The Ancient Art of Origami

Kara gave me an "Origami A Day Calendar" for Christmas and I love it.

Every morning I put a "brain teaser" on our school board and whoever figures it out first gets to make the origami of the day.

My two favorites so far have been the cute pink fox and the dollar pantsuit.

Try this at home.

Risky Business

I was reading an entry by Jen, a mom who has adopted a houseful of kids and she talked about taking risks when you invite kids to be part of your family. She has a heart that follows the Lord and I read her faith in action in her blog.
I agree with her that foster care/adoption ministry, like so many others, puts us at risk for "sitting down with sinners" up close and personal.
We attended a church that had a wonderful ministry to orphans in Mexico. They sent teams down to fix their buildings and and to distribute warm clothes and they brought back pictures of adorable children who said a blessing before each meal. Everyone wanted one of those cute orphans in their family. But those cute orphans are broken and in your sweet, loving, Christian home they would steal and lie to survive as they have learned.
We too, as Jen has said, have dealt with problems I could never have imagined. A few years ago I had the prosecuting attorney's phone number on speed dial and I know the names of most mental health facilities in our area. People in our family have been hurt. We have been fooled and betrayed.
And we have been called.
I'm sure there were many times when Jesus wanted to have some good food with the Priests instead of hot dogs with the sinners. And His risk with getting involved with us messy people cost him His life.
So, here's to stepping off the "nice" path and taking a risk. The bigger the risk, the bigger the hurt and the bigger the blessings.
Psalms 37:23

Hey Baby!

Emily's having a baby photo contest over at her blog and she was giving extra points for baby pictures that included macrame or 60's hair.

Okay, how about poodle skirts? I'm a 50's baby and that cool car behind me was brand new!

One Man's Trash

I admit to being a junk collector...I pick up good junk from people's trash....I LOVE Goodwill (as does Emily)....and I've trained my children to be on the look out for good junk too. One son was embarrassed as he sat in the drivers seat of the car while I was getting something good out of someones trash and the people came home to find us blocking their driveway while I was hauling stuff into our van. My son just kind of melted down into the seat. I thought it was funny actually.
Last week my daughter called and said that while driving through town she thought she saw a little tykes kitchen in someones trash but didn't have a car big enough to pick it up...would I go check it out?
What a find!! The kitchen is great and my kids are enjoying it until we can haul it down to Maryland to Kara.
The thrill of finding treasure among trash is soo better than shopping at the mall.

I Think I See Something....

Yesterday our science class dissected worms. What all the worm dissecting people aren't' telling you is that the stuff inside worms is really really small and mostly unremarkable. We were instructed in our dissecting guide to gently lift the esophagus up and forward to reveal the reproduction organs. The esophagus was the size of a barley bean and I'm not really sure we saw anything under it. We just have to live in faith that earthworms reproduce.

And it was, no kidding, 70 degrees outside.

After lots of washing up the class headed to the river for "Hands on Biology". Which really means that we were not about to waste a beautiful day talking about science when we could go outside and enjoy it. Only two of the kids actually fell in. The water in the Shenandoah River IS NOT 70 degrees! I'm sure some of the parents didn't appreciate the wet seats going home.
Sorry!

To see the rest of the pictures, click here.

I Love Sushi!!

This New Year's Eve we had a sushi party at our house. James spent the day preparing so much sushi that you could eat and eat till you were sick of it. I didn't know there was such an amount... but there was.

He assembled all his ingredients.




















He trained his young sushi assistant.



Making the perfect roll.




Beautiful!

On the 89th Day of Christmas

I was talking to someone on the phone yesterday and they said they were in the middle of taking Christmas down. Oh my goodness!! Christmas was about a billion years ago now. I love the Christmas tree and lights and decorations...until about one second after Christmas Day and then it all annoys me.
Luckily I have a son just like me. He usually starts asking right after we open our gifts if I want him to take everything down. I don't allow him to, mostly because it's his birthday on Christmas and he shouldn't have to work that hard. The next day though he's hauling crates down from the attic and packing everything up. All the kids help and in a couple of hours the entire holiday season has been dragged away. With so many packing so quickly I lose a few things each year. This time a poor nutcracker lost his shoe and his entire head cracked away from his neck. Small price to pay to have my house back to normal.
I have friends who like to "savor" the holiday and there it is - all sitting there well into January. And people are still turning on their outside Christmas lights every night. (My son Kevin and I used to play a game when we drove around in January, imposing imaginary fines per day for decorations on houses after January 4th.) It's not too bad since they're not on my house, but I have major objections to still blowing up those air-filled decorations in January. Okay, I hate them even in December. And if they're not bad enough all blown up, what's with them laying all over the yard, dead and deflated during the day? Looks like a serial holiday killing.
Here's my sincere apologies to all those who love the blow up stuff.
I'm really not a Grinch, I'm just always ready for the next thing.
3 cups of coffee - no Ridilin please.