Walk in Wisdom

I have heard it said that the Old Testament doesn’t matter anymore because Jesus has returned, died, risen and ascended in to heaven. All of His teaching on earth supersedes all of the Old Testament. My question to those who believe this is, “Why then would God allow the Old Testament to remain in the scriptures?”, “What would the Old Testament benefit those of us who are Christians then?”, and last but certainly not least, “What does the New Testament say about this very topic?” Very simply put, searching and studying THE scripture (meaning the whole book of God’s Word) itself will give us the answers we seek.

First of all, let’s define the Old Testament. The “Old” Testament simply stated is the record of God’s works among His chosen people from the beginning of creation to approximately 300 or so years before Christ’s birth record. Is the Bible a history book? Absolutely! For example, the record of the kings in 1st and 2nd Kings gives us an account of what each king did during their reign. In my own understanding, the records of the kings are there to show how each king conducted themselves according to level of obedience to God’s word. Some kings knew God’s word and obeyed and they were blessed. Other kings knew God’s word and didn’t obey and they were cursed with loss of their lives or the lives of those whom they loved. There were yet others who knew the history of their people, but did not read nor understand the word of God and they chose evil. The people suffered under this type of king, yet they wanted a king to rule over them. God gave them their desires and the fruit of their desires were evident in the kings who reigned. Having said that, the records of the kings are there for many reasons that, in my own mind, I cannot fathom yet due to my own mortality. I am sufficiently content, however, knowing that there is a reason far past my own understanding for the Lord of Heaven and Earth to have placed the records of the kings in His Word.

Considering the historical account of God’s people in His Word, then would it be a testimony to God’s grace and love toward the children of Israel? Of course it would be! It also shows without a shadow of a doubt how God is also a God of power and might, a force to be reckoned with and one who deserves our admiration due to his sheer power. To send the plagues just by giving Moses the power to speak it is awesome. To part the Red Sea so that the children of Israel could walk across on dry land is absolutely spectacular! Just placing myself in one of those Israelites’ shoes is very humbling. Just think of it! You’ve just seen Moses, a man who has inspired everyone of Hebrew lineage to leave Egypt and be free of slavery has just raised his arms and the waters parted. While you’re walking across the bottom of the Red Sea, in the wall of water to your left and to your right you can see WHALES and all sorts of other deep sea creatures you’ve never seen before, IN THE WALL OF WATER!!!! Think of it! It’s awesome!

There are a whole HOST of other stories contained within the Old Testament that shows every one of us the importance of obedience to the laws of the land we live in as well as the Lord’s words that are contained within the scripture. The book of Leviticus gives us rule upon rule to live by. I’m not sure about everyone else who is reading this post right now, but honestly, when I read the book of Leviticus, I can feel the oppressiveness, the hopelessness, the absolute need of a Savior. One who would not free me from all these God given laws, but give me hope, let me actually talk to and reach God without going to the tabernacle and asking a priest to sacrifice a lamb for me to have my own sins washed clean. I believe this very point is the reason the Lord placed the book of Leviticus in the Bible. We need to read it to remind us that in our own strength, every single day, in our own mortality we all fall so very short of the grace of God. It is for this very reason that I believe God allowed the Old Testament to remain intact in His scriptures. There is such hopelessness and helplessness when one is led to and fro by the world much like the sands of the sea. There is MUCH hopefulness and peacefulness when one is grounded on THE ROCK of ages!

Those of us who are Christians in each of our various stages of spiritual growth need to see very clearly the wisdom shared with us in the Old Testament. There is such a wonderful legacy that is shared with us through the feasts of the Old Testament. My own personal study of these feasts and celebrations is very limited at this point in time. However, I do know that with each celebration of each feast and holy day, each one of the practices of these feasts point directly to Christ. Right now I am in the process of compiling books to study these celebrations with our children. We will begin, hopefully on January 1, 2011 and follow each of them through the entire year. What a wonderful way to study the Old Testament! I will update as time goes on how this impacts both myself as well as the rest of my family. We are excited to learn more about these Old Testament traditions. Much of the reason we are pursuing this study is due to the discovery of this particular scripture—

Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy,

but to fulfil. (18) For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one

tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished.

