Going Straight from Winter to Summer

Our little Easter butterfly, on one of our front bushes.....


We used to have four seasons in Tennessee--four very distinctive seasons in nice little three-month increments. I dare say that many of the people who settled in Tennessee did so because of their fondness of having these four distinct changes of weather, with the freshness that each new season affords.

Maybe it is just me, but it seems like we have gone pretty much to two seasons here in Middle Tennessee--Hot Season and Cold Season. There really is no longer any great delineation between Hot Season and Cold Season, either. One day, you wake up and it is freezing; three months later, give or take a day or two, you wake up and it is boiling hot. Oh, and Hot Season lasts 9 months now, while Cold Season is composed of January, February, and March. Folks can generally sunbathe right up through Christmas if they want!

There is another feature of the weather which really confuses me now as well. There is a brief period of time at each change of the seasons, where you temporarily, for a few hours each day, slip into periods of the opposite weather. You are running your air conditioner, because it is 90 degrees in April, and then, suddenly, a whoosh of Artic Air slips down from Canada, and you are scrambling to plug in the ceramic heaters again. Some nights, we have the window air unit running along with the ceramic heater---kind of like mixing hot and cold water in the bath to get it just right! If we run just the a.c., it is too cold. If we run nothing, it is stuffy hot. And if we ran just the heater, we would all wake up as a batch of cookies.


Girls with wet hair discover the Easter baskets!


Ah, well, Easter was glorious anyway. It has been many years since we were not on the road headed somewhere for Easter. We usually have gone to whatever family member's house was closest and having a big dinner! :) This year, Mom and Dad were just returning from Florida, and I did not think they needed us coming in on them the next day. We enjoyed a leisurely day, and I actually got in a short nap! The girls had a ball with eggs their Grandma and Grandpa N along with their Aunt Lisa sent to them. Daddy hid them around the house, and they just giggled and giggled as they looked for them. Little whoops of joy here and there let us know when they had successfully located another one!

The kids are finally shaking off the confusion of "which church are we going to today, Mom?" For a couple of years, we have been attending one place on Sunday and another on Wed. nights. due to the inability to make it on time to the farther location on Wednesdays. We are now going all the time to one location, and the kids are settling in nicely. Sarah has a new "beau," but unfortunately, she has a rough time telling him apart from his twin brother! :) (see below! I *think* it is the one closest to her! Sarah is going to have to get some "telling-the-twins-apart-lessons" from her Aunt Brooke!)




"Running after church"---the quintessential activity for kids!


****Other Easter pics****

Those little camera hogs

The "Sammer"

"Mikey D"


From 6'2" to 2'6" ...my little stair-steps...just TRY to get them to smile in sync!

Ah, Childhood!


What better thing to do in your Easter dress but play in the dirt?


"Mommy is SO gonna get us for ruining these dresses!"


A quick outfit change for evening services, since we desecrated the other dresses in the dirt this morning....


*****In other news....


Dad is having some troubles with his heart as well, and we are waiting to see what they are going to do with him. He is having some congestive heart failure and atrial defibrillation, so he will be seeing the heart doc tomorrow.

Meanwhile, my skin cancer surgery is scheduled now for the first part of May. I am having some swelling in my right lymph nodes in my neck and back of my head. I will be seeing a doctor soon about that, too. So looks like we will all be seeing the inside of doctor offices for a while. That is sure not my favorite way to spend pretty weather.

We have not had any more storms since the terrible ones that hit Tennessee the first of the month. That has been very good news!

Storm clouds forming to the north of us on that fateful day in early April! Hope we don't see more of those this season, but that is purely wishful thinking!

So keep us in your prayers as we venture into more unchartered territory with the health issues! I will post updates as soon as I can!

Spring has Sprung, sort of.....

Clouds to the north of us during the tornado outbreak last week...











The weather has been just spectacular, in my own humble opinion, since the tornados ravaged our mid-state last weekend and the one before that. (There is a blog here with some great pictures of the tornado that did so much damage in Gallatin and Goodlettsville if you go down through the posts....)

