Busy Boy

Farming has been a big attraction for David lately. Yesterday he fed pretend animals while his sisters prepared dinner for him. The girls worked hard crushing up Tasteeos to make flour and mixing it with cornmeal. They said that it was good until they added garlic salt. I had to smile at all the farming talk and the roles the girls insited each of them play. My smile wavered as I walked into the living room and discoverd the nature of the animal feeding operation. He was using all manner of things I had worked so hard to clean up and organize the day before. I let delight prevail, grabbed my camera and took a picture. Later I asked him to clean up. We raced to get it clean and I was surprised out how quickly the clean up went.



A few weeks ago David used shredded banking papers for haying.




Could it have been a desire for spring that sparked the making of this nest? Maybe it was reading the book Big Bird Brings Spring to Sesame Street.

Sickness and God's love

I had an "aha" moment today as I cleaned up David's vomit, changed his clothes and his bed clothes, washed things and brought him a drink and some jello. Throw up grosses me out, but even when my children are covered with it and I cringe and want to turn away, I don't because I love them and I want to help them. I want them to be clean, to feel better, to have what they need, to rest, to call out to me when they need help and to know that I will be with them. Do I like that in the middle of the night while I am sleeping? No, not really. But I am compelled to action by my love for them. The sickness of my children doesn't make me love them less. To the contrary, it reminds me of my love and gives me opportunity to demonstrate it.

The past few days I've been praying that God would help me to understand more completely how He can hate to look on sin and yet love me, a sinner. He answered my prayer through my sick children. My sin is like vomit, an ugly wound, a broken bone, infection, cancer. God doesn't want to look at it. He hates it, but He loves me and takes care of me, cleaning me up, setting things right, clothing me with new clothes, nourishing me, and restoring me. He's not doing those things to make me lovable, He's doing them because He loves me.

But what God chose to do to conquer the "sickness" of sin and death cost Him much more that what it costs me to minister to sick children. I might have to leave my bed at night when I am comfy and warm. He left the glories of heaven where He was adored and obeyed. I can clean with some cloths, water and detergent. Sin requires shed blood for cleansing, blood from a perfect sacrifice. Only God Himself could offer perfect blood. Now I better understand Jesus as the physician who came to help the sick and the sinners.

God doesn't ask me to clean up my own sin, but He doesn't want me to stay in it either. He wants me to admit I'm not well. He wants me to call out to Him for help. He wants me to submit to His help. He wants me to trust Him and not fight Him as He removes my filthy clothes and cleanses my impurity. He wants me to accept the nourishment and medicine He offers. He want me to accept others He sends to help me. He wants me to rest. As His cleansing and healing takes place, He wants me to get up and try the things He asks me to do that will make me stronger. He doesn't want me to overdo it and try to go beyond what He wants me to do, for that will only wear me out and weaken me. He wants me to listen to Him, obey Him, lean on Him.

God loves me. God loves the world. God gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but shall have eternal life.

Stomachs Emptied and Filled

Last evening we had a fun family dinner at the Northwestern College Gala Auction. We actually left before the audible auction, but had a good time nonetheless. In previous years the dinner was pizza. Last night it was pulled pork sandwiches, baked beans, potato chips, soda (pop), and ice cream bars. About six hours after the dinner we saw it again in a different form -- a gooey mass on Carie's pillow. I'm not sure if what she ate didn't agree with her or if she picked up a bug somewhere, but the cleanup effort was enormous. Bob dealt with he bed and I helped Carie. I did laundry until well after midnight because no sooner was I finally dozing off when Maggie came in and announced, "Carie threw up again." Off I went to clean her, remove her floor bedding, and create a new pallet on the floor for her with towels. She had soiled at least six blankets. Clean ones were becoming scarce.



