here was our dinner conversation last night:

sawyer: mommy, does everybody die?
me: yes, sawyer, we're all going to die some day.
kenny: sawyer, you may never die.
me: this is true. jesus might come back before you die. won't that be cool?
sawyer: what?
rowan: what?
we then chat about jesus coming as a baby, then dying on the cross, and now alive in heaven...so perhaps when he comes again we'll all still be alive.
rowan: (interupting me) how come when the earth spins around and around the food doesn't fall off our plates?
i think any mention of heaven, and his mind goes off into planets and the sun. smart kid. he's going to be too smart for me in a few months!

these are fairly typical conversations that we have daily. they're only 3 and 5 year old boys and are already asking questions that are hard for me to answer! they've been doing so for a while now. i hope they always ask the tough questions. doubting, wondering, questioning...these are some tools God has given us to uncover truths. perhaps we'll never get to the deepest mysteries of Him, but how much fun we can have along the way by digging deep into things with our minds!

i've linked to jennifer's blog, "Et Tu?" before, but i absolutely must point you to her article in America Magazine, found here.

it's brilliant and lovely. she takes a controversial, yet important subject and wraps it in grace.

rowan and sawyer had their first, ever outside-the-home-without-mom-or-dad-hovering (well, sort of) learning experience last week in the form of a local Vacation Bible School program.

our church is too small and, well, let's just keep it at that...too small to have a VBS and the older two are finally old enough to attend, so i signed them up at the local church and i can't tell you how much they (and we!) enjoyed it.

i don't remember much about VBS, but i attended it as a student and a helper in my (Orthodox Presbyterian) church growing up. i feel as though i liked it because i couldn't wait for our boys to get involved in one. and i think VBS has changed quite a bit since i was a kid. the church used a VBS package curriculum that really (REALLY!) resonated with the kids. the church was packed with nearly 100 kids every day, and roughly 25-30 adult helpers. the church was barely bigger than our house, but it was doing big things for the families of our little town. i nearly choked up when i saw rowan and sawyer doing all the motions to all the songs the first few times i dropped them off. i think i was the only parent who didn't really drop off my kids: i walked them in and stayed for every opening, and got there early enough to attend the closing "ceremony" each day (like the geek that i am!). I couldn't wait for bible school. and the boys were giddy each morning as we drove the country road to the church. we have a cd of all the songs they sang throughout the week and it's playing nonstop in the house and in the car.

even though we plan to start homeschooling in the fall (with curriculum...a lot of homeschoolers say that they homeschool from the child's day of birth, so i feel the need to clarify), i love how much they loved this experience.  i loved how it changed their "God conversations" just slightly. the theme of the week was God's power, so they were all about how much power and strength God had. i have their daily papers hung up in the kitchen and i plan to go over their daily lessons from last week. am i a homeschooler or what??? :)

one thing i didn't groove on was how much i actually missed them! no doubt the first day was nice as adam and i had lots of quality time together, but by the second day we were both bored. next year, all three boys will attend. if adam ever decides he's not a baby. :)

i've been neglecting this blog. the boys (and kenny) have been fighting small colds over the past 3-4 weeks...and i seem to have developed a knack for getting sinus troubles for the first time ever. not fun at all. it's a good thing i only have a handful of blog readers and i'm not paid for blog advertising. because once life gets busy, or filled with sick days, the blog is the first thing to be neglected.

is anyone else finding this st.-patrick's-day-during-holy-week a bit...well, off? this week is so full of big things...st. patrick's day today, the first day of spring on thursday, and then all of this smack dab in the middle of Holy Week! if it were up to me, st. patty's day would be a celebration in its own week, a few weeks later, we could celebrate the first day of spring (like we did last year) and then a few weeks after that, celebrate easter. it seems weird to have spring and st. patrick's day celebration during the somber Holy Week.

even though it is a holy week, we will still observe all of it:

• today is all about st. patrick! i'm making traditional corned beef (a recipe from my friend amy), boiled potatoes, carrots, and whiskey cake for dessert. the boys will have pistachio pudding (green!) with whipped cream and green sprinkles since the whiskey isn't cooked off on the cake (it's poured all over with melted butter!). i was just reading this interesting fact about the color of st. patrick. i prefer blue as none of us really have any green clothes. or orange clothes, if you're protestant. or conservative. or...dad? jonathan? help me out. why orange?

