Five Minute Friday: IMAGINE
It’s not Friday.
It’s Sunday afternoon.
I had every intention of tuning into the #fmfparty Thursday after workout class and after ball and after the boys were in bed. But I forgot. I think I got engrossed in a book, or maybe an episode of Law & Order Special Victims, and it totally slipped my mind.
IMAGINE that, me being forgetful.
One of the things I do best these days is forget.
I forget to pick up cheese at the grocery store, or get gas on the way home or to get the wet pool towels out of the back of the car.
I use lists to help me remember but sometimes I even forget the things that need to be added to the lists.
If it weren’t for my calendars I’d never be at all the places I need to be.
I even recently put in my calendar the date my friend’s baby was due … so I wouldn’t forget.
I sometimes enlist my kids to help me with my forgetfulness. I asked Finn this morning to remind me later today to vacuum a certain part of the house.
So on that note, my five minutes are up.
I should go vacuum.
Before I forget.
Another School Year Gone By
“And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” — Luke 2:52
I feel like the verse sums up well the boys’ first year in Christian school.
I wrote back in September about my decision to move them to Christian school, and I can’t believe the school year is already over!
They both had an aMaZiNg year!
Grew in wisdom … Caden learned to read! He could read some in kindergarten but his reading really took off this year! He also learned about the human body and hatched chickens in the classroom. Finn’s reading improved too. They dissected squids and did several book reports including one where he dressed up and gave a report on Elvis.
Grew in stature … They both grew about two inches over the course of the school year, evident by pants getting shorter and shorter as the year wore on. Also, they’re feet grew A LOT! Finn jumped into men’s sizes about midway through the year.
Favor with God … They learned so much about God this year. Part of it was hearing the Bible lessons at school and memorizing the weekly catechisms and/or Bible verses. But also we talked as a family the whole year about how God was taking care of us as a family, evident by the blessings including their new school.
Favor with man … The boys made new friends and were reunited with a few old ones.
We couldn’t have asked for a better school year. The teachers and families at their school are wonderful, and we had such a good time. Second and fifth grades will be here before we know it ….
Book Review: Beauty for Ashes by Dorothy Love
Christian romance is not usually my cup of tea, but I gave Beauty for Ashes a try anyways. To be fair, the book is part Christian romance, part historical romance, and the historical elements were the parts I enjoyed best.
The premise:
“She’s a beautiful young widow. He’s a Southern gentleman with a thirst for adventure. Both need a place to call home.”
To get “home” Carrie and Griff both have to deal with family issues — Carrie with her brother and his new hard-to-get-along-with wife, and Griff with his estranged brother and father who he felt disowned them long ago.
The spiritual issues with which the characters wrestle are mostly about searching for happiness and trusting God to take them there. The characters are challenged with hard economical times in the post-Civil War South and they’ve all suffered losses, whether it be losses of life, jobs or status.
Carrie keeps hoping things are going to turn around and get better, but that’s not what seems to be happening. The more she prays for blessing the more it seems that hard things are put on her. In the midst of this, her friend said something to her that resonated deeply with me:
“You want to please God. You want to be happy. You’re not sure whether one precludes the other.”
Ever been there? I have.
I didn’t know when I started reading Beauty for Ashes that this was the second book in author Dorothy Love’s Hickory Ridge romance series, which is a testament to how well Love inter-weaved the backstory of the first book Beyond All Measure into the pages of this one.
While I don’t usually read romances, Christian or otherwise, I like historical fiction and enjoyed the historical parts of this book. Twenty years ago, teen-aged Heather loved reading Janette Oke books, which were set in the 1840s expansion into the West. Beauty for Ashes reminded me of Oke’s books, for it’s focus on true historical times, the struggles of the people, and their reliance on God to get them through tough times.
I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com <http://BookSneeze®.com> book review bloggers program.
Five Minute Friday: VIEW
So I’m sitting at my son’s ball game tonight when AKAJaneRandom texts me about Five Minute Friday.
This, by the way, was my view at the time.
Got home late, got kids in the bed (late), read to them two chapters of Kingdom Keepers II (the serial that we’re reading), grabbed the iPad and gave the Five Minute Friday Party #FMFParty on Twitter a whirl.
The writing prompt for tonight was the word VIEW, to which the immediate thing that came to mind was the view of the sun rising in Haleakala, Hawaii. I had the pleasure of going there with John several years ago, and we drove up to the top of the volcano in the middle of the night to watch the sunrise. It was one of the most glorious and incredible VIEWs I’ve ever seen, before or since. Pictures don’t do it justice. But then most of the best views really are better in person, aren’t they?
P.S. So writing that took five minutes but digging up the photos I wanted to use and adding links took like an 15 extra minutes so this was more like a 20 minute Friday.
Oh, and adding this P.S. just took up another minute, so make that 21. :)