(19) Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall

teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do

and teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Mat 5:17-19

This is the very answer to questions #2 & #3 above, “What would the Old Testament benefit those of us who are Christians then?” and “What does the New Testament say about this very topic?”

But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and with no reproach,

and it shall be given to him. But let him ask in faith, doubting nothing. For he who doubts is like

 a wave of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed.

(Jas 1:5-6)

The more we study the word of God, the more He shows Himself to us. Like a father takes delight in the child he loves, our Heavenly Father wants us to know Him and His heart of hearts. There is no other better way to take delight in knowing the heart of our Lord than to read His scripture. There are great and wonderful mysteries that are made known to us through opening our eyes, our ears and our hearts to the word of God.  In this pursuit is great wisdom.

Blessings,

Fixing Major Problems

As many of you know, we've had some big dirt mounds in our front yard.  This is to hopefully document the journey that still is not over yet. 
To begin our journey I'd have to back up, so this will only be about the outside of the house in this post.  The rest of the journey is yet to be written. 

As you will notice, above is what resembles where we use to have our square foot gardens.  Earlier this Spring, we took them out to relocate them and plant something else here.  Little did we realize at that time that we would be using this space for transplanting my flowers in to from the front of the house.

This is only a few of the perennials that have been transplanted. 

This is why we needed to transplant all of the perennials.  This wonderful gentleman from our church came to help us dig out our foundation so we could install french drains.  This was just the beginning.    
 He was able to dig all the way down to 9 feet below the ground level, thankfully. 

Here he is precariously balanced on our hill. 
For all this, we've had quite an experience.  After the gentleman left, my daughter was sitting on the porch tying bundles of chives for drying when her yarn rolled off in to the 9' hole pictured above.  The boys got the ladder out, got the yarn out and left the ladder in the hole at my direction.  I figured that since my husband was going to be working in the hole the next day that leaving it there wouldn't be a problem.  Just after dusk, my youngest son said, "Mom, what was that sound?"  I said, "No, let's go check it out."  We went out to the front porch to this...
 ...a half burried ladder with 4 feet of clay filling up the originally dug 9 foot hole.  (This is standing on the porch looking down in to the hole.)

The next day, my dearest husband and youngest son were perched on the porch in this fashion checking things out and figuring things in their minds.
 In this picture you can see exactly how much of the wall of dirt came down.  The hole is a little more than 4 feet deep in this picture.  The black stuff is tar.  This is the first coat. 
Hubby painting the tar on the foundation...


 After all of the tar is painted on, the plastic goes up, then the pipe and gravel.

 Of course the bucket brigade helped to save my hubby's back.  Each of them were incredibly helpful in the whole process.
  Here is the french drains completed and ready to be filled in.
 ...by our ever helpful friend who came to till with this same tractor this past Spring.  He was such a wonderful help and I am ever so greatful to him for his friendship and help to make sure my hubby's back doesn't get hurt further.  What a blessing!

 Yippee!  It's getting fuller and fuller!

 Almost done!
 Of course the screen decided to rip out of the screen door and look at who wants to see everything that is going on!  LOL  Silly Biscuit!
 And who can miss...the filled in hole!  From the side...
We are ready to begin work on the inside of the house now.  Tomorrow my hubby will begin the computations for getting everything from mold resistent drywall to the framing wood.  I'll get more pictures as we progress with the project.  For now though, the soil needs to settle in the front yard before we do anything more.
Blessings,

Not So Lazy Summer Days...

These summer days are quickly flying by and coming to a close faster than I ever thought possible.  But, that is how it goes with seasons.  My beautiful beebalm has long faded.  My precious hummingbird came to buzz by the bay window earlier today, perhaps to say "Good-bye" until next summer.  I have been quickly trying to fill our last days of summer with sun and fun. 

This morning the children, dogs and I walked along the beautiful Clarion River for our morning walk.  Well, I should say that the dogs and I walked.  Dearest Daughter rode her bike, oldest son roller bladed and youngest son roller skated.  Once reaching almost to the 1 mile point, we turned around and they BEGGED me to jog back to the Pale Whale.  So, with doggies in the SUV and emergency flashers on, my two tortises and one hare jogged behind me.  My one hare decided to run as fast as he could, then stop to walk very slowly for a while, then run at top speed again.  Lessons were learned very quickly about the difference between sprinting and jogging to build stamina. 