• thursday is the first day of spring and last year we made a big bunny cake (see link above). it took over the kitchen, and we're hosting an easter dinner on sunday, so i think something on a smaller scale would be better. i'm thinking easter-egg cupcakes or these cute birds nests?

• there are several church services this week, and it's nearly impossible to take 3 boys under the age of 4 to all of them without upsetting their sleeping schedules. especially since we're still recovering from daylight savings last week! i made the realization this week that our boys have never done an easter egg hunt. and...I have never done an easter egg hunt as a child. it's not my parents' fault. i think my church thought easter egg hunts were of the devil or something, so there was never an opportunity for us. my parents did hide our easter baskets on easter morning, though! and there is one at our church this week after the easter service, so they'll finally participate. here's the problem: i have a tendancy to be very competitive, and i'll want to dive into the church lawn and gather up as many eggs as i can possibly find and give them all to my boys. but the cute little kids in our church are their friends, and those kids' parents are our friends. so i'm not allowed to be competitive during this easter egg hunt. something about losing friends and minding my manners...you know. what adults are supposed to be like. i'm a little worried about my participation in our boys' involvement in organized sports.

happy st. patty's day! happy first day of spring. but most importantly...a blessed Easter to all of you!

i love pancakes.  we eat them so very often in our house for breakfast because kenny is the king of pancakes. he makes them from scratch and that has turned me into a pancake snob: i don't like pancakes from a mix. we eat them pretty bland as well: just butter and maple syrup.

last night, shrove tuesday, was the pancake dinner at our church...a tradition that dates back hundreds of years in anglican/episcopal churches. we had more than syrup to pour over them. we had whipped cream and chocolate chips, bananas and strawberries (i forgot the blueberries...and i heard about it from four people!). cinnamon rolls and orange juice, and sausage links rounded off the breakfast-feast. it was truly a fat tuesday, carb-heavy, un-lenty meal.

i like what i read on a blog earlier in the week to describe the contrast of "fat tuesday" and ash wednesday:

this year, we're really going to observe advent. we talk about it every year and last year we got somewhere with some of our traditions, but this year, we're really going to observe advent, and celebrate christmas on the twelve days after christmas, culminating in a 12th night celebration.

i am noticing a lot more talk of "getting presents" between rowan and sawyer this year. they're getting more and more excited about christmas, and while i don't want to steal their excitement in the giddiness of receiving, i want them to also begin to get excited about giving. i know they have it in them. this year, i made a raggedy ann doll for my niece ramona, and the boys fell in love with her as she grew from fabric in a bag to torso with a face to doll with hair and clothes. they constantly asked to play with her and did everything they could to keep raggedy ann a secret from ramona until we opened gifts on thanksgiving night. i think it was sawyer who just couldn't wait any longer and told laura (ramona's mom) about the doll the day before thanksgiving. but when it was time to give the doll to ramona, as she opeend the present, sawyer stood over her dancing from one foot to another, totally giddy to see raggedy ann in her new owner's arms. when she opened the present sawyer scooped up the doll and held it up high for her parents to see and then finally gave it to ramona.

so in advent, we will prepare our hearts from the coming of the chirist child and His return. i am looking into some celebrations for the different days in advent (the four sundays, st. nicholas day, st. lucia day, etc..). i'll share what we find and what works and flops this year. i have a feeling it will take us a few advents to figure out what traditions are good for our family. but i can't wait to see what takes shape as we learn how to prepare our hearts for the coming of the King.

kenny has been very busy over the past few months preparing for something that began last night, and that we hope continues and grows on into the future.

with the help of friends and other church members, we started a saturday evening service for church members and anyone outside the church who wants to check it out to worship. the service is based on "an order of worship for the evening" so communion is not included. however, the service concludes with a free meal for everyone, so communion happens, just not Holy Communion.

