I Have Updated...

I noticed I hadn't updated my pictures at dropshots since last year. I replaced all the old pictures and video with new ones from this year.

Also, James bought a new tiller for me this past weekend. It is big enough for me; medium size and it seems to work well enough. I am working on slowing tilling up some land to plant wheat in the Fall. Gardening should be easier now that I can till the land, it is just too much work to do it by hand.

I am Glad Life is NOT FAIR

Lately I have heard again, as I have many times, "that's not fair". I tell them I never said life was fair and I ask them what ever gave them the idea that life was fair. I guess it is our human nature to think that way, but, I am so glad things are not fair. If they were, I would get what my sins deserve. That would be death. Instead, God did a very unfair thing and gave His Son to die in my place for MY sin.

"But HE was pierced for OUR transgressions, HE was crushed for OUR iniquities; the punishment that brought US peace was upon HIM, and by HIS wounds WE are healed. WE all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of US has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on HIM the iniquity of us all." (Isaiah 53:5-6) Wow, how fair is that? Jesus, knew no sin, and yet took the punishment for us.

So, I told my children about how following Christ is all about being unfair. His word is full of commands that are unfair, but that bring Him glory and show His love. As I started listing unfair scriptures, I realized that there are so many commands that are unfair. Below I'll list a few that popped into my head.

We have memorized Romans 12 this summer, so I'll start there:
-bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse
-never pay anyone evil for evil
-if your enemy is hungry, feed him

Others that come to mind, from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:
-if someone hits you, turn the other cheek
-if someone takes your tunic, give him your cloak also
-if someone makes you go one mile, go two
-love your enemies

Now that is definately NOT FAIR. These things are impossible to do without the Spirit of God living in you and working through you. And I'm so glad He gives us the power, through Christ, to do all these things. We (my kids and I) have a long way to go, though. Fairness??? I think it is over rated!!

The Month of June

First of all I have a couple cute stories to tell…a couple weeks ago I found Jedaiah had red colored nails (toes and fingers). I asked Rachel if she did it and she said, “I…I just want a girl baby.” CUTE!!! (It was marker and not nail polish and it didn’t wash off too easily. Oh well, you can’t really see it anymore.)

Can you see the red nails?

A day or two later I was cleaning walls and had a bucket of water on the floor. Half naked Jesse walked up to me and started peeing in my bucket. Wrong place to pee, but at least it was easy clean up. When we get back from vacation, I plan to potty train him completely. I think he is ready. A raining day, hiking through Illinois' Garden of the gods on our anniversary

In early June, James and I celebrated 16 years of marriage. We went away for a weekend of backpacking in southern Illinois. We took Jedaiah with us and he did pretty well. We found a beautiful place to camp. It was up on a bluff that had a pretty view. We hiked about 8 miles on Friday. It was warm, but then it rained on us and then it rained and rained on us. We were in a thunderstorm and we got quite chilly at one point, but we were prepared with rain gear and warmer clothes. It was a relaxing time and we made great memories together. I am so blessed that God has given me such a loving and wonderful husband! I love you, James. Our Camping Spot

Jay turned 8 on June 7th. He is growing up so fast. He is a bundle of energy and full of life. We celebrated his birthday on Father’s Day with the family. He got an aquarium for his birthday and he is looking forward to filling it with fish when we get back to Missouri.

The next week we had Vacation Bible School all week. It was busy, but fun. The kids all enjoyed it.

We are on the road right now, in New Hampshire, on the way up to a state park to do some camping. My sister, Sara and her kids, and my brother, Bob, and his family will be joining us for the rest of the week. We’re looking forward to a great time with them.

We saw my parents on Saturday after we arrived in NH. We had a short, but nice visit with them and then continued on to Bob’s house. Sunday after church, we went to my cousin, Michelle’s house for a Levasseur family reunion. It was good to see everyone. Even Uncle Henry (my Dad’s brother) and his wife were there, whom we haven’t seen in about 15 years.
Jesse wasn't too excited to go swimming

Lyndsey and Rachel had a great time playing together at the beach
That brings us to yesterday. We had such a great day, once we got going. We went to the coast and hiked on a trail along the coast. We stopped shortly into our hike and found a perfect little beach to hang out. I say “perfect” because it was small and able to contain all 13 kids. It was so easy to keep track of them and they had suck a ball. They played in the waves and sand and there were lots of joyous giggles and laughter. Jesse was apprehensive to go near the water, but after a few minutes he was running from the waves and saying, “fun”. It was too precious! He really loved it. Jedaiah didn’t care for even touching the water with his feet. I guess it was too cold for him.
All the cousins
Later…
We are home now and had a long, but uneventful trip home. We are pretty tired and have already put the kids in bed. We’ll be heading that way soon. I just wanted to catch up on the rest of our week in NH. The weather was pretty nice the whole time; somewhere in the 70’s and sunny. It never rained, which was a bonus. On Tuesday we got up to camp in the afternoon and set up. Sara, my sister, was already there with her kids. Bob and Sarah came up around dinner time. Wednesday, James took Jonathan and Josh and climbed up and down Mt. Washington. It took them close to 8 hours round trip. They had a great time and James said that was his favorite part of the trip.

We stayed back at camp and didn’t do a whole lot. We took the kids down to the beach to play. Some of the kids went fishing in the canoe with Bob. Thursday we hiked around the lake. It was probably about 3 miles (just a guess). In the afternoon I did a little roller-blading, which I haven’t done in a couple years. That was great fun! My sister, brother and I later took the kids to the ball field and had a game going. Lots of laughter filled the day. We had great fun around the campfire every night, telling stories. The kids enjoyed hearing the stories, like the one about how my brother and his wife met. Bob Sara Me Dad

When we got up on Friday morning we found my brother and his family were gone. We found out later that my nephew, Anderson, got sick during the night and threw up on everything. They packed up and went home, the stench was just too much.

We went back to their house on Friday morning, dropped off their stuff, and took showers. Next we went to my parent’s house for another visit. Again the weather was just beautiful. We had a nice visit and then headed home before dinner. We stopped at Cracker Barrel (a tradition) and had dinner around 8:00.

Daddy and the kids

At my parent's house

It is so much fun to go on vacation and visit with family and it is soooo good to be home after such a trip.

Music

I think it is pretty cool that I want to borrow my son's new cd's. I'm not sure that will always be the case, but for now, Jonathan pretty much likes the same music we (James and I) like. He bought the new Steven Curtis Chapman cd, "Beauty will Rise" (which I thought was very good - it is all about his daughter's death and his journey through it). Then there is David Crowder, I like his song, "He loves Us" and so I'm checking out the other songs on the cd (sounds good so far). And lastly, he bought Phillips, Craig and Dean's latest cd. I haven't listened to it yet, but I'm sure I'll love it. It is so cool to be able to put it on my mp3 player and not have to carry around a discman (remember those days? actually, I missed that era, I had the walkman, but my sister forked out the $100 to get one during our teen years.) Well, for today I like the taste of my son's music, we'll see if that lasts.

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!