Four

^{Joshua 4...
20} And Joshua set up at Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken out of the Jordan. ²¹ He said to the Israelites, “In the future when your descendants ask their parents, ‘What do these stones mean?’ ²² tell them, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ ²³ For the LORD your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The LORD your God did to the Jordan what he had done to the Red Sea^[b] when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over. ²⁴ He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the LORD is powerful and so that you might always fear the LORD your God.”

I am no Joshua. But, I am a part of a long, rich line of incredible men and women who have raised 'stones' in honor of the One who had delivered them from pain, sorrow, grief, struggles, etc.

Today marks the fourth anniversary of Eric's death. But, as I was thinking through the past four year's events I realized that this day should not just be a sad anniversary but could be, no, should be turned into a milestone to look back on and marvel at God's goodness.

Of course, building a stone altar might look a bit strange now-a-days. But, there is no reason why, in our minds, we can't pile our stones on this particular date to remind us of His wonderful right hand.
We do this a lot.
We create special dates using the calendar on our wall.
We celebrate all kinds of frivolous things along with all those important marriage anniversaries, birth dates, and holidays.
But, so much more important are those milestones that remind us of God's faithfulness.


So, here I raise my Ebenezer.
I publicly dedicate it as a monument to God's help, God's faithfulness, God's eternal covenant.
And, as we go on with our lives, the 'stone' will stand there,
visible to me as a reminder of God's faithfulness to our family.
May people always see that the 'hand of the LORD is powerful' through His working to complete in us what He started out to do in our lives.
And, may I regularly share this milestone with you so that you may rejoice with us at God's faithfulness.

~Heather

Goals

Recently, our church had a woman's encouragement day where we enjoyed a wonderful brunch and listened to a good friend of mine talk about the importance of making goals..realistic goals.
Writing down goals not because it is the first of the year and everyone makes unrealistic resolutions but BECAUSE it is the first of the year giving us a fresh start.
At first I thought "yeah right, okay, goals...my main goal is to get through each day."
But, I know myself well enough. I know that I resist implementing new plans. I actually like planning but have a hard time getting going on the said plans. Maybe its due to years of making unrealistic New Year's resolutions that I just could never keep.
I sent away from the gathering truly encouraged...and, with a long list of small goals to work on for ninety days. Yep, 90 days is doable. Then I will reassess and either add more to the list or change things around a bit.
We were also asked to find an accountability partner. This past year I was blessed with a surprise friendship. Jennifer and her family moved to the Oakdale area recently.
They all showed up at church one Sunday and while greeting them she informed me that we were Facebook friends. I thought I had recognized her!
This was our first time meeting each other but we do have a lot of friends in common.
A quick friendship developed and now she is my accountability partner.

So, Colleen, the friend who was speaking to us about goals gave us eight areas to work on:
self-care, spiritual, intellectual/emotional, relationships, life/time management, nest management, financial, uniquely you

I thought I would share with you the different goals that I made. These are goals that I am working on until the end of March. So far, I am doing fairly well.

For self-care the decisions were made for me. I had actually taken a blood test and my Chiropractor, who is now practicing Functional Medicine, gave me the results. I was severely dehydrated and lacking vitamin D and Bs. I also had other things to deal with but those I can save for another day.
So, for self-care I am going gluten free and drinking three 24 oz bottles of water a day. In the meantime, our whole family is working on eating as much organic, whole foods and cutting out sugar and refined foods. We have done this before but since Eric died it has been hard to actually care. I can tell that my period of mourning is coming to an end as I am able to manage these things now without being so overwhelmed.

Spiritual - I plan on memorizing one song from the Psalter and one worship song that we sing in our church. I have such a hard time memorizing lyrics so I want to deliberately work on memorizing Mercies Anew and Psalm 54.
My second goal in this area is to keep a prayer log. I pray a lot. When I can't sleep I pray. When I am up with Sweet Pea at night I pray. I need to pray more but I also need to keep a log of those of whom I said that I would pray for. When I say I am going to pray for you, I mean it. But, sometimes my brain does not remmber as well as I would like so the prayer log will help me in this area.

