My Peacefully Chaotic Life

It's been a lovely week here. The weather has been absolutely perfect, not too hot, not too cold. The leaves are changing with colors so vivid that I almost can't take it all in! I mean, have you just stopped to admire the beauty lately? The sunsets this week have been breathtaking! God's amazing artwork is at its finest in autumn, don't you think? Yesterday afternoon the children played outside, busily piling up leaves and jumping in them, only to do it all over again. Today the weather suddenly took a turn and temperatures plummeted with freezing temperatures expected tonight. I went out and cut armloads of camellia blooms to decorate the house with. With their delicate pale blooms, I wasn't sure how well they would stand up to the freeze and I wanted an excuse to bring their beauty indoors! Now I sit here curled up in the recliner with my cat, Tiger, trying to get warm by the fireplace. He has a hard time staying warm now that he is older (almost 16 years) ...

Did you get your extra hour of sleep? Not me, my body knows when it is time to wake up. I lay there for  a moment before the alarm went off. I marveled that I had finally managed to sleep in. But when I got up and saw all the clocks said the same thing, I realized my husband had forgotten to turn the clocks back. ;) Just as well, because I needed to get Sunday dinner started. I wanted to put the meat in the crockpot last night but it was still frozen and I wasn't so sure about that. I am hoping it will be done by the time church is over. I had originally gotten the recipe from the facebook sensation, Crockpot Girls. They are in the process of changing up their facebook site because of the whole trademark name change deal. they are Crockin girls now, I think? They have loaded a lot of the recipes on the new one, but I couldn't find the one I needed. So I thought I would google it. I was shocked to find all these blogposts up that were criticising them and were suspicious o...

I had never been inside her home until the day she told me CPS had removed her children. On that day I had gone over with some clothing for her daughter. When she came to the door I rattled on about what the bags held and if she could use them. Open mouth, insert foot.  She took me in the first few rooms. My impression was that of dark rooms and general disarray, as you might find in a case of depression. The windows are busted out and they had no water. Their dog had messed in the floor and was jumping in and out of the busted windows. I immediately told her I would help her clean, organize, repair, anything. I truly wanted to see this young woman piece her life back together. Well, of course, to her I am "the pastor's wife" and she is too embarrassed to let me see the whole picture. So I tell her that when she is finished that I will gladly do a walk through and see if there was anything obvious to be done. My work background qualifies me to...

It's my husband's birthday today. We haven't done anything particularly special to celebrate but it's been a good day nonetheless. We went to church and he preached a great message on being useful and not wasting your life away. When we came home, lunch only took a few minutes. I had already cooked lunch in the crockpot. Have you seen the crockpot girls on facebook? They have some terrific recipes. I cooked the pork chops and gravy one except without pork chops LOL. It was SUPPOSED to use thick cut pork chops. Have you priced those? Good grief! So instead I found a family pack of country style ribs. By the time we got home from church they were perfect. Everyone liked it and the gravy was divine. After we ate we all curled up in the living room and watched some of the Love Comes Softly movies I had taped. My little guy crawled up in my lap and promptly fell asleep. Great excuse to not get up for 2 hours! Now we are all out back enjoying a lovely day. The FisherM...

Around 6:00 AM this morning my little guy trudged into our room and I pulled him up in bed with us. I was greeted by ice cold legs and feet where he had kicked his covers off. As he snuggled down between us, I tried to go back to sleep, hoping to find the dream I had been in the middle of. Which is when the Rat Terrier woke up and jumped down from the bed. Gravity doesn't work well with Pretzel when she stands up after sleeping all night so I jumped out of bed to catch her and run to the living room where I unceremoniously dumped her out the back door. Not having much fur, she wasn't impressed. I didn't care. I went back to bed, grateful to see my son still curled up trying to go back to sleep. I quickly slid under the covers, pulled him close, and tightly shut my eyes hoping to go back to dreamland. I didn't care what dream at this point as long as it was good. Then Pretzel decided to remind me it is cold outside and she started up crying and barking. Sigh. I de...

My oldest son loves it when I make homemade lemonade. I add some extras that are not necessarily needed to make it good but just put it over into the extra special. It's really sweet and gets stronger the longer the ingredients mix. My lemonade is not unlike a marriage. I start out with the basics, lemons and water. In marriage you begin with an ordinary man and an ordinary woman. But it doesn't become lemonade until you add the sugar. In marriage this is the love! To become more than just separate ordinary people, you must mix in love. However, just a romantic love won't be enough sugar to overcome the sourness of the human spirit or the blandness of a self centered person coming into marriage. The love must be grounded in friendship and self sacrifice. The idea that you must fight to not "lose your identity" is one that the enemy has planted in order to destroy. Before you jump to a conclusion I am not drawing, let me explain what I mean by that. :) I a...

Well, I promised to share some fall pictures as well so I thought I would show you some pictures I took when we took a recent trip to the river. Well, trip probably isn't the right word because this is only a few minutes from my door but here goes. :) The water was low but still it was beautiful because you could see all the river rocks. We hiked along the riverbank... ....and found a few blooms hanging on. Little LadyBug spotted the sunlight hitting the tree above us just right to catch this shot. The children observed everything closely.... They even managed to learn something new! Yes, that is indeed a porta potty. They had never seen one (well, that they remembered anyway!) and wanted to peek inside LOL. Chalk it up to life experience LOL It was a beautiful day spent together. What treasures are you passing by that would be a fun time for your family?