DA is the oldest who is now 15 years old.  HJ is my precious daughter who will be 13 this month.  JL is the youngest of the 3 who just turned 11 in July.  What fun we've had together this summer!  This area is absolutely beautiful to walk, ride, jog, canoe and whatever other mode you'd like to go through.  I'd highly recommend it!

We've tried our hand this year at selling produce from the side of the road.  We've had such and adventure!  The kids did all the work with it and we made a wonderful profit of $9 from it!  What a wonderful learning experience!  Maybe next year we'll have even more to sell!  Yippee!

Well, today is my paperwork day.  I just stopped by to write a tid bit and then head out to get my work done. 

Have a wonderful day!
Blessings,

Summer Time Fun

We've had a wonderful summer to this point.  The garden has given us more than we had ever imagined in food to put up for the winter.  This year we've canned tomato juice, potatoes, stewed tomatoes and put up corn, zucchini and my hubby is taking care of his hot peppers.  I know this doesn't seem like much, but this is the 4th year we've had a garden here in this home, but in years past the garden has not produced well at all.  We've not had enough to put up, so we've had to buy at farmer's markets and stands.  This year, we've had the abundance and we praise God for that! 

Here are our potatoes, onions and a few tomatoes and zucchini that we began with this year.  We canned 18 quarts of potatoes for the first time ever!  What a blessing that was! 

The onions we tried to sell as many as we could with signs on the side of the road.  We sold about 20 of them and one of my Black-Eyed Susan plants.  We're continually amazed at God's goodness toward us. 

During a rainy day after dinner, we tried a new game out.  We looked up "edifying" words for the letters in each of our names that describes that person.  This is what we'd come up with.  It was a lot of fun! 

We've recently found that we needed to do some water proofing in our basement due to some black mold we found in the carpeting.  After getting all of it out of the house, my hubby dry locked the walls and we turned our attention to the outside front of the house.  Here in PA you have to call before you start digging, so we called and called and called.  Every one of the companies came, but the telephone.  They drove by and marked on the PA1 call that they were "all clear" when they really were not.  We were at a stand still for at least 2 weeeks.  Once they did come, we were clear to begin digging.

We had a gentleman from church come and help us with that part since we didn't have such large equipment.  Everything is dug out now, including the sidewalk.  My hubby has done the pressure washing on the outside and now we'll need to go buy the foundation sealer, more piping and gravel to make the french drains.  Slowly and steadily we're working on making our house better.  We're not really doing much by way of "improvements", but just replacing the old things with just a little better for energy savings and so forth.  We must take care of what the Lord has blessed us with and be good stewards of those things or they may be taken from us. 

Well, it's time for me to sign off.  My computer time is done for now. 

Have a blessed day!

Canning Day 1 Complete!

We now have 18 qts of potatoes & 2 qts of stewed tomatoes from the garden!  What a blessing!

One of my kids snapped a shot of me while I was adding salt to the jars.  We use Sea Salt which is better for those of us who have high blood pressure than regular Iodized Salt or canning salt. 

I enjoy canning for this reason.  I know what is going in to my food.  I know that we won't have to buy cans of prepackaged food.  This Momma is very happy with that thought.  So, we can, freeze and dehyrate as much as we can.

This is my oldest son DA.  He loves to help me do the canning.  What a wonderful blessing he is, especially when my back starts to hurt.  He just asks, "Mom, is there anything I can do to help?"  Now who can turn down help like that? :0)

Here is my precious daughter HJ who is intently listening while I explain what we're going to do while we can our produce.

These are a couple of our HUGE brandywine tomatoes we grew in our garden this year, by the grace of God.  This is our first year getting these and it has been such a blessing.  We love growing this variety.  They are so delicious with a flavor unmatched by any other.  My husband showed me this by having me eat a cherry tomato, then a brandywine.  Wow!  What a difference!