Last night, we lingered long into the night enjoying one another's company after the gospel meeting at our little church. We were jammed in again, which I love, because it means that there are others with spiritual things on their minds, and that is a great encouragement to me. (We are getting a bigger building, but it is not finished yet!) It got a little warm before the end, and when we all spilled out into the night air, it was just like coming inside into air conditioning on a hot day, except this time, it was reversed! I must be getting menopausal, because the cold air just felt so good!

We had such a wonderful lesson last night. The speaker changed his mind at the last minute and changed topics, and he ended up speaking about hell. No one really likes to think about hell, but he very, very effectively showed how Jesus Himself had more to say about Hell than any New Testament character, and if Jesus spoke about a topic, then we had better pay attention. We had one precious soul respond and correct his life! After such an amazing sermon, it was a fitting thing to see one step off the path to hell and turn around!

Our speaker this week is from Montana. I don't think I know anyone else from Montana! He has a fresh take on the gospel and doesn't shy away from admitting that he is not traditional in his presentation. That does not mean he is not scriptural...it just means he is not traditional. Those of us who are Christians have to be sure that we don't get caught up in the traditions of men and bind them as doctrine. I am a stickler for doctrine, and if he strays from the truth, I'd politely be on him like "white on rice" as they say! But I am content to hear him preach in a way that I am not accustomed to and draw on his illustrations to remind me of some truths that he has quite a unique way of getting to....

I especially liked a point he made Sunday night. Have you ever had someone ask you how your "spiritual life" or your "prayer life" is doing? (As opposed to WHAT? Like there is a time that we are NOT spiritual?) I have, and I'll bet you have too. Maybe you were even the one who asked. What we forget is that we should not put on spirituality and take it off again like it was clothing. We should be spiritual ALL the time, and "whatever we do in word or deed should all be done in the name of the Lord." It is not like we have a spiritual life and something else. The preacher pointed out very poignantly the other night that it is rather hard to "chew out your mate" in the name of Jesus! It's hard to browbeat your child right down to the fiber of his/her being "in the name of the Lord."

Maybe some of us flounder at times because we are taking our spirituality off at the door as we leave the church building. Maybe we don't even realize we are doing it. Once we put on Christ, we should not be taking Him off and putting Him on over and over again. So when I am cleaning house, that IS my spiritual life, and when I am raising children, that is spiritual service, too. If I do each and every activity every day with the attitude that I am doing it for the Lord, it changes my attitude about how much I put into that activity!

That kind of goes with the reason we homeschool our kids. Deuteronomy 6:6-9 says, “And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." That does not leave a lot of extra time in there for someone else to see to your children. It is my responsibility.

This is how I have tried to raise my kids. We talk aboutspirituall things all day and all night--not every waking minute, obviously, but often. Everything gets turned into a lesson. We don't write on our hands and wear things between our eyes, but we do have our Bibles close by and good wholesome reading material and Bible coloring books and puzzle books for the little ones. We use software and visit websites that promote reading and discussing the scriptures. Television is pretty much a thing of the past in our home (except when we raise the bunny ears to hear the weather reports.) We haven't written on the doorposts and the gates literally, but we do fill our walls and our refrigerator and our desk tops and our mirrors, etc. with Bible verses to meditate on when we are doing the most mundane tasks. While we don't outwardly notice every verse every time we pass by it, you can bet the subliminal effect is there, and there is something powerful about affirming "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" every time you walk through the den.

Posting Bible verses all over the house will not guarantee that everyone will automatically be saved. Each of us has to live it, every second of every day. Do we? Sadly, no. We fail. We miss the mark---the mark that has been set by Jesus. Missing the mark is also called sin, and sadly, we do that from time to time. But I think that is what the apostle John was saying in I John 3:6 when he said that "Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him." As we get more into the spiritual and less into the carnal, worldly nature, we don't sin as much as we used to. We should get better at being spiritual as we get older, that is if we are growing in the faith. (II Peter 1:5-8: But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.)

I've been a Christian for about 33 years now, and I have heard a lot of gospel sermons in my life. But the older I get, I grow ever more cognizant of the need I have to be reminded over and over of spiritual truths. The apostle Peter said numerous times in his second epistle that he needed to "remind" them of things over and over so that they would be stirred up to do the things they needed to do. As I grow ever more feeble-minded every day, it seems, I need these reminders, too.

