Victoria typed up the names of all of you who entered the giveaway for Dorcas Smucker’s book, Tea and Trouble Brewing.  I cut them carefully into strips and mixed them up and put them into a bowl.  Andre closed his eyes and drew a name.  And the winner is #writersblock02!  Congratulations, Andrea!  I’m excited about mailing a package all the way to Lancaster, PA, for you.    And for those of you who didn’t win, see previous post for how to order the book.

And thanks to all of you who entered.  I enjoyed hearing about what you like about where you live.  I started my own post on a day when I was feeling sad about  how long winter stretches out before us.  In writing it, I again realized how attached I am to the Great White North.

Post below:

They were off to school in a flurry of skates and shin pads and elbow pads and hockey pants.  The insanity has just begun.

The car thermometer showed -23 degrees Celsius on the drive to school.  I`d left my gloves at home in the craziness of getting out the door and the steering wheel was cold long after the suburban warmed up.

Last night I went on a walk after school and the sun set at 4:30-ish. It doesn’t get very high in the sky on the shortest days of the year.

And it wasn’t up yet at 9:00 this morning, but the sky was blue and pink and promising.

Our neighbors saw this grizzly this fall.   Its unusual to see them here, but they seem to travel through occasionally.

I know the spot to look for the cow moose in the bush beside the road on the drive to school.

Last night I burst into unexplainable tears because the overhead light in our bedroom seemed so dim and the four walls of the house were coming in on me, even though I went out to play with Liesl and Andre in the morning and took a walk later in the day.

Dan took us to town for icecream after supper because he knew I was blue.

I dream of the days in Belize when the children put on their flip flops and got on their bikes and went off to school.  I dream of Florida, of Paraguay, of Kenyan sunshine beating hotly down.

Our neighbor, Mr. Sadlier, shot a record book elk last week.

 

The aeriator on our dugout isn’t working right and only a local can understand what dugout water is like that’s not getting air.  Hold your nose and close your eyes while you take a bubble bath at my house right now.

Winter afternoon sunshine is glorious.

In town there’s this northern camaraderie that I can’t explain.  Big diesel pickups idling.  Tuques (US stocking caps—and yes, wikipedia told me to spell it that way!)  and scarves and boots everywhere.  People walking quickly to their vehicles.  Long lines at Tim Hortons drive-thru.  No size 10 boys’ coats to be found.  Snow stamping and shivering.

Oh land of my birth, you have captured my heart.  You hold it tightly and don’t let it go.  Sometimes I know that I will not survive you.   I cry quietly on my winter walk because winter has only begun, the water smells bad, and everywhere I look there is a semi doing oilfield hauling.   The tears freeze on my cheeks.  (I do not exaggerate for effect.)

*note:  Some of my friends absolutely LOVE winter here.  Long snowy days make them happy, busy in their cocoons of sewing or crafting or cooking or feeding their cattle and chickens.*

 

Then I catch my breath at your frost and your wide spaces and your wildlife.  I bask in the crackle of the fire and the falling snow.  I am proud of our red-cheeked hockey players.  I drink a chai latte and talk with my friend at the coffee shop.  There is lots of time to read a bedtime story.  Maybe I will even start to blog in earnest.

We will survive another winter.  We will even enjoy it.  Chinooks will breathe over us when it feels like we can’t stand another day of cold. 

And then the spring mud will come.

Soon the wild busyness of summer will be upon us.  Planting and haymaking and picnics and weddings and camping and DOING.

 

I will smile again, breathe in warmth and light, and forget about vitamins and anti-depressants and SAD lights.

I love where we live because it is where we’re supposed to be right now.  I love it because of the people we share life with here.  I love it because it’s beautiful and free. 

Today it’s white and cold in Alberta, while in Oregon it’s raining.  Today is Thanksgiving if you are American and here in Canada we’ve already celebrated back in October.  Today is also Giveaway Day, a first for me from this remote corner.   I am honoured to announce that Dorcas Smucker is generously giving away her newest book, Tea and Trouble Brewing, via this blog. 

I quickly jumped in and said I’d do a book review when Dorcas was looking for bloggers for her blog tour.  But then I got nervous because I’ve never done a book review before.  As number 11 on a list of 18 bloggers doing a review, I wondered if I could do it without shamelessly copying the others.  And (horrors!!) what if I don’t use commas correctly?

But.  After someone has kindly mailed you 3 books- one to keep, one to give away on your blog, and one to quietly slip to someone as a gift- you need to keep your word.  You want to keep your word.

Here I quote someone named Bevy who introduces Dorcas:

Dorcas is the wife of a Mennonite Minister, the mother of six children and author of several books/memoirs.  She is a once-a-month columnist for the Eugene Register-Guard, on Facebook and is blog host for Life in the Shoe. (end of quote)

After joining the online world just three years ago by getting a Facebook account and then discovering the wide world of blogland, I was quickly drawn to Dorcas Smucker’s writing.  I had heard vaguely of her before, but when she left a thoughtful comment on one of my first faltering blog posts and I followed her to her blog at Life in the Shoe, I knew I had happened upon a gold mine.

Dorcas writes well of real life.  She is articulate and funny.  And with her there is none of this rambling what-does-this-mean-and-where- is-it-going” discomfort that I can almost feel through the computer screen when people read what I write.  Succinct at its best makes me happy.  There is also none of the Sunday school paper stuffiness that you might mistakenly expect from  a Mennonite minister’s wife.

