Beautiful Girlhood

Grace and I are reading, Beautiful Girlhood, revised by Karen Andreola.  I bought this book a couple years ago in preparation for the day when my Grace would be entering young womanhood.  It is hard to believe that we are nearly there.  I wanted to fill her mind with beautiful thoughts as she makes this difficult journey to womanhood.  We are just in chapter 9 and already I am so glad we are reading this book together.

"The great foe of these years is selfishness, and the girl who comes to the most perfect womanhood learns soon to fight selfishness with all her might."  page 27

Oh how I wish I had thought about these things when I was a young girl of almost twelve, like Grace.  It would have saved me many heartaches, for sure.  Unfortunately, I did not meet my Savior for many more years ( I was 20) and so I was left to my selfish ways for too many years.  Years that the Lord has redeemed to be sure, thankfully!

It is my prayer that my daughter can avoid the discipline issues that I struggle with.  Is it not what all mothers want, to spare their children pain?  Sometimes pain is the best teacher, though, and I must step back and let her learn.  

So, Grace and I will read this lovely book together and pray that she can be a girl who is wise and learns to fight selfishness with all her might for the glory of God!

Shaping of a Christian Family

Good morning friends. Are you enjoying a peaceful home this week? It's been a lovely week here. The sunshine and warmth does wonders for my soul. Here's a little post about a wonderful book I am pondering at the moment. It's the kind of book that you must not hurry through and you must go back and read it again, perhaps, as your seasons in life change. How I love and thank God for Elisabeth Elliot.

The Shaping of a Christian Family by Elisabeth Elliot is currently my self encouragement reading. Actually, I purchased this book many years ago.  I hung onto it, hoping one day it would "click."  Well, it has clicked!  I think I am finally through being spoon fed good books. Hooray!  It's embarrassing to say that I put this book down more than once and for more than a few years because it just did not make sense to me.  However, now I am finally mature enough.  I am certainly older!  And my family is beyond the baby stage, when I first tried to make sense of this awesome book.  Unfortunately, it would have been of great benefit to my family if I had persevered way back then!  *sigh*

The Shaping of a Christian Family is actually a sort of autobiography for Elisabeth Elliot's family.  It is  filed with remembrances from her mother and her father's journal entries sprinkled with Elisabeth's godly wisdom about raising a Christian family.  

The book begins with the history of Elisabeth's maternal grandparents and her parents.  Her maternal grandparents were Christians, but certainly not on fire for the Lord.  They lived a comfortable life with servants and big houses, lake houses too.  It was not until later that the family became devoted to Jesus.

Elisabeth's father came from a more modest family that was living for the Lord.  Her father decided to be a missionary in his late teens, about the same time Elisabeth's mother came to the same independent conclusion.  

I highly recommend this book. It is filled with godly advice, quotes from Scripture, and good old fashioned remembrances of time gone by.  This remarkable family serves as an example to the rest of us striving to bring up godly children.  It's just so encouraging to my heart! 

"The ordering of a peaceful home is not possible without the application of eternal principles.  It is, after all, mostly little, common things that make up our lives.  This is the raw material for the spiritual life. If we despise small things, regard normal household duties as burdens, routines as boring, rules too confining, we will never learn, nor can we teach our children, to live a life of holy harmony.  This takes faithfulness in the troublesome details first of all, learning to do them well that we may make of them an offering to the Lord, for it is His work, after all, given to us.  It is our daily bread for which we should learn to be thankful.  Such faithfulness is the ground-work for all God may ever ask us to do."
p. 129-130

A Cure for the Unmotivated Homemaker

Not writing this to step on any toes, but Monday is a great day to get off on the right foot, so to speak.  I hear quite often around blogland that someone is feeling "unmotivated" to get busy and down to work of taking care of their family.  I admit feeling this way too, sometimes.  This is how I get myself in gear.  I ask myself one simple question.

1. Do I have a husband who got himself out of bed very early this morning to go to work in order to provide for my well being and comfort (in other words deny himself)?  

(Well, uh, YES!  He did get up early and go off to work with a happy heart! )

This is usually the only question I need to ask myself to get myself out of a bad attitude.  If I still find it hard to get moving in the right direction after getting my daily Bible reading and coffee, here is my second string list of things to do to get motivated.

1. Pray for a right heart attitude.  Remember how blessed I am to be home and how important it is for me to set the tone of my domain.  No one else is going to do this for me.  Or perhaps I will allow the outside distractions to have victory? 
2. Turn on some big band music via Pandora  free radio.  Have you a Pandora account?  Music is a great motivator for me! 
3. Get myself clean and dressed.  Put on my pretty apron.  Dress for my job.  
4. Make a list of things that need to be done, but don't make it so long that it is discouraging.  
5. Get my kids to join in.  Many hands make the work light. 
6. Start a load of clothes.  
7. Fill the sink with warm soapy water.  (It will always get me in the mood to clean the kitchen!) 
8. Empty the dishwasher.  
9. Make sure I have a plan for dinner.  This should be number one, actually.  If I lack inspiration or desire here, it is easy to find menu ideas with little effort online.  If you find yourself slacking here, remember, would your husband get away with that kind of an attitude at his job?  Providing meals to your family is an essential part of our role.  We can't afford to be a slacker.

By the time I do these simple things, I am moving and in no time the house will be tidy and there will be plenty of time to enjoy the things I enjoy!

