Bad roads!

This is the second post titled "Bad roads", I know, but it's the truth--the roads were bad coming home tonight! My dad waited up for me, which is always so nice. :)

We worked a bit short tonight, due to the fact that one of the CNAs started having labor pains around supper time! She and her mother took off for a hospital, and I've been praying for them ever since, as this young woman wasn't expecting the baby to make its arrival for at least another month....

And now I have a rather strange question for you all. Does anybody know what to do for a dog who apparently has something wrong with her ears? I gave Lady a bath yesterday and was careful not to get soap or water into her ears, but am thinking maybe some made it past me anyway and perhaps that is bothering her? She has been shaking her head back and forth all day, off and on. Any suggestions would be most appreciated.

And now, I'm off to dreamland. ~

Odds and ends...

I took the time to import my camera pictures today and, consequently, have a few to post from last week. :)

This is a sewing project I'm working on, a little dress to either go to friends or to be tucked away in my hope-chest (I haven't decided which yet!)

My piano, with it's shining job... (and my music and crocheting project stacked up on top!)

Andrew, fixing up computers to sell...

Anyone want to swing? Be sure to bring your tall snow boots!

As Winter goes along, we watch this big tire tank sink deeper and deeper into the snow... It's a good thing that Spring is coming. :)

I think Millie's looking forward to Spring too. (She likes to sit on top of the bench we have out on the deck, which happens to be right outside of our kitchen window. She's surprised me a couple times already when I turned to see her looking in...)

This was a present we found in our mailbox yesterday. It had a note written on the outside wrapper: "Thanks for pulling me out when I got stuck. Your mailman."

Anytime, Mr. Mailman. ;)

Mom mixed up a wonderful batch of blueberry muffins on Friday and they disappeared so quickly,

that I decided to make some more today!

Oh, and this picture was taken the day that the tractor broke down and the guys had to figure out some way to unload the bales so they could go get another load of hay and then bring the other 9030 loader tractor home.... (Can you see Millie and Lady in this picture? How about my dad and Andrew?)

I gave Lady a bath today and she took it very well. I think my mom got some pictures, so those may get posted here sometime...

We also separated milk/cream again today and have 5 quarts of cream on hand. Yummy!

After our noon meal was over, we all sat down and read and discussed the home school bill that's being proposed...

Also, as a FYI, all North Dakotan home schoolers are being encouraged to attend the "Home School Day At The Capitol" this Thursday! I was able to trade days with a coworker (at my CNA job in town), so I'm planning to be in Bismarck and hope to see many of my ND readers there as well! Click HERE to learn more.~

And that's about all I have for tonight.

Blessings to you all as you do the things the Lord has for you to do this week.

I'm so tiny....

For part of our home-church service today, we watched one of the "Wonders of God's Creation" DVDs---the one about all the stars, planets, and galaxies and, while watching, it made me realize how teeny tiny we really are here on this great earth we know as our big world.

How wonderful it is that the creator of all this immense beauty and splendor is wanting to call us His children!!!




Psalm 8: 3-9~

"When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained, what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! "

Decluttering; decobwebbing; and blueberry muffins~

Friday is always our house cleaning day, and this was no exception. :) I got my room back in order (I still had a cake mess.......) and used "Old English" polish on my piano, making it look nearly new. While Mother worked on scrubbing pots and pans, I took our nice, multi-colored spiderweb remover brush and, well, did just that----removed spiderwebs that somehow have a way of building up when you aren't looking! Mother made blueberry muffins later in the day, while I swept and vacuumed the floor.

Meanwhile, the guys were having tractor troubles, again. Dad brought two loads of hay home and then he and my brothers worked together to get the 9030 (either a hose broke or an O-ring did, they're not sure yet) in the shop, which was a challenge, as they couldn't start it up, as it would pump oil out very quickly if they did. The guys had to then use the big red tractor (without a loader) to unload the semi-load of square bales. I'll let them tell you about that though.

