Actions and Re-actions

I'm sure that many myths abound about how our life may be a bed of roses with sunshine and lollipops all the time.  While this may be many people's view of our lives, this perspective may be from the outside looking in. 

Rest assured that we do have our fair share of troubles, squabbles, hurt, heart ache, sorrow, lonliness, selfishness, confusions, anger and so forth.  We would be the first to admit that we are not perfect...very far from it, in fact.    We deal with disobedience, rebellion and a variety of other sins with scripture as our guide.  We forgive quickly, or at least we work very hard to.

Why then, do I not write about those things that are in our home?  If you search either of my blogs, you might catch a glimpse of struggle, concern, irritation or pain.  But, honestly, is it really worth passing along a  bitterness to others?  I know that misery loves company.  I don't want to wallow in misery.  I don't want to soak myself or my family in a selfish "woa is me" rant that is repleat of any hopefulness. 

How is that I can do that when _____________ is happening around me?

First, I recognize that God is not surprised by the occurances of things around me or to me.  He's already fully aware of everything.  If He's got it all covered then why do I need to worry, fret and stew?  What good does it do to me or my family?  Nothing!  I CHOOSE peace.  Since I choose peace, then bitterness and his/her brothers and sisters will not follow.  If I cling to the promises in scripture that says,

Deu 31:6 Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.


Deu 31:8 And the LORD, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed.


Jos 1:5 There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.




1Ch 28:20 And David said to Solomon his son, Be strong and of good courage, and do it: fear not, nor be dismayed: for the LORD God, even my God, will be with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee, until thou hast finished all the work for the service of the house of the LORD.

If God says in His holy word "do not fear", then why should I? 

What should I do then?

Eph 6:10-24 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. (11) Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. (12) For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. (13) Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. (14) Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; (15) And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; (16) Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. (17) And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: (18) Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; (19) And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel, (20) For which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak. (21) But that ye also may know my affairs, and how I do, Tychicus, a beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, shall make known to you all things: (22) Whom I have sent unto you for the same purpose, that ye might know our affairs, and that he might comfort your hearts. (23) Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (24) Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Amen.

If we have the sword of the spirit and all the armor of God on, then we are fit to do battle, withstanding the devil's firey darts.

The greatest commandment we have is this:

Mat 22:37-40 And he said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. (38) This is the great and first commandment. (39) And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. (40) On these two commandments the whole law hangeth, and the prophets.


If you are finding that you do not know how to love, start by reading John 3:16 in your Bible.  This scripture in and of itself is the greatest amount of love the Father has shown to us.  If you don't own a Bible, go to e-sword.net and download a Bible.  If you don't want to download one to your computer for whatever reason, go to crosswalk.com and read it there.  (Click on the link, it will take you to John 3.  Page down to verse 16.) 

God also gives another definition of love in scripture.  That is,

1Co 13:4-7 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant (5) or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; (6) it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. (7) Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

If life throws all kinds of things you way, you have a choice of how to react.  There are so many things in each of our lives to be thankful for.  Will we react with bitterness and anger or will we have peace? 

What will you chose?

Blessings,

Regina

Please Keep Us in Your Prayers

My Love

Making Way

While writing the weekly posts on "Recovering the Lost Art of Home Making", I've come to a point in time where I'd like to share some of the things I've been working on.  As you can see by the title, we're "making way" for something new.

This particular piece of furniture is taking up residence in our living room.  My dining room is rather small, with base board heating around the 2 walls.  While we are hoping to change that in the not so distant future, it is not in the plans currently. 

One of our concerns has been, since joining a new "to us" home school group, is having enough seating for guests.  While we do have furniture in our living room, and chairs to spare if and when we need to pull them in to the living room, we don't have a full sized couch.  In order to "make room" for the full sized couch, we need to bless others with not just the china cabinet above, but also our old piano.

If you notice, they are sitting (or standing) side-by-side.  They take up the entire wall currently.  You can see the wall in the picture below.

Once we give away the piano and sell the china cabinet, we'll purchase our new sofa bed.  We're replacing the piano with a keyboard to put along the half wall.

To get a better feel for the room, if you click here, you'll see what I mean.  :0) 

Why are we doing this?  I'm glad you've asked!  We have purposed the past 2 or more years to invite families over for dinner to help me teach the children more about what it means to be hospitable.  This time of preparation has been a wonderful learning time for us to help the children to learn and to apply what they've learned about what it means to be hospitable.  They are not only learning how to be hospitable, but how to serve others as well.  This year, we will be practicing more "over night" hospitality with family coming to stay.  We had discussed getting 2 sofa beds at one point in time, so this is just the first step toward that goal.  We have discussed building a guest room in the basement along with partially enclosing the "living room" area there too.  We will proceed all in due time, of course. 