we honestly had no idea if anyone would come, but we were pleasantly surprised to see the faithful worshipers from a typical sunday morning service come, and a few others.

i can't describe the service any better than kenny already has at the service's web site. please check it out. and if you're local, come visit! and if you think of it, keep this service in your prayers.

i leave you with an image of my favorite poster we've hung up in stores in the area.

if the devil were ever a true part of halloween, it was today.

it started off great...the boys awoke in good moods and we were dressed and out the door by 9:30. we drove to Lowe's to pick up kenny's birthday present (which would still be a surprise had it not been for the rest of the days' events). the boys were excited talking about and planning his birthday events...but to them, it's all about the cake.

when we got home, kenny had an errand to run, and i jumped at the chance to run it for him. adam and i took off around noon to a Kinkos (the closest one is 45 minutes away!) to pick up a poster for something i'll blog about in the future...but it was important that we pick it up today. adam fell asleep about 20 minutes into the drive. i noticed that we were getting low on gas, but wondered whether or not i should just fill the tank once i reached the Kinkos since it was around more gas stations. at the very last minute before passing up the last gas station before getting onto the highway, i decided to fill the tank then. so i get out quietly (as not to wake a just-fallen-asleep-adam) and start to fill the tank. around $5.45, i noticed something leaking from under our car. i peer underneath and surely, a pinkish liquid was POURING out of the front section of the car. i stopped pumping immediately and got back into the car and pulled it around to the station. i checked again under the car and it was still pouring out. in fact, i noticed that there was a line of liquid on the ground from the road and into the gas station, so it had started to leak before i actually got to the station.

to make a long story semi-short, i had a guy from within the shell station look at the car and he said that it seems one of my heating lines rusted through and anti-freeze and water was draining out of the engine. he recommended not driving it. i called AAA, and told them i was stranded with a 16-monht-old (by the way...if you are ever stranded with young children, you should mention that to the AAA folks as they make an extra effort to get their faster. apparently.). they were there within 40 minutes.

the tow-truck driver was a hoot. he had a double cab, so i felt comfortable putting adam face-front for this one trip (even though he's just over 20#, he's still rear-facing and i'm not really in a hurry to switch him around yet). adam had a great time watching out the windows all around him and sitting next to me. we had the van towed to the neighborhood mechanic: you gotta love the country. this guy lives next ot his garage and has a few goats penned up in a small shed a few feet away...and it's not junky. he's in an "upscale" section of the neighborhood - a newer build area (well, newer-build as in 1970s instead of 1890s!) who fixed the line for us in less than two hours. i think he heard kenny and i trying to figure out how to get the kids trick or treating tonight without the family car (and three car seats!). once again, gotta love the country - you have to drive to get anywhere to trick or treat!). i had to pull kenny's gift out of the back of the van and put it in the truck to take home - so he got his brithday present early!

all in all, it was a HUGE pain in the butt, but we see God's hand of protection in so many parts of the day:

1. i thank God i stopped when i did, otherwise the car could have overheated and done more damage.
2. i considered canceling our AAA membership back in april. thank God i didn't.
3. the mechanic is usually backed up with a lot of work (we recently waited over two weeks for our truck to be inspected). today, he turned our van around in a few hours.
4. adam, who has been on the cranky side lately, was a pure delight to hang out with at a gas station today. he laughed, played with my cell phone, said "hi" to strangers and didn't fuss once.
5. the boys didn't miss out on trick or treating - something they've been talking about since last january (they still talk about how fun it was to trick or treat with uncle wayne and aunt amanda last year!)
6. when we got home from dropping the van off at the mechanic, i was able to run back out in kenny's car to pick up the much-needed poster while adam napped the entire time i was gone.

i'll post pictures and a play-by-play of our trick or treating events later.

tomorrow is the start of National Blog Posting Month. see you back here tomorrow!

as kenny and i drove back from church the other night, we noticed the moon. it was just a sliver but it was RED. dark red. blood red. i thought that was the stuff of ozzy osbourne songs...but they're real! and a bit creepy, especially on a coolish autumn night.

for the past few weeks, i've received the following SPAM email from "GhostCentral" which i find quite funny. it reads:

Three houses in your neighborhood have had high amounts of spiritual activity.  Our instruments show strange energy radiating directly from your home.

