Lovely Sunshine and Breaks

God is so good to us.  This week we had a lovely day of sunshine, and my husband came home to have lunch with us.  He encouraged me afterwards to go for a short ten minute walk with the children, to enjoy the fresh air and sunshine.  That ten minutes turned into more like an hour!  We walked through the village and grassy fields and enjoyed God's creation together.

We've had our broken washer repaired, and I am so happy to have two working washers again!  Tonight I get a break from making dinner, as my dear husband will make some roast lamb that we purchased from a lady in the village.  She raises her sheep without medicines and antibiotics, so we are so thankful for this.

Sunrise photo by one of our daughters

I've put fresh, clean sheets on the bed, and am doing a bit of work in our bedroom while I have the little ones doing lessons.  I love that homeschooling is so portable that you can take your books pretty much anywhere you want to.  It is quite cold and gray today, but my dear husband has once again built us a nice fire to keep us warm.  We have used so much firewood, that we will need more delivered quite soon.

God bless and keep you all.

This Christmas....

I am writing this post from my bed...because I have come down with the flu.  A couple of days ago, I started feeling a funny feeling in my throat, and started feeling quite tired.  I was hoping it was just due to exhaustion from all the preparing I had been doing for Christmas, and because I had been tending to sick children all weekend and following, and because of other current matters.  But during the night, the feeling in my throat turned to excruciating pain that kept waking me up, along with the feeling of fever and body aches.  I had come down with the flu.

I spent the whole next day in bed, not feeling like myself, but treating myself with remedies that I thankfully learned over the past few years.  My husband braved sitting next to me, much of the time, keeping me company.  I got one little card from Understanding Heart, and a sweet little note from Trusting, that said, "Dear Mommy I Love you, I hope you feel 100% better."--along with a drawing of him and his mommy.  It is so sweet when your little children remember you even when you are shut up in your room away from them all day.

A yak we saw on one of our recent family walks

I am still in bed today, but feeling so much better.  It is such a beautiful, sunny day and quite warm, and I can hear many birds chirping, and the cows mooing outside.  The children have enjoyed some outside playtime with Daddy today.  Quite a change from all the recent rain we've been having, with mostly dull, gray skies.  The children and Daddy have now gone on a walk to the organic farm, and I wish I could have gone with them.  But the Lord has me here.  How I am reminded in these quieter moments the Lord gives me that I must remember to pray, for there is so much to pray about.  And while I may forget, my Saviour never leaves me and is always with me, ready and waiting to hear from me.

While I am feeling a bit better, I am almost tempted to get up and go do some laundry, for I enjoy doing laundry, and it really needs to be done. But in this big, old house, that would require a lot of walking.  Apparently, no one has reminded Golden that she should help out by doing some laundry, though she has been helping in other ways such as getting meals for the family.

I am staying in bed, except for a few little trips up and down in my room.  I've been going through a few drawers of paperwork and cleaning things out, little by little.  It is amazing how much paper piles up these days and takes up so much of our space and time.  I would be happy to be rid of it all.  I am getting rid of whatever I can, but keeping those keepsakes from the children and necessary items.

My husband has gotten me the most beautiful bouquet of flowers.  There are dark pink roses, lilies, and some other strange but beautiful flowers I am not familiar with.  They are brightening up the room and providing the sweetest scent to cheer me.

I hope you all are doing well and have had a merry Christmas.

Longing for Home

Do you ever find yourself longing for home?  Your Heavenly Home?  Sometimes I do....I hope that is okay.

Sometimes life is so trying and taxing, full of discouragements.  Things do not turn out the way we had hoped for or imagined.

But what keeps me going is knowing I have work to do.  I have children to take care of, and a home to make for them--as beautiful and Heaven-like as possible, by God's grace.

I don't always have money in the budget to get things for our home, and I cannot drive right now to go to the shops.  It has been a long time since we have been to thrift stores or car boot sales--I have found a couple of lovely paintings at car boot sales.  But this week I have managed to have just enough money to order a picture frame to frame a couple of our wedding photos.  I also finally found a natural candle company here that does not charge an extravagant amount of money for scented soy candles.  So I have ordered a couple of fall-themed candles to lift our spirits just a little bit.