Oh yes, one more adventure of the day was when Jacob had to pull our mailman's vehicle out, after he walked into our yard with the tidings that he got stuck! At least he had a tow-rope along. :)

It was a busy day and, after all the work was done, we watched a movie Andrew had picked up at the library. It was called, "Searching for Bobby Fischer" and was about a boy who turned out to be a champion chess player (at the age of 7), and the kinds of trials he went through, but how love (and talent, of course) conquered in the end..... It was a pretty good movie, not Christian but had good morals and the little boy, Josh, had great character.

And now I will leave you with a thought from my daily calendar, as I used to do:

"God's grace keeps pace with whatever we face."

"Be a do-gooder, not an I-should-er..."

For some reason, just now as I was thinking over the very busy night at work in town, this little-people song popped in my head...

The chorus of the song goes something like:

...Be a do-gooder,
Not an I should-er,
Be somebody who helps someone in need.
Be a big helper,
Not a my-selfer,
Be the kind of friend that Jesus would be...

I hope you all will do your best to be the kinds of friends that Jesus (Yeshua) would have you to be! :)

Busy day...

• Dad and Andrew hauled hay home from South of Hazelton (20+ miles away).

• Mother and Jacob worked on schoolwork; laundry; and dishes.

• I cleaned my room and started on a sewing project. I thought I had a meeting to go to this afternoon, but that was canceled, so it was nice to get things done here at home! Oh yes, and I spent my tithe money on a bicycle for a missionary in Asia. :)

• The dogs got sprayed by a skunk! Consequently, I gave Lady my old barn coat to sleep on OUTSIDE tonight... :(

That was our day.~

Locked in!

It was nice outside today. So nice, in fact, that it must have thawed some water that was in the outside doors' doorknob, and then, when it started to cool down again, that bit of water obviously froze... Consequently, when Dad tried coming inside after working in the shop, he was locked out. He and Jacob got the door open though, after taking the doorknob apart. When Dad, Jacob and I were going out to do the evening chores however, we were locked in, again. We walked through the kitchen and dining room and went out of the patio door, only to go around and find that the door opened from the outside. Strange!

Andrew went with Mother to Bismarck today, as he was looking at spending some of his computer-fixing-then-selling money, but the item he was hoping to purchase was already sold, so that didn't happen. He still ran errands in town and helped Mom with some technical things in her office.

I was looking at some recipes that my friend, Rachel (at Young Homemakers) recommended on her blog and would like to try this one: Butterscotch Pudding. I'd like to make it with honey though and am wondering if any of my readers have ever made pudding by using honey in place of sugar? If so, did it thicken alright? I also hope to try the Gooey Butter cake recipe sometime... I think Sally Fallon would like this cake (as well as some other people I know!) :)

Well, it's getting late once again, so I'll wish you all a good night. Millie is barking outside again (maybe at that fox we saw out in the cornfield today?), and Lady always gets excited when she hears that. She's whining right now, but I know that if I let her outside, she'll be whining in a few minutes because she's cold and wants back in again. Such is dog nature...

And yet one more cake post~

As you may have noticed, I didn't post last night, the reason being that I wasn't home! I stayed in town over night, as I worked until 10:30 and then had the DRH (Dining Room Host) shift at 6:30 this morning, so I thought it made the most sense to just stay put and get as much sleep as possible....

My parents were also not home last night, as they stayed with friends of ours up by Mylo. We have not seen these friends for a few years now, so they enjoyed the time to be able to catch up on what's happening in each others' lives.

The very good news is that we are all back home again now. :)

~Here is a picture of the wedding cake at Joshua & Esthers' reception. (Thank you so much Dad and Mom for driving so carefully over all those railroad tracks, and for setting it up and all, and for getting some pictures too!!!)

Oh, and here's a picture of my dad's cousin, Jerome, with his baaa-rthday cake. ;)

There! I think I'm done talking about cake for a while...

Tomorrow, Mom is going to Bismarck, but I get to stay home all day. I love being home!

R & R time...

That is, as Andrew puts it, "Rest & Redecoration!"

It was another cakish day here at the Bornemann house... When we weren't eating sheep cake with my dad's cousin, Jerome, we (and yes, I do say "We", as my family helped give advice and technical support...) decorated cakes.

This picture was taken yesterday, after taking the marbled cakes out of the oven...

And this picture was taken this morning--two of the cakes being ready for colored decorations and the big one still needing Cornelli lace on top...

