Ice, ice baby

The more it snows (Tiddely-Pom)

The more it goes (Tiddely-Pom)

The more it goes on snowing (Tiddely-Pom)

And nobody knows (Tiddely-Pom)

How cold my toes (Tiddely-Pom)

How cold my toes are growing (Tiddely-Pom Tiddely-Pom Tiddely-Pom Tiddely-Pom)

The More It Snows (Tiddely-Pom) A.A. Milne in the book The House at Pooh Corner

February brought another wintry storm- a mix of ice and snow this time. I delighted in watching it fall in blustery gusts pit-patting outside my cozy window. I stayed in stretchy leggings, fuzzy grippy socks, and a baggy long-sleeved T-shirt most of the day, researching fresh material for my Pilates classes. Did little barre workouts at the kitchen and bathroom counters since I was already dressed in slidy socks for the occasion. Felt accomplished although the scale has not moved a millimeter (for me) in all the recent healthy choices. It moved away four pounds worth for my man. Typical.

I said a prayer of thanksgiving for the opportunity to spend a few hours with my mom yesterday before school was let out early. She lost her brother to a stroke this week, and the coffee and conversation over her kitchen table schooled me on another season of life- one spent planning funerals.

My man and I had a much-needed meetings of the minds over our two hot topics. One, his health plan. Important questions like, "If I make this, will you actually eat it?" Evaluations like, "I think the oat flour encrusted baked chicken strips are okay but need more seasoning." Balancing the tension was the dreaming and planning for our upcoming fifteenth anniversary trip. I have no need to go somewhere on Valentine's Day itself if I know a tailor-made adventure is waiting in the wings for spring. I'm patient like that. (Smiles) I jogged/walked 6 miles on the treadmill to Pride and Prejudice for another period film fix. I signed up for a fun run with a friend in March, but I keep forgetting to train. This will not be one for the records books! More watching at the window than beating feet.

In February

I caught up with a dear friend over lunch about her continuing transition from college life to the working world. We brainstormed what adventures could be had in this season. I like her challenge of doing one new thing or going one new place each month. Maybe I'll adopt this challenge too.

My friend played the elf and delivered many goodies beautifully wrapped in handmade paper from another dear friend who is working abroad. Many thanks for our treasures, M. You know who you are. We love you.

The Davis girls display their personalities and life stages. One is all, "Please take my picture...and put me on stage, and tell me that my outfit is awesome." The other would rather swim the frigid English Channel than be photographed.

Terra incognita

My first forays into the low glycemic world

All my attempts at healthy eating for our family seems to be thwarted, so my man has called for a new plan of action. Not known for acquiescence, my first response was to sullenly throw the covers over my head and shut down. Sullen tense silence. "Don't talk to me any more about this, Davis. I can't process anything else right now."

Day 2: Spend the day stalking friends' Pinterest boards for mealtime inspiration. Feel rather accomplished to have a Pinboard of healthy foods even though I haven't actually cooked anything. It's like feeling sporty wearing running shoes all day without actually ever going on a run, just walking around Target proclaiming through fashion your good intentions. Sadly, sometimes good intentions are not enough.

Choose a skinny version of chicken broccoli alfredo. After an afternoon of zesting lemon and making sauce my man asks if this meal came frozen in a bag. Grrrr. I seethe, but show admirable amounts of restraint by not spearing him with my fork and watch wordlessly as he scrapes 75% of meal one into the trash. Does not care for Mediterranean quinoa. Add it to the long list. Sigh.

Day 3: My man downloads a 600 page book on healthy living onto my iPad . I skim the recipes on the treadmill and make mental notes of how many of these items my family will not eat, not to mention our chief health advisor. I note that these two sisters have debatable opinions, even with each other. Decide to learn what I can but not take anyone's advice as the only answer. Roll my eyes when my man reads about the health benefits of "ken-oh-ah". I correct his pronunciation and remind him that the protein-rich grain is exactly what I served for dinner last night and that he scraped in the trash. We decide to give it another try in a future meal. The family asks if vegetable-infused meatloaf is what the dad on Johnny Test makes every night because he doesn't know how to make anything else. They poke fun, but they do eat it and actually fight over the bacon-drenched green beans. Mental note: we are now a four-can family on veggies they actually like.