This is going to be a very profitable week, if the Lord sees fit to give us the time.

Back from the dead....

A beautiful planter from my mother-in-law's deck











Well, my two readers have been writing and complaining that I have not posted in some time! I DO have a life, guys, despite reports to the contrary! This last weekend, we went up to see our "little" eaglet in Lexington for the first time since we shoved him out of the nest. (Well, really, it was more like he had his flight suit on for a year before he left!)

It was a great reunion! We got to not only see the boy again, but we met yet another set of parents belonging to one of his roommates. We met the Ushers, and we found out that they had numerous friends in common with us through church ties. We knew so many of the same people that we felt just like we were family (and we truly are!) Our boys have struck up quite a friendship and are very happy to be roomies. We enjoyed a leisurely lunch at Cracker Barrel with them Sunday between church services. As everyone knows, Cracker Barrel does not get in a big hurry for parties of 12, so we had about a two hour stay with them, resulting in a much-shortened Sunday afternoon nap.

Our plans had been to spend Saturday and Sunday with Dan, and get back to Nashville on Monday so that I could have a lovely basal cell carcinoma removed from my jawline. This patchy place came up last year and looks nothing like I am accustomed to thinking that skin cancer looks like. However, my husband did not like the way it was looking and insisted that I get in to take care of it ASAP, and in two days, I was having my first biopsy. It was indeed basal cell skin cancer, so, I have to have it cut off a layer at the time until they get to a clean layer. Then, they will take stitches, and later, I may have to have some plastic surgery. We will take it a step at the time.

Anyway, I came down with some kind of flu on Sunday and just felt awful. I felt like every lymph node I had was sticking out badly, even up in my skull. So, we canceled the surgery. I did not want to be sick and be cut on at the same time. It has taken me all week to shake this off, and I am not even 100% now. Tim came down with something after teaching the Wed. night class at church, and he spent yesterday in the bed. Yet, our symptoms were somewhat different, and by this morning, he felt human enough to return to work.

So, it was a great reunion with our kiddo, and I surely hated leaving again. I felt so proud of him, because he has matured a lot in the short time that I have been separated from him. His room was immaculate, he had every receipt he had gotten up there in a book of important papers I had given him, and he is just about up to 40 hours a week now at work---something that has been long enough in coming. They keep promising him hours that he does not get, and it has been frustrating for him. Hopefully, he will have that behind him. He has a great network of Christians that he hangs with, and he never lacks for things to do. There was a college-age Bible study on Thurs. night, a singing on Friday night, a Saturday afternoon Bible study on relationships with other Christians, and the Spring gospel meeting at their church kicks off Sunday! He does not get to make it to every single thing because of work, but he makes a lot of them, and he is very happy! Now, if his old car will just hang in there for him.....

He gave me an early Mother's Day present---a stainless steel 12-cup coffeemaker of the Starbucks variety and some coffee to go in it! Woo-Hoo! I love the totally stainless steel carafe, and it puts out some of the hottest coffee you will ever see! I haven't tried the good stuff in it yet---I can hardly bring myself to drink it up, but I plan to maybe make myself a cup tomorrow morning, when I can drink it in leisure. I have been trying to figure out how to get the proportions of water and coffee just right so I don't waste any!

Tim and I made a change at the end of March. We have been burning up the roads going to one church on Sundays that was about 55 miles west of us, and going to a different one on Wed. night because we could not make it to the Sunday church after Tim got off from work on Wednesdays. We felt like we were dividing our membership, in effect, and not really giving either church our full service. We have prayed for guidance in making a decision about what we should do for some time. Our congregation in the "Boro" decided to purchase a bigger building to meet in, and we decided this would be a good time to just make the break and begin worshipping there full-time. We have met with these brethren for over 2 years now, and they have been very gracious and patient in sharing us with the other brethren. The trip to the 'Boro is not nearly as far, and we will be able to get some rest on Sunday afternoons between services, something we have not been able to do in a while. Now that I am getting old, that is a factor!