Here I quote Crystal on Dorcas: 

Her writing is impeccably genius. This isn’t some random blog with a few funny stories thrown together. These pages are chock-full of carefully-crafted beginnings, middles and endings. One specific reason I love Dorcas’s writing? She ALWAYS connects her final paragraph to her first in a way that perfectly ties up the package. That takes serious talent and years of work.”  (end of quote)

Tea and Trouble Brewing is Dorcas Smucker’s fourth book.  Like her other three books, it is a compilation of the Letters from Harrisburg that she writes for the Eugene newspaper column.   In her fourth book she addresses truly winning, clotheslines, harvest time, pregnant cats, football games, and joining face book.  Among many other things.

My favorite paragraphs include these in the chapter “How Little Girls Become Moms” when the sweet family kitten suddenly becomes a mother. 

Cleo was like a different cat.  Skinny, tired, preoccupied.  She no longer had time for lounging on laps.  Most of the time she was in her box, curled into a crescent, the patient curve of her body completely filled with pawing, seeking, demanding kittens, a mass of black and gray and yellow.

“It makes me sad to look at her,” said our oldest daughter, Amy.  “She’s like these girls that get married and have all these babies way too young, and they just look so harassed and tired.”

I didn’t tell her that Cleo reminded me of myself. 

And later on in the same chapter, Dorcas writes on how motherhood has changed her: 

I could, if I wished, go back to worrying about matching this belt and these shoes.  Instead, I agonize about war and orphans and tornadoes and injustice.  I meddle shamelessly, asking the guy in the wheelchair if he needs help reaching that cantaloupe at Fred Meyer and offering to pray for the weeping young woman hiding out at the back of the Goodwill store.

I dispense advice and listen a lot.  I hope people can look at me and tell that I care and if they need it, I will drop my work to make a pot of tea and talk.

I have a restless, seeking nature and struggle with contentment.  I think the biggest appeal for me in Dorcas’s writing is wrapped up in this excerpt from the chapter “Rethinking Life Choices” in her latest book.

I seldom question my major life choices.  I have few regrets, and I like where I live and who I’m with and what I do.

And later:  Who knows, the future may find me stitching up wounds on little heads in Africa someday.  Or not.  But right now I need to sew pretty dresses for my daughter and take good care of the wounds that show up in my household, and I know this is what I’m supposed to be doing, now and here.

Yes and amen.

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For a chance to win a free copy of Tea and Trouble Brewing, please leave a comment on this post.   Tell us what you like about where you live or who you’re with or what you do—or all 3.  Since a lot of the people who read this blog are not bloggers and I know how annoying it can be to sign in to some foreign site, your Facebook comment will count as well.  (I hope this is considered kosher.) Since this is a busy time for many of you, I will draw the winner’s name a week from today.

Per the Author’s request – the following information is made available to you:

To order a copy, for yourself, go to

Amazon , to pay by credit card.
If you would prefer to pay by check (cheque! , please send $15 (postage is included in this price) to Dorcas Smucker, 31148 Substation Drive, Harrisburg, OR 97446.

**Dorcas also has a special on right now. All 4 of her books for $40.00. Again, postage is included.

(Note:  I have read all four of these books and they make wonderful gifts.)

Happy Thanksgiving to my lovely American friends! 

They were Tyler and Betsy, off on a hike to find new parents because theirs had died.

She wore her princess dress with polka dot pajama pants underneath it and her “cozy brown mocassins”. (i.e:  big sister’s boots that are 4 sizes too big for her)  In Betsy’s “packpack” were six apple slices, salt & vinegar chips, a marker, and 2 coats for good measure.  Tyler said he had Bryant’s Bible and snacks in his.  He was carrying a little bear that he found in the woods.  They pretended that they lived in a town with white grass because there’s still snow out there but they wanted it to be summer.  And to settle the dilemma of leafless trees he decided that “a million people came and chopped off all the leaves”.

They hiked for quite a while and I cleaned up the kitchen.  When I went to tidy the bathroom this is what I saw.  They’d been using bubble bath to wash the play dishes.  And a very dirty motorcycle. And other things. {Please do not turn me over to the decor police.  WHEN I start to redo this house, this bathroom will be where I start.}

 

These are the beautiful, terrible days.  The days of bad smells that I can’t find the source of in the suburban and 8 people to have pressed and ready for a wedding.  The days of flu making its rounds and smashed skittles in the carseat.  The days of finding a little diary to God written by someone who’s six.  “Dear God,  Your so good But sumtims Life dosent seam so entresting” and “Dear God, i Love you.  Your so good your so loveing your so kind and you make life faer and you love us all so you should have a treet and I’m so triying to do a treet and I’m going to tel you wat is is on the nekst paje.”  Next page: “Dear God your so good so I’m going to tel you wat the soapris is.  Ok hear it is.  I’m going to tri to do the best I kan do.  I’m going to try to be nic to evrebode els in the world. Love, Natalia.”  These are the days of rushing off to piano lessons and brushing 3 sets of teeth before bed at night.  They are the days where I cook huge pots of food and it’s gone before I have time to sit and enjoy my own plateful.

I want to hold these days tight. Sometimes I can’t wait till they end.  These are the terrible, beautiful days.

