Wowee.  My site is back up.  That must have been quite the severe technical difficulty! 

Sorry, folks.  My leave of absence was very unplanned.  From what I hear, I will need to find new web hosting within a short while.  I’ll have to get back to you on the plan….just as soon as I decide what the plan is. 

I hope that you are all doing well, that your Christmas was blessed simply because of Emmanuel – God with us! 

I’m so glad to be back up and running, so looking forward to hearing from you.

Be back soon.    God bless you.

Holly

Sometimes, it is difficult to get a good family picture.

Especially if you are a large family,

Depending on a timer…

and a jokester (*cough* son #1) for all of your photographic needs.

With patience, something tolerable finally happens.  :)

(p.s.  I really, really DO long to be blogging.  These days are just so full for us, as I imagine they are for you.  See you all, soon!  Thinking of you, and praying that God’s peace would be upon you and yours.)

These are my glitter days.

My glitter glory days.

Glitter boys, and glitter girls.  Nothing brings joy to the toddler/preschool/kinder/first grade set like glitter.

Glitter season comes early,

And stays late.

May your life be filled with glitter, too.

Computer boy came home, cast a loving glance toward the beloved hard-drive, and the computer leapt to obey his commands.  Voila!  Photographs!  Machines hate me, but not him.  I guess that I am thankful for that….

Anyway….

Here’s a few photos I wanted to share with you:

Salad.  From my Garden.  For Thanksgiving.  In Indiana.  Buttercrunch, Swiss Chard, Parsley.  Awesome!

The flowers still stand.  I’m so glad I didn’t uproot them at the end of summer.

And yes.  I’m one of the 700,000 reading this book this week alone!  It was a gift from my brother.  Since my playground reading goes slow…I’m all the way on chapter two.    So far, the writing is very good.

And one more.

You’ve all heard of Venom, otherwise known as Spiderman Gone Bad.  THIS is Spiderman Gone Nurturing.  He is fully accessorized with a pink backpack and a kitten in the carrier.  You don’t get to see somethin’ like this everyday!

I wanted to give you an update and post some pictures from the last week.

The update I can do, but alas, nothing appears to work with this dang computer.  (I know.   We never used slang words growing up.  “We use intelligent words.”  Okay, but we definitely don’t out and out curse, and computers are frustrating.  So, this dang computer doesn’t do a thing I need it to do, and the older and busier my son gets the less the computer seems to work.  Sounds about right for a modern parent.    )

But enough frustration.  This post is about Thankfulness, and I’ve got plenty of that.

Emily’s biopsy came back okay.  She has the type of moles that will have to be monitored closely, but for now they are normal.  She will have to wear sunscreen and protective clothing – but we are extremely grateful that all is well.  Thank you, God!

Working a few nights a week is working out well – better than we would have thought.  The work came at just the right time, and fits perfectly into our schedule.  The Lord is kind, and good.

I know that times are tough for many people, and when I say that I always think about a story from my Grandfather’s life.  Grandpa died 20 years ago.  His own father died when Grandpa was a boy of 9 years old.

His mother had two younger children, and without any social safety nets, she could not take care of her 9 year old son.  She had very little income from taking in washing from other people, and fed her family as best she could by raising a few chickens and planting a garden.  Grandpa hired out, yes, at the age of 9, to work as a field hand for a farmer that lived several miles away.  He was no longer able to live with his mother and younger siblings.  He didn’t attend school past the third grade, and sent the money he earned back home to his family.  He became a man at a very young age.  Can you imagine having to send your child away because you couldn’t care for him, and because you needed him to earn money to care for you?  This was America less than 100 years ago.

I’m sure those years were hard, devastating even.  They all made it, though, and my grandfather grew up to be a farmer and a trusted businessman in his community.  He never learned to read or write.  I remember how he signed his checks with an “X,” and that was good enough for his local bank and the people who did business with him.  The people who knew Elcie Storey knew that he was a hard-working man, who could be counted on in good times and bad.

