If it were not for the adversaries who make us conscious of our impotence, how would we learn to trust God's omnipotence? -- E.E.
Tuesday, 07 July 2009
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Currently
Gran Torino (Widescreen Edition)
By Clint Eastwood, Brian Haley, Christopher Carley, Geraldine Hughes
see relatedour first garden
We're pretty excited about gardening this year. We saw an amazing local garden last year that was done completely in tires, so we decided to try that. Keith took the sidewalls off some tires, flipped them inside out, and we added nice rich soil to them. The theory is that the tires hold heat better and can extend the short north Idaho growing season by up to a month! I thought having old tires in our backyard would add something classy (not!) to the trailer motif but it doesn't actually look too bad.
Here are some pictures of our garden. Note the ridiculous overachiever of a tomato plant in the first picture. It is now twice as tall as its cage and about six times as tall as the two little tomato plants behind it. The onions in the third picture are looking kinda wimpy, but at least they're there. Their neighbors the peppers have yet to show themselves. Still, I think our first attempt at a garden is going pretty well.
Tomatoes, zucchini, butternut squash, and cucumbers.
Pumpkins, cucumbers, and melons.
Potatoes, onions, and carrots.
And this little addition to the scene is my personal favorite.
Recently we have been torn between the desire to pay off debt and the desire to have our own bit of land to work and cultivate. We want to have rows of fruit trees and heaps of berry bushes, and we've held off from planting any of these things before because, well, we haven't gotten to that longer-term home yet. So we have finally decided to go ahead and start planting these things on this land even though we don't own it. That way we can continue on the road to paying off debt but still enjoy planting stuff. We might not see the long-term fruit of our labors, but we can enjoy the cultivation process! So I don't have pictures of them, but we now also have a few cherry trees in the ground as well as some raspberry and blueberry bushes.
I'm really appreciating living in a yard with some mature plants in it. I don't think we have before. I have always wanted a garden with lots of staggered perennials and beautiful vines and big trees and that sort of thing. The yard where we live now isn't large, but there are a few big trees around it, and a lovely flurry of vines on our chain link fence, and another rose bush to keep mine company. We've enjoyed a succession of tulips and some other flowers this spring, and we're now into orange daylillies, my favorite! It is so fun for me to be able to take Rilla around our yard to see different colors and feel different textures of the modest little mixture of plants here. Definitely a blessing.
One more picture of our sweet girl.
Friday, 03 July 2009
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a sobering day
My friend Jennifer and I took our little girls for a walk to the beach today. We started off on the steepier, sunnier side of the river cove near her house. Her one-year-old daughter had a life jacket on and enjoyed going in the water with her mom, and I sat on the bank with Rilla, just putting her legs in the water. There was a lady near us with a few young kids playing at the river edge. After a while it was too hot to not be in the shade, so we moved across the cove and spent some time in the water there. Jennifer offered to let Rilla wear her daughter's life jacket so that she could go in deeper with her, since Rilla was enjoying the water and wanted to be more immersed but I wasn't wearing a swimsuit. I thought about it but thought it would be an inconvenience to put the life jacket on. About this time, Jennifer's husband who had just joined us and was in the water said, "There's something wrong," and he began to swim across the cove. We watched from afar as a small crowd gathered. We could hear a woman sounding really upset but we couldn't tell what she was saying. Brett came walking back to us after a few minutes and said, "That boy just drowned." The paramedics arrived soon and we watched and prayed from across the cove. I couldn't hold back and so I went over and sat down with the woman who was wailing. It was the lady we had been sitting by before we moved to a different area. It had only been ten or fifteen minutes after we moved away that her grandson wandered too deep into the water and disappeared before she realized he was gone. She panicked when she didn't see him, and a few men went in after him and found him. I think they tried to perform CPR before the paramedics came. I went down and sat with the lady and prayed for her as she cried out to God and as the paramedics worked on the blue boy behind us. I don't know yet if they were able to resuscitate him. They took him by ambulance and I think they may have gotten a pulse. We recognized one of the paramedics as being a friend from our church, so we hope to find out later from him what happened.
I haven't been in a lot of situations like this one, but when I am, it's like I am compelled to comfort. Just to sit and be with and intercede for the people involved. Like the forty or so people standing around at a distance and watching all this, I felt totally overwhelmed and chaotic inside when this all started. As we prayed, though, it was like I just couldn't stop myself, I had to go over and be with this lady. I figured she could hit me if she wanted me to go away, but I had to go over there. Rilla was quiet and calm in my arms despite the deep wails coming from the lady as we sat with her, and I was glad for that. The Lord was present and I am glad that I was there in those desperate minutes before they all left for the hospital. Still, Jennifer and I couldn't help but wonder later what would have happened if we had still been nearby when the boy drowned. I have a peace about it, that we were in the right places when we needed to be, but I am shocked and quieted to realize how fragile life is. This boy was probably four or five years old, and I said hi to him while he was playing, and just a short while later he wandered in too deep and drowned. Among other things, I am stunned by my own stupidity at thinking there was no need for Rilla to have a life jacket as we take her in and out of the water this summer. I went and bought one after we left the beach and I am pretty sure I will be erring on the over-cautious side with her for quite a while after this.