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We just had a family wedding in southern Alberta.  It’s a 12 hour drive south for us.  Down through the First Nations reserve near Valleyview, on to the bleak landscape by Whitecourt, on south through Alberta’s capital Edmonton, down to Calgary’s rolling landscape with mountains in the distance, and on still farther to booming Lethbridge and then the flat, treeless farmland near the little town of Raymond.  My parents and a sister live there, and the rest of the Peachey siblings (minus Carol in Virginia–and Kevin in heaven) met there for a brief and noisy weekend.

We stayed the nights with our friends the Maldaners since Mom & Dad’s house was too full.  I didn’t get any pictures of our stay with these friends, but here’s a picture of their beautiful livingroom that I stole from Mrs. Maldaner’s facebook page.  (Thanks, Kathy.)

 Their boys and ours stayed up late laughing and horsing around, shooting guns made out of pvc pipes with soft darts for bullets.  They skated and played hide and seek.  Kathy had fun crafts ready for the the girls to do.  Gingerbread men to decorate with glitter glue.  Puffy paint made out of shaving cream and white glue.  We discussed dress patterns, friendships, and fellowship dinner organization in the evenings and mornings we had together while the guys talked work and used Google maps on their I-phones and took care of rowdy children.

Dan preached the wedding sermon, “Choose to Love” and Grandpa Peachey married the beaming couple.  There was a bag of chips for each wedding guest, which pleased Liesl to no end.  There was fresh salsa.  With cilantro!!  There were coffee bean and burlap decorations, and swirls of pretty girls in lime green dresses.

The cousins aged 11-14 had a high time together. (below)

The Peacheys got together to talk and eat before and after the wedding.  We sang Dad’s favorite songs together on Sunday evening.  Our niece Hannah sang a lovely descant on “Unto the Hills” and we tried unsuccessfully to get Linda to sing her “We Are Not Alone” solo.  Carefully we skirted around discussing the recent election when we were all together, in a very un-Peachey-like avoidance of controversial issues.

Some dear elderly woman wanted a photo of Dad & Mom and their children at the wedding. Here we stand in order.  Excuse the poor photo.  My radically non-Menno brothers still wear white shirts to weddings.  Oh.  I guess David doesn’t.

Dramatic Veronica entertained us and took pictures with whatever camera was available. Here she is below.

 

The nephews played on Grandpa’s remote controlled recliner.

 

We ate leftover rice and beans and recado chicken from the wedding meal. A few of us left Raymond with the stomach flu.  I slept nearly the whole way home and ate nothing.

And my pictures to document the occasion are not very good.  But the memories are sweet.  I am back to baking cookies, making soup, doing laundry, and catching up with online friends. 

~Love, Luci

 

 

 

30 minutes until time to go pick up the four school children in their little basement school at Bay Tree Mennonite.  That is minus the time it takes to start the suburban to let it warm up on this wintry day.  It was -27 degrees Celsius this morning, which translates to -16 F.   I know.  Don’t fall over.  It feels leisurely to be sitting here by the stove in the big chair with my french vanilla mocha made in the classy black SMS cup from the school reunion we went to in Sparta, Wisconsin this summer.  Confession:  I love luxury.  I have a post I want to write about all of that which includes this line:  “But I don’t want to live in mediocrity, sipping life away on $5 starbucks coffees.”

It didn’t seem fair when Dan dressed up in his full line of winter clothes after lunch and I stayed here where it’s warm washing dishes. 

The dogs love to spend cold mornings in the porch and we humour them along.  The magpies are back to eating all the dog food like they do when it snows.  And it’s the time of year when it’s not unusual to see moose and elk in the fields on the way to church or school.

I introduced Andre to tomato sandwiches not long ago and he’s had one for lunch every day since. 

We had a special weekend with sweet company from Idaho and a very good communion service at church.  Small church life has its pros and cons.  I love the hearty, honest folks that make up our little group.  But  a few more hearty, honest folks would be altogether lovely.  Conservative Mennonite style, we have communion twice a year in the interest of keeping it a reverent, soul-searching time.  After communion we wash each others’ feet, taking the words of John 13 literally:  “If you know these things, happy are you if you do them.”

Two burnt coral dresses for Natalia and Victoria to wear to my niece’s wedding next weekend are slowly being completed.  I  also hope to sew a black dress with a white pin stripe for myself.  Aside from putting a sleeve in backwards and having to adjust patterns and trim and measure and losing my seam ripper every time I turn around, I’m kind of having fun.  Sewing has never been my forte, but maybe I can get okay with it yet.

Life with just the two preschoolers at home is hilarious lately. They’ve  been playing a game where their names are Hillary and Samson. I think it’s from watching a Berenstain Bears episode, “The In Crowd.” This morning they were playing doctor and Andre told Liesl to pretend she was pregnant.  She laid on the couch with her baby on her belly and then he said, “Ok, when I say 1, 2, 3, POP then the baby is born.”  I watched and she flung the child off of her stomach at the right time.  Then the doctor took it in hand and fed it water out of a medicine dropper.

Later they were playing Cinderella and the prince.   He picked her out of the crowd at the ball and later they were married and eating noodle soup for lunch.  She said, “Pretend that I made this noodle soup and you think it’s the best noodle soup in the world.”  He was Prince Tyler and I heard her telling him that she will always stay married to him because he’s the most handsome man in the world. 

