Just Summer

It’s summer.  When my weeks fly by like days. 

When we spend more time with family and friends. 

When hours and hours are spent outside. 

Hours in the garden, hours in any sort of water that might be available,

hours having picnics and swatting mosquitoes. 

And my housework makes a serious decline. (It’s really bad!)

Maybe I don’t need to explain why I haven’t posted here in two weeks?!

I’m throwing some random pictures in here of life.

 Just little bits of the last couple of weeks of our summer.

 It’s been good.

 Picking yummy peaches.

  Girl fun with friends on a waterslide I found for six bucks at Family Dollar.

I’m enjoying the Garden so much this year! 

Last year when Lyme had me down I was barely able to keep up with life,

and anything I did took so much effort – this summer

I’m thoroughly enjoying having more energy!

Okra on the stalk.

 Green beans – the Whole Long Row.

 We got to spend time with a brother from Liberia, Africa. 

(Here he's helping to do beans at my in-laws.) 

God is real and God is good!  

His story of miracles in escaping his country during

The brutal civil war in the 90’s is amazing. 

 Now he has opportunity to live here in the USA,

but chooses instead to serve suffering people in Africa.  

It was a privilege just to hear him

preach on Sunday morning at our church talking about 

hindrances to true Christianity. 

He’s for real!

 My man driving the family to church on Sunday morning.

The girls and their cousin pulled all the carrots in the garden and 

got a whole five gallon bucket full.  

Washing carrots equals more water fun!

This week is Vacation Bible School in the city of Charlottesville. 

This is my girls class.

 Blackberries!!!  

My father-in-law’s plants have been yielding 3 ½ to five gallons every other day! 

So huge and delicious, and they come without thorns. J

 This little nest we found tucked in the blackberry row.

  

Another trip to Lexington to see my Lyme Dr.  

So glad for a car that gets great fuel milage! ;)

 I’m on yet another different antibiotic – I’ve been on antibiotics

 for over eight months now. 

It’s hard to believe.

 I feel like we are getting somewhere even though I still have some bad days!

My girls and I spent two days and one night canoeing the Rapidan River

with my four sisters-in-law (they are the best ever!), Sheralyn, and my two nieces!

 This was the first time overnighting on the river for the kids and they loved it!

Our Sleeping quarters. 

photo credit: Bethany

 Morning hot chocolate.

photo credit: Bethany

Supper – Sooo delicious!

photo credit: Bethany

The dam and mill on the river in my hometown of Rapidan.

photo credit: Bethany

"Exalt the LORD our God; 

worship at his footstool! 

Holy is he!"

Psalms 99:5

A World of Reading

 

A few weeks ago I came upon Kadence, in her own

 little world, sitting on the swing with a book. 

It made me long just a little for when I was a girl

and the simple life it was, this being a child.

And it also made me just a wee bit sad somehow.

 

My little girl has just finished first grade and

has come to a new stage in life.

 

 

Gone are the days of me skipping sections or

changing words in a storybook so she wouldn’t cry

 over some bit of sadness in the character’s life.

  Gone are the days of me explaining and discussing

 with her what the moral of the story is or how a

 character should have responded differently.

 

Not that I will never read with her or discuss the

 books she reads, but there will obviously be things

 that she will filter and think through entirely on her

 own.  There are things she is learning without me

being the one presenting the information. 

 I’m letting go a little bit.

 

On a lighter note, I love how she loves books. 

When we get home from the library she dives right in! 

She’s quite pleased to be keeping a list of the books

 she’s read for the summer reading program

we signed up for last week.

 

I can’t help but love the simplicity of

Frog and Toad

and their adventures of normal life.    

“Toad, Toad, wake up,” said Frog. 

“Look at your garden!”

Toad looked at his garden. 

Little green plants were coming up

out of the ground.

“At last,” shouted Toad,

“my seeds have stopped

being afraid to grow!”

“And now you will have

A nice garden too," said Frog.

“Yes,” said Toad,

“but you were right, Frog,

It was very hard work.”

 

 

“Lord, let me be quick to let go of what I should,

And grant the wisdom to hold tightly

to what I should not.”

The instructions of the LORD are perfect,

reviving the soul.

The decrees of the LORD are trustworthy,

making wise the simple.

Psalm 19:7

 

 

 

Summer Fun - I Heart Faces Entry

I felt a hint of wistfulness when I noticed

my daughter Kadence, who is six, had brought a book

 out to the swing and was lost in another world. 

 I remember those carefree summer days

being a girl,

and it doesn’t seem that long ago.

 

 

The photo theme at I Heart Faces for July is

 “Summer Fun”

 and I found it hard to decide what to enter. 

There are so many special things about summer!

 

 

Wishing to Whistle

 

  I love this child’s poem, Whistling. 

It fits Cassie Jo very well. 

She would love to be able to whistle just like her big sister,

but only once in a great while

does any sound come out!

 

 We stopped in the pasture on the way to the garden yesterday to take some “whistling” pictures. I got a little distracted and ended up with not-so-many pictures about whistling, but lots of pictures about a Little Girl with Curls, and the Wind, and the Weeds, and Puffy Summer Clouds…

 

 

 

 

Worship the LORD in all his holy splendor. Let all the earth tremble before him.

Psalm 96:9