Before going to bed last night, I had (what I thought was) a great idea for holding the roses up on the sides of the cake. I took some of the chocolate candy melts Andrew had picked up for me at the MagiCandle Cakery last week, melted them and made little lines on some parchment paper and left them to dry. What did I make? Edible toothpicks! I would stick one of these "Toothpicks" into the side of the cake and then hang the rose (which had a dab of frosting on the back as well) on it. (You can see my creation in the top photo---all those white lines on the sheet on the counter.)

So, did the little sticks of chocolate work, you may be thinking? Welllllll, for the smaller flowers, yes, they did work, once I made them thick enough so they didn't break in two! However, once I started in on the medium cake with the larger roses, I had a disaster on my hands.... I did eventually get all the roses up in swags around the side of the cake, but in a few minutes time, several had toppled off. I tried longer and thicker "Toothpicks", but it wasn't helping much and I was getting frustrated! About this time, Jerome left and wished me well. :) Also at about that time, Andrew came along and suggested I change my plan a bit and make each cake unique. So long as the cake had yellow roses and bright, Royal blue icing on it, as the bride requested, I didn't mind....and was quite grateful, actually!

Here you can see the top cake---the design being what I was planning to do on all the others...

The second cake actually turned out to be my favorite design. After a very long struggle with slipping roses, it was fun to put them around the bottom edge of the cake and to then add a very healthy ivy plant that sprawled across all the imperfections. :) (Andrew helped me move this cake over to the table so I could start work on the largest one.... "Please be careful, brother!!!")

All better!

I didn't even try putting the rose garland around this cake, as I'd learned better... I did have a lot of roses to use yet, though, so this is what I/we came up with:

...And a picture from the top:
I really hope that the new couple will enjoy their cake immensely (and I'm praying ever so hard that it makes it up the 3 hours North of us safely with my parents tomorrow!!! I'm sending a little touch-up kit along with them, just in case......)

It's been a long day and I must say I'm glad to be done with cakes again for a while.

I am grateful that my wrist didn't hurt today!

Cake, cake, and, well, cake!

My day was spent in baking and decorating, baking and decorating, and decorating some more... I have a case of decorators' wrist tonight, but am hoping it goes away by morning when I start decorating some more. :)

I did get 2 cakes finished.

This one is for two of our little neighbor children who celebrate their birthdays close together. Their mommy came over to pick it up and she had their new baby along, so Mom and I enjoyed a slight break in our work and played with the baby while her mommy ran over to some other neighbors to pick up her other son. (I think Mom took pictures on her camera, but they're not loaded on the computer yet so, consequently, I can't post them yet.)


I made this cake for my dad's cousin, Jerome, whose birthday was today. My parents have invited him here for a birthday meal tomorrow, so Mom asked me to make him a cake (plus she paid for the ingredients! :) ) Jerome is in the middle of lambing right now, so I thought sheep on his birthday cake would be most appropriate!

I also got the wedding cakes baked: 2-14 inch; 2-10 inch; and 2-6 inch cakes. Then I assembled them; crumb-coated them; iced them and started working on the Cornelli lace.... Tomorrow I'll be putting the roses on, so I'd appreciate prayers for that to go well-----and I'd be glad for any advice that a reader may have about how to get large roses to stay up on the side of a cake?

Babysittin'...

I watched the 3 little neighbor children from 9:00AM to 6:00 PM today. It must be a very busy life being a full-time mommy! :) We did lots of coloring, reading, puzzling, and movie watching, as usual. Amelia also wanted to do some "Projects", as she so cutely calls them, so I got out her coloring book, markers, paper, scissor and glue (and paper towel to absorb some of the extra glue!) and she had lots of fun creating a couple pages of princess pastyness. :)

And now, from here on out, it's cake time...

This cake deCORAtor is going to get a good nights sleep first though!

Quilted dresses?

I found an interesting quilting site today (did that catch your attention, Tamera? :) ) that has pictures of quilted dresses that were on display at a ND quilt show in 2009.

Click HERE to see 4 of the dresses;
click HERE to see another one;
and click HERE to see the last.


I like how these dresses look, (especially the 2nd and the last) because of the ladies' dresses in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," I'm sure, but another member of my family thinks most of them look strange. What's your opinion?