They fight a lot too and get terribly silly  One great pastime is to sing This Old Man and say, “Give a dog a lamp…or a pizza …or a couch”— instead of a bone.  They get louder and louder and crazier and crazier.    Or knock on the fridge door and pretend that the Ranch dressing or the carrots answer you.

When Alec bought a new 4 wheeler this fall I told him that he had to read classics all winter to counteract  the quadding/snowmobiling craze that’s so huge in this country.  I was kind of joking but he thought I was serious.  And I love seeing his room light on late while he reads Jane Eyre.

I’ve been seriously beseeching God every night to wake me up early enough to spend some time with Him and it’s so cool because He seems to honour that.  I read Donna Kauffman’s book The Treasury of Careful Planning again and was inspired to try more of a schedule. Again.  It’s  been far too lax for far too long around here…and it’s serious business, this making of a home for so many people.   Of course this is only Day 4 of reform.  But it’s a start.  I used to be a perfectionist.  Hard times and babies and laundry and life have taught me flexibility.  But it seems like I struggle to find a middle road.  I’ve been honing my flexibility for so long that it borders on haphazard laziness. 

If you should visit us, the deep tracks in the ditch at the bottom of the lane are mine.  I forgot that it was winter and brakes don’t work well on snow covered roads. 

Coming soon on this blog:  The Day the Glasses Fell Down the Toilet Hole ( a story from my childhood) and my first giveaway later this month.  The giveaway makes me laugh because I remember when I first started blogging and I wondered What in the world giveaways had to do with blogging.  I still don’t really know the answer to that.  But I think you will like this one.  I’m excited about doing it.

Day 2 on this bit of writing.  It’s dull.  Must publish or forget it altogether.    Prayers and warm thoughts for all the good Americans suffering the effects of Hurricane Sandy.

That concludes my winter thoughts for the time being.  Bring on November!

(Photos in this post are from a visit to the B.C. rimrocks and windmills about a month ago.  Now the leaves are gone and we’ve had a big snow which disappeared.  There’s a snowfall warning out for tomorrow.)

It’s been pretty dull on my blog.  Life has not been dull, though.  I’ve been with the wide, wonderful, wacky online world for three years now, and have had a blog since May of 2010.   Somehow after all this time of having more  to say than there seemed to be time or discretion for, I just can’t blog anymore.  The topics burning to be discussed have grown quiet.  I start writing and close out after a few sentences.  And I come back to the usual question.  Why do I blog anyway?  And is it only crazies like me who read it?

I was moaning to Dan the other night that I can’t blog anymore and he said, “Well I feel that way about preaching sometimes too but I have to do it anyway.”  I knew that already but I realized again that that’s got to be difficult.  Because I know that part of my issue with blogging is that I feel like I don’t have my life together.  And a pastor has to preach whether he has his stuff together or not. 

But I miss the interaction here.  Writing, like music, is good for the soul.   I Must Blog Today.  It could easily go the way of I Must Start Walking for Weight Loss and I Will Not Eat Another Raisin Tart Square.  But I will try.   Like this good blogger here http://baileyandme2.com/2012/10/11/k-life/ I’ll write in numbered paragraphs.  (And I still haven’t learned how to highlight a word that takes you to a site without the big web address dealie.  Tell me how in easy terms and I will thank you.)

1.  Last  night Dan & I watched a lot of the presidential debate.  Can you IMAGINE speaking and knowing that every.single.word.you.say will be taken and hashed and rehashed and picked apart and used against you?  All I can say is that those men are tough. 

2.  Liesl can’t stand to sit on her dress.  I hadn’t realized her aversion to it until the last few weeks.  It is especially noticeable at church or prayer meeting when she hitches her dress up above her panties and then sits down.  Last night at Bible study I realized that Sitting Down Like a Lady must be on the top of my teaching list.  Today the lessons commenced.  She laughs and says, “I keep forgetting!” when I remind her to try again.

3.  There are two stories that I can’t forget right now.  One is the story of a young girl in southern B.C. who committed suicide after years of horror through cyber bullying.  It’s all over in the Canadian news.  It’s just so, so sad.

      The other is the 40 something guy who’s paralyzed because of some freak accident in a surgery.  He weighs 400 lbs. and is in a nursing home because they have the equipment to lift him and care for him.  He is intelligent.  He is depressed.  He has diabetes and may have to have his legs removed because of the sores on them.  He keeps eating.  He orders in food on the side.  There is no policy in place to stop him.  He has rights.

    I think the reason these stories grip me is because I see myself in both of these people.  I see myself in the darkness, the quiet desperation, and the demons that tell me over and over to give up and give in.  Sometimes my doubts are so huge that I can’t voice them to anyone.  But Jesus is synonymous with Hope.  I am so thankful.   I want to share HIM.

 

4.  Alec & Victoria went to Wisconsin for 10 days to be with their grandparents and cousins and all the rest.  They are 14 and 13.  They changed planes in Denver on the way down and will in Chicago on the way home.  I am proud of them.  I miss them. 

5.  Nobody told me that parenting would be so hard.  Some days I want to run away.   But there is nowhere to run.  Some moments I know that my heart will burst with love and joy.  Parenting is the most harrowing experience in the world. 

(That paragraph deserves a medal for profundity.  Not.)

