Reformation Day

 A quote by Charles Spurgeon which was posted on A Wise Woman Builds Her Home blog.

“O dear mothers, you have a very sacred trust reposed in you by God!

 

He hath in effect said to you, “Take this child and nurse it for Me, and I will give thee thy wages.” You are called to equip the future man of God, that he may be thoroughly furnished unto every good work. If God spares you, you may live to hear that pretty boy speak to thousands, and you will have the sweet reflection in your heart that the quiet teachings of the nursery led the man to love his God and serve Him.

Those who think that a woman detained at home by her little family is doing nothing, think the reverse of what is true. Scarcely can the godly mother quit her home for a place of worship; but dream not that she is lost to the work of the church; far from it, she is doing the best possible service for her Lord.

Mothers, the godly training of your offspring is your first and most pressing duty.”

 

On this Reformation Day, I'm thankful for the opportunity to stay home and teach my boys what it means to have the light of Christ shining through them.  Our fervant prayer for our boys is that they would be willing and ready to be used by God to go out and reform their worlds, whatever that may be, for God's glory.

Morning Glory

Counting Our Blessings

Fall is a hard time of year for me.  The changing colors of leaves are beautiful but the cold that makes them change is awful.  Fall/Thanksgiving is the time when we focus the most on being thankful, but already in October there are Christmas trees out and advertising for presents--do we really take the time to be thankful?

So, as a way to try stay focused on thankfulness, I started a "Counting Our Blessings" poster on the fridge where we write what we are thankful for and that keeps those blessings in front of us at all times.  I also started a list as a separate page on my blog (found here).  There are many, many blogs out there doing the "1000 Blessings" but I'm just going to keep a tally running, I think.  Blessings never end, our focus gets narrower and we may see fewer of them, but God never stops blessing us.

Praying you too will find countless blessings for which to be Grateful.

Imagination and Play

Bryan makes the pancakes on Saturday morning in our house.  One day Brandon decided he needed to be just like his daddy, so he asked me for an apron and a flipper.  He found this lid in my "big" tupperware drawer and used it as the table so all his cars could enjoy pancakes too.



There was never a better use for painter's tape, I tell you what!  It's worthless for actually painting with, but perfect for creating F-A-S-T race tracks.

Bryan and I are getting really tired of doing all the building of tracks, tunnels and stations.  Brandon is a perfectionist and has a problem trying to do something unless he knows he can acommplish it successfully in his mind (hmmm...sounds a little scarily like his mother).  Anyway, we've started walking him through the steps and teaching him how to do the building and that is perfectly acceptable in his mind and he is very proud when the creations come out correctly.

Brandon is also learning how to play simple games on the computer.  See Micah?  He's getting taller by the day, I think.

Blessings on your Tuesday.

Birch Bay

Wednesday morning Brandon's breathing was worse again, so we headed out to Birch Bay.  The salt air is helpful in clearing him up.  It was especially helpful that morning because it was so foggy.

There were hundreds of Canadian Geese right outside the park boundaries (maybe they were worried they would each have to pay $10 to get in... ;) )  Okay, that was naughty.  I just couldn't resist.

Snack time.

Shortly after this picture he did a face plant into the sand and scraped
his forehead up.

Have a fabulous weekend!

The River

Tuesday morning, in the interest of getting some fresh air, we took a four-wheeler ride out to the river.  Brandon, especially, needed some fresh air but couldn't run, so the river was a good place for him.  He could climb and get some exercise without exerting too much energy.

Blessings on your Friday.

Pumpkin

In other news, I decided to try make my own pumpking (for baking) this year. 

Brandon and I have really been enjoying "working" together lately.
He did stick with this too long since it was pretty hard to scrape the seeds out, but
at least he was willing to give it a try.

I tried two methods.  Half of the pumpkin was oven roasted and the other half was cooked in the crockpot. 
The oven definitely works better.

Measured pumpkin, ready to use.

Last week pumpkins were on sale at Freds for 18 cents/lb.  A can of pumpkin (1lb) is $1.69.  That's a pretty significant difference...nevermind that it's healthier this way. 

Have a good day.

The Long and The Short of It

The last several days:
* At the end of last week we were all starting to get over our colds.
* Saturday we worked hard outside in our yard, trimming and cleaning.
* Saturday night Brandon suddenly started coughing with a hint of strider.
* We rushed him outside into the foggy cold air and his breathing calmed down.
* Sunday morning we decided it would be better to keep him home from church--he was just starting to get over a cold and if the cough the night before was any indication, he was already starting to get another one.
* Supper time on Sunday he started coughing again.  We took him outside for a while and it sort of calmed him down.
* He managed to sleep for about three hours before the strider came back.  Bryan sat outside with him for a while again, we tried an onion poultice and various other methods, but by 11pm he was starting to gag, cough, and panic from not being able to breathe.
* I rushed him to the ER while Bryan stayed home with Micah. 
* They gave him another albuterol treatment, mist/steroid neb, and a shot of decadron.  We stayed for two hours.  The doctor started mentioning admitting him if I wasn't comfortable taking him home.  We were down to just the cough, so I said I would try taking him home. 
* We got home at 2:30am.  By 3:30 am Brandon was panicking again and the strider was back.  The doctor had mentioned several times how dry it was that night and there were several croupy kids in the ER because of it.  So, instead of rushing him outside, we sat in the bathroom with the shower running on full hot to create steam.  Meanwhile, I'm thinking in my head I should be getting dressed and taking him back to the ER.  Thankfully, the steam worked and he managed to sleep for a couple more hours.
* Monday, mid-morning, the ER doctor called us (completely unheard of in my book!) because he was concerned about how serious the strider had been the night before.  He heard Brandon still coughing  and said his coughing should have been better than that by then and we should get him in to his doctor. 
* I called right away, but we couldn't get in until 7pm.  At his appointment, the doctor decided to give him another dose of decadron. 
* Brandon slept for 13 hours straight that night.  Micah, on the other hand, woke up several times.  I had moved him in to the guest room so he wouldn't get re-infected with the virus, but by Monday night he obviously had another cold as well.
* Tuesday night I got up six times with Micah and Brandon's cough woke us up another three or four times. 
* Today, they both seem to be doing better, but for Brandon, this is the most difficult stage because he has energy and wants to run, but the more active he is the worse his cough is, especially at night.  It's a vicious cycle.

