Today is my little sister's sixth birthday, what a joy she has been for the half dozen years she has been a part of our home.
Lizzie:
The girl who when two years old could explain many things in wonderful ways while making you want to hug her to death. The girl who is absolutely laughable- when you see her pixie face you want to pinch it. ( please don't- I've learned from experience.) The girl who talks.(need I say more) Anyone who has met Lizzie can collaborate my statement. The girl who loves to tell you about the time she was a little bitty baby, "ownly five." The girl who at age three had an excellent conversation at an RV park we visited with a little seven year old boy while her elder siblings looked on in stunned amazement. The girl who at age two when asked what the name of her future husband was...... replied, "I think I'll name him, Sloppy." The girl who sounds the same when she laughs or cries. The girl who has had a thousand people tell her they wish they could take her home with them. The girl who sleeps in my room and begs me to tell her bedtime stories until my voice goes horse. The girl who loves helping cook in the kitchen, especially cookies!! The girl who nicknames almost as well as I do. :) The only girl I know who wants to be called Hopalong Cassidy. The girl who we cannot spell things around anymore cause, well- she can sound the word out faster than Mom. (well, not quite) The girl who always makes her food choices by asking, "what is the healthiest?" The girl who chose to eat oatmeal this morning for her birthday breakfast because it was, "the healthiest." Groan. The girl who can quote movie quotes better than the actors. The girl who begs to clean the bathroom with me. The girl who tries on at least three night gowns before she finds the "right" one. The girl who knows the first fourteen Catechism questions, watch out big kids!!!! The girl who I cannot imagine life without.
I love you like crazy, Lizzie!!!
Lizzie
Lizzie's poetry in motion, a steam car with a mouth, a double barrel gun that talks manufactured in the South.
Lizzie is an articulating brain who became fluent at age two, a junior conversationatic Chatting with Lola, Betty and Sue.
Lizzie is a gregarious rainstorm coming in the midst of drought, a watermill that is full of words trickling and pouring out.
Lizzie is an expressive puddle that has turned into a lake, a magnet that can always find new words to brew and bake.
Lizzie is an imagination getting set to blow her top, but even as the words come down she is planting yet another crop.
Lizzie can converse better Than many folks ten times her age I hold her up as an example of a walking, talking page.
Maddie 2008
I made this video last Summer when my cousin Emily came to visit. The four girls have so much fun together. The photos were taken for Lizzie's fifth birthday at Nanna's bunkhouse!
This is a picture of Nanna with her namesake, Louisa Rose.
Today is my grandmother's birthday and I want to honor her for the godly stand she has taken throughout her sixty-five years of life. I am so blessed to have a mentor and friend who walks according to the Lord's word with a smile. I am thankful that she has my siblings and me over to her home every week for a sleepover and fun-filled "whoda night". Thank you for all that you have done to mold me into a more Christ-like child of God, you have been one of the most influential women in my life.
Nanna's Advice
You have taught me to yield and good character build, to advance in God's will and my fleshly lust kill.
To walk the right ribbon, and to get your work done, flee temptation really quick; Let all your sins make you sick.
Better to not have one friend than to party in a vile den. Keep your thoughts clean and pure, reject the world and Satan's lure.
Act modest and dicreet, be the first to smile and greet. Talk to God daily on your own. Be a friend to the person who's alone.
Have a soft and gentle heart, finish all the things you start. Speak out boldly of the King, Give up your rights in everything.
I wanted to thank you for the words you have said, I will recall and use them often For I've kept them in my head.
“Here is a sweet fragrant mouth to kiss; here are two more feet to make music with their pattering about my nursery. Here is a soul to train for God; and the body in which it dwells is worthy all it will cost, since it is the abode of a kingly tenant. I may see less of friends, but I have gained one dearer than them all, whom, while I minister in Christ’s name, I make a willing sacrifice of what little leisure for my own recreation my other darlings had left me. Yes, my precious baby, you are welcome to your mother’s heart, welcome to her time, her strength, her health, her tenderest cares, to her lifelong prayers! Oh, how rich I am, how truly, how wondrously blest.”