Intellectual/Emotional - Although reading is one of my loves, it is also one of those loves that most frustrates me because I have a hard time making time to do so.
Did you notice that I didn't you the excuse that I don't have time? The thing is, we all have the same amount of time in a day to creatively fill with what we think is important. If reading is important to me I will find the time. So, this goal is one I am most excited about because I am purposefully making time to read something that is educating.
This book was brought to my attention by, I believe, Dr. George Grant and it helps that it has an acknowledgement from Ravi Zacharias. The book above was written by an Indian philosopher and so far the first part of the book is dealing with aesthetic philosophy which is something I have always wanted to study.

For the emotional part of the above section I am trying to create a new habit. Every time I am frustrated I will count to ten and say a quick prayer for wisdom. This is in hopes of controlling my tendency to speak louder when I get frustrated.

Relationships - I have a lot of relationships that I need to work on continuously. But, for the next 90 days I had purposed to work on my relationships with my older girls: Rebecca, Miss M, and Daisy. I was able to spend some great time with Rebecca while she was down here for a week and I have some ideas of how to encourage her over the next couple of weeks (although I can't explain them here because I know she reads this! :).
As for Miss M and Daisy, I will be traveling with them over the next couple of months for debate tournaments. It is not easy to get one on one time with them with Sweet Pea around but I sure hope to make some milestone memories with them that they can look back on.
I have very little time with them left at home. I am telling you what...those years of high school and early twenties go by so quickly. Before you know it they are off on a new adventure and your sole communication is by phone.

Life and Time Management -I had begun making a new chore list before hearing Colleen talk about goals but I was kind of stuck in the planning stage and wasn't sure how to implement it all. The Chore chart is almost complete because of the encouragement of Colleen and others. As your kids age, you find that chore charts, lists of things to do, and goals need to change with them. Since moving to the new house I had seen the need for change but had never put it down on paper. Now I am catching up and making sure that I have chores listed for weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. And, next to them will be a dollar amount of which I will pay for these things to be done. Some of the items will be normal chores that you just do because you live in the house but we also want to encourage our kids to go above and beyond and be able to make a little money on the side. Nothing big...learned that a long time ago. Kids are happy with just enough to be able to save for something big or use to buy their favorite gum. A worker is worth his wage though so we try to be fair.
The second thing I am working on under life and time management is making better use of the children in helping maintain the house.
With the birth of this newest one I have found myself more frustrated with the inability to get it all done. It has been five years since I last had a little one in the house and I had gotten use to getting so much done. Well, baby doesn't let me get as much done...this means I have time to work on management and encouragement skills with my children. This is good!

In the area of Nest Management I have been lacking. But, then Pinterest came into my life! Pinterest is this amazingly fun way to keep and organize great ideas. I have been doing this manually for the past twenty years....instead of keeping magazines I would clip the idea out of the magazine and file it away for future use. Pinterest is the same thing except it is digital AND I don't have to have a special box to store all the info. Yes! So, now I have all kinds of great ideas stored online and guess what...it's inspiring me to make my house more of a home.

Another area that I am working on is creating new memories, new traditions for my new family. Of course, I need to keep some of our old traditions for my older girls but I need to create new ones for everyone. So, I'm trying to come up with unique birthday ideas and other creative ways to make memories with my new family. I know the value of having years of memories and how it helps solidify families.

Financial - I rarely even looked at the finances before I became a widow. That means that for two years I have learned the hard way how to manage our finances. I highly doubt that my oldest daughter and son had much training so I have a goal of helping my other children so that they know how to manage a budget, how to deal with extra expenses, and how to work credit to your advantage. I am not an expert but I just don't want them to have to such an uphill climb. My goal for the next 90 days is to work with Miss M and Daisy.
Secondly, I plan on passing the financial stuff to Phil. It is one less area that I need full control and one less thing on my plate means more time to work on some other project.

So, in the Uniquely You category I decided to spruce myself up a bit. First off I have made a commitment to always have make-up on and have my hair done when I go out of the house. I have kind of let this area of myself go ever since I got pregnant. Well, no more! And, honestly, I like it when I have my hair done, my eyebrows waxed, and my make-up on. The toes, well, the toes will have to wait until the warm weather comes and I begin to slip on my flip flops again.

And, last but not least, I made a goal to complete a photo album for 2010. For our wedding I created one of those online photo albums and the results were amazing! I love it. So, I was inspired to create one for each year putting the best of the best pics in from that year. I am starting with 2008 but decided to work on 2010 before the end of March. Sad to say, this goal just might not get done but it will have been because I got more important things done.

There you go. You now know more about me than you probably wanted to!
I hope this post encourages you to make some goals for yourself.
~Heather

Merry Christmas...um, I Mean Happy New Year!