6.  Dan & I took online personality quizzes the other night.  I don’t think my results were very accurate.  I was labelled Groundbreaking Thinker.  They told me that I was into one-upman-ship.  While I didn’t like it much that was probably at least one area of truth.  I don’t like it, my competitive side.  That’s  one reason it’s good for me to step back from the online world sometimes.  I get too caught up in my own and others’  “likes” and comments.  I hover.  I compare.  I want to be free, happy with the praise of others, giving it myself from the heart.  I don’t remember anymore what Dan’s label was and that makes me feel self-centered.

7.  My parents were just here for a visit.  Our children are part of a disappearing era who have grandparents whose false teeth come out.  The little guys think that it is the most wonderful thing in the world.  My mom worries over being a bother to us and Dad just drinks his coffee and has a good time.  Mom canned up the tomatoes that were ripe and Dan told me one night that my dad is one of his best friends, which makes my heart happy. 

8.  I want to live in South Carolina and have buckets of pecans in my freezer. 

9.  I wrote and then erased a paragraph about Zoloft and natural health remedies and depression.  I won’t bother with details.  I cried over this song this morning:

Breath of heaven,
Hold me together,
Be forever near me,
Breath of heaven.
Breath of heaven,
Lighten my darkness,
Pour over me your holiness,
For you are holy.
Breath of heaven.

I love it.  I didn’t know Amy Grant wrote it.

I wonder sometimes if there are people who just wake up happy every morning.  Or do they all work hard at it every single day like I do?

Time to end this sunshiny post.   I’m so glad to have the outside work mostly done for the fall.  Now I must

a) Read The Screwtape Letters

b) Clean, organize, trash 1/3 of the junk in this house

c) Repeat b

d) Sew for a niece’s wedding

e) Pray that we can go to Faith Builders this winter

f) Repeat b

g) Repeat f

h) Have Mel & Linda for a meal

i) Have Bob & Kate over

j) Sew living room curtains

k) Put pictures on memory stick

l) Teach Andre to write his name and color.  He hates coloring and he goes to kindergarten after Christmas. 

We are having frozen pizza for lunch.  I need to wash up last night’s mugs from Bible study here, along with the breakfast dishes.  But the laundry will soon be done and I read to Andre and Liesl. We read The Biggest Bear and the Sunday school paper about a little girl learning to ride bike.  We did the activities in the paper, read the back story about turtle soup, and Andre wrote his name on the paper with a yellow marker.

And I blogged. 

~Respectfully,  Luci

Little girl is asleep, clutching her blonde polly pocket with the pink dress  that has a taped shoulder strap because she insisted that I tape it for her this morning.

Andre drove his 4 wheeler up the hill to the sawmill to sit in the loader and watch Dan & Terry saw logs. 

Liesl was up there with Andre this morning for a while.  Andre came down and told her she should come up with him because there was a lumber customer there with a little girl just her age.  They came down later smelling of fresh fall air and she said she hadn’t talked to the little girl.  But Terry was up there smoking and he had on his jammie shirt and jammie pants and his hat with the tag showing.  Terrry is one of Dan’s employees.  He wears sweatpants a lot.  I guess Liesl considers those pajamas in a house where the guys wear jeans.  They love Terry because he gives them apple fritters from Robin’s Donuts.

When Dan comes in for lunch he shakes his head at how pretty Liesl is and calls her his fuzzy fairy tale.  Andre prays and thanks God that they can have a good day at work.  He thinks he’s pretty big stuff and I love it.

This morning I got the laundry out on the line early and baked some good but rich cookies that had lots of oats and coconut and chocolate chips and even a bit of wheat bran in them.  If mornings would always go like this one, I would soon start a blog with efficiency tips.  Unfortunately for me but fortunately for you, they normally don’t.

I am high on fall.  We keep doing one more picnic, one more trip to the park, one more trip to the river, one more stop for icecream.  But the gorgeous weather just lasts and lasts. 

 

This is the first year that I grew gladiolus.  Look into the heart of a glad and be glad.

We took our first day of school 2012 photos in about 2 minutes. We were running late and then the teacher’s wife called and asked if I’d take a class photo for the first day.  I hadn’t combed my hair properly yet.  Or washed my face.  But I went, wearing my garden flipflops and old brown jacket.

I love these four.  It’s surreal.  Why are we not mature like the parents of the 8th and 9th graders were when I taught school?  Times are changing, I just know it.

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When a girl turns 13 on 9-11 there is reason to celebrate.

 

You can celebrate with mini pizzas made by 9 delighful girls.

You can celebrate by playing Russian baseball in the neighbor’s sheltered backyard because the fall wind is blowing so crazily in your own.

You can celebrate with mocha chiffon cake and icecream.

You can celebrate other ways too.  Because 13 only comes once.

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Sometimes I feel like we’re a boring family. 

But I guess we looked up Moby Dick after a lunch discussion yesterday.  After that we googled the Hotel De Glace in Montreal because of what Bryant read on the cereal box that morning, where we marveled over the cool, cool place with ice bar stools and ice beds and ice walls with people walking around in parkas.  Last night Dan made an elderly man happy be playing Edeweiss on his guitar and harmonica for him and taking him driving after a long and lonely week.  And the little girls’ latest fun is using cornstalks for band instruments and dancing around on the lawn singing and playing.

I guess we’re normal.  We fight a lot. 

And now I should go work on the blog post that I got on the computer to work on.

Sending Monday love,

~Luci

 

I’ve taken to flipping coins lately.  When there’s a hard decision ahead and I honestly want to do the right thing, the thing God wants me to do, I pray first and then I flip.  I don’t do it flippantly either, NPI.  (You didn’t know that stands for no pun intended?)