When Carie woke this morning she was quite cheerful. I read to her and David for an hour after seeing that the rest of the family got breakfast. Bob and Maggie went to church while I was reading. I proceeded to ready myself and David for church, including giving a bath to David. In the end, I went to church by myself. It was a wonderful time of praise, worship, and reflection on God's word. Meanwhile, Bob had prepared brunch, so when I got home we had waffles, bacon, and eggs. I'm so thankful for Bob!



This evening Maggie and I joined many others at our church to help pack food for Kids Against Hunger to send to Haiti. Maggie and I had a good time working with others as we weighed and sealed packages. I enjoyed seeing the level of responsibility and ownership that the children of our church took as they bustled around making sure that packets of food and bins got where they needed to go. God is at work and it is exciting! He loves the people of Haiti, He loves us, and He has provided a way for us to use our hands in love to help. Thank you God!

Life this week

It's been a long time since I've posted. We've had lots of snow, cold, and wind. Not as much snow as others, but even one inch of snow coupled with Iowa winds on the open plains is enough to make major road hazards. Carie has had a number of snow days since Christmas. Monday, President's Day, was supposed to be a make up day for past snow days, but the school had another snow day. The kids and I had a nice day together, taking time at lunch to listen to a recording about George Washington and then joining our neighbors at the library later in the afternoon. Our usual Monday evening activity, gymnastics in Sioux Center for Maggie and Carie, was cancelled due to weather.

David has been taking a great interest in letters and words. He is now writing his name by himself and enjoys asking what combinations of letters spell. He can identify certain words in print and likes to "read" aloud books he's memorized. His newest interest is dot-to dots. He can do 1-20 dot-to-dots, saying each of the numbers as he goes along. A few weeks ago he finally got it that numbers go " . . .12, 13, 14, 15. . ." not " . . . 12, 14, 15, 16." As always, he loves to create structures and roadways with boards and leftover sheet rock. Now he has leftover flooring to add to his supplies. He loved watching the men install our new floors. They had buckets, boxes and bags of tools and he watched with great interest as them measured, cut, hammered, and glued. He would hunt down our tape measure and his tools and get busy trying out some of what he saw. Carie often joined him in his activities. When the flooring was all done David enjoyed playing on the hard floor with toys that had not worked right on carpet. All the children paraded around with instruments and shouts of glee when the flooring was complete.


Carie loves going to school and "doing school" at home. Yesterday, while Maggie was busy taking a test, Carie sat with a white board and practiced writing. Then she pulled out some handwriting paper and wrote the numbers 1 through 100. She listened along with Maggie as I read from a biography about Eli Whitney and from a histroical fiction book about Nathaniel Bowditch. Carie has also taken to copying simple drawings with great skill. As of two weeks ago, Carie has officialy begun piano lessons with me. Maggie's piano teacher is too busy to take Carie on as a student right now but doesn't mind if Carie sits in during Maggie's piano lesson. So, Carie sits quietly next to Maggie during Maggie's lesson. I hear Carie practicing fairly regularly. She's doing well with the lessons we go over and with her own compostions.

Maggie is in the midst of taking the Iowa Tests of Basic skills while also doing regular homeschool lessons. At times things are a little tense, but overall this week is going well. In math she has begun mutiplying double and triple digit numbers by a single digit. We've also practiced estimating. In history we are reading about Eli Whitney and the challenge whe was given to creat a machine to separate cotton seeds from cotton bolls. Science is on hold for this week, but lately we've been learning about plants. Maggie's reading Om-kas-toe, a story about a Blackfoot Indian boy and his first sighting of "elkdogs" (elk-like animals that would carry people and had long tails like dogs - i.e. horses). In Bible we've been reading about the travels and trials of the apostle Paul, most recently his appeal to Ceasar. And Maggie's also been reading in Kings. Right now she is using colored pencils to mark verse that are special to her. No, actually she has moved on to replacing batteries in David's toy phone. Soon she'll probably be buried in a book. I better catch her to do some writing before I lose her.

All of the children are shutterbugs. I never know what is going to be on our camera when I trun it on. The pictures of Maggie and Carie were taken by children.