Yes! I am actually writing on my blog!
In this new year I have so much to be thankful for.
I look around me and see the beautiful, warm, cozy home that I live in and give thanks.
I sit at the dinner table and look into the eyes of each of my children and my loving husband and thank God for His bounty.
When I wake up with my husband on one side of me and our beautiful 11 month old on the other I praise my Creator for His sovereign plan.

This past Christmas season saw a continual busyness that I have still not learned to like.
I personally to stay home....unless I am traveling.
I have always enjoyed getting out on the road but I dislike the busyness that sometimes can creep into the lives of moms who school the children at home.
I did try. I did try to slow things down and enjoy a few moments reading books with the kids on the couch. And, we even worked on our Jesse Tree project.

I thought I would share some photos of my attempts in decorating.
This year we bought little, fake trees for each child so that they could decorate the trees the way they wanted. It has been fun to see each child's creativity come alive.
Miss M is using some of the old favorite ornaments with a silver and red theme.
Daisy is as funky with her tree as she is with everything else in life...orange and other bright colors along with old favorite ornaments.
Foley has decided to collect beer caps and wine corks. He came up with all kinds of creative things to make with both and then added some baseball stuff to his tree.
Brown Sugar and Sweet Pea share a tree and it is decorated by me! I have all these fun stuffed hearts made with the fabric of my old dresses and these cute shaped felt ornaments that my mom made for me years ago. Added to that are some snowflakes and some red hearts. It has a Mary Englebert flavor to it just like their room.
This meant that the family tree would finally be the way I have always wanted the tree to look. It is white and red in flavor with snowflakes and red tin stars and red beads and white lights.
I love it...I so enjoy sitting in front of it in the evening and just think about life with no other lights on except the white twinkling lights.
Ah...pure delight!

I have found Pinterest! For the past four years I have done very little in the way of crafts. I gave up quilting because of my eye sight. I gave up on scrapbooking because of how time consuming it is.
I do still knit because it is a great stress reliever and I can take it everywhere I go.
But, it was Pinterest that stirred up those creative juices again.
So, here is my attempt to decorate with little time on my hands.
It was refreshing...it made our house more like a home.

My mom started the tradition of making stockings for me and my siblings when we were young. She has kept up the tradition by making them for all of our spouses and children. The only problem? They are so big that it is hard to fill them!

I have wanted to complete Anne Voskamp's Jesse Tree Journey for the past four years. I bought it the Christmas before Eric died. He had been in the hospital the month before and so I really didn't do much with it that year. I have not been able to do it since. Last year I tried but I allowed our schedule to get to booked up. This year I worked harder to make it happen...even with a very needy baby.

Thanks to a friend of mine, we used some peach branches for our tree. We did get about half way through the book. Next year we will get all the way through it.
What I loved about this year was that I made new traditions, gave placement to my decorations, created a homey atmosphere for this big house.

My daughter, Miss M is quite the photographer. She has made a little business out of it and is doing quite well. She has been the assistant photographer at a few weddings and has taken quite a few family groups. Well, our family was one that needed a new family photo and here is the collection.

Love this one of Sweet Pea.

Sweet Pea has a proclivity to tearing our lips off with her death grip.

Brown Sugar is growing up...sniff, sniff! She is a very precocious six year old. Thankful that she is showing reading readiness...this girl needs something to do and I believe that reading will help her with her adventurous spirit and keep her away from the scissors!

Foley is such a handsome young man. Learning some hard lessons lately but man, that smile just gets him through so much boyhood craziness! Foley still loves to bike around, skateboard and if we had the money he would be the best dressed kid around! He has great taste in clothing (although he didn't think it was cool to have his shirt tucked in for this picture!).
He is a great reader and has more friends than he knows what to do with. I believe he is going to be an amazing young man with a powerful voice wherever God places him.

Daisy is as funky, quirky, sweet, and loving as ever. This girl can get down on the level of little ones so easily...she reminds me of her dad when she does this. I love her adventurous spirit. Part of that spirit is what drives her to learn Spanish, French, and ASL all at the same time. She wants to be able to speak clearly with when she travels the world.

Miss M is ready to face all of lifes darts. She is an intelligent young woman who can't wait to tell you all about this years Debate resolution (it happens to be on Federal revenue generation) or why you should vote for Ron Paul. She is still looking at all the possibilities of becoming a midwife which I hope she will be successful at...she has only dreamed of being one since she was a little girl!