Through much planning, saving and wise purchasing, things will get done...all in due time.

Blessings,



Recovering the Lost Art of Homemaking Part 1

http://homeschoolmummyx3.xanga.com/739961170/recovering-the-lost-art-of-home-making-part-1/

Schedule Finished!

I am so happy that my/our "official" schedule is done!

1Co 14:40

(40)"But let all things be done decently and in order."

Of course this is not the complete schedule, but it gives a simple example of what it looks like.  I've had many schedules before, but this represents out current needs and the needs of our family.  We are much different than other families.  All of us need to take the needs of those under our own roofs and place importance on those people first as our ministry and daily worship unto the Lord through our service to those we love.  We are entrusted with their upkeep, discipline and training "as unto the Lord" for a very short time.  Let's make that time the best we can possibly make it by keeping it decently and in order.  :0)

A Slice of Our Life...

This is DA carpet scrubbing the living room floor.  If you'll notice, the coffee table behind him has quite a few notebooks and our vitamin bin on it.  LOL  These things are a regular part of our days.  The kids may do school there.  It makes the perfect place to sort everyone's vitamins and meds too!  ;)

This is our basement fireplace.  If you have seen our basement before, it  looks a little different now since the panelling on the wall to the right has been removed and the wall water proofed. 

I don't know if you can see well or not, on the bottom of this picture you can see a definate point where the carpeting stops.  From the wall to that point is how much we had to remove from the black mold problem.  We're not sure what we're going to do in place of the carpeting yet.  Our plans are still being discussed at this point. 

HJ's bed....

is in....

the closet!  LOL

This is what she wanted to try to give her more floor space.  Since we've converted to a family closet, this leaves her closet free for other things.  She loves this little nook!

As a side note, as of this picture, you will be seeing LOTS of comforters, flannel and warm things on our beds since it is winter in PA. 

This is the view out our 2nd floor bathroom window to the south.  This is where our children do a lot of their snow fort building.  If you locate the bright orange thing in the middle of the yard there, that's a sled.  It is sitting next to a mamoth snow ball!  LOL 

After these two children had lunch and went back out to play, I managed to get a good picture of them on top of the mamoth snowball!  Yes!  This is how much snow we get!  ;) 

Back inside the house, a glance in to the boys' room will show...more comforters, afghans and flannel sheets! 

Just as a side note, this week has been "bedroom" week, so it looks MUCH better than this picture! 

Why did I do this?  I just wanted to show everyone that we're real people with real messes and challenges with our lives.  We're striving for a closer walk with Jesus, even in our bedroom cleanliness.  ;) 

In our bedroom, on my side of our bed sits this lovely table with wonderful shelves beneath it.  I was blessed by my MIL with this table after my husband and I were married just 2 or 3 years.  What a blessing it has been!  It is made of real wood and I just love it.   It holds all the books I love to read, then all the patterns I need to get to on the other side.

On the top there is the phone, a tissue box, lotion (a must have with the dry heat of PA winters), anti-bacterial hand gel for after tissues get used, some lip balm (for those dry PA winters), a coaster for my water bottle, a discipline tool "just in case", a remote control for movies, and a just finished dish cloth.  There are some medicine bottles there too.  I need to get those put in their proper place. ;) 

If you look closely, you'll see....YUP!  flannel sheets!  LOL

These are laying on the floor close to my dresser so that I can remember upon waking to pick them up and look at more ideas to adapt to my home.  ;) 

Our bed was "freshly" made just moments before this picture was taken. Dogs decided they needed to come see me when I took this. LOL 

The black thing is hubby's stocking cap. He gets cold at night and when he has a migraine in the morning with light sensitivity, this stocking cap comes in handy.

Right now it's winter here, so you're going to see LOTS of covers and flannel sheets on our beds.

As a side note, yes, I need to declutter my dresser to get those clothes inside it. LOL As of posting this picture, it's been done. :0)  

  Part of our bedroom. A 10 year old TV an even older chest of drawers and a towel hanging over the bedpost to dry. LOL

My hubby wanted to paint our room yellow like our bedroom in Greenville, but I told him I'd rather have it   just a bit lighter than our old bedroom. ;)  It was very very very DARK yellow with a purple ceiling!  LOL   It has been our running joke now. 

