Archive for August, 2009
Snacking on Pancakes
Barley Pancakes!(I just love their warm brown colors!)
Basically I took my mothers faithful ‘Scottish Pancakes’ and altered it a little. Less sugar (1 cup of white sugar is now 1/2 cup of organic sugar and 1/3 cup of wheat germ) and different flour are the main differences (white flour switched to 100% whole grain barley flour). The barley flour is surprisingly light (much lighter then whole wheat) and so switching it to all barley is not a big deal.
My barley pancakes are more filling, they cook faster and have a gorgeous color. They taste lovely, mildly sweet and doughy with a nutty taste that makes me wanna keep snacking. The kids love them and I feel good serving them (feel even better eating them YUM).
The kids would love to share the left overs with me today but they understand there is a limit to Mommy’s generous nature and when it comes to cold pancakes I draw a line. I hand them a cookie and remind them ‘the pancakes are mine!’
Gotta go, the last pancake is waiting to unite with a perfect cup of red tea and help me have a perfect moment of inactivity as I sit on my couch and stare at the pine trees out my window. I have a lot to say about those pine trees but that is a story for another time…
TTFN
Intense at SEVEN and going on Thirty!
(My little sales ladies!After watching some kids with a lemonade stand I caught her trying to sell pine cones for a dollar each! To our neighbors… one of whom is the owner of the tree that is loosing all the pine cones!!)
I am wondering if most parents have felt like this where their oldest is concerned? I don’t know what I am getting myself into with her!! No one told me she would change SO MUCH and SO FAST in one summer. I thought I had it cased till high school at least but she has really been stretching her maturity wings lately. A million and one questions, ideas and concerns!
I have been going to bed a lot lately with a sigh and this thought on my mind ‘what am I supposed to do here?’ She surprises me so often lately and I stand there looking dumb, trying to say what I should and do what I should in each new situation.
MY GIRL -‘Mom lets make crafts out of the pine cones and sell them for money!’
ME -‘Uhhh‘
MY GIRL-‘Oh lets clean up the whole neighborhood so everone can have a break!’
ME -‘Well…’
MY GIRL -‘They can pay us if they like! Like a hundred bucks each huh!!?’
My perceptive girl is even more so lately and I am afraid to turn the tv on because she is gifted at pointing out how much inappropriate stuff is on even during the day! If something is at all touching it is a given that she will cry lately. My girl is a sponge and willing to take on the weight of the world! I can just see her mind kicking into intense gear right before my eyes and I just wanna get out of her way…
The other day we where watching ‘Sue Thomas FBI’ and Levi (the dog) got lost… She started wailing and I gave her a hug. She was shaking! So worked up about Sue and her dog that I had to tell her the end of the episode so she could relax (good thing I have watched every episode a million times).
I love her so… I hug her when she is weeping for the sixth time today about someone elses pain or upset about what is on tv…and I try to help her deal with all this… categorize and put it into its place, all sorted nicely in her sweet little brain…
‘Mom why do they only put the sad stuff on the news?’ SO PERCEPTIVE!
‘Mom why are people so mean?’ SO TRUE!
‘Mom we need to care about people even if don’t know them RIGHT?’ So beautiful!
I wanna do right by her and say right by her but I can’t get ahead of her lately!
TTFN
MERCY
- compassionate or kindly forbearance shown toward an offender, an enemy, or other person in one’s power; compassion, pity, or benevolence
For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy.
Mercy triumphs over judgment.
Read this verse in the second chapter of James early this week and I have been chewing on it for days. So often a chapter or verse jumps out at me and then I end up having conversations about it, hearing and seeing so much that relates to it during the week following…
Judgment and mercy have been coming up a lot lately, in my daily life. There is often an unseen struggle in the heart of man that is basically TO JUDGE or to SHOW MERCY. The worlds solution to so many problems is to judge others and it is easy to do that with a heavy hand. Judgment is seen as the POWER of the two options and those who call themselves Christians are famous for their ability to judge others (are we any different from the world in this regard?).