 

Day 4: Price comparisons and learning where to shop to find healthy ingredients. Coconut oil is higher at Kroger. Joseph's low-carb pitas are found in the deli section of Walmart, not with the other breads. Stroll the aisles of Trader Joe's like the walking dead. Gone are my delicious lemon walnut heart cookies (discontinued, sniff...who could do such a thing so close to Valentine's?). I observe the other people in the store and wonder about their stories. I see artiste-guy wearing a beret. Patagonia-guy looking like he was fueling up for his next trek into the wilderness. Homestead mommy with her organic cart of earth foods and several homeschooled children in tow. I wonder, "Which one of things is not like the other? Oh, right. Me!" I resist the chocolate-filled croissants and dutifully check out. I can do the right thing, but not yet with the right attitude.

Make pork tenderloin sans delicious apricot sauce and survive. Not that awful. My long-cooked broccoli was definately not a hit with the fam, must watch my cooking time more carefully next meal. I pretended the broccoli purée was a casserole when I sprinkled some cheese on top. They didn't buy it.

Back to the drawing board for next week's menu explorations.

 

 

 

My sassy friend, mother of four boys, calls the afternoon "homework hell". We attacked the English language with all we knew how. A bazillion spelling pretests. Color-coded words to differentiate the different patterns for the same sound. (Think about it: knew, glue, canoe, fruit, food- maddening to the homework helper and frustrating to the English learner who would much rather be playing Minecraft). I sent up prayers of desperation and Jesus reminded me of a scene from Akeelah and the Bee. We went outside and wrote the words in color coded chalk and had him stand on the letters that made the u sound. Then we took out a jump rope and had him shout the letters with each skip of the rope. He liked this much better and came home with a 93 (a minor miracle).

 

Hosted our Sunday School class for a Super Bowl Party. Saw half a commercial and one play. Happy to see more introverted quiet families interact with other more boisterous ones. Kids ran wild in the yard shooting each other with Nerf bullets. A good time had by all.

Pot luck sometimes means you have the night of the meatball: four crocks of meatballs arrived at our house, but no one complained. These Super Bowl beauties also arrived:

Take your kid to work day: safety glasses, child labor, and lunch with the Fischerfolk.

Finished season 4 of Downton Abbey on DVD and realized I had walked 29 miles in all - a true "movie marathon". Now for the next period film/ exercise inspiration.

 

Do You Want to Build a Snowman?

Taste and See.....

Boogie Boards Double as Sleds in a Pinch

My Angels in the Snow

Such a blessing to see our kids enjoy one another instead of fight one another.

The girls woke up singing "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" from Disney's Frozen.

http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Do_You_Want_to_Build_a_Snowman%3F?file=2._Do_You_Want_to_Build_a_Snowman%253F_-_Frozen_%2528OST%2529

Vanilla Snow Cream

We decorate with snowflakes in January: cut paper, origami, crochet, plastic - all in hopes of seeing the real stuff. Today was a wintry wonderland for our kids. They played to their hearts' content.
B and I went trekking and followed animal tracks- quite a few deer and dogs.

Just for a few minutes we felt like Simon Beck. See his snow art below:

We had fun leaving some quirky tracks of our own for others to ponder.
All in all, it was a magical memory-making day...one that will need to last for the next four years or so!

Snow Day- waiting

South Carolina has bi-polar weather. Yesterday it was in the 60's. As a good Southerner, I knew the procedure in the unlikely event of a snowy weather forecast. Go to the grocery store and buy up all the bread and milk your pantry/fridge can hold before someone else does. (We actually go through this volume of food every week, but I wondered if the other customers do).

The watering hole where every kid seems to want to gather - my room (not a sanctuary today)

School was cancelled and the kids spent the day waiting and watching out the window. The skies were gray. The air was cold. But 12:00pm turned into 6:00pm with only some very cold rain. One tween declared she would not change out of her pajamas unless it actually snowed and lamented the loss of a future day off in February. All was lost and wasted. Another spent the afternoon making a pound cake "by herself". (I counted twenty-two questions she had about the procedure, but it turned out well. Lessons learned.)

Which beater?

What is Crisco?

What is the difference between baking powder and baking soda?

Where do we keep the lemon extract?

Which bowl should I use?

What kind of salt?

What is all-purpose flour?

How do I grease a pan?

 

Kids bundled up and played with other neighbor kids also out of school, but disappointment was thick. We decided to have a snow party anyway and broke out the cocoa and made marshmallow snowmen puppets on skewers. They sang Olaf's song from Frozen and songs from the Sound of Music and tried to pick out songs on the piano. They played gluttonous amounts of electronic games until I declared a read-in and enforced the doing of chores.

We put a movie on when it got dark, and were delighted to see the long-awaited snow finally begin to softly fall outside. When they awake, there will be a winter wonderland waiting for them after all. I am not sure who is more ecstatic: my Latvian-born children who miss it so much, or my Southern-born children who understand that a rare snow day is truly something to celebrate.