I'm done with working in town for the week now, and am moving on to babysitting. :) And do you remember what comes after that??????

Oh deer!

I wish I had had my camera along tonight as I drove home! As I turned onto the road leading to Kintyre, I could see (it's very bright out tonight!) literally 100+ deer grazing and lying in the corn field close to the road. I feel sorry for the wildlife during this season of very cold and very snowy weather! Just to give some of my non-Northern friends a pictures of what it's like out there, I'll tell you a little story....

A couple of afternoons ago, we received a phone call from a passer-by, saying that a few of our cows were out. She said that one had been on the road and, when they got up close to it, it plunged into the ditch which is, quite literally, FULL of snow! The cow sank down in the snow but through her floundering, she did manage to get back out. (Andrew went then with the snowmobile and chased the naughty cows back in where they belonged.) It snowed another half inch or so today and they're talking about more snow in our near future. Such is life in ND~

Life...

Thankfully, Mother's feeling better tonight and nobody else is feeling iffy, so hopefully that's the end of that!

The guys had a bad tractor day again today, so I was told, so their day was about the same as yesterday.

I baked bread before heading to work today (and it rose nicely!) and then, at the end of the day, one of my coworkers gave me a bag of nice dresses (mostly denim) that she got from her mom when they cleaned out her closet, so I had a good day. :)

In closing, I thought I'd share here the song that my mom's been asked to sing at her dear friend, Elizabeths' daughters' wedding this Sunday. It's called, "1,000 miles". Enjoy~

A challenging day...

...for Dad and Mom anyway...

Mom is feeling sick (stomach ache) tonight, so please pray for her. :(

Dad had tractor troubles, first with nearly getting stuck with the 9030 (we all thought he was stuck actually, but then he got it rocking back and forth a little bit and got it out!); then breaking a hose on the loader, so that it was not usable for evening chores. This meant he had to plug in our 4020 tractor and use it (with the bale fork) to feed the cows their supper----only, the fuel started to gel on it, so he had drive back in the yard and had Andrew run hot water over a part while he went and got some #1 fuel and dumped it in the tank. Then, while he was feeding the cows, he saw that one of our late fall calves was stretched out on its side, barely able to move. So, he came back for the pickup to transfer the calf to the milk barn with. He had me warm up some milk and put it in the stomach-feeding tube. When Dad tried to warm the calf up by rubbing it with blankets and then feeding it, it died, so it's been a frustrating day for him.

My brothers worked on projects (indoors mainly) all afternoon, while I started in on my own big project----making 128 small frosting roses and 42 large ones for the wedding cake I've been asked to make for this coming Sunday. As I have a busy week ahead of me (working in town the next 3 days; babysitting the next day; and making a birthday cake for neighbor children and a wedding cake the next day(s), I figured I'd best get a start on things! I did some reading online and found that it's alright to freeze "Flowers", so all 170 yellow roses are neatly tucked away for further use....

Most of the little roses:

Some of the large roses:

A sweet-smelling rose, up close!
And that, dear friends, was our day.

"The Child"--a must see!

My family and I sat down and watched "The Child" today... My brother, Andrew, wrote about it on his blog tonight too, I see: CLICK HERE to see a trailer of "The Child". I'm hoping a viewing can be set up at the home school convention and/or the home school day at the capital coming up, and perhaps in some of our local churches as well, as the need for the Parental Rights Ammendment to our country's constitution is crucial... Without it, our freedoms, yours and mine, as (future, in my case) parents will be greatly limited---our freedom and the freedom of all those that come after us!

The time to act has come.

Please visit the Parental Rights website and learn about how you too can help protect the God given rights of parents: the right to pass on to our children our beliefs; the right to discipline them in love when they've done wrong; to educate them as we see fit; to have a say when it comes to their health care......

~Deuteronomy 11:19 (King James Version)

"And ye shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. "

~Proverbs 1:8-9 (King James Version)

"My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother:
For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck. "


Our founding fathers must not have even been able to imagine that America would even ever get to the point of considering parents as inept at raising their own children, or they surely would have made up their own "Parental Rights Ammendment" so many years ago!

Cookie recipe!

Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cups w. w. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
3 cups oatmeal (uncooked)
1 cup raisins (you can also make these with chocolate chips for a special treat)

• Heat oven to 350 degrees
• Beat together butter, sugar, and honey until creamy
• Add eggs and vanilla; beat well.
• Add combined flour, soda, cinnamon and salt; mix well.
• Stir in oats and raisins; mix well.
• Drop by rounded Tbsps. onto ungreased cookie sheets.
• Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown.
• Cool 1 minute on cookie sheet; remove to wire rack.

Makes about 4 dozen

You can also make this into a bar cookie: Bake 30 to 35 minutes in ungreased 9x13" metal baking pan.

Cookie recipe coming soon...

...to a blog post near you. :)

Release date: January 14th, 2011
Time: ?


PS. They're delicious!

Sewing...

After digging all my sewing supplies out of my closet, drawers, and more drawers----and after reorganizing them a bit, I started on a new project! But, alas, I am choosing not to post about it, as the future recipient of the finished product is a reader of my blog and it's supposed to be a surprise. :)

It is very cold and very windy tonight. It's probably a blizzard out there again....

I hope all my friends are staying warm tonight!

Silent night, chilly night!

I just got home from town
And I don't know what to write.
I've slipped into my gown
And am ready for the night.

It's very cold out of doors,
It feels like -23!
Lady softly snores...
She's glad to be in with me................


It is so wonderful to be in where it's warm. The car was reluctant to start tonight at 10:15 when I went out to get it warming, but "Old Faithful" did it once again--it chug-a-lug-lugged into action.

As for the rest of my family:

Dad went to Casselton,
The boys stayed home,
Mom saw clients and did a meeting in Bismarck,
And in the end, we all met up again at home sweet home. :)

Progress~

Our whole family went to Bismarck today and, after making a stop at Sam's Club and the FedEx building, Dad dropped the rest of us off at Mom's office building and went to run more errands.

While he was gone, we cut the fabric for the wall-divider and stapled it on the 5 long pieces of wall-sections (the guys built these a while back), and then stapled fabric onto the door (also built by said guys.) The wall actually has two different floral fabrics on it, one on each side, to make each room unique. Andrew and I (mostly Andrew, I guess, as I just handed him things) put the hinges on the pieces of wall once they were finished, and then the guys lifted it upright and put it in place. It looks REALLY nice and makes a difference in the sound level in the room, which was our main goal, so people in the waiting room can't hear what's being said in the session room. Mother, Jacob & I took LOTS of pictures, but they're all on her I-Pod currently, so I'm not sure when they'll be put on the computer so they can be shared with you....

I just read a thought-provoking blog post about holding/not holding grudges, written by an e-friend of mine, "Cora", and thought I'd point it out to you all. Go visit Cora at: A Cool Clean Rain.

And now, even though it's relatively early yet, I'm going to bid you goodnight, as a new book I ordered (The Lost Art of True Beauty by Leslie Ludy) came in the mail today and I can't wait any longer to start reading it!

So, farewell, my dear readers~

White roads...

On my way home from work in town tonight, I was driving in a world of white! Thankfully, someone had blazed a trail ahead of me so I could tell where the road was at.

I don't have too much to tell here, as we slept in a bit this morning and then did chores and tidied up the house a bit, then made lunch and ate it, and it was time for me to go. We hope to go to Bismarck tomorrow, but that all depends on the weather...

I'm tired and so I'm going to do the only sensible thing and turn my computer off for the night and go to bed!

May God be with you all~

A belated New Years treat...

The K. family had invited us to their house last week, but due to some less than desirable weather, we took a snow-check and stayed at home. We were able to go down today and had a very nice time, playing games; eating good food; and visiting. Here Mr. K (red shirt), my brothers, Dad and I were playing a game of Agricola. It lasted a couple hours! James K. (red, blue and white shirt) had fun playing with the extra pieces...

*Can you tell we were thinking hard?*
Once that game was over, we all ate some homemade ice cream and then started in on a fun game of Taboo. The guys beat us ladies by 4 points, so they were well pleased. :)

Thank you again, Lane & Sarah (and little ones) for a splendid time!

What makes 101%?

