Texture Thursdays

My entry for Texture Thursdays...

Fun Shots

This is what I do for fun when I need a break from packing...

Kids are free entertainment

First Friday in Lancaster

No plans for your Friday night tomorrow night?  

Do you enjoy art galleries, music, and walking around the city?  

Come out for Lancaster city's First Friday event tomorrow night!  

Click HERE to see a list of all the galleries and shops that will be open for your pleasure!  

Hours are from 5 - 9 pm.

My church is also taking part in First Friday, and will be showcasing many of the photos that I took while in Nicaragua, which will be on sale.  

To preview some of the photos on sale, click HERE.  

You can also buy greeting cards with Nicaraguan landscapes, purses woven by a women's cooperative in Nicaragua, sample some food and traditional drinks, listen to some traditional music, and buy some jewelry!  

Come drop in anytime from 6 - 8 pm, at 20 North Charlotte St. at West End Mennonite Fellowship.  

Hope to see you there!  Leave a comment with any questions and I'll get back to you :)

Country Setting

There are so many things I enjoy about living in the city.

BUT...I will miss my backyard view....

On the move (again!)

Just some random shots around the house....they all evoke a sense of "summer", don't they?

I know it's been quiet around here lately...probably due to the amount of energy spent packing our stuff into boxes and trying to keep the boys busy.  Yes, we love moving so much, we decided to do it a 5th time in one year! *sarcasm*  Actually, we found a great deal on a house that is closer to friends and church, and couldn't pass up a mortgage payment less than our rent.  In addition, we thought we could possibly rent it out to give us some support when we return to Nicaragua, or sell it, depending on the market and how long we are here.  We hope to move within the week, we are just waiting on a confirmation date for settlement.

Be warned that with all the moving and not having access to internet could keep the posts a bit sparse for a few weeks.  But I look forward to rejoining the blogging world as soon as the dust settles!

the start of summer

3 black eyes

1 knocked out front tooth

one aspirated peanut

4 X-rays

1 fingernail smashed and fallen off

too many bruises and scrapes to count

Yes, we're off to a great start to summer

can you tell I have a house full of boys?

although we are really enjoying catching fireflies in the evenings...

notice the little yellow lights....our friendly neighborhood fireflies

Texture Thursdays

What do you get when you have 2 adult women, add in 4 kids, a completely packed minivan, and 4 days?

You get an incredible and fun road trip!!!

So that explains the long break on my blog, but I'm hoping to get back into writing more, although we ARE in the process of moving, which has been taking up lots of time lately (can we say piles of boxes??)

anyways...I'm linking up with the texture thursdays photo challenge, and it was really hard to pick.

I picked these 3 photos and need to narrow it down to just one of them. Which one do you like best?

I have a few more days to enter my photo, so don't be shy!  Leave your comment!

Scripture and a Snapshot (June 13)

This lovely bird sat right outside my boys bedroom window and spent most of the evening napping...our faces a mere few inches away, examining all of it's delicate features.

As I sat admiring his delicate feet and fine feathers, the verse in Matthew came to mind.

Climbing the walls

My boys are energetic.  Super energetic.

Especially when they are all together.  

Sometimes they climb the walls.

Literally.

The 2 yr old tries, but bless his heart his legs aren't quite long enough.  

Soon enough....

Baby shower cake and flowers

I love all the flowers around our house...especially because I didn't have to do any work to get them here :)

These are the beautiful tiger lilies around our house. There are also dwarf and white lilies around.

My latest baby shower cake.  I know, I know, I said I was going to take a break last month...and I've made 3 cakes since then.  But this time, I am serious.  With packing and getting ready to move, plus having all 3 boys at home, time is a rare commodity these days. So I plan to take off at least a month.

Another Shot

I love this shot of my niece.  

I think the colors are amazing, and I love the curls in her hair.  

So I'm entering the photo into the Photo Competition: Your best shot! (keep your fingers crossed!!)

I almost never edit my photos, but I admit I did mess with the colors just a teensy bit, to brighten it up. 

What a Peanut taught me...

I learned a few interesting lessons this week...from a peanut.

I hear some of you saying, Really? How so?

Let me start with a few of the lessons, and then I'll give you the background.
I learned that:

1.  Peanuts are invisible to the X-ray eye.

2.  Lungs and peanuts do not mix.  Lungs do not like the oils on peanut and quickly become inflamed.

3.  Our church is incredibly supportive and helpful during tough times.

4.  My body does not comfortably fit into a crib; however, it can stay there for several hours without cramping up.

5.  I can still function even if I only get 5 hours of sleep in 52 hours (okay, barely, but I was still walking around...talking was a challenge).

6.  Americans should be incredibly thankful for the amazing healthcare and doctors we have here.

7.  Hospital food is actually fairly edible.

8.  My husband is an amazing man.

9.  The house still got messy even though hardly anybody lived here for 2 days.

10.  Hospitals always, always remind me of my daughter, and while there I really struggled with the fear of losing another child.

The background:

Last Friday night, while we were enjoying some peanuts, including my 2 yr old, he started to choke and cough, and continued to cough for several hours.  The next morning, in addition to the cough, he started wheezing.  We went to the pediatrician, where they listened to his chest, which sounded great, then sent him for an X-ray, which also revealed nothing.