Please dont wait until it is too late!

Click Here to find out if your house is Haunted.

i wonder if anyone has fallen for it yet...clicking on the link provided only to find some scam or virus taking over their computer. what is funniest to me is the line: "our instruments show strange energy radiating directly from your home."

i've never blogged before about the haunted rumor about our house. probably because i don't quite believe in ghost hauntings, and we've not experienced anything "supernatural" in our home, and we don't really expect to. but the story behind our house haunting is rather sad:

the original owner/builder of our house had a wife named sadie (her last name is the same name of the street on which we live). rumor has it that she was locked in the attic by her husband for days on end because she was crazy. the previous owners of this house raised three boys (like us!) and the one son tells us that there was a strange occurance in the room that houses the door leading up to the attic when he and his brothers were sleeping one night: the attic door flew open rather loudly.


on the other side of the staircase is a picture of a flapper-type woman with a name and date (1938?) written next to her.

the previous owner says they were there when they moved in back in the 60s. why wouldn't they have been drawn by sadie? the really odd thing about the first drawing is the area around her belly: it looks as though she was trying to demonstrate that she was pregnant. hopefully the baby was delivered and had a happy, healthy life...but one never knows when stories are only rumor.

isn't it amazing that the littlest feet in the family are the busiest ones? the ones that keep the mama bigger feet busier than ever? i snapped a few photos lately of adam's feet because i recently came across his newborn footprints. babies have long, skinny feet when they're born, and padded and rounded when they're about to walk or crawl.

this morning, we (rowan, adam, kenny, and i) walked outside while the fog still rose above our trees. the chickens were already out, grazing (we forgot to lock them up last night...i guess we got lucky as there are still 15 of them), waiting for some water.

we watered them, then passed through the garden, finding a few tomatoes not quite ripe enough to pick. perhaps tomorrow. next stop was the blueberry bush. rowan and i picked about 2 dozen berries for their oatmeal. rowan couldn't wait to show sawyer his four berries he picked. we then walked inside to see if sawyer had stirred awake. he was, in fact, walking down the stairs and his first question? "where's rowan?" he's not used to waking to an empty room. rowan walked into the kitchen, showed him his (crushed) berries, and they were instantly ready for breakfast.

we hadn't been to our home church in a while. last week we were actually there, but i was nursery duty, so the boys and i hung out in the warm nursery, growing tired really quickly of toys that are too young for the older two, waiting to see if other kids would show. i've been thinking about how to introduce "the pew" to the older boys...and perhaps to adam. this is a concept that frightens me: there are people who look at you when your child makes noise in every church, including ours. today, we opted for the nursery while kenny and i sat in church without them. they were happy - more kids and graham crackers this week!

a sunny drive home from church...the humidty was high. we decided it was beach day again. adam got a good afternoon nap while kenny made chick pea curry for our lunch. we left as soon as he woke up.

coincidentally, there were people from our old church there - it was CoA's family day at the beach area of the park - our new favorite Sunday afternoon hangout. it was nice chatting with old friends.

the boys love the water. adam can throw sand like the best of them, and enjoys just sitting and piling sand in and out of buckets. this week, he got up several times and walked around the sand, to the water. this made for a very relaxing sunday afternoon for kenny and i. we sat on the beach, took the occassional stroll through the lake with a boy or two, then snacked in the shade. the sun was perfect, the water warm enough, and the boys were so happy to be there. it made them so happy that we decided to build our own sand beach and dig our own lake, right off the deck.

i'm just kidding.

rain clouds gathered as we drove off nearing bedtime. it was the perfect way to keep a sabbath: resting, playing, no work whatsoever.

we're ready for a new day; a new week.