I used to resort to the coin thing sometimes but had kind of forgotten about it.  Then I read a blog post by Shari Zook about flipping a coin and  remembered again how well it worked and what peace it gave me.  Shari was John Coblentz’s little big-eyed daughter back in my Maranatha Bible School days in the early 90′s.  Now she takes words and whips them into submission and art.  And her political views are fascinating.  I tried in vain to find her coin-flipping post tonight.  Surely she didn’t delete it.

I stayed up till 3:30 a.m. last Friday night writing a post that didn’t feel right when I read it in the light of Saturday.  Mostly it made me uncomfortable because it came circling back to my old problem of insecurity and comparison and I think I’ve written enough for two lifetimes on those subjects.  But I couldn’t quite let it go.  So I flipped a coin and three times the heads came up and I had chosen heads to mean publish.  So I’ll publish it.  Sometime.

But tonight I’m just saying a few goodnight words while Dan is out combining again.  School finally starts for us tomorrow and I’m trying to decide if I should be a copycat and do the chalkboard photos of The First Day.  I saw so many darling ones online this fall.  You know what I get tired of?  I get tired of trying to be orginal.  Sometimes I just want to really copy someone and use cliches and admit it because truly there is no new thing under the sun.

 

It doesn’t seem to be in vogue to have these themed xanga headers that you just pick out and I don’t like the format of this one at all but I hate wasting the time trying to figure them out.  Is it showing up to you in a strange narrow format that’s hard to read?

Do yourself this favor before winter comes:  Buy some Island Fresh Gain laundry soap.  (I guess you can get it in the USA?)  Wash your bedspread and sheets in it.  Hang in fall wind to dry.  Make your bed all fresh.  Go to sleep and know you will die happy.

I need to write an ode to all the people who help clean their churches and schools every fall.  Deep in the darkness of our church furnace room, sorting through paint & Christmas costumes and pieces of plywood from years gone by, I get this overwhelming sense of gratitude for all the ladies who went before me and all the ladies of all the places where I taught school who scoured and sorted and boxed and set mouse traps and painted.  And the men too, of course.  It makes me feel like crying, really.  It goes beyond the cleaning to the preaching and the planning and the tediousness of small church business meetings and all the nights they sang at the nursing homes. 

I love my American friends extremely and Dan & I probably have more family in the States than we do in Canada.

But there are Certain Times when I am so, so grateful to be from my quiet and sometimes boring country, socialized health care and all.

Election Time USA is one of them.

God help us. 

I’m forever grateful for parents who taught me respect and honor for all men and lived the words of the Jesus whose kingdom is not of this world.

And now all the words that were whirling in my hooded jacket while I walked in the cold wind tonight have left me.

Goodnight comrades. 

Excuse all the italics in this post.  Just call me Anne Shirley.  Or was it Emily of New Moon whose gruff teacher made fun of her overuse of italics?

*edit:  I do not mean to be smug about Canada’s relatively peaceful government OR my political upbringing and beliefs.  The peace could change at any time.   And the last thing I’m ready to do is argue politics.  I waver between being drawn to the news and the facebook rants and feeling so disgruntled by it that I wonder at my sanity for following it at all. 

Blessed are the peacemakers.  ~Jesus~

 

 

 

 

 

Lately it feels like there’s not much to say and I don’t really know why.  But since I was geared up to blog the other day and uploaded pictures, I guess I’ll slap them up and add a few words.  “Luci” and “Few words” are polar opposites.  Just so you know.  

Liesl got a bee sting on her finger while swinging the other day and the next day she was armed and ready for swinging.

One cloudy-ish day the sunset was so unique.

VBS was fun this year.  I love to tell a story about Jesus to a child who has never heard of Him.  I like to dress up every day and teach motion songs in assembly.   VBS was also terrible in spots.   I had little boys hopping around the classroom pretending to be dinosaurs when I was trying to tell the story of Jesus healing the lame man who was let down through the roof.  Sometimes I couldn’t hear myself think.  And that mean garden of mine didn’t stop producing peas and beans in honor of Bay Tree Vacation Bible School. 

Wildflowers:  only pretty for one day in a vase.  They bloom tirelessly along all the bush roads.

Our good friend Brenda gave us a thick book of Eloise Wilkin’s illustrated classics.  You know-  Baby Dear and We Help Mommy and others.  Liesl LOVES this book.  But out of all the winsome little pudgy cuties, her favorite picture is the back of this baby’s head.  Every single time we come to this page she says, “awww.  He’s so cute.  Isn’t he adorable?”  It’s funny because I’ve always loved the backs of baby’s heads too.

Victoria & I sorted toys last week and ended up with a lovely bag of junk to throw away and a nice box for the Salvation Army.  I had a post written (head only) about how I felt like the big doll, dirty, loved, imperfect, and stretched out to dry in the sun after a scrubbiing.  Also minus a few eyelashes from the harrowing experience of life in general.

 

Natalia drew herself and Victoria and I fell in love with her thick,long-haired portrayal of my pretty girls.  Then I had to bribe her to add Liesl too.  And somehow Liesl got taller than her big sister, which bothered Natalia extremely.  And caused tears.  But at least the curls are right.  I want to draw like a 6 year old again. 