It is the Lord who gives breath and life. I am confident of this and confident of His timing and goodness. I know He can bring good out of this. Please pray for this family. Pray for the grandmother, the mother, and the sister who were all there this afternoon. Pray for this little boy. And if you plan to go swimming tomorrow like we do, please oh please oh please put life jackets on your children.
UPDATE: The little boy is alive and expected to make a full recovery. Praise the Lord!
Thursday, 02 July 2009
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Currently
Character Is Destiny: Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember
By John McCain, Mark Salter
see relatedrendezvous
This is a mountain man rendezvous.
This is Rilla at a mountain man rendezvous.
This is Rilla with my mountain man dad at a rendezvous.
This is Rilla with her daddy at a rendezvous.
I grew up going to rendezvous with my dad. It's themed camping which imitates the mountain man get-togethers of the early 1800s when fur trappers and traders in the west would gather together to trade and fellowship after months of solitary trekking. Attendees of the modern kind dress up in old-style clothing and spend the weekend camped out in teepees or canvas tents, cooking in dutch ovens and shooting muzzleloaders, throwing tomahawks and calling one another by mountain man names like Eagle Feather and Hummingbird. I don't know yet if this is something we will do often with our own children, but it was a special part of my growing-up years and it was great to go to one after a long absence and see old friends again.
And of course, I enjoyed the chance to snap pictures of this baby girl who looked like she fell out of a wagon somewhere along the Oregon Trail.
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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Currently
Overdressed
By Caedmon's Call
see relatedhere and there
Have you ever played a board game - or really, any game - in which one of the other players has to leave and so you fill in for them? So you end up playing your own part as well as theirs? Well, that is how I feel when I take Rilla to social events. I couldn't put my finger on it until last night but that is exactly how I feel when I am trying to carry on an adult conversation while taking care of a six-month-old and fielding questions on her behalf, and of course trying also to speak for myself. It's just like playing two roles in a game where everyone else is just playing one. Except that instead of something like Monopoly, I feel like I'm playing Dutch Blitz and the conversation just keeps rolling whether or not the sentences I half-say make any sense. And so inevitably, I find myself driving home afterward and literally cringing and blushing as some of the things I have said come creeping back unbidden to my mind. I said what? And I followed it up with that? Oh man. On the plus side, it makes me feel like I must have really good friends to not point these things out more often. Either that or they just feel really sorry for me.
The hard drive on my computer is out of space and I can't figure out how to interface with my new external hard drive, so I haven't been able to upload pictures for a while. It's driving me crazy. I have to go through and delete old ones here and there to make room for new ones, and since I try to only keep pictures that I think are worth keeping, well, it is kind of frustrating. I did upload a few today though because it's Rilla's half-birthday today and I wanted to brag about her newest skill.
Keith with his bees
our cute little nephew
out for dinner on Father's Day
Now here are the ones from this morning. Rilla is suddenly much more active in this last week. She has been rolling over one way for a few months, but since discovering how to roll the other way just a week ago, she can now roll all over, push up on her hands and knees, scoot backwards for long distances, and, my personal favorite, do boy push-ups! She gets up on just her hands and tippy toes, which is pretty impressive to me. I think she's trying to figure out whether crawling is supposed to be on knees or on toes. It's incredibly entertaining.
Monday, 15 June 2009
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Currently
Chasing Fireflies: A Novel of Discovery
By Charles Martin
see relatedOur rather-large-for-a-trailer front porch is knee deep with miscellaneous belongings and has been since we moved in. I dug into some random garbage sacks this afternoon and discovered, among other things, clothes which have been packed away for five years or so. I have no idea where they've been hiding all this time, but there they were! And oh, the memories. Some people keep scrapbooks; apparently, I keep clothing. Here are some of the things I found.
Spring Dash shirt from 1995
Idaho Youth Summit shirts from 1997 and 1998
Our Generation (Spokesman-Review) shirt from 1998 or so
Smithsonian tank top from 1999
Hershey's sweatshirt from visiting Pennsylvania in 1999
Shiloh Ranch shirt from 2000 or so
the dress I wore to Winter Ball - our first date - in 2000
Caraway Street children's ministry shirt from 2000-2001
Whitworth Homecoming 2001 shirt
Warren Hall shirts from 2001-2002
Panama City Beach shirt from going on a mission trip there in 2002
Schumacher sweatshirt (so relieved to find this one) from the glory days
Alleghany College (my dad's alma mater) shirt from our road trip in 2003
Ladies of the Lake shirt - you know who you are - circa 2003 or so
our really good winter gloves that have been missing for years
the green hat Keith used to wear while we were dating
the mittens Josie gave me for Christmas when Keith & I were engaged
And those were just my clothes... Keith has plenty of interesting ones too. Of course, there were also some items from high school that actually made me cringe, but I'm trying to forget those again. This is probably a really boring blog if you weren't involved in any of those activities with me but... wow, the memories! I'm rather overwhelmed with nostalgia at it all, and seriously wondering how these things survived fifteen moves without being discovered until now.
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- Name: Jamie
- Country: United States
- State: Idaho
- Metro: Moscow
- Gender: Female
- Member Since: 3/9/2005
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