-- Elizabeth Prentiss, Stepping Heavenward.
“The best convent for a woman is the seclusion of her own home. There she may find her vocation and fight her battles, and there she may learn the reality and the earnestness of life.”
--Elizabeth Prentiss, Stepping Heavenward.
“As you have spoken plainly to me, knowing me to be a wife and a mother, you must allow me to speak plainly in return,” I began. “Oh, speak plainly, by all means! I am quite sick and tired of having truth served up in pink cotton and scented with lavender.” “Then you permit me to say that when you speak contemptuously of the vocation of maternity, you dishonor not only the mother who bore you but the Lord Jesus Himself, who chose to be born of woman and to be ministered unto by through a helpless infancy.”
Every morning exuberance fills my heart when I see the bundle of assorted dumbbells that wait expectantly on our craft table in the studio. Mama and I are going to exercise with my four little sisters. I hear gleeful sounds emitting from our hallway and the door crashes open. Catching looks of eagerness from each girl as she lines up along the rose covered carpet, I laugh. They make desperate attempts to establish each other’s exclusive corner. Baby Katie looks on knowingly from her swing. I take my place in front of the television as dumbbells are collected and clasped in readiness. Mama reaches for the control and the screen lights up in aerobic movements. Bella and Lizzie have the daily debate deciding who is going to be which exerciser, the wondrous Jodi is always chosen first. Three bodies sway in front of me, brimming with energy. I can barely lift a leg without tangling with a pint-sized person. Arms lift with funny little jerks, they are keeping up today. Katie’s swing keeps time to the beat. Wiggy* pauses to return a host of toys to baby’s tray. Bend and straighten, kick and lift then walk again. Bella places her hand in mine, rambling up and back in the row of roses that has been named ours. Soon all five of us are sailing over the floor together, screaming in merriment. Wiggy drops her weights the standard two-hundred times. I wonder why Mama and I are sweating more than the girls. We tread on, until- at last, we finish! I now have a new and improved definition for aerobics class. Oh, the joys of home school physical education!
* Nickname for Louisa
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
"She always made home happy," - epitaph in a churchyard, inscribed by a husband after sixty years of wedded life
He who finds a wife finds a good thing, and obtains favor from the Lord. Proverbs 18:22
"Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other. It is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defense, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness, and without any dread of ridicule."
-F.W. Robertson
"And be ye kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you." Ephensians 4:32
Please go over to Jasmine's blog, Joyfully at Home, for info on a Noble Rose Press give-away!! The site is beauitful, appealing and feminine and the dolls themselves look so sweet....I love paperdolls.
Quiet, quiet falls the snow as footfalls of a woodland doe. Flying doves of winter breed follow frost’s impromptu lead.
Joining fellow comrades’ rest deep within my fair forest. Lacing trees; eternal chains, snow along our slushy lanes.
Glowing diamonds, eiderdown blanketing the frozen ground Rolling up my tired threshold fleecy ice waves; quick and bold.
Cold, gray sky as in early dawn, disappearance of brown lawn. White of whitest, clear but deep shifting past my warm retreat.
Piling high the garden fence in rows of linen, piling since something in me constant drew to behold the changing view.
An ashen swarm lands the trees as a clump of summer bees divide the pollen in the flowers; flurries make us icy bowers.
Sudden drops as whitened leaves when in Autumn blows the breeze; fall to ground to muted breathe, while above the winds do seethe.
Resting, waiting, flitting, falling, drifting, sparkling, raining, stalling Quiet, quiet how it snows, watching how the Winter goes.
Beauty made from God’s own hands shaping, forming icy strands, Thankfulness is snowing on my mind as I am snowed upon.
