Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Oh My Baby Girl
This coming Wednesday, the 28th, marks the third wonderful year of our baby girl, Mary’s life. As it comes close my mind always drifts back to the events surrounding her birth. I felt heavy laden those last few weeks of pregnancy as I am sure many women can identify with. I had had a very healthy pregnancy with only some anemia. Part of my great weariness was my age. I had been blessed with baby at 46 and though my health was really good I still felt the tiredness in every fiber of my being. I had waited all my life for this wonderful event and I was filled with wonder and praise and also it was the completion of a journey that God used to test my faith. Would I wait for Him and would I trust Him. I was not in the social norm of having a child at my age but I wanted God’s will to be done in my life and I knew from scripture that God had blessed people in the later years with a child. Yes, I wanted a loving, godly husband and a child from the time I was in my 20’s but God took me down a road that was not often traveled on. Many, many times I felt alone but God in His wonderful grace always gave me the strength to carry on! Eight years ago I met my husband who had been waiting all his life too for a helpmate and family. We were so happy to be lead to each other by the Lord and we knew it from the beginning of our relationship that God was doing a work in our lives. So, having Mary was like the cherry on top of our lives. She was a wonderful reward to us, such a blessing. I remember thinking that when I had my final sonogram before she was born. It was a Friday morning and the sonogram tech left the room to talk to the doctor. She felt that Mary was not moving vigorously enough and in the light of my age that labor should be induced. Mary was full term and I was only 10 days out from my due date. So the doctor gave us instruction to go to the hospital for me to be induced. As soon as I was hooked up to all the monitors there the nurses assured me that Mary was plenty active enough and I was already having contractions. I didn’t feel a thing. So, I thought, “Hey this isn’t too bad, I can deal with this!” Rich and I sat and watched TV and had an early dinner. Later that night my contractions slowed down so they gave me a light inducement, at 6 am my water broke and no longer did I NOT feel anything!! Wow, waves a pain came over me like I had never felt in my whole life. The nurse said I was at 2 centimeter and that she was going to get everything set up and cleared with the doctor for an epidural. She came back in a half an hour and I was at 10 centimeters and ready to give birth! They raced around my room as fast as they could and called the doctor to come. In about a dozen pushes she was born. Man talk about pain! The last push I didn’t think I could do it, but she was born. The young nurse assisting with the birth said, “Wow, look at her color, she is beautiful. I have never seen a baby with such good color. Then they placed her on my tummy. The world shut down around me and all I saw was her beautiful little face lifted up and looking at me with her big blue eyes. Her little hands were clinched and she was just yelling her little heart out! So much love flooded my heart, I thought I would burst. Here was God’s promise to me in the flesh. I told the Lord right there that I would never doubt Him again. I had come to the end of my longings and my cup was running over. I came back to the world around me and I looked up at Rich’s face and said, “ Here is our baby!” His face was just beaming. We took her home the next day. We had a lot sleep deprivation and weariness but our hearts were very happy! She has had such good health and has only had a couple of light colds and that is it!! She is such a little bundle of love and joy for us. What a little character she is making our hearts light and full of laughter. Thank you God for our dear Mary girl. Thank you so much!!!
Monday, October 19, 2009
The Farm
This weekend we had a lot of fun taking Mary to a pumpkin patch and petting zoo called "The Farm". It was a nice ride out in the country on a beautiful fall day. This was our first trip there and Mary just loved seeing all the animals, going on a hay ride and playing on toy tractors and in a sandbox filled with dry corn kernels. Here is the slide show I put together of the pictures and video we took.
Here is the link: http://www.onetruemedia.com/shared?p=9b77501b6d81e63faba3db&skin_id=1603&utm_source=otm&utm_medium=text_url
I hope you all had a wonderful weekend too!
Friday, October 16, 2009
Our Greenhouse
This last weekend Rich put up our greenhouse. He made it bigger and better than last year. He designed it all so that when we take it down in the spring he can take it all apart and store it for next year. I am so thankful for him and his talents. Now our avocado tree and other plants will be safe and happy from the cold weather. Here is a slide show of the process of putting it up. Mary got so excited. She loves it that she has her sandbox in there and can play in it while I am out there watering and taking care of the plants. She also has her watering can next to mine and loves to take care of the plants too!
Here is the link to the video:
http://www.onetruemedia.com/shared?p=9ada91e8db9c3851d23b36&skin_id=1603&utm_source=otm&utm_medium=text_url
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
A Creative and Innovative Mind
My husband has a creative and innovative mind. It is a talent that he was born with and one that God has given him. As long as I have known him, these short eight years, he has come up with very unique and interesting ways to design a machine or work of art. He is a mechanic by trade. At this point in his life he works repairing heaters, air conditioners and any machinery that requires refrigeration. In the past he has held a lot of different jobs with the majority having to do with machines. Eight years ago he packed up a small business he had. The only business he had that he made an income solely on one of his innovative ideas. He made beautiful ceramic lamps. You may ask, what is so innovative about a ceramic lamp? Well, it is how he puts the design on the lamp. He puts flowers and verses on the lamp bases and the design has holes in it that allows light to shine through it and is a beautiful night light when just a small light bulb is lit inside the base of the lamp. Again the idea is not new, there are many lamps that do that but his way is unique. If I explain it any further, I would be giving away his secret! The first lamp he made he took to a ceramic shop in Las Vegas, Nevada to see what these 2 ladies who had done ceramics for years thought. They were floored and had not seen anything like that in all their years of business. They greatly admired his work but had no idea how he did it! I have searched the internet, including Etsy and I have not seen anything like what he has done. They are truly unique.
