a little beach ball

I stayed home last night ... meaning I didn't bring the kids to church and then go grocery shopping. I have oodles of stuff to conquer before this baby arrives ... and we don't really need to eat, do we???

Anyway, a friend asked Foofie what I was doing ...

"Mommy couldn't come to Cubbies because she has a beach ball in her tummy," she replied very sincerely.

a little day in February

You know ... it's getting harder to title each of my blogs with "a little ..." Perhaps I need to stop restricting my titles ...

Anyway, this little sweetie woke me up this morning by saying, "Mommy, my love ... Mommy, my love." It was so cute :)


Here is a peek at what I've been eating for lunch lately ~ pregnancy, ya know ...

I helped Halo assemble this votive holder with her sweet drawings ... and then she gave it to me as an early baby gift :)

A couple nights ago, we were talking about how every Christian is called to be a missionary right where they are ... Buddy agreed and said he's a "missionary policeman" :) Later, I told him one of the exciting things ~ in my opinion ~ that happened when he was six is that he learned to like salads. (I like salads ... and I like when my kids will cheerfully eat whatever I fix.) Then, I asked him what was exciting for him when he was six ... and he said, "eating salads and getting lots of legos". (I doubt he would have mentioned the salads without my bringing it up though.)

Anyway, this little dude turned seven today and we were having entree salads and ciabatta rolls for supper ... spinach, cheddar, bacon, ham, hard-boiled eggs, sun-dried tomatoes, and croutons. Buddy's first comment while waiting for everyone to get seated was ... "It looks so delicious that I can't resist looking at it!" (I told him he didn't have to ...) We had cake and ice cream too, of course. I couldn't locate any birthday candles ... thus the little, stubby thing in front of the cake. It did the job though. Then I gave him a birthday haircut :) (It was at the end of the evening though, after this photo.)

a little parenting

I try to preview all of the books we get for Halo ... for crude language, boyfriend/girlfriend stuff, meanness toward siblings, disrespecting parents, minimizing deceitfulness, bad/selfish attitudes, and more. The principle here is G.I.G.O. ... Garbage IN = Garbage OUT. And it doesn't only apply for TV and movies ~ books can also be influential, either positively or negatively. In addition, just because a book comes from a "Christian" bookstore doesn't mean it's acceptable.

The old saying, you can't judge a book by its cover, is quite true. My mother-in-law had gotten Halo a set of four books about some twelve year-old girl and her horse, of course. She asked me to look them over before she gave them to Halo for her birthday. The covers were well done ... the summaries on the back seemed interesting and harmless ... but just as I was about to say the books looked okay, I decided to open one up. The page I happened to turn to had the girl and her friends doing drugs ... smoking pot if I recall! Insane!

Anyway, I've never told Halo exactly what I'm looking for when I'm previewing a book ... but somehow she figured out part of it. She was recently reading a novel to her brother over the course of a couple days. The main characters were two boys named Soup and Rob. I had only skimmed it, and hadn't read it entirely, so I asked her how she was liking the book. "It's good. I skipped over the part about g-i-r-l-f-r-i-e-n-d-s though," she replied by spelling out the word :)

I don't exactly know why I started writing this blog ... somehow it all evolved from the previous paragraph ... but I've just been shocked lately at what is going on with young people. I saw Bristol Palin's interview on FOX and she said something like ... abstinence is best, but it's not realistic, because everybody does "it". Parents, myself included, need to take parenting seriously and view it as their most important task. When you consider what things children are taking in from TV, movies, magazines in the checkout aisle, the internet, video games, books, school, friends ... it is any wonder so many kids today are so messed up? It sometimes feels impossible to raise godly children in this evil culture we live in ... where wrong has become right.

Is there any hope of avoiding the traps of sin that youth are so vulnerable to? I think so ...

How can a young man keep his way pure?
By living according to your word.
I seek you with all my heart;
do not let me stray from your commands.
I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
Psalm 119:9-11

I know my kids are sinners and that they will make mistakes along the way, but my prayer is that they will continue to seek God and that their strongest desire will be to obey Him.

a little critter ~ actually two!

When we arrived at the cabin last night, there were two dead little critters on our peanut butter glue trap! Last month, when I first spotted one of them, I thought it was a little mouse ~ but they were probably voles or shrews. They were so tiny that they were both stuck on the same trap. Anyway, we had been sharing our living quarters with them recently ... and it was a bit unnerving ... so we were relieved to have captured the interlopers.

Later on, after lots of unloading and getting settled and readying for bed, Jeff climbed into bed before I did and pretended there was a mouse in the bed! I'm on to his schemes though ... so I didn't fall for it! A couple minutes later, he tried again ... "AAAAhhhh! There's a mouse!" ... kicking his legs and kind of bouncing around. Anyway ...

Tonight, as Foofie was in the middle of her prayers, she said, "And thank you that we don't have a so crappy house with mice in the downstairs." (which is the main floor, as compared to the loft)

a little Florida

a little cookie

So ... last night as I'm laying in bed trying to fall asleep ... my husband says to me ...

"I stopped at SA (SuperAmerica) this afternoon and the cookies were way smaller than they used to be ... so I went up to the counter and I said (and he said it in a loud voice) ..."

"Hey! What happened to the cookies? They shrunk! They're noticably smaller!"
"And they're no longer 2 for 89 cents! What's the deal? What's going on?"
"Obama's the President! I thought the cookies were gonna get bigger ... not smaller."
"Oh ... did I say that out loud?"

I burst out laughing ...
"And what did the cashier say?" I asked.
"She chuckled a little bit."