So, here are pictures of what our household looks like when croup is around:

Micah got abandoned to finish supper on his own for a while.

The nebulizer stays out and is used 24/7.

The boys watch lots of movies because it's so important to keep Brandon quiet.

The mystifier runs 24/7 in the boy's room.

We play LOTS of quiet games.

So that's what our week has looked like.  I've put our house under quarantine and Friday will start disinfecting and washing everything that can be washed.

Praying you've had a healthier week.
Blessings.

Croup

Dear Croup
You are neither wanted nor welcome in your torturing of Brandon.
Thanks for leaving quickly without infecting Micah.
Sara

A Park Finale

Friday Bryan came for a rare lunch at home, and said, "Tomorrow isn't supposed to be raining.  How about doing a park day altogether."  My response?  "If it's not raining shouldn't we be out in the yard working to get it cleaned out for winter?"  But as he knew it would, the idea grew on me.  A park day...a finale to all the park days we've had this summer...with Bryan...after an enormously stressful work week...time with the boys...weighed against yard work...  Well, by the end of the day it sounded like splendid idea and I'm so thankful we went.  The sun shown brilliantly and it was such fun to spend a day as a family just having fun.

We went to Washington Park in Anacortes.  It was a park we had never been to before, had a play ground and walking paths so it fit all our criteria. 

After lunch we played on the playground for a while. 

Micah seemed pretty overwhelmed at first.

Maybe just a little too tall...

Brandon wanted a drink before we went on our hike, so he tried to get one out of this fountain.
He tried getting the water to run and drinking it at the same time, but he wasn't quite tall enough
or coordinated enough to get both happening at the same time.  So he filled up the bowl
and lapped it out of there.  It was pretty funny to watch, but may be not so clean...

There was a loop that looked pretty simple to walk around, so we decided to go for it.  It ended up being about two and a half miles up and down hill.  Lots of people drove by us, but there were others walking as well.  Brandon's asthma kicked in pretty badly about half way there in the dense and moist forest so I ended up carrying him half the way.  I debated just turning around but Bryan insisted that we keep going cause we were probably over halfway already.  I'm glad he insisted because we broke out of the trees at the top and the view was tremendously spectacular with the sun shining so brightly.

Following the "rules" by touching the water.

Brandon insisted on pushing Micah for quite a while.  It was pretty steep but they had fun.

My favorite picture from the whole day...a boy and his dad simply watching life happen together.

The view from the top.

A fun Brandon sequence.

And of course I had to play a little bit with my camera. 

So poignant...A flower struggling to survive as the rest of the world around it turns brown in hibernation.

When we got back to the playground we did a little more climbing before heading home.  Brandon wasn't quite sure about being up so high.  I, on the other hand, was trying to figure out a way to get higher.  ;)  Unfortunately, I'm just not as dexterous as I used to be.

And that was our day of play and de-stressing.  I'm so thankful God gives us the ability to play and enjoy each other.  Once I got my mind wrapped around the idea that it was okay not to work on a Saturday, that's exactly what we did.

Blessings on the rest of your week. 

Children and the Goings-On

Well, I was informed by two men in my life that I was completely remiss in posting pictures of all my fun on Saturday (all those old, rusted chains) and not posting any pictures of the TRAIN SHOW, of all things, and the kids!  What's this blog for, anyway??  ;)

So, to remedy my grievous sin, here are all pictures of the kids, the TRAIN SHOW, and the goings-on around here...

These train show pictures were taken on Bryan's phone since I wasn't around.

Tuesday I made applesauce for 12 hours straight.  I've been trying to get Brandon more involved in helping around the house and he is soaking it all up, being my "BIG helper".  ("Micah, you can't help cause you're still too little.")  :)  Anyway, he was my big helper and strained the peelings and seeds out of the applesauce for THREE hours straight!!  It amazed me how long he stayed interested in it.  He did take a couple breaks in between to come wash the apples for me, but otherwise he was on the chair straining.

Of course, half the fun is watching it come out...

He strained all of this!

To give you a bit of perspective on how big the blue bowl really is--I strained the stainless steel ones.

We ended up with 19 quarts of applesauce all together.  We would have had more but I burned one batch.  Seems I burn one batch every year.

And look who decided one day this week that it was time to pull himself up.  One day he struggled to pull himself up by the couch and the next day he was pulling himself up on everything.  Today he tried walking along the couch by himself.  He astonishes me how he just decides he's ready and goes for it.

Watching his goofy brother.

In case you're wondering why my children are trapped in the living room, it's because I have this
thing with children sliding, jumping, walking and scooting through my dirt and/or while
I'm trying to wash the floor.  So instead of yelling at them to quit it, I trap them in the living room.  :)

Micah is also soaking up books right now.  Wants nothing to do with the cloth ones, but anything else
he is completely engrossed in.  This is one of my favorite times of development so far.

Micah is also trying to talk.  He is definitely communicating with "ahs" but is also trying to form words.

Well, there you have it.  Our week in pictures.
Blessings on your weekend.