On Wednesday, the kids and I threw a costume party here! Costumes were required for children and moms! There were nine moms and twenty kids. Everyone brought food to add to a smorgasbord lunch, which included munchies (chips, crackers, pretzels), cookie-cutter cut peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches, fruit salad. For desert, we had jello […]

Always trying to improve. Here’s a thought on parenting. If a parent gives a child a task to completed that is out of their range of sight, and the parents comes back a half-hour later and it’s not done and the child says that they “forgot” that their parent had told them to do something, […]

Part II: So how does one move from maintenance to nurturing? First, we must realize that children are not ours, but the Lord’s. Yes, we carried our children for an average of nine months. Yes, we are responsible for their care. We are very, very involved in the raising of our children. Yet, while we […]

I recently subscribed to a Christian listserv called “QuiverFull” for parents of large families. I have found it very encouraging to hear everyone’s ideas on ways to take care of all of their children and yet prevent individual children from slipping through the cracks. One of the recent threads was on responding to people who […]

Tom would kill me for posting this… except that he’s not here! The monkeys have taken over the radio station. — “Change all the answers so they apply to you, and then send it to a whole bunch of people (including the person who sent it to you–me 🙂 The theory is that you will […]

Children create housework, but children are not housework. As I observe friends with children, particularly those who seem to be discouraged and overwhelmed with motherhood, I have noticed a pattern of sorts: they all seem to treat raising children as though it is a form of housework. They go through the motions of caring for […]

Tom had made the following comment: As you can see from her previous posts, Sarah copes with separation the same way I do – by staying really busy. At least when I’m on travel, I’ve got lots of work to do to keep busy – Sarah has to be creative, and she’s better at being […]

grandvisit/IMG_0294 My mom and my sister also came to visit – they were here last week! They, along with my friend Laura and her daughter, came to church with us for Micah’s baptism. We filled up two rows! My mom had written “Your Mamma Loves You” in a heart on my chalkboard, and I’m NOT […]

No, we’re not having rice for dinner. benvisit/IMG_0340My brother Ben (who is 19 years older than Thomas to the day) was visiting friends in PA and came to see us, too! (Click on the photo to see more pictures from his visit.) I had known that he was thinking of visiting, but not sure when. […]