Another blessing from a friend... This is great!

How to sing...

I just found this video, via a friends' blog, and it seems most fitting to post today as we are preparing to go visit our friends, the K. family tomorrow (Mr. K. was my music teacher for a year and half and both he and his wife are very talented singers). Enjoy!

Bad roads.

I got home late tonight, as there was about an inch of new snow on the road, plus there was more blowing across the top of it, so it was very hard to see anything! It was also a long night at work as everyone needed something at the same time it seemed. One neat part though was that I saw a picture of my dear, life-long friend, Kjersti, on one of my favorite resident's bulletin boards. I learned then that Kjersti had helped J. when J. was still living at home. As they say, "It's a small world."

Since I've started working in town, I've met a lot of local people and so it's neat, when doing errands, to run into people I know, or at least recognize!

Lets see... Today, I went to the post office and saw one person who visits at the nursing home and one person who works in the office there. Then I went to the gas station and pulled up opposite a guy who used to work at Wolf's farm equipment and who I see at the nursing home occasionally. A car pulled up behind him and it was Rose and her husband--friends of ours from the days when we sold cream, and also visitors (and Rose volunteers) at the nursing home. I went inside to pay my gas bill and a lady who works at the nursing home occasionally waited on me, and the other person inside the station was a young man whose mom works at the care center. Upon going back out to my car, another of my coworkers greeted me as she was going inside. Then I went to the bank and, after going through the drive through and turning back onto the main road, I saw a lady who works in activities, and we waved. Next, I turned off the main road and saw a lady walking--one of the kitchen ladies, and we waved. I got closer to the nursing home and one of the maintenance men was getting the mail, and we waved.

It's just a nice feeling to know that you're amongst friends instead of strangers!

Then, I got home and found my parents waiting up for me. :)

A good mail day!

It was a good day here, all around!

For one thing, Dad got the car fixed (it was the fuel filter).

Also, the guys put in our new DISH-washing machine (Mother's birthday present from Dad)!

Here the boys are putting their heads together, almost literally, trying to figure out the best way to install the fancy present...


Ah hah! It works like a dream. We haven't had use of a dishwasher for a few years now, so we feel very spoiled and blessed. :)
Oh yes, I was going to tell you about our good mail day!

• I got paid for some babysitting I did (that's always nice.)
• We got another Holiday letter/picture from friends (that's always nice.)
• Mother received a belated birthday gift from a dear friend of hers (that's always nice. :) )

... It can either be worn as a pin or a necklace and it has a girl and two boys on it--

with our correlating birthstones even!

AND Mom and I received a package from my Aunt LV, containing: 5 hats that she'd crocheted!

AND a set for each of us of a hat, scarf, and fingerless mittens, made of very soft yarn! She thanked me for getting her started on knitting when they were here for Thanksgiving and said she's having a blast learning more from the book she bought on the subject. :) WOW! We were so surprised! Aunt LV also shared her pattern for making the hats, so if anyone is interested, I can share that here too...


These next two pictures are from New Years day, when we played a game of "Carcassonne".

Has anyone else played this game?

Well, I've run out of pictures, so I'll bid you good night and get some sleep. That is, if I can get to sleep with that owl hooting and the dogs barking/howling. (It's so nice out tonight that Lady stayed outside with Millie.)

Thank God for brothers!

I had a bit of an adventure on my way to work in town today. Let me tell you about it...

My dad had dug the old car (the one I drove all Spring, Summer and Fall) out of the snowbank; put air in the tires; scraped the ice off the windshield and made sure it was running so that I could take it to work. My parents and Andrew were going to Bismarck with the van (what I usually drive in Winter weather), and the roads were good enough to take a 2-wheel drive vehicle out on them safely. Soooo, around 1:00 this afternoon, I hopped in the car and headed South through Kintyre. When I was driving slow on the gravel, I had no problems, but once I got on the other side of Kintyre and tried speeding up, the car would only go 40 MPH. Then it started chugging...

"Oh dear," thought I, "I'm running out of gas!"

As the fuel gauge doesn't work on that car, I keep track of how much gas is in the tank by how many times I've driven into town. I was pretty sure there was still a good deal of gas in there when I quite driving the car, but, well, maybe not?

