Memory Verse Musings

"I am the LORD, I change not".
Malachi 3:6

This is the new memory verse, and we asked the kids on the way home from meeting what they thought it meant. Of course they all answered, "I donno." so we took smaller steps...
"What does it mean to change not?"
PC: That it's the same?
Dolly: It means that God is God and he's not gonna change.
"Ok, who can tell us what God is? Can you think of a verse that might tell you?"
Dolly: "God is love"!
PC: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him shall have everlasting life." So, He's gonna love us forever!
"So, what is 'forever'?"
Emma: Forever and forever and forever.
Dolly: Never gonna stop.
PC: Always!

"Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever."
Hebrews 13:8

"The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee."
Jeremiah 31:3

Have you ever just stopped to really think about what these verses mean?

Some things Make you Thankful

I started making my teriyaki sauce marinade at about noon today. First I measured out the soy sauce, and then got sidetracked warming up leftover pizza for lunch. Once I got the kids up to the table and served, I got back to the sauce project. I started measuring out the sugar, got halfway through that when I ran out of sugar in the main container. As I headed to the pantry, thankful there was a refill sugar to grab, one of the kids had some urgent question that they insisted needed my attention. I answered the question as I walked back to the kitchen with the sugar. Please note that my pantry is a whole eleven feet from my kitchen stove (and yes, I measured that distance especially for this post).

When I got back to the stove, I couldn't remember how much sugar I'd already put into my pot. Eventually I figured out how much more sugar I needed to add (that involved dissolving and tasting) and I turned the burner on to start heating the sauce to a boil. But by then the kids were done eating and I was sidetracked with washing them up, stirring the sauce when I remembered and being thankful that I was supposed to heat it on a low burner setting each time I stirred it and found it was still unburnt.

Then the phone rang - it was Tina. While I was talking to her I discovered Butler had a dirty diaper so I changed him while I talked to her on the phone. By this time it was almost nap time, so I put him to bed and walked back to the kitchen just in time to find my teriyaki sauce had finally come to a boil and was about to boil over. It did start to boil over as I moved the pot off the heat and then it continued to boil over for a couple seconds as it cooled down. So, I had a huge mess to clean up on the stove top, but I was thankful it was a glass top and that I'd wiped it clean before I started the teriyaki project and that made it a little easier to clean. Besides, it gave me more time to talk to my sister (I've found that you can talk and clean at the same time very effectively).

It wasn't very long before it was time to feed Ricka again so I put the rest of the kids down for naps and sat down at my desk to reply to an e-mail while she nursed. When Ricka was happy again, I took the meat out of the refrigerator, measured out the teriyaki sauce, mixed it into the meat and then started putting the ice cream buckets of meat (there were four of them) back into the fridge to marinate. The second bucket I grabbed, slipped out of my hand and fell onto the floor perfectly upright. The impact had split the bucket down the side and around the bottom, so when I went to pick the bucket up it started to dump. Then I was thankful that I had half a dozen more ice cream buckets in the cupboard just inches away. That made salvaging the meat that didn't dump out easier.

I put the undumped meat into a new bucket, picked up and rinsed off the two cups or so of meat that did dump out, added them to the bucket and measured out more teriyaki sauce which made me thankful that I'd made an extra large batch of sauce today instead of making exactly what I thought we'd need for my marinade. Of course, I don't have a lot of extra teriyaki sauce now, but I didn't have to start over either.

And when I got to cleaning up the huge puddle of teriyaki sauce that leaked out of the cracked bucket, I was thankful that the bucket dumped AFTER I'd put the kids down for naps so I wouldn't have to worry about them walking in it.

It's only 3:30 and ALL five of my kids are asleep! And that is definitely something to be thankful for.

4 weeks and 200 pictures later....

This is the only proof that my mom was ever here.

And it was taken about one hour before she went home.

I guess the other proof of her visit would be the fact that I still have some of my sanity.

Ricka was due June 19th. Toward the end of May, my mom called me and said she was thinking of coming up to help us around when the baby was born, but everything depended on schedules and doctor's appointments down in California and she'd get back to me around the 1st of June. I was ecstatic - it really sounded like she might actually make it up here, but knowing from past experience, nothing is set in stone.

Of course, I heard nothing on the 1st, and started talking myself into the idea that something could always come up and it was possible that my mom might not make it up here after all. I didn't want to get my hopes up too high.

On June 2nd, my mom called back and it was planned. She was going to come up here and stay at least THREE weeks starting around the 13th! It was like an impossible dream and I was so excited....

(and that is as far as I got on this two weeks ago.)

Anyway, On June 3rd, Sir's mom, Grandma C. got hit by a car while riding home on her bike. She spent the next few weeks in the hospital getting surgeries and scans and all sorts of stuff to start fixing all the things that were broken. She's still recovering, but at home now and we're very thankful for that because the accident was pretty serious.

Previously, each time one of our children has joined the family, Grandma and Grandpa C. have taken the older children while we were in the hospital and then Grandma C. would come nearly every day during the first week or so to help me get adjusted to all the changes one more little one brings. So, when Grandma C. was going to be recovering for months after our baby was due, it was even more of a relief that my mom was planning on being here to be a help.

