Clean Floors?

Yesterday I was outside, gardening, when Rachel brought Jedaiah out and said he had "mud" all over him. I was puzzled and wasn't sure how he would get that dirty when he was in his crib. He was taken a nap when I went out. Jay was with me and he told me he had gotten Jedaiah out of his crib. I told Rachel to take his clothes off. She said, "Okay." A few minutes later she said, "Jesse pooped all over the floor." Then it clicked, "Oh no," I thought. I went in and found Jedaiah covered in poop. It was all over from head to toe. You see, he is now crawling and getting around fairly well. Jesse pooped on the floor and Jedaiah must have gotten into it and tracked it all down the hallway. Yuck!! The night before (Friday night), the boys and I cleaned the whole floor on our hands and knees. The boys asked if we were having people over. I said we weren't and that we were cleaning the floor for Jedaiah. I like to keep my floors cleaner than usual when I have a crawling baby. It is gross when I pick him up from crawling and his outfit is all dirty from the floor. Anyways, I guess a clean floor didn't matter in this circumstance. I have to keep a sharper eye on him, now that he's getting around so much. We still haven't figured out what we are going to do about the stairs and we better figure that one out soon!
In other news, I have most of the garden planted. I've been working hard the last couple weeks to get everything in. Since last weekend I've planted four apple trees, 2 pear trees, 1 cherry tree, four plum trees, more strawberries and another blueberry bush (I have one peach tree that hasn't come yet). Plus we planted squash (summer and winter) and corn. That was a lot of work. Jonathan and Jay have also gotten interested in gardening. They bought two blueberry bushes (that haven't arrived yet) and I gave then three strawberry plants and they have a little plot they did all themselves. They are hoping to have lots of berries next year to eat and to sell. Josh didn't want to have anything to do with the idea. He's saving his money to go to Senegal, Africa, in a couple years, plus he wasn't interested in doing work (let's hope that changes).

God's Sovereignty

In light of last weeks events I've come to a greater understanding and conviction of God's power and control of our lives. A dear family at our church said "Good-bye" to their two sons on Mother's Day as they entered Eternity. As a mom myself, it is hard to fathom the difficulties and heartache this family is facing. Their great faith is carrying them through. As I was processing and grieving myself, I could only come to the conclusion, based on scripture, that God is fully in control and he orders our steps. He could have prevented this car accident, as He has so many times, but He didn't. In Him not protecting, He was allowing it to happen. We can do our best to be as safe and cafeful as possible, but in the end, His will will be done. We may not like His plans, but in the end all He does is right and good, because He is GOOD and His ways are perfect. His perspective is so different from ours. His grace is great and so is His love. He knows the number of our days before even one of them comes to be and we don't know when that last day will come for us. We just need to make sure we are living closely with the ONE who holds our future in His hands. We need to know Jesus, the Savior, and know his grace and forgiveness that will allow us access to spend eternity with Him. Are you ready? The life we live is but a breath and then we're gone. I am so glad I can trust in my Heavenly Father. Even though I don't understand His ways, I can trust trust them. I go on, living in hope and not in fear, for perfect love casts out fear.

Thank You, God, for the Internet

This modern tool of the internet has become such a powerful thing. It can destroy and it can be so helpful. It is such a wealth of information, some good and some bad. We keep a password on our computer (that only I know) that will not let people go to any site they want, unless it is approved by me. Anyways, that is a side note. Yesterday I decided to move a mower that we've been basically storing for a couple years. It's been in the garage and I thought maybe I'd move it outside, under our deck. Then I thought maybe I'd take a look at it. This mower was given to us by our good friends, the Whitbys. They told us it wasn't running because the carborator needed to be cleaned out. The mower was just a year old at the time, so we figured we'd get it fixed and have a fairly new mower that is nicer than our current push mower (which is over 10 years old). We don't know much about mowers and so it sat. I got online and found the manuals. First I drained the oil and didn't know what to do with it, so I put it back in (it didn't look that black). Then I started to google about fixing lawnmower carborators. That brought me to youtube. They have all kinds of helpful videos of people showing how to fix things. I watched a guy clean a lawnmower carborator and thought I'd give it a try. I was hoping to get the boys interested in learning about it too. Jonathan didn't help until the end, because he was busy with other things (he has been gone for a few days and had stuff he wanted to do). The others were down at the river. So I basically did what I saw on the video and then gased it up. After priming it, Jonathan gave it a try. It didn't take long and we got it started. It smoked a bit (probably from oil in the muffler - again, I learned from the internet). Anyways, it ran great, cut great and is more powerful than our other mower, which is out of commission at the moment (the primer bulb has a rip in it). I was not expecting a miracle of the thing actually working, what a blessing! I was pretty excited. Now I'm thinking maybe we'll tackle the old mower at some point and see if we can get that one going. The boys are doing more mowing and actually starting to get paid for it (James' office and James' parents). Without the internet, I would have never been able to figure this out, so I'm so thankful that I can find just about any answer to any question out there. Most of all I'm thankful to my Heavenly Father, who provides so abundantly!