Just a little perspective on how big the brandywine is in comparison to our cherry tomato and a quarter.  :0) 

And my youngest son, JL who enjoys being goofy.  I just love this picture of him.

Preparing the Harvest

This past week, we had some hard working children who absolutely loved to do our harvesting for us.  Our tomatoes are starting to come on, our potatoes and onions are done for the season, zucchinis are still producing as are the varieties of peppers and cucumbers.  Today begins our canning season.  We will be canning at least 20 quarts of potatoes.  We're hoping to do a couple of stewed tomatoes too.  With those we just blanche the tomatoes to get the skins off, put them in a jar with some basil, sea salt, minced garlic and a few slices of onion.  For the potatoes, we're following the Ball Blue Book's guide on  pressure canning them.  We will be posting pictures of the process since we've never canned potatoes before.  Although it shouldn't be too hard since we've canned so many things in the past.  This morning we've already shredded and froze zucchini in 2 cup incriments, so preserving the harvest is nothing new to us. 

We're hoping to make some beef and deer jerky this year with the dehydrator as well, so that will be a nice treat for all of us. 

Until another time...

Blessings,

Good Morning!

I love getting up before everyone else does and listen to the birds.  This morning is no different in that aspect.  However, there is one thing about the morning that has caused me to look up the weather.  The sunrise is red.  True to the saying, "Red sky in the morning-sailors take warning..." we have rain coming.   As a result I will be drying the family clothes in the drier today.  Yesterday I managed to get 8 loads done on the clothes line which was astonishing to my kids.  LOL

We do pay attention to the weather here in our home.  We've done hurricane studies in the past and kept close eyes on those huge storms that would threaten to cover our loved ones.  Now, even though we still somewhat watch hurricanes, the more intriguing part for my oldest son is to watch for rotation.  He is checking the weather on his own most of the time and watching for how systems move and grow or disipate before they get to us.  Why rely on a TV weatherman/woman when you can research it on the computer?  Here are a couple sites we use~
Unisys
Wunderground
Weather.com
Intellicast

All of these sites allow you to see the storms and so forth in a storm tracker fashion.  Weather.com has a neat feature where you can see the track the storm will take just by clicking the "future" button.  Since the weather can take turns that the weather people don't know about, it helps to know where you can find it yourself to see if your plans need to change. 

Speaking of plans, we had intended to go blueberry picking today, but with the weather coming we'll have to change it to tomorrow instead.  We only have until the end of this month and the first week of September to get the blueberries picked.   The patch is in the national forest and located inside a primitive campground.  It closes on Labor Day, so we need to get what we can now.  I like going on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Many campers go to pick on the weekend, so whatever isn't ripe then...by their picking...is ripe on Tuesday.  That's the same for Thursday as well. 

The blueberries are the size of grapes!  This is much of the reason we go picking up there.  It's about a half an hour from our house, but that's ok.  We enjoy picking out in the woods and walking the trail to get there.

This is the blueberry patch.  It's a half an acre of purposely planted blueberries.  It's been there since the national forest service planted it in 1990.  What a blessing!  An even greater blessing is that they do not spray these bushes with pesticides or use chemicals on them.  They're thriving and growing naturally organically and look at how well they are doing!

Well, it's time to get moving on more laundry, get my children up and get chores done.  Today starts day #1 with switched chores.   More on that later. 

Have a wonderful day!

Blessings,

Bounty

I don't think there has ever been a time when I've enjoyed watching our garden than I have this year. Of course each year has been like that though. This year is particularly true because we have tomatoes! Yes, we have quite a few other things in there too which makes things so much more enjoyable, but at last, we have our tomatoes.


This is our fourth summer growing things here in this house. With each passing year it has proven to be quite a challenge to our gardening skills. Each year we've started seeds early, with the exception of this year. This year the only thing we've done differently is purchase plants from an Amish farmer not far from our home. We planted 44 tomato plants on purpose. I say that with tongue in cheek because our last year's compost pile has yielded so many more tomato plants than we ever thought were possible! At my hubby's last count, there were 72 plants! Yes! I said 72 plants! He lost track of where he was at that point and decided to stop there. What a blessing!