So, there are changes on the horizon, as always. We had hoped to be in our new building by this Sunday, but some structural problems arose in the remodeling efforts, so it will be a few more weeks. We start our gospel meeting this Sunday, too, and it will be a little bit like that time that Jesus was crammed in the house with all the people teaching them, and they let a sick man down through the ceiling. If you get there late, you may just have to cut a hole in the roof, too, to get in! It makes for good singing, though!

One more little request before I leave you....My good friend Jennifer is having some difficulties with her hearing. She only had a little (about 5%) hearing in one ear from birth, and now, that hearing has left her, too. She is hoping to have a cochlear implant soon. Please pray fervently with me that she will get LOTS of hearing from this procedure, that she can enjoy the sounds of her children and worship, and all the other wonderful noises that we all take for granted daily. You have Jennifer to thank for this blog, as she is the one who taught me about blogging. She is just the greatest gal, and I hope you will put some real effort into petitioning the Father on her behalf.

Everyone stay safe tonight, especially if you live here in the South. They have been predicting this awful weather for a couple of days now, and likening it to the weather that hit upper West Tennessee last weekend. I dislike strong storms. We really have nowhere to go except the bathtub or under the steps in a small closet. I doubt either would help much in a straight-on hit from a tornado. Keep those weather radios handy tonight.

Well, that is about all for this update. If you need me, I will be cleaning, and cleaning and cleaning.....How does everything get so dirty in the winter????

Mama, Don't Let Your Babies Grow up to be..... Baristas!

For those of you who have wondered what happened to my little eaglet, well, here is your answer. He got a job at Starbucks, has been enjoying his unlimited latte's and espresso's and now, his eyes are permanently stuck like this! Son, I only have one thing to say to you! "That's my boy! Send coffee!!!!" ---Love, Mom

SOMEONE said.....

This is not original with me, but I liked the sentiment, and so I added a few pictures of my own, and I dedicate this to all my e-friends who are having babies this month!


"Someone Said..."


Somebody said it takes about six weeks to get back to normal after you've had a baby .

Somebody doesn't know that once you're a mother, "Normal," is history.


















Somebody said you learn how to be a mother by instinct....

Somebody never took a three-year-old shopping.










Somebody said being a mother is boring ......

Somebody never rode in a car driven by a teenager with a driver's permit.





















Somebody said if you're a "good" mother, your child will "turn out good."

Somebody thinks a child comes with directions and a guarantee.













Somebody said "good" mothers never raise their voices .

Somebody never came out the back door just in time to see her child hit a golf ball through the neighbor's kitchen window.

















Somebody said you don't need an education to be a mother.

Somebody never helped a fourth grader with her math.












Somebody said you can't love the fifth child as much as you love the first.

Somebody doesn't have five children.







Somebody said a mother can find all the answers to her child-rearing questions in the books ........

Somebody never had a child stuff beans up his nose or in his ears.







Somebody said the hardest part of being a mother is labor and delivery ......

Somebody never watched her "baby" get on the bus for the first day of kindergarten. or on a plane headed for military "boot camp."







Somebody said a mother can do her job with her eyes closed and one hand tied behind her back .......

Somebody never organized four giggling Brownies to sell cookies.






Somebody said a mother can stop worrying after her child gets married .

Somebody doesn't know that marriage adds a new son or daughter-in-law to a mother's heartstrings.









Somebody said a mother's job is done when her last child leaves home .

Somebody never had grandchildren.

Somebody said your mother knows you love her, so you don't need to tell her .

Somebody isn't a mother.

Making a Difference

"You are the light of the world...." Matthew 5:14

One thing that has always been important to me in deciding how I live my life is the thought that I, one little tiny dot on the face of a planet with gazillions of people who have lived and died, could make a difference for good in my world.

Jesus called it being "the salt of the earth" and "the light of the world." The idea was that I add something to the mix, and it is either good or not so good. While it is hard sometimes to characterize an entire life with one label of "good" or "bad," I think it is generally easy enough to look at the life someone has led and say that the way they lived their life either was generally beneficial to others or it was not.