I have been so busy with other things lately, that the home has just been on maintenance-mode, with the children doing most of the housework.  There is more I would like to get done around the house, so my family has a beautiful and clutter-free home to live in and enjoy. 

A trip to a reservoir.  Imagine how lovely Heaven will be, where the light comes from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Green and Chickens

We have been in full swing with school lessons, feeling the chill of the new autumn air.  The week before last, the chill just swept in, shocking us a bit with the sudden cold weather.  To my pleasant surprise, the outdoors remains mostly green.  The grass is still as green as ever, not the drab, dead brown of our previous desert home.  The leaves began turning awhile ago: beautiful shades of gold and red, but many of the trees are bare now, except for the bright green moss that grows on many trees.  I am enjoying our new home.

A few weeks ago, Husband took us on a trip to get chickens.  He built a remarkable chicken coop out of old scraps of wood, furniture, and other materials.  He even made it so that our chickens can free range all over our whole garden, eating lots of bugs and vegetation.  With every opportunity he gets, he looks for ways to improve on their diet and their environment.  Because of their age and the cold weather, the hens are not yet laying, but hopefully they will be soon.  Each of our children has named a chicken.  The little hens often follow us around the garden and like it better when we are outside with them.

Husband has also ordered a lovely turkey straight from a farm, for we will be celebrating Thanksgiving here, as we would in America.  We have invited a few people to join our family, so we may have an even fuller house again.  There is much to do to prepare, though I have already planned most of the dishes we will serve.  I've been able to order a big roasting pan for the turkey and a pie pan for pumpkin pie.  A thoughtful neighbor even stopped by with a homegrown pumpkin for us a few days ago, which we will use for homemade pumpkin puree.  I love homemade baked goods with pumpkin in them--pumpkin muffins, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cookies...

Rainy Days

Last week was quite a sunny week.  We hardly had any rain.  The wet ground finally had a chance to dry out a bit, and there was less mud to go around.  But the past few days have brought more rain and wet to us again.  I suppose that is why it is so green here (smiles).   Over the weekend, the cold weather came in suddenly, making us quite aware that winter is on its way.

Sometimes, in the late afternoon and early evening, the sun looks so amazing.  We have seen it in the sky as a huge ball of fire--but the sun is so bright and fire-y that it looks almost red.  I took some photos, but they don't do it justice.

Over the weekend I made my first blackberry and apple crumble at my husband's request.  He took one bite and started with his Mmm-Mmmmmm!'s, and exclaimed that is was so very good.  And yesterday was a very busy day, and dinner was late, but thankfully delicious.  I made a new recipe of a "potato" soup, but it really doesn't have any potatoes in it.  Instead it is made with cauliflower and radishes, and everyone loved it.

I am thankful to the Lord to have a big old farmhouse to be sheltered in from the elements.  We don't get too cold, but sometimes I have to send one child to find another child amongst the many rooms.  Our neighbours have told us that our house must be around four hundred years old.  This makes our house quite interesting, and I wish I could find out more about the history of it.  There are many doors in our home that have been closed off and are no longer usable.  There are many old locks with old keys to go along with them.

There is the sound of little pitter-patter feet.   Little Ones are waiting for their school lessons, so I must attend to my motherly duties.

Have a blessed day in the Lord.

Mother's Apron

Mother needs another apron.  I had a few at our old house, but I got rid of some when we moved because they were getting ragged and old.  I had even won of those aprons in a giveaway several years ago.  That apron was very long, with a lovely cream ruffle at the bottom.  The children called it my "pregnancy apron" because it is the only apron that was big enough to accommodate my growing belly when I was with child.  However, it had gotten a bit of an odor that wouldn't come out in the washing, so I got rid of that one.  I packed another apron in our crate.  It is somewhat pretty with floral and pink, but it's just a bit silly as it says, "Queen of the Kitchen".

My great aunt had sewn me a lovely apron that had a bit of ruffles.  It had a pocket on the front where I would stick little things like notes from the children that they would give me when I was going about housework.  It was golden yellow with a tiny floral print, and accents of red.  When we moved, I accidentally left it behind hanging up on our kitchen, as if waiting for me to put it on in preparation for the next meal.  My great aunt had also sewn aprons for each of the girls.  Thankfully most of those were brought over, but we may have left one or two behind.