*Written by Madeleine* 2/11/2010
"Hold fast to the Bible as the sheet-anchor of your liberties; write its precepts in your hearts and practice them in you lives. To the influence of this book we are indepted for all the progress made in true civilization, and to this we must look as our guide in the future. Rightiousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people." ~Ulysses S. Grant
"Every thinking man, when he thinks, realizes that the teachings of the Bible are so interwoven with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally impossible for us to figure what life would be if those teachings were removed. We would lose almost all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals; all the standards towards which we, with more or less resolution, strive to raise ourselves." ~Theodore Roosevelt
"The Bible is worth all the other books which have ever really been printed." ~Patrick Henry
"So great is my veneration of the Bible that the earlier my children begin to read it, the more confident will be my hope that they will prove useful citizens of their country and respectable members of society." ~John Adams
Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar,and the fulness thereof. Let the fields be joyful, and all that is therein: then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice. Psalms 96: 11,12
Yesterday it snowed about eight inches at our house. A record unusual for Texas winters !! :) Everything looked like a "fairyland!" Jonathan made the littlest snowman and left him on our front porch while he went to go feed the animals. The girls were on cloud nine when they beheld the masterpiece.... Introducing.... Tiny ( a small name for a small customer ) Dicken meets world's smallest snowman. "Black cat, black cat what do you see?" "I see a triple, scooped ice cream!" In the evening Dad, Jonathan and I made a snowman that was taller than all of us, it took us about forty five minutes. His name, Lizzie dubbed him, John the Jolly Giant.
We're evaluating our music, realizing the importance of how it effects our spirits.
Any suggestions for uplifting, encouraging music would be welcomed. Specific groups or families would be great. We love classical, Celtic, instrumental and hymns!!!
Don't forget to pause my playlist.
Please forgive the distortion, Baby Katie's head is really not that big!!!!
My family did a test about the influence of music on people, even babies!
I am a nothing, a nobody; I must forget my indefinite self, and plead my heart for Him so I am one with Christ and His will. For without His Spirit, no personality or concept will be mine.
I must come to realize that mine and me are one in the same body; a monotone mess of personality. The same as every other self that has a working, grasping will; dark and void of Him.
But if He takes me unto Him and makes His wishes mine; I will find that my stubborn will does come in accord with His body. Christ will triumph over self, and change my twisted personality;
to a harmonious personality. With the righteousness that is in Him, and will shroud my sin and self; away that His purity might be mine. Owing all that I am to Christ’s body; hung on a tree by my shameless will.
So I have lost my will, but I have found Christ’s personality, and am entitled to shun my body with its entices and desires, for only Him. So the originality that is held as mine; must be credited to the Holy God, not self.
I must learn and ascertain that myself is a lost cause; a defaming will. That causes what is me and mine to look an indistinct personality. For who is special, but Him; and unique- The believers in body. For He directs my body, heart and will; Him and Him alone has given myself a personality I cannot claim as mine.
"As thy days, so shall thy strength be." Deuteronomy 33:25
"He that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down upon his little handful of thorns. Enjoy the blessings of this day, if God sends them; and the evils of it bear patiently and sweetly: for this day is only ours, we are dead to yesterday, and we are not yet born to the morrow. But if we look abroad, and bring into one day's thoughts the evil of many, certain and uncertain, what will be and what will never be, our load will be as intolerable as it is unreasonable." - Jeremy Taylor
I love this poem, this is my hope. I pray to the Lord I might keep my thoughts pure and chaste, no matter what is happening in my life.
The Lady of the Lambs
She walks- the lady of my delight- A shepherdess of sheep. Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white; She guards them from the steep. She feeds them on the fragrant height, And folds them in for sleep.
She roams maternal hill and bright; Dark valleys safe and deep. Her dreams are innocent at night; The chastest stars may peep. She walks- the lady of my delight- A shepherdess of sheep.
She holds her little thoughts in sight, Though gay they run and leap. She is so circumspect and right; She has her soul to keep. She walks- the lady of my delight- A shepherdess of sheep.
I am a daughter of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. God saved me, by His grace, at age five and my desire is to grow in the love of my Savior. I live on a farm, where I am daily able to enjoy God's creation and to help and play with my five younger siblings. My two best friends are my mom and dad who are educating me and teaching me to be a homemaker and future helpmate.
"Bless the Lord, all his works in all places of his dominion: Bless the Lord, O my soul."
Psalms 103:22
"Whenever we step out of domestic life in search of felicity, we come back again, disappointed, tired, and chagrined. One day passed under our own roof, with our family, is worth a thousand in another place."
~ Earl of Orrery