In a satisfying twist, Grandpa ended up inheriting land from the farmer who hired him at such a tender age, and my Grandfather and Grandmother one day took care of the old farmer during his last years on earth.

When I look at my own little boys, my heart breaks for the difficult days that little boy/man/Grandpa faced.  And yet, I know that God was with him through every long day and sorrowful night, working and molding and making him into the man he was supposed to be.  Through him, God would bring to life and sustain a tiny twin who should not have survived yet did, who grew up to be my mother.  And my mother would grow up and in turn marry a man who had began life as a breech baby born at home in the 1920s.  From these two tremulous starts came me, and my family.  Every family, every individual, has their own story that they could tell.  God has been with them – through good times and through bad.

Life is hard.  God is good.  He turns our mourning into dancing, our barren days into fruitful years.  He is with us, working for us, calling us to know Him.

I am thankful.

I tried to post a few nights ago, but had a faulty internet connection. The entire post was lost. Since that time, I’ve been so absorbed with the normal business of family things, that I have not really had time to post again. Even now, I’m ready to head out with my little troops (the youngest five) in order to do some birthday shopping. Both Mariam and Emily celebrate their birthdays during Thanksgiving week. That tends to make things a little bit busy!

I don’t have much verbal creativity right now – but I have many crafty items in the works for Christmas. Maybe I only have the ability to be creative in one realm at a time? There actually ARE lots of things going on around our house – things that I would like to share with you – but I think that I will have to resort to a bullet point type of update versus a coherent post for each item.

1) Emily, who turns 14 this week, was recently in for a regular doctor’s visit. We have been fairly healthy over the last two years, so I have not even established most of my children with a doctor. In order to establish a family of ten with a new doctor, that’s right….it takes ten separate visits. It may not seem important, but if you are faced with emergencies (as we were this summer with Nick and Ben) you quickly find that you need a family doctor. So, we’ve been working on that. During Emily’s turn last week, we asked the doctor to look at some large, flat, brown moles on Em’s arms. The doctor was duly concerned, and quickly scheduled a biopsy. The biopsy was done yesterday, and we should know what kind of moles we are dealing with within a week. I do know this doctor pretty well, as she is the one who delivered Mariam two years ago. She’s a incredible doctor, not over-reactive at all, but she was concerned about these moles. She said that it is odd for them to be as large as they are. She also said that Emily apparently has extremely photo-reactive skin. I have had some fear over this, have prayed to God that first of all that all would be well. Second, I have prayed that we would continue to give all things over to Him and asked that He would be with us through every storm.

2) Emily hurt her foot pretty badly while playing tag Sunday night. It has a large bruise and was swollen. The doctor said that she was not sure if was broken or not. If it is worse by Wednesday, we are to have it x-rayed. Emily thinks it is a little bit better this morning, so maybe we will avoid another medical adventure.

3) I am a working woman! Well, not really. (That’s really funny when you think about it. I’ve been a hard working woman for all of my adult years.) But now, I am working two nights for pay. I have a job that involves sitting with an elderly woman (92 years of age) from 8 p.m. til 8 a.m. I feed my family supper, bathe the little ones, do the nighttime routine, then head over where I help my little lady get ready for bed. She sleeps through the night, and calls me when she needs to get up to use the restroom. I am able to work on things such as grading essays and homework and handwork, until I go to bed myself. She has a bed for me and I sleep there. We get up around 7 a.m., and I fix her breakfast and whatever else she needs, and then I come home at 8 a.m. to a full day with my family. After all of our medical bills from this summer, it is a real answer to prayer. God provided a way for me to earn a little extra money in a manner that does not take time from my family. I’m able to “work” all night and still get rest. Isn’t that wonderful?

4.) Jacob, our oldest, has decided to graduate high school this year. We weighed the pros and the cons with him, and fiscally, graduation made the most sense. He’s already taking some college courses, but is unable to get financial aid as long as he is still a high-schooler. He’s ready. Very responsible, juggling work, high school and college at the same time. We’re excited for him, but that throws a few new meetings into the schedule and fastracks some of our plans. We’re looking into having him graduate in a ceremony with other local homeschooled seniors.