april 18th of this year was our one year anniversary of moving into the home of our dreams, on the lot of our dreams, at a fairly early age. we couldn't be more thankful for such a fun thing to celebrate without an actual party-celebration (we were brand new chicken parents on april 18th, having picked them up at the hatchery just two days previous!).

when we first moved here, i was sad a lot. i cried a lot. it probably had something to do with the fact that i was 33 weeks pregnant, had a baby, and went through my third bout of the "baby blues" post adam's birth. i thought it was because we had made the wrong decision moving to the country. away from the city. away from people we loved. away from people in general! i was given the "it takes you about a year to settle in properly" advice from several people and i found comfort in that. i knew that in a year, i'd feel more settled. i'd feel more like this was my home, and not just a place we were "trying out" for a few years.

after a year, i feel settled...and not so settled. i think it's because i will always have a bit of "the city" pulsing through my veins. i'll miss the city-smog smell when i have nothing but fresh air to breathe. i'll long for sidewalks and "block parties" when i can't even see my neighbors' house from my front yard. i speak only for myself because the boys don't know any difference (rowan can recognize a picture of our old house, but he wouldn't recognize it if we drove past it), and kenny is totally at home here (i won't go past the garage once it's dark out. we've got woods all around us, and bigger-critters still make me nervous).

and it's not that i don't consider this to be my home...it's just i think it's going to take me a lot longer than a year to truly feel settled. because i get giddy when we have a trip planned into "the city."

i have a list in my mind of what i miss the most, or what i don't like about country-living and one of what i love about living here, and what i don't miss at all of city/suburb-life. ironically, the "pros" of living here outweigh anything negative.

what i miss

• taking walks. tonight, we took a walk through our yard, and through a 6-acre field near us, up a steep, country road (speed limit is 35? 40?). we didn't pass one person. i miss our old neighborhood for walking and chatting with neighbors; spending time in the playground behind our house, talking to neighbors, other parents, new neighbors. being able to push the stroller without "four-wheeling" it.
• a sense of community. mabye it's because we had great neighbors in the city. or maybe it's because all our friends and family were within a 15 minute drive. we had and incredible church family (who won't let us go, thank goodness!) that we got to see weekly.
  
• good food. we always joked about how we had the pick of the best indian and thai restaurants a few minutes' drive from our old house. we're saving a lot of money not eating there, but i'm missing them. AND...good grocery stores with decent hours of operation. organic, whole foods? gotta drive into the city for those.

what i love

• the space. i know it's ironic, but i love the space we have here. the rolling hills and valleys we see and run along every day. i love seeing the boys run and run...chasing fireflies, chickens, rabbits. and i don't have to yell constantly to keep them from running into the road.
  
• our house. it's a dream to be living in a house big enough to house your entire family for holidays. we had 17 here for a few days over christmas. i love to be able to offer hospitality to friends by offering a guest room, a meal. we did this in our old house, but we have room to do it more here. i love that this house has been sitting here on this land for over a hundred years.
  
• the quiet. it's so quiet here, that when a car drives by, it actually wakes you up. which makes it hard to sleep with the windows open.
• our chickens. i love those 15 cluckers running around our yard, free-range.
• our future. we have so many great conversations, kenny and i, about what we want to do here. what we want our boys to be able to do, to learn, to experience. it's not that we couldn't do that in our old place, it's just a different way of letting them experience the same things. we have the best of both worlds...living in the peaceful, quiet, big, starry sky boonies, and able to get into the culture of the city in under an hour.

i'm almost embarrassed to admit the things i miss, which make me feel unsettled. but as i look at the above lists, i know that my "pro" list will overcome the "cons" list in no time. maybe i'll include a blog post a year from now and i'll laugh that it ever took me so long to be settled into what is our home.

and maybe i'll be walking farther than the garage once nightfall hits.