An apron is like a housewife's uniform.  I automatically put it on whenever I cook, as it keeps the splatters and stains off of my clothes.  The little children would love to snuggle up and hide under Mother's Apron. Especially when they were shy, it provided a little place for them to peek out from.  I like to have at least two aprons so that when one gets dirty, I can have it in the wash and wear my other apron.

So hopefully sometime soon I will be able to get another apron or two.  I have seen one or two in the superstores here, but they are not very pretty.  If I had a sewing machine, fabric, time, and know-how, I would make one myself (smiles).

Unpacking and Settling in

Last week was a very busy week.  At the beginning of the week, we had a large crate of our belongings from America delivered.  It arrived on a semi-truck (what they call lorries here), and the driver called my husband to let him know that he couldn't find our house.  Our house is down a little road that wasn't obvious to the truck driver.  We went out to find out where he was parked, and I showed him where our house was.  First, the driver tried backing down the small road towards our house.  I stood there with some of the children, covering my eyes, because I was afraid he was going to run into something on the small road in between houses.  Upon realising he couldn't back down all the way to our house, he pulled his huge truck back up the road and decided he would unload the large crate at the top of the hill and pull it down to our property.

All of the children were out now and watched as he began to lift the large crate and pallet onto the pallet jack.  It all looked so unsteady that I turned away, not wanting to watch.  All of this was happening on top of a hill, and the crate was slanting downwards...all of a sudden there was a large "crash", and I looked back to find that our huge crate had fallen over, off of the lorry, with the majority of the boxes that were inside now fallen into the road.  We all gasped, and I was thankful that none of the children were nearby when the boxes came tumbling down.  When we had prepared our crate back in America, we had secured it with straps, but apparently somewhere along its journey, the straps had been taken off and were never replaced, which caused the instability.  I approached the driver and asked if he would like us to just start carrying boxes down to our house.  He did, but they were quite heavy, so some of the children worked together to carry boxes down the road.  Thankfully, shortly after this, my dear husband came home on his lunch break to help us with our predicament, and he helped us get all of our 26 boxes into the house.

The next couple of days were spent unpacking and putting things away in the house.  Thankfully, my husband had gotten enough bookshelves to contain the many books we brought with us.  We also now have our clothes for the cold weather, as we had been getting cold here without them!

A storm hit here over the weekend, which made it very cloudy, rainy, and windy here.  This made for a great time of snuggling in on Saturday to play games, have Bible study, and watch Little House on the Prairie together as a family.  We have also had some beautiful sunsets.  We also went apple picking last week, as our neighbours have several apple trees and invite us to come and pick their apples.  We have already made applesauce and apple cider, and we have plans to make apple butter, apple tarts, apple crisp, and perhaps some apple pie.  My husband and the children have peeled and cut up much of the apples and put them in the freezer for later.  I also need to make some berry preserves with the blackberries we have picked--they grow wild here all over.  Cherished of God is making homemade candied fruit for the fruit cake she is making for Christmas.  We've never made a fruit cake before, but she wants to try it since we are now in our new home, and it's a tradition here.

Our school books arrived in our crate, so I have to get busy planning everyone's school assignments, and I have to get back to teaching, along with of course getting ready for our many guests coming soon (smiles).

Company's Coming

Thank you for your inquiries into my health--I am thankfully feeling much better today--just a little bit tired still, and I have a slight headache.  I will be easing back into homemaking tasks today as much as I am able.

In a couple of weeks' time, we will have a full house (well, fuller than just our normal family, *smiles*) of some people from church, and some of my husband's family.  They will come for the afternoon, and then for supper, and my husband's family will spend the night.  My husband made all these plans on his own (smiles).  I am not used to having much company around the house, or entertaining lots of people, as I grew up in a household that hardly had any guests.  For the past several years, I was also not in a position to be able to cook meals for other people besides our family.  I am also a very shy person, and I thrive on quiet and routine.  Being around lots of people wipes me out.

But nevertheless, the guests are coming, and my husband wants me to practice hospitality, which of course I know is important.  So I will prepare myself mentally as much as I can, and strive to plan meals that will feed a large crowd and pray for the Lord to help me.  Maybe I am a bit silly, but this is just not something I am used to--especially with just having immigrated to a different country and having never met these people before (smiles).

The girls and I love to pick fresh flowers to decorate our home.  I'm glad there are still flowers out this time of year!