2 days later, on Monday, the wheezing and coughing were much worse, so I called the Dr. again.  Several hours later they called back and wanted him admitted to the closest children's hospital.  Talking to the pediatric surgeons that night, they explained that peanuts are generally not visible on X-rays (good to know!), and listened to his chest, which they pronounced sounding great.

Long story short, they did a scope in the morning and took out a good amount of peanut pieces, but his oxygen levels did not go up, so they kept him another day to observe him and make sure he wasn't getting pneumonia (something peanuts in the lungs can do rather quickly, I was told).

Thankfully, we were able to go home the day after the surgery, and we are all trying to catch up on our sleep and get the house into some semblance of order.  His oxygen levels are still not totally normal and he sounds like he is constantly having an asthma attack, but because the peanuts were in his lungs for 4 days, the doctors said it would take a few weeks for his lungs to heal.

Thanks for all the prayers, and let's hope we don't make any more trips to the hospital for a while!

Mondays of Gratitude

a BIG thanks to Ann for challenging me to find the beauty in the grime, grace amidst the business of three lively young boys.

Mondays can often seem dreary and heavy.  The whole long week stretches out before us, with it's endless list of things to do, places to go and meetings to attend.  Will it never end?

How lovely to start the week with a list of gratitude...finding God in the cracks of this life....

- grass stains on pants, which show how healthy and active my boys are

- soft hands on my back, grasping my own hands, heads bowed in prayer, lifting me up as I continue to struggle on my journey of healing

- 1 yr birthdays

- the faces of toddlers....ah, such innocence!

- a blazing red sun as it sets

- opening up so many new worlds through book reading with my children

- running my hands through the fine, silken hair of my 2 yr old

- cooking with my hubby for date night at home

How to age your baby in 10 minutes or less...

Here is my baby BEFORE...

and here is my little boy AFTER the haircut...

It took a few tries...I think toddlerhood is the hardest age to cut hair.  But I eventually figured out a system of locking my legs around him, getting a few snips in, then letting him go to run for a few minutes got the job done.  It's amazing how much a haircut can change the look...from baby to boy in 10 minutes!

Texture Thursdays

So....today I joined this photography challenge from another blog, called The Daily Wyatt.  The photography challenge?  Upload a picture with texture.

So here it is...and have fun perusing the other photos on the Wyatt blog!

Is it Christian?

Life is so incredible.

I have times of happiness, laughter, joy and silliness, especially when my kids are involved.

But there have also been times of grief, sadness, frustration, and even....anger.

*gasp*

Did I really just say that?  But can I really be a Christian and be...angry?


I thought I was healthy.  I read lots of book, prayed, went to church, read my Bible, didn't smoke or drink.

But then my daughter died.

And it felt like a river of anger swept out of me, rushing forward, engulfing everything in it's path.

Yes, I was angry about my daughter.  But there was also anger from hurt in my past, anger that I had tried to suppress for so many years.

Because it isn't Christian.

Because when I showed my anger to other people, to other Christians, they ran away.  They didn't know what to do with it.  Add to that all the sermons and talk about loving your enemies, and where does anger fit in?  Or grow up in a family like mine, where yelling and copious amounts of anger were the norm, and you don't want to be angry...you've seen enough to last a lifetime.

Is it okay to be angry and still be a Christian?

What does the Bible say?

Most of us know the famous passage, be angry but do not sin.  Sounds to me like it is expected that we will get angry, that the emotion itself is not a sin, but how you handle it.  Do I tear into other people, smack my children around, and act out through ______ (insert any of the following: shopping binges, drinking, gambling, busyness, drugs, or any other addiction?)  Or do I write, draw, play music, exercise, or find somebody safe to talk to about my anger?

I read about Jesus, overturning tables and throwing a whip around, running people out of the temple.  I read in Psalms from David, who writes about crushing his enemies to a pulp.

It's been a struggle, but for the first time in my life, I am starting to understand that it's okay to be angry.  I am pushing back against the condemnation I feel, from both inside and out, that you cannot be a Christian and be angry.  I cannot heal until I have acknowledged my anger and have dealt with it.  Ignoring pain, acting like it isn't there, or saying, it isn't all that bad, only pushes the anger deeper, and there it festers, like a putrid wound, seeping into other areas of life.  Perhaps that is why the Bible states, Do not let the sun go down on your anger.

I recently heard the comment, Anger turned inward often turns into depression.  When I look at the number of people in America today, even the number of people who attend church, that struggle with depression, it makes me wonder...there are a lot of angry people out there.

We've all heard sermons about loving our enemies.  Wouldn't it be great to hear a sermon about anger?  To hear a whole discussion on righteous anger and how we deal with it, as a church?

Don't you ever feel angry about human trafficking?  About the millions of women and children who are sold into slavery each year?  About the number of babies aborted around the world?  About domestic violence? About the millions of children that die each year because they didn't have clean water to drink?  About the fact that our culture has so emasculated men, that nobody seems to know what a real man looks like anymore?  About the millions of orphans around the world that are left to themselves, or placed in ill-kept orphanages?

I do.

I feel angry about all these things.  In a recent discussion about anger, a woman stated, anger motivates.  When we feel angry about something, we are motivated to do something about it.  To initiate change. To become involved.

Perhaps anger isn't all that bad.