(the beginning of the "moving" series starts in april, 2006)

i want to highlight this so that everyone can read this comment that was left in yesterday's entry by my friend bonnie who leads the women's bible study at my old church:

We actually prayed for you and your chickens today in bible study! During our pray time, you just came into Beth's heart and she prayed for you and your family and the chickens :) Maybe it was her prayer that led the baby robin to safety!  We hope you are all doing well! We miss you!

ahhhh...how i miss my regular, weekly contact with my circle of friends. this particular womens bible study was extremely supportive, loving, encouraging, funny, and had a deep love for God (they still are...and i only speak of it in past tense because i am no longer a regular attender). it was great to know that every tuesday morning, i'd be encouraged and loved by this group of women...encouraged to go deeper in my faith, and encouraged to be a better wife, mom and all around better person. if they can pray for me and my chickens, they can (and will!) pray for whatever you need prayer for.

so if you're not already a part of a book group or bible study (i strongly recommend the latter as there is something powerful about groups of people that pray with and for each other), get into one. you'll be strengthened.

parenting is the best. seriously. i can think of nothing else that makes me want to scream thankfulness and praise to God than when i stop and just "behold" rowan, sawyer, and adam.

but when your kid gets sick, you meet a "hard part" of parenting.

i don't think i'm the only parent in the world who gets a pit the size of a grapefruit in their stomach the minute their child complains of "not feeling well" or begins the every-five-minute puke session. and it's not because once your kids get sick, you are in for a lot of extra work, and hardly any sleep. the hard part for me is constant worry.

when rowan was 5 months old, he got his first virus - a cold virus with a low-grade fever. but i was a mess. we spent $60 on "cold and fever supplies" at the drugstore to make him get better faster. i prayed that the fever would just disappear, or that i was simply being too paranoid and his warm forehead wasn't a fever afterall. the virus ran its course, and he was back to himself in no time. and we had a house full of cold and fever supplements to share with the neighborhood. but still, i worried about the next time a fever would hit.

i'm just a worrier. and that's not a good thing to be when you also put everything in jesus' hands. this is a struggle for me.

sawyer started puking yesterday at noon, and he puked for 10 minutes straight. this just after a HUGE diaper blowout. i was certain he was exorcising a demon. it just didn't seem natural to puke for that long. he's slowly but steadily getting better. today the "action" is less, but the fever is here. and my prayers for health for the rest of the family are being answered at the moment. of course, i'm worrying about him...his little body shaking for lack of nutrition and sleep and his poor diaper rash. and on top of worrying about him, i worry about the other two getting it (or kenny and i!). worry. worry. worry...

the other night, we were all in the living room a few minutes before it was time for the boys' bedtime. i was at the piano playing hymns from a hymnal-for-piano-dummies (meaning each hymn had no more than two flats or sharps) and kenny pointed out a hymn that i haven't sung in so long, based on Isaiah 66:12: "I will extend peace to her like a river." Since that night, I've had the chorus stuck in my head...

"Stayed upon Jehovah, hearts are fully blest, finding, as he promised, perfect peace and rest."

God knows how much I pray for my little guys daily. (Worriers tend to be pretty frequent pray-ers, too!) So I know that my little family...my little guys...are stayed on Him. I look at that little face of Sawyer under that blanket and I know Whose hands he's in, no matter what.

And the imperfect worry dissolves into a perfect peace.

before i post my "spring reading thing" challenge on Wednesday (it's SPRING! in less than 48 hours!) i thought i'd quickly rehash the books from my "fall into reading" challange, also hosted by callapidder days.

Simply Christian by N.T. Wright. very good book, but a difficult read for me as he's extremely academic in his writing (probably similar to his preaching and teaching). i tend to be drawn to beautifully-crafted sentences and his are very pragmatic and to-the-point. which isn't bad, it just makes it harder for me to get the point. i guess i need "poetry" in a lot of my non-fiction as well as my fiction! i owed the Carnegie Library a bunch of money for keeping it out well past my due-date.

Father Melancholy's Daughter by Gail Godwin. i'd read this book before, and if i were to re-write that book meme i did a couple of weeks ago, i'd change my all-time favorite book to this one. this is poetry. and tragedy. and a love story. and full of grace and God and...man, did this book make me cry. also recommended is its sequel, Evensong. i didn't get around to reading it this past fall, but it's always so close to my bedstand that i pick it up from time to time and just skim a few chapters. i'll pick it up again, i know it. for the record, i haven't been able to get into much of Godwin's other works. these two are her best.