Another thing we were going to just ask around for is zucchini. I've never had to grow it because it is such a voratious grower that people always have plenty. This year we have zucchinis growing in the old compost pile! I asked once for zucchini, received 2 and now we've found it growing in the garden! Now we can harvest it, peel and shred it for zucchini breads and zucchini lasagna! Yum-O!



We've also thought we had watermellons growing in there as well, but found that these huge oval things were not watermellons, but pumpkins! Wow! We have these HUGE things growing and they look absolutely fabulous!
Of course our 4 rows of sweet corn is doing wonderfully as well and I believe is very close to needing harvested. I don't know if we'll be able to blanche and freeze any, but it sure will be nice to have some of our own home grown corn to grace our table with.


Potatoes! Yes! We have potatoes coming out our ears! The funny thing is that with every 4 to 5 plants, we harvest about 10#'s of potatoes. What an especially blessed season we've had!

Our onions are ready to harvest as well and although they're not as big as we'd hoped, they've still grown and we've learned quite a bit from growing them this year. I know that onions may need a little more room to grow, much like the potatoes did. We may make mounds for the onions like we did with the potatoes. We'll see though.


One thing I've learned this year~weeds are a blessing! Yes, I said it! Weeds to a certain extent are a good thing. Now, let me clarify. We have made sure our plants have plenty of horse poo mixed with course saw dust around them and no weeds directly around the plants. However the weeds are allowed to grow where there are no plants. The reason for this is that we do not use pesticides on our garden. If we did, it would not give us the rich and healthy crops we pray for and work for. We've experimented this year and last year and have noticed an interesting trend. The bugs really like the weeds that naturally grow in this area, but the flowers and plants that we plant here are not dined on quite so much. As a result, we have allowed the good Lord's creation to do it's job better than we ever could by providing food for the bugs to dine on so they don't dine on our plants! For example, my roses have been so beautiful with blossoms as big as a tea plate. Like the one shown below.

This one is not completely out, but it was beginning to show such promise. The Japanese Beetles were so voratious last year that they ate my roses and their leaves down to the hips and the veins. I put out traps for them, but they still came to my roses....and my flower bed was weeded! Fast forward to this year and I've only weeded before Vacation Bible School at the end of June/beginning of July. After that, just a little here and there to make sure my herbs and flowers have sun. The Japanese Beetles came in full force this year and ate the weeds! Now, my husband's raspberry bushes are another story. Those poor things have been eaten down to the veins. So, we're going to strategize a little better for the sake of raspberries for next year.

This year has also brought some interesting monkey wrenches in to our plans. We are going with the flow though and just adjusting our plans as God changes them for us. I can look out the front window and see the entire front of my house that is dug up. We'll be having a gentleman come within the next week to help us dig up the rest of the front of our house down to the bottom of the foundation. We want to make sure the foundation is fully water proofed and there is little to no moisture getting through the walls. We would seriously like there to be NO moisture getting through, but honestly with the pourousness of the cement foundation there could honestly be just a wee bit of moisture, unfortunately. But thankfully we're fixing the problem now so that we won't have to deal with it later.


A positive result of all of this is that we're putting up a new wall in the basement once the waterproofing is done. Thus begins the remodeling of the basement. This means no more paneling! Hooray! Here is what the basement looked like when we moved in and there was a mouse dancing around in the basement kitchen. LOL


Of course if you've been to our house recently, it no longer looks like this, nor do we have the big blue couch. The wall that we're water proofing is to the right in this picture all the way around to the fire place.


This is what the basement wall looks like now.

My dear husband has been working on it as time allows and as the wall dries out with the dehumidifier and fan blowing almost non-stop. What a blessing he has been!

I will be entertaining suggestions for what to do with the carpeting and how to recarpet the 6' x 22+' area that needed to be ripped out. I was considering buying 6' x 6' square carpet pieces from Ollies or maybe redoing this entire area with an entire piece from Ollies. I'm not sure yet. I'll discuss any and all options with my hubby and I'll be happy to post pictures through the entire process.