Phil has officially, as of last week, finished his dissertation. He now has to prepare the bibliography and a small conclusion. He should get the rough draft of the last chapter back this week so that he can work on it and get it sent to the editor.
A defense of his dissertation is what is next on the list of things to accomplish before he can walk the aisle for his PhD. Yep, come this spring we can all start calling him Dr. Phil!
I am trying to keep up with everyone. Sweet Pea has turned out to be a high needs baby. She has no physical problems that we know of but she just does not like to be very far away from neither her mother or father. Its just in the last month that she has finally attached to her sisters giving me some breathing space and a chance to get back to shopping without it taking all day!
Between debate season, errands to run, homeschooling, and a house to keep up with, I am one busy momma. I love it. I love my life.
I thank God for this incredible journey that He has seen fit to set me on.
And, I am incredibly thrilled that I actually got this post done...even if it is an hour past my bed time! I hope I can keep journaling my journey for you and for my family this next year.
~Heather

Who Has The Time to Blog?

Well, for my faithful readers who have not completely abandoned me, I am still alive.

I just can't seem to make time to sit in front of the computer for more than a few minutes at a time...and, if I am in front of my iPad it is because I am feeding or snuggling with a little one in which case I have very little ability to type well.

And, really, when it comes right down to it, my brain feels like mush most of the time.

I am sleep deprived and trying to keep my home in order.

I'm only sleep deprived because I have gotten use to having eight to ten hours of uninterrupted sleep every night. Ha! That isn't happening now.

But, I wouldn't change anything...not one thing.

I love my life.

I love my beautiful family.

I love holding a baby in my arms.

Life is good...very good, indeed.

So, what has been going on?

Well, since our trip North in August we have started school...this year we are in a Science co-op and enjoying spending time with friends.

We also have a weekly Ultimate frisbee game that the kids all attend.

We have enjoyed a few visits with my son and his wife as they have been down here for different occasions. Carrie finally looks pregnant!

Daisy was able to work up at a Homeschool camp and is working at piano, singing, and school. She is also taking a Spanish class and ASL class. I love the opportunities that have come together for her this year.

Miss M was working for the past five months and has a very busy Debate schedule. She seems to rarely be here...sniff, sniff. She has said that this is her last year of Debate and so we are working hard at getting to all of her meets this year and cheer her on. She is definitely a great speaker and is learning a lot.

Foley is doing fine. Nothing new...just school and play. He is also taking Spanish and has a knack for it as my friend tells me.

Brown Sugar finally has beautiful hair. I am learning...man, it is a lot of work! She is so hopeful that she will have long hair someday. Her permanent front teeth are now in which is the time that I say they no longer look like a toddler. She is a girl and a feisty one at that!

Sweet Pea is so stinkin' cute. She is very long and has the cutest chubby thighs. She just loves momma to the extent that she reaches for me even when in her dad's arms. She is definitely attached! She is eating regular food now and loves it although is quite a messy eater still.

Phil is almost done with his dissertation! He has been working very long hours. Writing a chapter a month is hard work. When he gets his chapters back from his dissertation committee chair it rarely has a mark on it. His grammar skills are amazing. Honestly, he should be an editor. He is hoping to be done in December which means that early Spring will be when he defends it and then in the late Spring he will walk the aisle for his PhD.

I am soooooo proud of him.

He has already started sending out the applications...we are really hoping to be able to stay in the Central Valley but we are also looking at other possibilities.

I am busy teaching, nursing, managing.

I still play the piano at church and have put together a choir for our church for Christmas this year....because I had a spare moment so spare?!?

We have had a wonderful, sweet family living with us for the past six weeks. They bought a house that needed some remodeling done and so we have enjoyed their company here. They are the reason why Brown Sugar's hair is looking so good! They have helped me with her hair and have been such nice help around the house as well. It looks like they will be leaving this week to move into their newly remodeled home.

I am full of gratefulness and thankfulness for so many things...

God Almighty, saving grace, the beauty of God's church, Philip, each and every one of my children, my children by marriage, our amazing local church community, my family, the many friends that God has blessed me with, my memories, my past, my home, coffee and good chocolate, a good dark beer, photos to help me remember all those wonderful memories, music, and the list goes on!

I hope that you are taking this month to truly be thankful for everything and everybody.

~Heather

Love!