3 days old.

My mom came up as soon as we told her Ricka was born and she stayed four whole weeks. I don't think I'll ever be able to describe how much of a help she was. Dolly was still in school for 14 days after Ricka was born, and when I'd trip out of my room in a panic because I'd missed the alarm and was already 20 minutes behind schedule, I'd find that my mom had already gotten Dolly up, served her breakfast and was making her lunch. Then she'd shoo me back to bed while she'd get the rest of the kids going and Sir took Dolly to school.

She did the big things like mowed our huge backyard and the front yard in a single morning (this job usually takes me about two days due to my allergies) and stacking piles of wood that I'd given up on toward the end of my pregnancy. She did the little things like making sure the table got cleared and wiped off after each meal, the floors swept and the kids dressed. When I woke up from a terribly needed nap one afternoon in a complete panic because I'd forgotten to make any plans for dinner, I staggered into the kitchen to find she'd warmed up every last leftover in the fridge and dinner was just about ready - at dinner time.

11 days old.

Every morning she got the kids to make their beds and by the time she left, they could do it themselves on their own. In spite of Butler saying "NAOooo" to just about everything she asked him to do, I discovered after she'd gone home that he not only would say 'pease' when he wanted something but 'prih-ee pease' (pretty please) - and that just about made me melt because it's as close to a signature phrase belonging to my mom as you can get.

7 days old

As my mom was loading her suitcases into her van, Emma said to me, "Mommy, is Grandma going back to California?" "Yes," I told her watching Emma carefully. Emma had developed a very special relationship with my mom and I was a bit worried how she'd adjust when my mom left. "She has a booster seat in her van, and the back seat can go down, and you can put car seats on it. You know that, Mommy?" Emma said. "I know," I answered, "that's pretty neat isn't it?" "Yeah, can I go with her to her house and have a sleepover?" "No Emma, Grandma's house is a long ways away. If you went with her you'd be gone too long." with a little shrug of acceptance, Emma said, "That's ok. Can I go with her then?" It was hard to watch her little face fall when she finally understood she couldn't go home with Grandma.

In the four weeks my mom was here, Sir and I got to go out on a 'date' 3 (THREE!) times and we spent one Saturday morning running errands together - something we NEVER do anymore since someone usually stays home with the kids. It was really special and the best part was, we never asked her if she'd mind watching the kids so we could go out... she was the one sending us out. "Why don't you guys go out for dinner and I'll feed the kids?" or "If he's going to go do errands, why don't you run with him? I'll stay here and the kids can help me with..." If she'd had her way, we would have probably gone out a few more times too, but we figured we ought to be a bit responsible every now and then.

4 days old.

By the last week, I realized I was letting my mom take care of things for me that I was perfectly able to do. I just knew she'd do it for me if I didn't get to it before she did. But there were still times that she filled in for me when I couldn't get to it, and those times made me afraid of when she'd finally go home. But we've been adjusting, the kid in the bathroom sometimes has to wait for me to finish nursing the baby before I get to them, the baby has to put up with another kid trying to get the soother into her mouth because I can't stop what I'm doing to burp her again, the house goes in waves of being relatively tidy to disastrous mayhem, but we're slowly getting that under control now too.

Since all the things my mom did for us would take forever to list, I came up with everything I could think of that she might have gotten from her time here with us instead. It's really not that much.
While my mom was here..
- she got to go to a couple of Dolly's school events.
- she got to see Dolly graduate from kindergarten.
- she was there when Dolly lost her first tooth.
- she was here for PC's 5th birthday party.
- she was here for Butler's first stitches.
- she got to go to Ricka's baby shower.
- and she got to have Emma as a constant shadow helper.

I guess to sum it all up... I'll never be able to express how much my moms mean to me. Both of them. Maybe someday I'll be a little bit like them.

11 days old.

"Unto us a child is born"

7:43am, Saturday, June 11th, 2011.
8 lbs, 13 oz. 21" long

Mother and daughter are resting comfortably,
and expect to go home tomorrow afternoon.


It's Cold!!


Asleep


What Is It?


Big Sister Dolly


Big Brother PC


Big Sister Emma


Big Brother Butler


Big Brother Butler (again)


The Parents (Photo by Dolly)

Some Things are Inherited

Me (the oldest) about 7 yrs old and Tina (next in line) who I'd tricked into crawling into the cage before gleefully locking her in.


No comment necessary.


"That should keep you in there, brother."


"Oh - Hi Mom,"


I couldn't resist. They were all in there and the door was just begging to be closed. Don't worry, I let them out eventually.

I Have a Caterpillar Farm in my Kitchen.

We discovered them when we mowed the grass last week. One of my sons just had to keep them. So we did.

A close up - there's actually three residents, but you can only see two of them here.


The farmer boy himself.

I'm not sure how I can convince him that we probably should let them go. I'm pretty sure we're not putting in the right kinds of food into the vase they live in. At least one has been getting smaller and smaller and less active as time goes by.

For now, I'm just enjoying a happy young man who couldn't be prouder of his collection.