If you think about it… it is so easy to judge that how much strength does it really take to do so? It is often far more difficult to show mercy and takes way more thought power and heart… you have to really work to empathise and get to know a person. A man I respect said to me this week ‘…after all who really has the right to judge anyone? We don’t know their story.’ The above verse makes it all very clear… takes all doubt and argument away… When I read it I said aloud ‘Whooow, that is intense.’ and the truth is mercyIS INTENSE!
A scene from ‘Schindler’s List’ kept coming to mind as I chewed on the power of mercy. The hero of the story was trying to teach the Nazi camp leader the strength in mercy… The real man is merciful… the Nazi character of course missed the point, or the heart, of mercy… but it was a moving scene and really drove home the point…
We all know the verse ‘judged not lest ye be judged’ but how often do we take that to heart in our day to day treatment of other people? Instead of focusing on judgment why don’t we just move away from that (since it is ultimately GOD’s place) and focus on mercy. After all wasn’t what Christ did for us totally undeserved, intense, PURE MERCY!?
“There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy, Who are you to judge another?”
I hope it goes without saying that we must living in and by the Spirit to truly know and practice the mercy that Christ showed perfectly.
BLESS YOU!
TTFN
Lemon Juice?
Just thought I would add a little to my last post…
I have REAL lemon juice in my cleaning cupboard because it is a natural alternative to harsh bleach. It will get stains out of whites without the harshness or worry of bleach stains. Apply the juice to the stain and wash.
Vinegar cleans SO MUCH! I use it on most surfaces (floors, windows counters) and when put it down a drain with baking soda it will make the sink sparkle and unplug the drain!
As my friend mentioned in the last post, olive oil isn’t just for eating. It is a safe and natural way to treat your wood items around the house.
Anyone else have great tips to save on cleaning supplies and do it SO NATURAL? It is amazing how we are convinced we need so many types of cleaning chemicals when so much can be done with items we already have, that are safe enough for us to eat! Honestly I can’t remember the last time I payed for cleaning products. I don’t even go down that isle in my grocery store anymore.
TTFN
Baking Soda
For years I have had a real affection for baking soda. My cleaning supply closet has baking soda as a main item (along with lemon juice and vinegar). I have used it to put out small fires in my oven. It works wonders on the laundry as well. Just today I found a great link with all sorts of other things baking soda is good for.
http://lifehackery.com/2008/07/22/home-4/
Check it out!
DID YOU KNOW (I didn’t!)
Flowers will keep longer if you add a teaspoon to the water in the vase!
Doesn’t just take smell from the fridge! Try it on your shoes or suck it up your vacuum if it is getting smelly!
Apparently it can be a useful modeling clay when added water and cornstarch.
It repels rain so try it on your car windows!
Supposed to sweeten tomatoes if you put it on the soil around the tomato plants!
TTFN
Weary
not just because I have been sick… or because it has been super hot in the house… or because the kids where going stir crazy being house bound more… or because the kitchen was a disaster and I had to keep the kids out of it during renos… I would like to blame it on all of the above and more… but…
I knew this weariness ran deeper…
The wearyness didn’t make sense…
I am content where I am… happy to be blessed with a home to settle into for a while… thankful for the bright outlook I have about this coming school year…
So why was I so weary then?
I pretty much new from the get go it had something to do with the slump in my devotion time… Not that I am religious about that but I am SPIRITUAL about it and RELATIONAL about it. Due to craziness around me, my devotions had been hurried for the last week or more… I was missing my one on one time with Jesus and feeling like I wasn’t getting the kick in the pants each morning that I needed (you know, putting on the armor, focusing on Jesus in order to live by the Spirit)…
The weariness manifest itself in the dysfunction of my schedule.
