We had a great sermon today.  It was about tithing.  God doesn’t ~need~ our money, but since it already belongs to Him …

Psalm 50:5-15

⁵ “Gather to me my consecrated ones,
who made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”

⁶ And the heavens proclaim his righteousness,
for God himself is judge.
Selah

⁷ “Hear, O my people, and I will speak,
O Israel, and I will testify against you:
I am God, your God.

⁸ I do not rebuke you for your sacrifices
or your burnt offerings, which are ever before me.

⁹ I have no need of a bull from your stall
or of goats from your pens,

¹⁰ for every animal of the forest is mine,
and the cattle on a thousand hills.

¹¹ I know every bird in the mountains,
and the creatures of the field are mine.

¹² If I were hungry I would not tell you,
for the world is mine, and all that is in it.

¹³ Do I eat the flesh of bulls
or drink the blood of goats?

¹⁴ Sacrifice thank offerings to God,
fulfill your vows to the Most High,

¹⁵ and call upon me in the day of trouble;
I will deliver you, and you will honor me.”

Not that this has a whole lot to do with the above passage, but for the first few days after Heidi the Dog died, it made me sick to come here.  It still brings to mind the loss of my little pup, but it is a comfort to know that  she belonged to God and that He cared about her.

I would like to thank my children for all of their help around here this morning.  We had a two hour delay in starting our day, but they jumped in and did what I needed them to do.  We should’ve left for a family function five minutes ago, but there was a slight wardrobe malfunction – wrong pants on hanger, right pants on floor, mad dash to find something that will work in this unseasonably warm weather. Other than that, together we managed to accomplish:

3 haircuts, 4 showers, 1 cake baked, 1 batch of brownies baked, 1 cake’s worth of frosting made, 1 van emptied, van windows smudge-attacked (no window cleaner so I had them do what they could do with dry cloths), and van washed.  If we don’t get anything else done today (though we have several must-dos), we’ve done quite a bit.

Thanks, Men!

by Guest bloGGer Gabe

Locally known resident, Konrad Smitty Werbenjaegermanjenson laying asleep. Hears a weird sound.

"Could you be quiet? I'm trying to sleep."

So he decides to turn into Chihuahua Dog

As the result of the sound, this is what he does about it.

Tune in soon for more adventures of Chuhuahua Dog!

It’s a beautiful, sunny day in SW Michigan.  For the moment anyway.

Yesterday, Guinevere* and I met in the church library while the boys had their homeschool group meeting.  I always enjoy that time with her.  It seems like we’re both so busy that we hardly get a chance to talk.  Last time, we discussed vaccines and books as we perused the library’s shelves. This time, she asked me about my Heidi dog.  I thought I would make it through the day without crying.  Oh well.  Maybe tomorrow (already had the cry for today).

Once I stopped blubbering and could focus on being the attentive listener for once, Guin* told me about an applesauce making adventure.   She said that one of her relatives brought her a bunch of apples that she had picked up from under the trees in an orchard near her (the relative’s)  home and got them for much less than she would’ve paid for “good”, on-the-tree or pre-picked apples.  Guin* wondered if maybe an orchard we both like has something like that. They do, but not exactly, though it is quite a deal.

Don’t you just love the smell of apples cooking?  Don’t you love the smell of apples, period??  I sure do!  I grew up having a seemingly endless supply of apples, and I never got sick of them.   As a kid, some of the aunts, uncles, and cousins would go to the family farm and pic up apples from under the trees.  I can remember kneeling in the wetness under the trees, smelling the apple fragrance while picking up fallen apples with my gloved hands.  I was never as fast as everyone else, but it was work that needed to be done and didn’t matter how fast a person did it.  The owner of the farm paid a fair per-crate wage, and a person didn’t get fired for working slower than everyone else; they just wanted someone to do the job.  There were lots of jobs to do in the summer, but I hated those jobs because they always involved working in the hot sun, and that always seemed to give me a terrible headache.  Picking up apples was a more hospitable working environment for me.  It was fun, too, because my Mom’s family got the humor gene.    Between talking about times past and just being a bunch of wiseacres, the time often passed quickly and more memories were made. 