The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer. i loved this book...and i didn't get to read nearly the amount of it that i wanted to (it was also a library-loan). it's thick and dense, but such a fun read. i love reading books that make me excited to homeschool instead of fear it. i'm currently drooling over her earlier book The Well-Educated Mind.

Simple Hospitality by Jane Jarrell. i never read it because our libraries didn't have copies and i didn't feel like purchasing it yet. and Katrina (Callapidder Days) recommended buying a used copy as she wasn't as impressed with it as she had hoped to be since it didn't focus on the simplicity of being hospitible. which is something that's important to me as well (although I do like to spoil my guests!).

Recovered Body by Scott Cairns. again, i didn't read it because our libraries didn't have it, and i didn't purchase it. if you ever come across a copy of any of his poetry books, read them. now THAT'S some poetry. :)

another book i read along with Simply Christian was Kathleen Norris' The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and "Women's Work" which also was out a bit too long from the library...i should have just purchased these books! it's a small book - more like an essay, and i ate it up like...marshmallow Peeps! i never thought of laundry, grocery lists, diaper changes, meal preparation, and cleaning (especially cleaning!) as Holy. but she makes a great case for it. the work of the manager or keeper of your household works on hallowed ground making clean what is dirty and filling minds, souls and bellies of her/his loved ones with knowledge, love, and food. isn't that what God does for us daily?

i'm excited about my spring list - i even pre-purchased a few used copies of some of my books. the list is longer, but i'm ready for it! i know we have a busy spring ahead of us, but i'm up for the challenge! and i encourage you to get in on it!

spring-clean your mind with a few good books!

we love books. i come from a family that loves books. it's all i ever ask for when people ask what the boys need for christmas or birthdays...i point them to their amazon wishlist. i love going through bookstores browsing childrens books with amazing artwork and great writing. i think the artwork is important especially since our boys aren't reading themselves yet. i love glancing over at one of the boys sitting on the floor with a book spread across their lap. they'll usually stare at a picture for a few minutes, study each part of it, then bring the book over to me or kenny and ask a question about what they've seen in the picture: "mommy, why is that fish eating that other fish?"

we've hit the "why" stage with both boys. rowan recently (6 weeks ago) started asking a string of "why" questions. before we got to this stage with the boys - before they started talking - i wanted to make the effort to always answer their "why" questions. i know that kids go through the "whys" and i didn't want to just answer, "because i said so" because it was the easy answer to get them to stop asking. asking questions is how they'll learn. and i love that they want to learn (or that they're wired to learn already!).

but this is a lot harder than i thought it would be. sawyer, especially, loves asking "why?" he can ask upwards of 7-8 "whys" in one conversation alone. and each time it happens, it's based on different subjects, so i have no "canned responses" for him. i overheard a conversation between the boys the other day: sawyer was asking rowan a string of "whys" and by the second or third one, rowan asnwered, "sawyer, i just don't know. be quiet." i understood his frustration. because even i don't know the answer to some of his "why" questions!

i find that i'm ending a lot of these questions with the answer, "because that's how God created him/her/it/them." and that seems to be the answer that quenches their thirst for answers (albeit breifly). however, i want them to eventually ask "why?" when i tell them that God created something a particular way. because the answer to that will usually be, "i don't know." and i want them to know (and believe themselves) our belief in God as creator, Jesus as Saviour, and Holy Spirit as comforter. but we don't have all the answers. kenny and i want nothing more than our kids to know and receive the love of Christ. but we want them to come to that knowledge through Him alone, and not through keeping them from the world by building protective walls around them with bible verses plastered all over them. we'll work to the bone to teach them why we believe what we believe, and we'll eagerly pray for them everyday. but they'll only get to a deep faith by learning or wanting to learn it themselves.

so we trust that they'll get the right answers when they start asking the hard questions. when we can't be there to answer them. or when we just don't have the answers.