Kids and I not running like a well oiled machine… up to late, sleeping in to much… no naps, meals thrown at them… me missing meals… on and on and on… I felt like I would get glimpses of victory just before the kids would explode on one another like wild animals and then I felt pulled back under… I felt like I couldn’t stop it all long enough to get off and get clarity…
UNTIL…
Yesterday I read Hebrews 12 QUICKLY and it felt like a big present that I needed to unwrap more… but I was whisked away by family insanity and even though I thrust a copy of the new Testament in my pocket in hopes of going back to it during the day it didn’t happen. Night came and I sat down with my Bible after a long depressing day… I read the chapter again praying to see what was there for me… I felt it, I craved it… I thought I missed it…
Laying down to sleep that night I got it…
The above verses where for me…
WEARY…
Not because of my life right now (although it could use a little more schedule again)… not because of anything I listed above…
Because of thoughts…
So if this is where I loose you that is fine… I am writing this for myself to look back on.
Negative thoughts directed at myself, varying in degree aren’t new for me…
When I went to bed last night I realized I hadn’t noticed all the thoughts for what they where… building up in force and harmfulness…
A clear example came to mind…
I was driving home from a day at the park yesterday and I couldn’t stop the on slot… ‘You are a crummy mother, you are a disappointment, you don’t give enough to your friends, your kids and certainly your husband… you just can’t get it together…’ I ended up sitting in a puddle of bitter tears as I sat in my drive way… ‘Should I even bother getting out of the van?’ Flashed in my mind and then…JUST KEEP GOING… so I did…BUSY BUSY BUSY…till the day ended… trying to but never succeeding in out running the thoughts…
I am not saying I have a self image issue people… just that like most people, and mothers for sure, I let the guilt build up sometimes, of not being as good as other mothers and it blocks all the good in my life from getting to light.
My problem was I wasn’t holding these thoughts up into the light. Grabbing them as they came and exposing them for the foolishness they are so they kept building and I wasn’t noticing…
Weariness resulted and the cycle of it all just kept spinning around. You start to feel like resisting is too hard… but it hasn’t come to blood shed (verse 4) and even then MY GOD IS BIGGER! Thoughts are no match for my GOD!
Every mother assumes they are the one bad mother out there at some point and probably most wives as well but this will not keep me down because I am not a wife and mother first… I am a CHILD OF CHRIST, NEW CREATION IN CHRIST first.
I will look to Jesus and feel the weariness, dripping with nasty thoughts, fade into the irrelevant and I will remember all Christ has done for me!
My God is a consuming fire and he can burn away all these weedy thoughts that have been blocking all the good fruit in my life from getting light!
MY GOD IS A CONSUMING FIRE (also in Hebrews chapter 12).
Bless you!
TTFN
Sickly Summer
Sick in summer…
Most years I don’t get ill this often in the summer… but this year is different…
Having a cold in summer is worse then in winter.
I can’t describe how yucky I felt sitting in the hot van today waiting to pick up my man this afternoon.
Head completely plugged, sneezing up a storm and a throat that is on fire… and sweating thanks to the beginning of summer finally!
Plus 30 today! Only half way through August!
Consider this my blaaaaaa blog for the week:(
Here are some nice pictures to remind me that soon I will feel better and enjoy this weather… if it stays around that long…
TTFN
Home To The Lake Land!
Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to. ~John Ed Pearce
You barely get into the north and you notice the change in the air. It is so fresh and sweet.
(Wild rice field they had to cross to get onto the lake.)
Happily I feel at ease, a break from the vast expanse of the prairies, as the trees and rocks close in. It is all so familiar, so comfortable, when I return home to lake land.
(My oldest three on a mini hike with me around the cliffs and trees that I frequented as a child.)
My big girl insisted on climbing my favorite tree in Nanny and Papa’s yard. She wept when it was time to leave. ‘Papa calls me a real fishing girl Mom. I love Nanny’s yard it is so different!” shared my big girl. She is now old enough to carry the memories, all her days, of visits to Papa and Nanny’s. My daughter, especially, will never be the same after this last visit.
(My mother’s garden. It used to be a good portion of their seven and a half acres and the three large green houses. Now there is one lovely little green house, built by my dad and more lawn then garden. They still keep it well cared for.)
(My big girl and big boy enjoying the freedom of the farm life!)TTFN