I took one picture of camping 2012.  We’ve had a warm and sunny summer.  A nearly perfect summer by me.  That night we camped Tori and I were so cold that we scarcely slept at all.  The air mattress had a hole, Dan pumped it up several times throughout the night, and there were dark and scary trips to the restroom.  I whispered to Dan at one point:  “Never again!” and then burst into tired giggles because I remembered saying that during Camping 2011.   I took my book along and dreamed incessantly of a few quiet moments by the fire or sitting in the sun by the lake to read alone.  I think I read about four words between marshmallow roasting before bed.  By the lake we met a Seventh Day Adventist couple and talked for over an hour.  When we parted, the lady hugged me and invited us to come eat with them some day and she would make us Venezuelan food.  Here the youngest oh-so-happily wash the dishes.

The horizon has turned from green to gold.

I am holding on to the last bits of summer as I water my flowers.  August morning at our house:

I just finished reading I Am Hutterite and it consumed me.  I won’t ever be able to see a Hutterite girl in the same light again.  I will look carefully at her kerchief and wonder what kind of heart beats under her dark vest.  I think that working with other ladies all day would do me good.  No huge job to tackle alone, always the competition and the laughter and the reward of good food awaiting.  Then again.  Maybe being a private little  Mennonite with a computer is okay too. 

We went to Edmonton, six hours away, for Friday night and Saturday.  Just because.  I wonder if our children will ever grasp how much they are loved, how much their dad likes to give them good things, how fortunate they are.  I wonder if I will ever grasp it.  It seems surreal, these six that I call mine, pulsing with life and laughter and words and attitude.

At the Edmonton zoo, Dan tells the story of The Fox and the Pelican to all who will listen.

 

This is cheesy.  Edmonton zoo is famous for its 37 year old elephant named Lucy.  Here I pose with my namesake.  Crooked faced Luci of the drooping eye that always shows up to shock me in its incongruity on pictures. And great Grey Luci who can stand on two legs and do a little elephant dance.

 

We also swam, ate pizza, and saw two great Imax films.  Soon the combining will swallow up the time and the children will be back to school.  But for now we savor the last bits of summer.

Sometimes life seems so complicated.  We think too much, dream too much, read too much. 

I forget that I have all I need to live a beautiful life within my reach. 

Life:  it’s a precious gift.

And so is this Monday.  Have a famous one.

Later (maybe),

Luci

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At our house someone dropped the big laptop and its recently replaced screen cracked, making ghoulish colors and shapes.   It is not working any longer.  Hello, my friend Paul at Software Emporium.  I am here again with the Toshiba of the broken screen.

Someone else dropped the big frying pan with the nice glass lid and the good strong handle broke off. 

Someone else takes things apart and doesn’t know how to put them back together.  Like his plastic trike.  In a hurry to clean up the yard, the pieces and screws and tools to take it apart got thrown into a laundry basket.  The basket is still sitting on the porch a week later.

One night Victoria made white rolls in the breadmaker to go with the stew instead of the usual whole wheat ones.  I ate two and afterwards patted my tummy and said, “one too many white rolls” and Dan added, “….make one too many white rolls.”  Ahem.  Yes dear.

Last night at the park I was giving my own and a bunch of other little children underducks on the swings.  (Surely underducks are known nationwide?)  After I had pushed him many times,  one little blond freckled fellow asked me, “Why do you have your jammies on?”  It was my favorite teale floral dress handed down from my sister in law Lori.  I am rethinking our Mennonite dress style.  Did it look like his mom’s robe or something?  This of course reminded me of the time a few years ago when I still wore a cap style covering and heard a little guy in town asking his mom why that lady had a bucket on her head.

The Laura Ingalls Wilder books read by Cherry Jones are doing a re-run at our house.  I have to say that Laura knows how to grip me.  I want to cry every time over the year where the grasshoppers ruin the wheat crop when they built their beautiful new house on credit.  I get a huge lump over the year they leave their cabin with the glass windows and their sweet little garden and say goodbye to Indian territory.  “All’s well that ends well” and “No great loss without some small gain” says Pa.   Right now I hear the part where Ma settles into the new straw tick and sighs “I declare, I’m so comfortable that it’s almost sinful.”

How DID those people do it?  I was thinking of that when I was picking beans this week.  How did those homesteading women make it?  They couldn’t call their moms on the phone or find out when their sisters were pregnant, let alone sit and read about an online friend’s birthday party for her daughter.  They couldn’t  go shopping and get away from it all for a few hours.  Were they healthier emotionally than we are today?  Were they happier?   I’m sure that some of them went crazy and we never heard about them.  But I admire them.  They were tough as nails.

At our place we’re gardening.  Rows and rows of peas to pick.  Rows and rows of beans to snap.  I was out picking the other day and thinking about life and prairie women and iced coffee and whether this whole gardening thing is worth it.  I like to putter about and weed and I even like to pick.  But I hate canning and freezing.  I’m sure I’ve told you all that before.  Get me out of the hot kitchen or I might come after you with the colander. 

But.  Dan likes a garden.  He helps a lot where he can.  It gives the children work to do.  It tastes better than what you get out of the freezer at Safeway.  It gives me a chance to be outside.  The tan is a definite side benefit.   I don’t think it’s for everyone, but it kind of works for us.  Even when I’m tiredly blanching beans at midnight.