I think a lot of people just give up on this concept. They are led to believe that one life cannot possibly make that much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. I don't know how one can be so misguided as to feel that way. Just think about some people and how their life has affected so many---for good or for bad. One has only to mention names like Alexander the Great, Noah, George Washington, Benedict Arnold, Jesus Christ, Moses, Mark Twain, General Douglas MacArthur, Teddy Roosevelt, Saddam Hussein, Mother Teresa, Adolf Hitler, the Apostle Paul, Joseph Stalin, Alexander Graham Bell, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jack the Ripper, Ronald Reagan, Charles Manson, Ghandi....and it becomes very apparent that one life can indeed make a difference in the course of human events.

So what does this have to do with anything? Well, I have to say that about this time last year, I was totally put out with pretty much everything about this country for the most part. Many of our leaders are not what they should be. Evil things in our society like murder, abortion, terrorism, corruption, filth of all kinds, and all kinds of death and destruction seemed to be prevailing over everything that I had always considered good and right. I saw an alarming trend where good people were just passively sitting back and letting the moral degenerates of our day dictate the next wicked move. Many things happened that led me to believe that we were on an inescapable downward spiral straight to hell.

Many people will sorely disagree with me on this point, but I am going to say it anyway. There are two particular practices that I believe will take a nation down quicker than just about anything. Two perversions of the way God designed things in the beginning have seriously impacted our country in a negative way. First, the murder of babies in this charade that we sterilize by calling it abortion is one sure way to get the God of heaven and earth riled up. Jesus made it quite clear in His earthly ministry that children were quite special, and that the kingdom of heaven would be made up of those who were like an innocent child in spirit. I really do not think that it takes an abundance of intellect to discern that abortion is painful murder of real, howbeit small, people. If you are so uninformed that you believe this statement is incorrect, just Google "products of conception" and get some images of what they scrape out of a mother's womb. It is not a mass of cells. It is a tiny torso and arms and legs and head, etc. And it was painful to the baby no matter how much one chooses to ignore that fact. So-called late-term abortions where people appease their consciences by saying that they are not killing a baby just because it is lodged in a birth canal instead of a baby blanket by sucking its little brain out are merely the icing on one perverted cake. It is as though these people are just daring God to strike them dead where they stand!

The other perversion is homosexuality. We have "cleaned that one up, too!" You don't have to be a practicing Christian to observe in nature that even the dumbest of animals have the sense to mate with the opposite sex, not the same sex. And birds mate with birds, not giraffes. If animals and even flowers which have male and female parts can get it right, why can't we?

Lest I get bombarded by anonymous email calling me mean or closed-minded, I have to unequivocally state that I have relatives and friends who are homosexuals. I love them to death. Some of them are my favorite people, minus this awful perversion they are practicing. If you don't think that God dislikes this sin, just go back to the Old Testament and read how he obliterated Sodom and Gomorrah. They were filled to the brim with homosexuals, to the point that Lot could not even find 10 people who were righteous out of the two cities. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that Sodom and Gomorrah were the only cities that God ever just obliterated off the planet in His fierce anger, excepting of course when he flooded the whole world. I have never understood how people can justify homosexuality from the Bible. If they say that God does not care whether you are gay or straight, they just simply have not read the Bible. There are few things that are clearer in that Book than God's condemnation of homosexuality. There is not even a hint of permissiveness on God's part, through the words of Jesus or the apostles or the writers of the books, for this particular sin. It is always identified as sin, and the sinner is always commanded to turn from the sin. Just because God happens to be so gracious as to love sinnners does not mean He tolerates the sin indefinately. There comes a time when He says, in effect, that enough is enough and has a little cleansing. There is evidence that some New Testament Christians had been practicing homosexuals and changed their ways when they learned God's attitude towards the practice. (See First Corinthians 6:9-11) So don't insult me by telling me it can't be done.

So, seeing America very openly and abundantly practicing these two evil things and a whole host of others, I was one depressed girl last year. I felt like maybe this was the beginning of the end for us. Maybe it still is.

But in the meantime, I purposed within myself to do all I could on an individual basis to "stop the madness" that has entangled our country. I figured that if enough would have the courage to take time out of their busy lives to just stand up for one issue at a time, maybe we could make some difference. Some strides have been made which encourage me.