5.) Jeff, my husband, is at a point where he has to make a decision regarding his ministerial license. He has to decide which denomination is best compatible for holding his ordination papers. At this point, he is able to preach and officiate at weddings and funerals, and to put the title of Reverend before his name. It’s a time-consuming process to obtain that title, so he doesn’t simply want to let it fall by the wayside even though he isn’t pastoring at this time. His ordination is with the Missionary Church, a smallish but growing denomination. There are several denominations that are compatible – Wesleyan, Nazarene, various Methodist flavors of churches – but we need to make that decision. We have attended our local General Baptist church for a couple of years, but do find enough differences that have made us realize that we are not fully comfortable with keeping his official licensure with that denomination. So, this family of ten is visiting churches again and trying to find a church home that is warm, alive, loving AND compatible with Jeff’s reverency reverendhood ordination.   It’s hard, it’s scary for some of our kids, but it is also good and interesting.  It’s always interesting to try to find a church that fits the entire family!  We do have a sense of hope.  Hope and change and all that jazz, you know. 

That’s it, I guess.  I think that those are the major topics.  Of course there are a million and two minor things that are always swirling around our home.

God bless you, friends and family.  Thanks so much for stopping  by and for reading.

Me.  Tomorrow (Nov. 6) is my 41st birthday.  It’s also my big brother’s 50th birthday.  I am so thankful to God for the past year, thankful for this lifetime.  I’m so grateful for an incredible husband who encourages me to develop as a person, who gives me more than I could ever give to him.  I love these 8 kids – every one of them.    I’m thankful for each of you, my friends.  Some of you have been with me for decades, some of you just a short while.  You’re each one special to me.

I’ve earned every gray hair that Clairol can’t cover and then some….every wrinkle that is creeping, too.  Life is good.  God is good.  I look forward to this next year – to knowing Him better, to knowing you better.  God bless you. 

*This is playground duty.  A steaming cup of coffee, a good book that never actually gets read, sweet kids to push on the swingset and chase around the yard….life is indeed, good.

p.s.  IF you have written me a letter or note in the last two weeks, I promise to attempt to get back to you soon.    I’ll be busy this weekend, but after that I will attempt to catch up.  Thanks for your patience.

Yesterday we went to the park.  We’re trying to cram lots of outdoor play into our days.  Our fall season has been wet.  The sodden leaves quickly turned, then fell.  Too soon it will be cold, and virtually nothing will convince me to stay out of doors. 

Our toddler girl is cutting her two year molars, so we are driven to find things to keep her mind off of her misery.  A park will do nicely.

The levee makes a great play place, as well.  After running up and down, they rolled down the hill for awhile.

On the other side of the levee is mighty Ohio River.

Here’s my Emily, who kindly took all of my pictures except for this one. 

The playground turns pensive.  The cookies are gone.  Time to head home!

There’s no doubt that Mariam is the *MPS at our house.  (*Most Photographed Subject.) We – as in ALL of us – seem to be helpless in that.  Who knows if God will ever send us another little girl? It’s not like the gang doesn’t ask…we get the internal interrogations nearly every day:  “WHEN are you going to have another baby, Mom and Dad?”  The answer is always the same: Whenever God sends us one. Since He hasn’t sent us any NEW babies, we have to take lots of pictures of the one we DO have.

On the topic of photographs – ahem – there’s just so much you can do with your pictures these days.  Above you can see how I changed the first photograph.  I just use the free Photobucket options.  I cropped the photo to include the portion I wanted it to contain, then chose “Masterpiece Painting” from the “Effects” tab.  I absolutely LOVE how it turned out!  I think it would be so neat to print this out onto cardstock and use it for notecards.

I’m tickled “pink” by this picture.  I feel like I have my very own garden gnome.    And I love this new feature!  What else can I turn into a Masterpiece Painting?