In the mean time, please pray for me. I need more grace, mercy and peace through all of this. Things don't move fast enough for me, so I have a tendency to let things raise my stress levels, which isn't good for my blood pressure. One of the things that is bothering me is the increased amount of dirt that seems to go with this project. While I wait for the next step to occur, we'll be concentrating on schooling, so that will be helping me to keep my mind on other things. I'm organizing my sewing room more every day too which will help.
Thank you so much for your prayers!


Blessings,

Our Wonderful World

The past few weeks have been quite busy, it seems, even though I've been placed on "more rest" by my young 11 year old Dr.  I developed a UTI that was almost gone when we found some black mold in the basement.  While tearing it out, the UTI spread to a full blown bladder infection.  So, Momma's been on "more rest" so it doesn't come back. 

Here is a picture of my young Dr on his 11th birthday on the 8th of July.  He's such a blessing and quite a hard worker too! 


Needless to say, while I've been resting more, we've done a bit more school.   We've been able to get more of our Zoology 1 completed and it has been quite the eye opening experience for the children.  What fun though! 

Here is the science experiment dealing with drag and air flow.

Here is HJ doing her own part of the experiement.  They had a lovely time and realized that even though this experiment dealt with water, it still was messy!  LOL

If you look very closely, you'll see a little feathered thing on the screen in front of our fireplace.  This is a baby chimney swift.  Their momma build a nest in our chimney and this is the 3rd time they've come down in to the fire place.  The children thought it was best to put the screen up and secure it so that we didn't have birds in the house.  I quite agree! 


They sure did make quite a noise when their mother came to feed them!

This is the view out my front door.  The flowers are in full bloom and you can even see the evidence that we've been dusting!  LOL

We tried tweeking a Blueberry Muffin recipe to make it healthier.  I think it went over well since within 15 minutes all of these muffins were gone!

This young man was so tuckered out after sleeping out in a tent with his friends that this is what he did during school time one day this past week.  So sweet!  :0)

As you can see, this particular chair has had quite a bit of use.  We hope to replace it with something else in the next year or so. 

HJ tried her hand at making whole wheat spaghetti noodles with a yard sale pasta machine that we'd found.  This is her first attempt.  We later found out that this particular machine was not very time efficient.  We discussed it with Daddy and since we want to eat healthier, we're going to look for an attachement for my Bosche Universal to use for the pasta maker.  That way she can make pasta for us.  :0) 

The digging and removal has begun around the front foundation of our home.  We have some water proofing to take care of and many of our plants need to be removed.  This is the beginning.

This is DA who will be 15 in just 20 days from now.  He's growing in to a strong and hard working young man right before my eyes.  Praise God!    If you notice my flower bed behind him, it's full of weeds.  We get bombarded with Japanese Beetles that love to dine on my roses.  This year we decided to let the weeds grow up around my roses just a little to sheild them from the Japanese Beetles.  To my delight, they're doing wonderfully!  None of their leaves have been eaten to the mere veins, the flowers are still in tact and the Japanese Beetles are dining on the weeds!  LOL 

When all of our water proofing is done, we'll fill in around the front of our home with a layer of plastic, then gravel, then my hubby will put down these pipes with the holes on the top, covered with landscaping fabric.  The landscaping fabric will allow water through the holes, but not debris.  He will then cover that with more gravel.  He asked me if I wanted mulch on top of the gravel or just the gravel, but I suggested some decorative gravel to make things look nice.  He thought that was a good idea.  :0) 

This is our old compost spot from last year.  We're ever surprised by how much has come up in this spot that we didn't purposely plant there.  We've had zucchinis come up in this spot and we've found HUGE pumpkins in here too.  Our cucumber trellises are such a good idea!  My hubby made those out of untreated scrap lumber.

This is among the biggest of the Brandywine tomatoes we have in our garden.  The Lord sure has blessed us richly this year with our garden.  It never ceases to amaze me the wisdom He showers down on us and once tried, it blossoms so wonderfully for us. 

This year we've tried putting down landscaping paper and then putting horse manure mixed with coarse saw dust for our garden.  What an incredible yeild we've received in such a short time!  Right now it is time for us to harvest our onions and potatoes.  Praise God! 

Our lives are so full and busy with caring for the home, the garden and schooling our children.  We have been so very blessed with God's bounty and blessings toward us. 

Blessings,