Earlier this year, NBC decided to run a hideous t.v. show called "The Book of Daniel" which glorified homosexuality, promiscuity, drug abuse, and ridiculed tenets of the Christian faith. I thought to myself, "now here is something I can do! I can get on the phone and raise my voice in protest, and I can write letters. " A few, and I mean, relatively speaking, a very few, raised their voices in protest of this show. I personally emailed over a hundred people asking them to stand with me in protesting. I got personal responses from about 2 people stating that they would do something. More may have done something, but I was shocked at how many just plainly did not care. I did not email a bunch of Hell's angels down at the bar. I emailed my friends and family who call themselves religious people. Still, enough people cared that collectively, the voices raised across the nation got an unprecedented (at least in our times) reaction from the network, who gave up on the show and canceled it. Before the national outlet called it quits, our local station canned the program, stating that it was not the kind of thing that people around here wanted to see. I was proud of our region for standing up for what is right.

In February, unlikely "little" South Dakota passed a law to ban abortions in the state, even in the case of rape and incest. If I understand it right, abortion could only be practiced to save the life of the mother. Other legislatures in other states are now considering following suit! I just about choked on my supper the other night when I heard that debate had already started in the legislature of Tennessee. For the first time in a lot of years, there is some hope that Roe vs. Wade could be overturned; this is only right considering "Roe" herself now fights for the rights of unborn babies!

Automaker Ford is starting into considerable scrutiny for its active promotion of the gay agenda. Many folks are about to decide if Ford is still as truly American as apple pie or if they have lost touch with the feelings of most Americans. It would seem that some Americans are finally waking up and smelling the coffee that goes with that apple pie! It will be interesting to see if groups involved can pull off an effective boycott of Ford and bring them to the same place where NBC found itself.

Today I heard that the FCC announced it is fining 111 CBS stations $32,500 each for broadcasting "Without A Trace," complete with an extended teen-age orgy scene. This is the largest fine ever against the networks and their stations. In addition, the FCC reaffirmed a $550,000 fine against CBS for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" at the 2004 Super Bowl. I am hopeful that some of these stations are finally going to get the message that decent people won't tolerate this stuff forever!

Most agree at this point that we are winning the war on terror. After all, there has not been another incident on American soil since 9/11. Whether or not you agree with the current war, you have to give George W. Bush his dues for keeping the homeland locked down so far. We have come a long way in some areas we knew little about before 9/11.

Then, there is the very controversial area of all these weird "disasters" which are happening all over the world and even here in America. I personally have come to take the position that I believe that God may be issuing a wake-up call to the Gulf Coast states who have quite blazenly started playing host to such evils as Spring Break shenanigans, practically naked sunbathing, an inordinate number of sex crimes carried out against children and elderly people, gambling, and of course, all the perversion that happens during Mardi Gras, etc. You don't see some of the Bible Belt states getting pummeled, do you? I realize that this fact alone does not make it so, and who can truly know what God's thoughts are? Yet, it is something to think about and something to watch.

Christians have been silent for too long. We are the majority, not the minority in this country, and we need to start acting like it. That does not mean that we become a bullying bunch of vigilantes. I think what it does mean is that we stand up and demand our right to pray at ballgames if we want to. We push for the return to decency and family values. We promote righteousness instead of every perversion, and we hit those that want to destroy the foundation of America in the pocketbook and by doing so, suck the life right out of their godless plans. The wonderful thing about a free society is that there are plenty of unrighteous countries to go live in if you don't like our "apple pie." It would be wonderful if all the ones who want to draw the wrath of God down on humanity would take it somewhere else. I just am really not in the mood to be conquered by another nation any time in the near future. I have 4 children left to raise, and we solicit God's approval and His numerous blessings on our lives.

March Madness...The Birthday Pics!

Big Pappy and "Little Pappy"

My dollbaby is 6!

The princess cousins....Kelsey (l) and Sarah (r)

My big ol' 12 year old!

Daddy and Hannah, enjoying the birthday festivities!

Sarah loves her new Madeline doll. We are starting a collection, since you can't get them anymore. We love eBay!

Some vintage furniture that Grandma and Grandpa N sent us! Miss Clavel x 2 and Madeline check it out!


I believe the girl is going to love dolls as much as her mother did!