This Week At Home

In which we are well and very thankful.

The Mr enjoying his new castle. 

Sunday:
Sunday morning, sitting in the dry and cozy camper, eating cheerio's and strawberries from a cup, taking turns to read Scripture to one another, not minding the rain, it occurred to me what a great ending to our first camping trip it was.  Getting everything packed up to go home in the mud was a bit of a challenge, but it got done with happy hearts.  My legs were sore from the all of the stairs on our hike, but sore legs made me thankful that I had the ability to get up and down those stairs.

Monday:
Another rainy day.  My father (who just moved back to IN from CA) says he has webs starting to grow between his toes!  I think it has rained more this spring than I can remember.  Perhaps my memory is just bad.  :-)

We had a normal day of learning together at home.  We are in the process of wrapping things up.  I spend more time thinking about next year than this current one.  I am trying to gather materials little by little.  I love this time of the year!  I still need to get science for the youngest two and I am looking for a self-paced Latin program for my oldest. 

Decorations in Historic Madison, IN

Tuesday:
Another day at home.  Is it raining?  Why, yes!  It is still raining.  But, there are hopes of the next two days being dry.  We had another good day of lessons.  I got the laundry caught up, including the blankets from camping. I would have liked to have aired out the sleeping bags, but with the rain, I could not hang a line.  There was a chill in the air today with the cooler temperatures and no sun, so I decided it was the perfect day to make chili for dinner. We are blessed to have another free week night, too!  Oh, I love this time of the year.  Activities start to taper off. Makes me wonder if they are really necessary.  I could say no.  Hmm. 

Wednesday:
Another lovely day at home!  No rain!  So, we made the most of being outdoors after finishing our lessons.  Grace and Trevor picked up sticks from the yard.  Ryan mowed.  Grace spent time weeding.  Trevor swept up after her.  I supervised while putting things away in the garage.  The whole process was so smooth!   No complaining!  I count that as a victory.

Thursday:
No lessons today.  We only need 5 more school days.  I am going to spread them out a bit.  Today we will spend putting things away and then perhaps a trip to the library before karate and grocery shopping this evening.  The kids and I enjoyed more time outside today.  Grace planted basil and garlic.  It is starting to really feel like spring is here and the frost free date has arrived. 

Old fountain in Historic Madison, IN

Friday:
Another free day!  Going to work on getting things together for the cook out on Mother's Day.  Our standing play date is this afternoon, too. If there is time, I hope to get hair cuts before.  Great Clips is having a sale! 


Saturday:
Making pasta salad, baked beans and chocolate chip cookies for the cook out tomorrow.  Also will put finishing touches on the house.  Would love to work in the garden, but time might not allow.  We shall see.

Pet store sign in Historic Madison, IN

I hope you've had a delightful week!
Happy Mother's Day to you mothers.
~Jenn

A Very Touching Book

Just finished a darling little book via Gutenberg.org and thought some of you might like it too.  It's short, but sweet.  Very sweet.  And sad.  Consider yourself warned.  But it is good!  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. 

Making the House a Home by Edgar A. Guest

 

Nifty Clifty, Part Two

While it was great to go, I am enjoying being home this week.  All the laundry and unpacking is not stealing my joy.  Those are just things that are getting done between the regular chores in our day.  Camping work is not a burden to me, as it might be if my attitude were different.  I love the preparations and do not mind the after effects.  I've heard some say they don't go camping because it is too much work for mom.  

Anyway, like I said before, we had a great inaugural camping trip.  I really like Clifty Falls State Park. For one thing the people are very friendly.  You can't even walk to the bathroom without two or more people saying hello!  When we got to our camp site, a nice guy ran over to help Jeff move the picnic table off the pad.  Best of all, it's not a party park where people go to get drunk, as sadly some of our state parks are.  We've learned the hard way that some parks are just best to be avoided.  And that is really sad.

The weather was perfect for camping.  It was even dry Friday and Saturday.  We heard that the park recently recorded 11 inches of rain!  Sunday morning around 3:30 it did start to rain.  Thankfully the camper proved to be water tight.  Hooray!  We had to pack up after the rain, so things were muddy and damp, but that was not so bad.  It did rain on the way home but stopped so we could pop up the camper in the driveway so that it could dry.  It was sunny and dry long enough for the camper to dry out and be folded up again before the next wave of rain came.  And it did come! 

Here are some of my favorite pictures from this marvelous trip. 

All ready to go. 

All hands on deck setting up.

Lived in look. 

Walking around historic Madison, IN

Historic Madison, IN

Neat idea!

Upper Falls, Clifty Falls State Park

Sibling love!

Wild Turkeys! 

Tired, but happy.

Next trip is in a few weeks, Memorial Day weekend!

Nifty Clifty, Part One

The first camping trip with our pop up camper was a huge success.  I certainly feel as if I have done something this weekend.  One of the benefits of camping is that it forces you to move more than usual.  Check out these stairs we climbed.

And these!  These nearly did me in.

But, I did it and it was worth it to see the Lower Falls at Clifty Falls State Park, Madison, IN. 

I'll post some of my favorite pictures in a couple days. Right now I am busy with lessons, laundry and putting things aright for next time. Plus, I need to get ready for Mother's Day. We're hosting a cook out.

Ta-ta For Now!
Jenn