*contented sigh*

“Meanwhile, back in the library,” I asked Guin* how she makes her applesauce.  She told me about that, which led to a discussion on canning, apple butter, and pesticides on apple skins.  (Guin*, if you read this, it’s a concept called biochemical neutrality, in which the nutrients in the apple skins cancel out the fertilizers, pesticides and poop during the chewing process, at least whatever chemicals and waste don’t get washed off the skins by rain or people, rendering the skins of no nutritional value, but in return, rendering the inorganic chemicals (and bird poop) harmless.  )  Oh yeah, I definitely want to make apple butter, and I would like to try my hand at pumpkin butter, too.  I’ll definitely scour the apple skins thoroughly, or peel the apples and skip the pesticide business.

Guin* asked me if I was going to the homeschool program last night.  I didn’t know there was one except that a program made some of my young FB friends’ stati and comments make sense.  I told her that I would like to go, but I wasn’t sure about the transportation situation.  The homeschoolers around here put on some pretty great productions, so I was interested, just not real sure if the Mister would be home from hunting in time.

Later in the afternoon, after having next to no lunch and little to no energy to make something, I decided to go with Gabe’s suggestion to have taco-shells-broken-into-pieces and salsa.  I was hungry and so were the boys, but I had forgotten to pull something out of the freezer the night before, and there was really nothing good on hand that was quick.  My stomach has been rebelling against spicy food lately so I thought  a taco shell would be more soothing than salsa.  A few minutes after I started eating, I realized something was different about the taco shells we bought last time.   I asked that one of the boys please read the label on the box.  Homer* checked the ingredients for me and said that there was soy in them.  UGH.

*resigned sigh*

In time, I eventually made it to my bed, book** in hand.  It looked like it was going to be a long night.  I was losing the battle to stay awake, my eyes rolling back into my head and my left thumb and pinky finger fighting against the book’s tendency to close, when the phone rang.  I sat up and crawled to the end of my bed where the phone was conveniently located for once.   I picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Hi.” It was Guin*.  “Did [the Mister] get back yet?”

“No, not yet.”

“Do you still want to go to [The Program]?  We have room.  We’re headed back from [our activity] and can pick you up if you’d like to ride with us.”

There are times in every food sensitive person’s life in which a choice needs to be made.  Do I want to be a party pooper again? (Heh heh.  Get it?)  Or do I want to try biting the bullet and risk being sick in public? In an instant, … No, in an instant and a half,  maybe two due to the cramping, I made my decision.

“Sure.  That sounds like fun.”  Yeah.  Especially if I can’t find a restroom.  Oh, man!  Please, God.  Let this be the end of it.

When I got off the phone, I told the boys that we were going away in an hour  and to get ready, and then I went back to bed for a little while, hoping to relax and let my body have a chance to bounce back.

When Guin* and her kids got here, I was some better, but the clouds looked threatening, if you know what I mean.  We went and had a good time.  Thank You, God!  The way I feel today, there’s no reason I should’ve gotten any enjoyment out of the show at all, but I did!  And I learned a new word.

A New Word:  Cromit.  Verb. To cry and vomit simultaneously.    That was from a  play performed by the high schoolers called “The Homework at my Dog,” in which a student’s science experiment eats her dog.   I can’t do the play justice by trying to describe it here, but I have to say that the director and the students did an excellent job! 

** I checked The Mill House by Paul McCusker out of the church library yesterday. Mr. McCusker’s name was familiar to me from his work with Adventures in Odyssey and Focus on the Family Radio Theatre. I have read Darien’s Rise, one of the books in a series of novels related to Adventures in Odyssey called Passages. Having recently finished a novel by another author, I have to say that that popular author’s work does not hold a candle to Paul McCusker’s.   Besides the fact that his plot is good, his writing is technically good.

It has been a while since I’ve posted any bird pics.  It has been a while since I’ve taken any!  I just love watching birds.  They’re so interesting! Here are a couple of pics I took this morning.

Miraculously, I was prepared for all of the landings today.  Maybe it had something to do with the 10,000,000 geese already at this particular pond.

This guy was posing for us.

We call it the German Shepherd Pose.