Micah is SO going to hate this picture some day! This is the best picture I could get of 8 people at one time! Pappy and all his grandchildren, with Micah (who tells me he hates smiling for pictures) in La-La-Land!

Pappy proves that he still has a sense of humor!

The March birthday people...Cousin Kelsey, Sarah, Pappy, and Micah


Now that's a lot of hot air!

"I'm so glad you came to my party!"

Loving sisters, Hannah and Sarah

Broken Hearts

I want you to hear a sweet song. If you can, go to http://www.orear.com/ashley/funeral/preciouschild.ram and listen to this song.


Better to go to the house of mourning
Than to go to the house of feasting,
For that is the end of all men;
And the living will take it to heart.
Ecclesiastes 7:2

We spent today in the house of mourning. It can all change so quickly. One day, you are feasting, and the next, tragedy strikes. Last weekend, as we went through the rituals of celebrating at least 5 family birthdays, we got a phone call that one of Tim's co-workers was at the hospital with his wife. She had gone there, being in the last part of her pregnancy. Something went wrong...the baby was on life support...then, as quickly as he had come, he was gone. His dad held him as he passed from this life to the next.

Cage Thomas came into the world on the same day as my little boy had, some 12 years ago. Today, his parents laid him to rest. I don't think there are many things in this life harder than losing a child. It never seems to be easy to lose anyone, in my experience, with the possible exception of mean or evil people. However, it is especially painful to lose a child. I've lost two; I know whereof I speak.

I'll never forget when I lost my first. It was 1985. It was my first pregnancy. Something went wrong, and it was weeks before we knew if the baby was alive or gone for sure. First babies are so special for the new emotions they elicit in a parent. I felt like I was going to die myself. I was filled with a combination of intense sorrow for the one I lost as well as great fright that I might never hold a child of my own in my arms.

The birth of three subsequent sons comforted my soul for a time and certainly answered my prayers. Just when I thought my childbearing was over, divorce and remarriage gave me the renewed possibility of bringing another life into the world for the dear man I married who so wanted a child of his own. On his birthday, in the first year of our marriage, I delivered the happy news that he was to be a father! Less than a month later, we proudly entered the ultrasound room for the usual tests, only to come away with the devastating news that a little heart was no longer beating.

I never held either one of my children. It did not go that far for me; yet, I know the pain we and our families felt. That is why today, the tears flowed freely as raw emotion once again rose to the surface of my soul. One little white box, barely larger than a shoebox, contained the son of our friends. I was humbled by the experience of sharing what has to be one of life's blackest days with this family and what has come to be a small family of people who share the same work address.

It is something you never want to experience. It is something you may experience, and then again, you may be blessed and never have to lose a child. The thing some of us had in common today was that we are all the parents of children whose souls now reside in a place of peace and safety and rest, until that ultimate place of eternal bliss, heaven, is finished being prepared by our Lord and Saviour.

I hang on to Jesus' promise of John 14 (my favorite Bible verse) which says:

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

This verse has comforted me and sustained me through a variety of losses in my life, and I hope that Mike and Jennifer will draw on the same Source of comfort in this very difficult time. Our hearts are broken for them and with them, but time will heal, and God will comfort us all in our individual trials and our days of loss and sadness. I am sure they whisper to little Cage Thomas tonight the same words that we so often inwardly voice to our children who wait on the other side...."Save me a place, sweet babe...."

Happy 12th, Micah!

12 years ago today, I started out the day a miserable woman!

By the end of the day, I was much happier! I was also the proud mother of my third son, Micah!

He was a cute little dude! He never bothered anyone! He was always such a happy baby!

Now, he is a big ol' boy! Well----kind of! Seems he might have gotten the short genes in the family, a fact he is not too happy about! Everyone says that he is the spitting image of his Pappy! If that is right, he is going to be a fine looking man!

He hates to smile for pictures now, but occasionally, we catch him unaware of the camera!

Happy Birthday, Micah! When you were little, I used to sing "You are My Sunshine" to you all the time, because you did make me happy when skies were very gray in my life. You made us all laugh, and you still do. We love you for the fine young man you are! I am happy to share my spiritual birthday with you (Feb. 4th) and I feel really blessed to be spending your 12th birthday with you today!