 

 

Someday I’ll have a little weed free vegetable garden and putter around with my glorious petunias and drink iced coffee in my English gardens when I’m tired.  Dan will pick the beans for our dinner and I’ll water all the cucumbers so they don’t get bitter.  Or maybe we’ll have a huge weed-free garden and give out big buckets of produce to needy people.

The wild rabbits are alive and well, thanks to the people in this house who persistently feed and care for them.  It has become a bit of a chore for others.  The bunnies need a bigger cage. Soon. They are cuddled and squished and loved on many times a day.

They eat banana bread crumbs from the table.

Andre turned 5.  He’s a sweetheart.  He is not a brave son.  He hates new experiences and dentists.  He is interested in how things work and how they come apart.  I love him from the tip of his round face to the bottom of his white toes.  White because he likes socks and shoes and hates to be barefoot.  He likes to fowm (exactly how he pronounces “farm”) and doesn’t want to try vacation Bible school tomorrow because there will be children there he doesn’t know.

Victoria is playing the Music Box Dancer by Frank Mills on the piano right now and it is so delightful.  Her current fad is to read aloud for Librivox, which is a free online site for listening to audio books.  She is working on the book of Philippians and pieces from Black Beauty.  She’s always loved to record books on our old tape player and it’s like a dream come true for her to kind of publish something.

Tori is also responsible for the turtle cake above.  She is the kind of daughter that I am afraid to tell people about because she’s a model child in many ways and I feel like I’m boasting.  I pray that in her hardworking, perfectionist nature she will also be accepting, kind, and aware of her limitations. 

Today instead of roast beef and potatoes we had pancakes and sausage for dinner.  I planned this earlier in the week and looked forward to it for many days.  Mennonite tradition usually involves a nice Sunday dinner, often with company around the big farm table.  I don’t always follow that tradition, but there has to be SOMETHING to eat when we come home from church with at least 8 hungry people and often guests as well.  Shari Zook inspired me with this post. (But now I can’t find it. )  But I will still link to her very worthwhile reading blog:  http://shari.zooks.us/ With fresh raspberries from the hill behind the house and the blueberries I splurged on yesterday at Co-op, it was a wonderful lunch.  More wonderful than this photo shows.  The sausage looks…too sausage-y I guess.

I’m planning to teach VBS this week. Could you pray for me… for all of us?

It’s so much fun to read about the new babies and babies to come with my xanga friends.

Enjoy the last weeks of summer.  I feel badly for those of you scorching in the heat.  It’s warm here, too warm for most northerners.  But not for me.  And not anything like the heat of the east and south.

Later then, Luci

 

Donald Miller is fun to read.  He is not deep like N.T. Wright.   And not even as deep as Philip Yancey, my favorite Christian author.  Maybe someday I could write a little bit like him:

How I need people to love me and to like me and how, if they don’t, I feel miserable and sad and how I am tempted to believe they are saying about me is true.  It is as though the voice God used to have has been taken up by less credible voices.  And when I think about this I know that Genesis 3 is true;  I know without a doubt I am a person who is wired so that something outside tells me who I am.  I am not trying to say I have some kind of terrible disfunction or anything, it’s just that other people’s opinions, after the Fall, have become very important, and if everybody says Saab cars are cool, then I want a Saab car and if people say that certain kind of music is cool, then I am more likely to listen to that kind of music.  And all this makes me realize…..that Adam and Eve had it a great deal better before they ate the fruit. ~from Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller~

Now I’m discouraged because it’s almost 9:00 a.m.  The children are still sleeping (again) and I have wasted time looking for Fernando Ortega quotes and uploading photos.

*edit: I am also discouraged because I just read Linda and Amber’s stellar posts and I feel like a whiner.  I am discouraged because I am competitive and cannot seem to blog just for the fun of it.  I am discouraged that being a Christian and mom to six beautiful children and the wife of a kind man is not enough for me.*

Honestly, there are 3000 more urgent prayer needs.  But if you think of me today or see me around on Facebook, pray that I will take steps to become a more disciplined person.  It is not enough to dream.

One of Dan’s employees rescued 3 little wild bunnies and gave them to the children.

I am UNecstatic.  The children are delighted.

But this is one of the reasons I love Dan. 

(feeding baby rabbit w/ medicine dropper)

He cares for all of God’s creatures.

***********************************

(another *sigh* edit follows:

If you read my blog, you know that there’s that recurring theme of restlessness in my heart, problems with comparison, and the ever present need for more discipline & organization.

 

After I posted this morning, I went thru the usual self-doubt thing.  There’s that fine line between honesty and pathetic let-it-all-hang-outed-ness that leaves people grappling uncomfortably with how to help you.

 

And life has so many fine lines.  There’s that balance between accepting myself with all my flaws and striving for deeper and more.

 

There’s wonderful grace to accept but there’s so much ugliness to weed out.

 

There are the talkers and the listeners, the writers and the readers, the leaders and the followers, the inspirers and the inspired.  There are pessimists, optimists, and realists.

 

And in this wonderful 21st century where we don’t have water to haul and wood to chop, there is time to prioritize and the worldwideweb to draw us in.

 

It’s mind-boggling.  Sometimes I  need to Just Be Still. I need this: You are Good. Your ways are Good. Teach me Your principles.  Ps. 119:68 (I put this on a blue sticky note by the sink on Monday morning and need it always.)

#she bows out quietly after imparting her small but longwinded bit of wisdom#