It was one of those moments when you're very grateful to have a cell-phone along with you AND that your little brother had a cold and so had stayed home (a very rare occasion.) I called Jacob up and asked him to quickly hop into Andrew's pickup and bring me some gas, if we had any.... Thankfully, we did. Jacob rounded up a funnel and two gas jugs and came to my rescue. We put about 5 gallons of gas in the car and then I tried driving it a ways again, but it just wasn't working right. So, Jacob and I traded vehicles and I hurried to town, being only 2 minutes late. I called Jacob later to make sure he got home safe and he said he made it to the driveway before the car quit on him and wouldn't start up again. Andrew started it later and says he thinks the fuel filter is needing a change, or something like that.

I was just praising God over and over for having Jacob be home today when I needed him! :)

Sparkling diamonds, falling stars, and lasagna...

On my way home from work tonight, the snow on the road was sparkling so prettily that I felt like I was driving on diamonds. Then a star went shooting across the sky, and I praised God for His beauty.

It was kind of a funny thing today--for some reason this morning I thought about the nursing home, knowing I'd be going to work today, and wondered if they ever made lasagna for their residents. (Don't ask me why I thought of that, as I don't know.) Well, today at nearly 2:00, I walked in the door there; stomped the snow off of my boots; walked over to the dining room and read on the sign: "SUPPER~ Lasagna, garlic bread, corn, cookie." How funny is that?

Then, on the way home, I got really thirsty--for apple juice. (Every night at snack time at the N. H., we pass out fruit, pudding, crackers, etc... and apple juice, so perhaps pouring all that juice made me thirsty for it, I don't know.) When I walked in the entryway, I seemed to even smell apple juice, but realized my imagination was running away with me. I went further in the house then, but my Lady needed to go outside, so I headed back out to the entryway. As I was waiting for her to finish her business, I smelled apple juice again, a stronger scent of it this time, and then I noticed the steam juicer sitting on the freezer. It was still warm and contained a batch of fresh apple sauce and juice! Delicious! :)

I love God's sense of humor, don't you?

A great giveaway for ladies...

Good morning friends,

I just wanted to point you all in the direction of a great giveaway at Meditations of His Love! Enter in several different ways by January 9th for your chance to win a copy of Leslie Ludy's book, "Authentic Beauty".

Click HERE to find out more.

Have a great day!

His unfailing presence~

~author unknown~

Another year I enter,
Its history unknown;
Oh, how my feet would tremble
To tread its paths alone!
But I have heard a whisper,
I know I shall be blest;
"My presence shall go with thee,
And I will give thee rest."

What will the New Year bring me?
I may not, must not know;
Will it be love and rapture,
Or loneliness and woe?
Hush! Hush! I hear His whisper;
I surely shall be blest;
"My presence shall go with thee,
And I will give thee rest."

January 1st, 2011~

The new year started out sunny and cold, but it was a lovely day for us, spent indoors mainly.

We were not able to go to our friends' house after all, but hope to make it there next weekend, if the roads are safe to venture out on. The Keister family has asked me to come and stay with them (and help them :) ) for a few days the beginning of March, after their 4th child is born, so I'm really hoping that that will work out!!! Lane K. was my music teacher for a year and a half, so I got to know their family better when I went to their house for lessons every other week. Also, Sarah K. and the children come every other month or so, when she gets her Azure order.... I really hope I can get my work schedule arranged so I can help them!

Our day was spent in finishing, "The Calling of Dan Matthews"; singing hymns; eating ice cream; playing games; watching "Cromwell"; and in sending out the e-mail version of our annual letter (if you haven't received our letter today and would like to, just leave me a comment with your address, or write to me at corabeth87@gmail.com and I'll send it to you.

And now, I wish you a merry Winter and a happy new year!

Happy New Year!

...Now to get used to writing "2011"... :)



*A note of praise: My coworker friend, Cindy, offered to work for me so I didn't have to go into town at all today. PTL! Instead, I helped to clean the house and to prepare a feast, plus we got the newsletter nearly finished.

We had hoped to go visit our friends, the K. family tomorrow, but as it's an hours drive to their house, we may not wish to venture out if the weather holds! It is a genuine blizzard out there....