 This is part of our winter garden.  :0)  This is spinach.  We have lettuce growing too!  :0)   

  This is what our backyard looks like when it snows.  

  This is one of the things we do in the winter too.  The first sock is officially finished.  The second sock is in progress.  :0)  

  This is what the sock looks like on hubby's foot.  Finally!  This is the 3rd sock made to get to this point!

  This is what the original socks were supposed to be like for my hubby.  Now, though, they are for DA since hubby needed his a little larger.  :0)  

 

We do much more during the winter.  This is just a very small slice of our lives.

 

Before I bid you a fond farewell, I know that a lot of you have heard of our very cold snap that has occurred here in our area of the country.  I snapped this picture this morning of the snow that had blown through our front yard.  It looked so beautiful to me that I just had to get a picture.  I couldn't go outside to get it because it was 8 degrees F outside.  Brrrrrrr!

 

I snapped it when the sun had stared to come out from behind the clouds.  What a beautiful sight it was! 

 

Tomorrow, I'll take pictures of our driveway so you can get a picture of what it looks like now. 

 

Currently our road is snow covered.  The plow just made its pass just about 20 minutes ago. 

 

Life here moves along.  The Lord gives us these seasons for rest and time together with our family.

 

Tonight after HJ and I returned home from our shopping trip, I challenged JL to a TV game-Shrek.  The game itself is called "Donkey Dash".  For someone who really doesn't care for video games, Donkey Dash is one of my favorites.  There is a wonderfully hillarious sound that occurs when Donkey crashes.  It's like a gooey splat and I laugh every time.  It's such a cute game and I love playing it with my children. 

 

Blessings,

Mr. G & Mrs. G

This is a picture taken of my Mr. G and I while we were on vacation over Christmas in Florida.  Our oldest had the camera he was allowed to use and just managed to get this of us both.  I just love the look on my hubby's face.  He is 

♥ ♥ ♥ My beloved, my best friend, my knight in shining amour. ♥ ♥ ♥

My Pantry/Shopping System

If my previous post made you wonder how I do my shopping list based on my pantry and so forth, I have a new post up now.  Please go here to read!  :0) 

Laundry, Organizing and The Family Closet

I just finished this post today!  Come walk through the journey of my pantry/laundry room with me!   Enjoy!

Blustery Day Saturday

Today is a very blustery day.  We went to the church this afternoon to make pizza dough and cook them half way in preparation for tomorrow's pizza-by-the-slice sale.  The roads were covered very heavily, moreso than I've seen in a while.  The children asked if we could take the rental van since it had more room than the Explorer does.  I figured that since we still have it in our possession, we might as well use it, right?  Well, the roads were VERY slippery.  I love going around and looking at the surroundings while someone else drives.  LOL  Unfortunately, I was the one driving and had to concentrate on the slippy roads. 

We had an interesting time making our pizza dough at the church in the HUGE mixer.  What a time saver that was!  We finished all 12 pizza crusts in and half baked in 2 hours!  Praise God! 

Why all those pizzas?  Well, we were making pizzas for a pizza-by-the-slice sale to support missions.  We have volunteers from our congregation who go to a variety of places to support good charitable causes.  Last year the missions team went to Merci in North Carolina.  They arrange to get the disaster relief buckets ready to go out after floods, hurricaines and earth quakes. After the earth quake in Haiti, the buckets were depleted.  So, with our missions group, they not only filled buckets and wrapped them to go out, but they also built coffins (morbid, I know, but necessary) for sweet little babes.  There was a gentleman from our church who brought this particular mission home with him and built 99 more (now called cradles) to take down to the Merci headquarters this past October.  Our oldest son, DA helped on the project, sanding, hammering and gluing the wood for the coffins/cradles. 

Now the way home today was much more slippery than on the way over to the church.  It was much like this video that I took outside my front door in 2008.  Whew!   If you're thinking of heading to PA to live, please be prepared for winters like this!  Fortunately, this doesn't happen all the time.

Blustery Snowstorm

We spend quite a bit of our time inside in front of the fire, knitting, crocheting, reading, listening to the local Christian radio station, and just snuggling under a blanket with a little dog while we watch a movie.  HJ and I are getting ready to bring in the sewing machines and crank out some clothes for her.  We'll be working on skirts and some longer shirts for her.  I'll make sure to add some pictures when we're done. 

For now, though, it's time to get ready for the Lord's day. 

Blessings,
Regina