 

Blathering in January

Blathering- to go on and on without saying much of importance

"God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary, life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life - and place it before God as an offering."

(The Message translation of Romans 12:1)

Sometimes when I am in the midst of living life, I find it hard to stop and write about life. I'm too close to the actual events, too caught up in the swirl of the vortex, to properly stop and reflect upon the events themselves. And so, my blog remains waiting patiently until some sense of things can be made.

Sometimes I experience a sort of blockage. (Not the digestive variety, mind you, but a writer's block). The sense that I have nothing of value to say that hasn't been said before and shouldn't really clutter up cyberspace or a reader's precious time. No spark of creativity ignited. More blog silence. Closets are uncluttered. Halls are undecked. Menus are made and laundry is shoved into the washer by the loadful.

In such a dry spell, I have decided to simply count blessings. The ordinary blessings of an ordinary life. They are not unique to my experience, but, since they are still blessings, they should still be counted.

In January:

Cakes were made.

To celebrate birthdays and births, and to comfort those who had lost a parent to cancer, or were recovering from surgery. It has been our privilege to walk alongside family, neighbors, and friends through a variety of happy and sad times.

 

 

This recipe is over 100 years old. I wonder how many funerals and birthdays have been celebrated over this particular family pound cake.

Parties were thrown, family and friends gathered

Responsibility was taught. Allowance dollars were deducted for loads of laundry not folded, clothes and shoes left in the rain by the trampoline, etc. etc. etc. I hope that my children receive as legacy a great love for Jesus by living under our roof, but I'm about to lose hope that they will ever value cleanliness and organization! These lessons do not seem to be taking root without great struggle, financial repercussions, and endless sermonettes from mom (me).

Linda Dillow shares a story in her book Satisfy My Thirsty Soul about a student of Socrates who was given the thirty-ninth Psalm to ponder. He never moved on to the next lesson because he was still learning the first....holding one's tongue.

This chalkboard is nearly erased with age. The Davises continue to learn the art of not grumbling and complaining. We may never master this and move on either, but are adding "Be kind and tender to one another" (Ephesians 4:32) for good measure until Valentine's Day. I especially need to work on kindness as I dole out bazillions of instructions each day in keeping our family of seven going. I sound more like a drill sergeant than a cheerleader.

Asian food and conversation enjoyed in an hour of girl time

Enjoying a great rhythm of quiet time. Not keeping up with the Joneses in the read-the-Bible-through-in-a-year campaigns, but going a slower pace and journaling reflections and questions along the way. Simmering with Scripture is more my study style, not power-boil, full-speed-ahead. I'm on Genesis 22 on the 22 day of January.

I begin by reading the words of a hymn or praise song such as this one:

"Let me come closer to Thee Lord Jesus. Let me show forth Thy beauty, Lord Jesus , like sunshine on the hills. Let my lips pour forth Thy sweetness. Keep me and use me daily, Lord Jesus for Thee. (J.L. Lyne, 19th century)

Then all my saintliness evaporates with the morning dew when a grumpy preteen chooses to mouth off when reminded to clean up after herself. I'm not feeling grateful for the blessing of parenting. I go back to the drawing board and write down some praises and blessings anyway...I think this is what Scripture refers to as a "sacrifice" of praise. Choosing to bless when you feel more like cursing. Choosing to pray for restoration of parent-preteen relationships by afternoon carpool.

Cold Temperatures. We call this fountain in our neighborhood "the wedding cake" when it freezes over and delight each time it melts. This ice sculpture is as close to a snowman as we often get in the South. I argue with my children and shove hats and scarves into their hands as we head off to school. They prefer t-shirts and shorts. I insist on warm layers. They do not thank me, but maybe one day they will, or at least figure out why I was trying to spare them from the horrors of chafed skin.

Gym Bounty. I delight in the record numbers of gym members who actually use their gym memberships in January. I pray that their teeth-gritting resolve deepens into comfortable habit, and one day, they actually find it pleasant to come and work out with me. I enjoy meeting new faces and am thrilled to see a few newbies return for more.

Thomas Moore said, "The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest."

I hope he's right. January has been replete with simplicity.

 

 

 

Abiding in 2014

 

 

 

I found this prayer in a catalogue for people who love books. I pass it along as a New Year's prayer.

"Enveloped in Your Light,

May I be a beacon to those in search of Light.

Sheltered in Your Peace,

May I offer shelter to those in need of peace.

Embraced by Your Presence,

So I may be present to others."

-Rabbi Rami Shapiro