Some interesting events transpired right before he packed up his lamp business that I want to share. First we met and started dating 3 months before. He wanted to give me a gift of one of his lamps. He had a beautiful one with roses and lilacs on it. I picked it because it was my mother’s favorite flowers. He told me that he could put a scripture verse on it too. I gave him Song of Solomon 2:10 - 12, because it was one of my favorites and when I was single and lonely, it gave me hope that there would be an end to this time, my proverbial winter and the one God had for me, my beloved would come into my life. The verse says, “My beloved spoke and said to me, “Rise up my love, my fair one and come away. For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the time of the pruning of the vine has come and the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land.” The pruning of the vine sounds bleak but it just means that the Lord is going to make the vine more fruitful than before! It is true, grapevines are pruned back in the early spring for that very reason to increase their fruitfulness. Rich put that scripture on the lamp he gave me and I set it up in my apartment with great pride and wonder. Also that lamp was the very last lamp that he worked on before he closed and packed up his business. He moved back home with his folks to save money while we dated and then prepared for our wedding.
We married and lived in a small duplex that did not have a garage, so there was no place to set up his business. We both were working and managed to get out of most of our debt which was our financial focus at the time. Then God opened the doors wide for us to move to Oregon and we indeed became fruitful. Within the first 6 months of our move,I became pregnant at the age of 46 and Rich was 50. I did not take fertility drugs, we just left it in the hands of the Lord and He blessed us. I had a very healthy pregnancy with no complications in delivery and a very healthy baby girl, Mary! I was now staying at home, the first time in my whole adult life, and raising our baby. Rich was blessed with a job that made plenty of money to provide a nice life for us. The only complication was that the work he does is hard on him physically. It requires climbing up on roofs in all kinds of weather, crawling in attics and under buildings. It has taken a heavy toll on his back and joints, especially his knees. In the spring of 2007 when Mary was a little baby he began to ask God to show him a sign that our lives were pleasing to him and that we were on the right track spiritually. The sign he asked for was that our grapevine that we had planted would bear fruit. We had had that grape vine for a number of years and it had not given us grapes! I didn’t know anything about this prayer. A few months after he asked God for this sign, I looked at our newly leafed out grapevine and in amongst the healthy large leaves were fruit buds. I was so happy that I called Rich up at work and told him what I saw. He was extra happy and told me about his prayer. After I talked to him, I went to a Bible concordance and looked up “budded vine” and I came up with the scripture, Song of Solomon 7:12 which says, “Let us rise up and go to the vineyards, Let us see whether the vine has budded and its blossoms have opened and whether the pomegranates have bloomed. There I will give you my love.” I like that a lot. It meant to me that when the vine budded the Lord was going to something really wonderful! I also went to a Bible dictionary to see if there was a common thread of symbolism of the grapevine. I knew it is a picture of us for Jesus said He is the vine and we are the branches. He is our life. The vine also is a symbol in scripture of ones livelihood. I got so excited. I told Rich about what I had discovered and encouraged him that God was going to make a way for him to get out of this line of work he was in so that he could have the strength to do the task of raising our precious daughter that God had given us in our later years. Because the closing of his lamp business was a pruning back I thought that God was going to cause that to flourish more and provide the income we needed. And it may.... but a new thing has come on the horizon. Like I said Rich has thought up a number of very innovative machines but his biggest road block is making a prototype to see if it really works. They have all been out of our reach financially. Rich has been blessed with an idea that his boss is really excited about. We can easily afford to make the prototype and if it works it is revolutionary to that kind of machine. No company produces a machine like this. It is an innovative twist on an old idea and millions of businesses use this type of machine. Rich is working on the prototype now and if it works, his boss will provide the funds to manufacture it and maybe even sell the idea to a really big company. They will split the proceeds 50/50. I am not going to tell what he is making because I feel it necessary to keep it a secret at this point but it is really cool! I told him the other day, that I think this is what God is going to use to produce a fruitful income for our lives. So, it wasn’t the lamp business that I thought a couple of years ago (even though we can still make and sell the lamps) that God was going to increase, but God was pruning back the only thing that Rich had made an income off of from his innovative ideas to bring about an environment and idea that would be more fruitful in our lives! Rich has a natural talent that God is blessing and using for His purposes!
I have filled him with the Spirit of God in wisdom, in understanding, in knowledge
and in all kinds of craftmanship. Exodus 31: 3
and in all kinds of craftmanship. Exodus 31: 3
Friday, October 9, 2009
Let's Make Music Together
Mary and I have been going to a music class for preschool age kids every week. She just loves it. All the parents sit in a circle and the kids sit with them or jump around in the center. The teacher leads all the songs. We sing simple songs with hand motions. They also supply different musical instruments for the kids to use. The class is designed to give kids exposure to different kinds of misic and learn to interact with you and other children as they do the songs. It is a fun and creative time and I really have a blast too! Here are some pictures I took the other day in her class.
Making Music Classes are nation wide. Here is the link to the national site if you are interested in taking your child to one.
I hope you have wonderful weekend!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
This Little Light of Mine
Mary has been enjoying the scripture loaf I just bought and a new book. I keep the scripture loaf on the kitchen table and we read one scripture after lunch. Mary does very well repeating after me. I was just going to read it to her but she wants to say it too! I bought a new book for her called the Pumpkin Patch Parable. The first time I saw this book was about 14 years ago. I had purchased it for my niece and nephew, Maranna and Julian. My brother told me they really enjoyed it. So, I wanted to get it for Mary. She loves it. It is now her favorite book. She has me read it to her twice each night. It is a cute little story about a farmer who raises pumpkins and carves a face on one in the fall and places a light inside it. It is a parable of how God changes us and puts His joy and love in our hearts and we shine in a dark world. It is a great little book! 
You can see Mary's trusty blanket right beside the book!
The last page. A pumpkin shining in the dark world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)