How Do We.... Clean

This big old farmhouse is about 4,000 square feet. It is BIG and luckily for me, it isn't all remodeled yet (looking on the bright side here) and so there is less to clean. I am in no way an expert on keeping a tidy home. Like laundry, it is something I am always working on.

So... here's what works.

For cleaning products, I love a few things. I love my Ecover floor soap. It costs under $4 and lasts about six months to a year depending on how often I mop (which I'm sure makes the point that I don't mop often enough). Anyway, dilute a cupful in a sink full of warm water and you're good to go.

For our dishwasher, I use a splash of plain vinegar with each load, regular old "green" dish powder, which my repair man tells me is the same as the non-green stuff on the market now that phosphates have been banned. Because of our hard water, I use Lemi Shine every few loads. I'd love to find a source to buy it in bulk so I could use it always but until then, using it once in a while helps keep our dishwasher clean and that cloudy film off the dishes from our hard water.

I'm also fond of this all-purpose cleaner from Ecover which I dilute a lidful of into a spray bottle from the dollar store and fill the rest of the way with water. I use this to clean every surface in our home. It has a pleasant mild scent and works great.

The bathroom, more specifically the toilet, is the only place in our home where I use bad cleaner. Really bad cleaner. We have very hard well water. I believe most water is considered "hard" at 20 parts per million. Ours is 130 parts per million of hardness.

In my humble opinion, ring of iron in the toilet is pretty unwelcoming and unsightly. I have tried every non-toxic cleaner and now use toilet cleaner from the dollar store. It has horrid ingredients that are probably killing my septic tank. I keep it on a shelf above my washing machine where no child can reach it and it has a child lock cap on it. It works.

Our home has two bathrooms currently, both upstairs, and the one that the kids use is the one I have them keep clean (minus the mentioned toilet cleaning). I've found a wonderful way to have them clean it, from the two yr. old to the ten yr. old. I hand them a pack of wet wipes and tell them how many they can use. For some reason, getting a clean white wipe completely dirty is delightful to my children. Much more than scrubbing with a washcloth would be and it is a (small) extra expense I don't mind.

I keep the dish soap, baby shampoo, scrubbers and such in a basket by the kitchen sink. Addie usually gets a bath by the wood stove in her little tub.

Like many of you, I find the most housecleaning effort is focused on clutter control and crunchy floor alleviation. Daily sweepings are key to my sanity. I really dislike stuff on our floors, whether it be coats and boots or toys or cheerios or cracker crumbs. A few times during the day I'll have everyone work together to pick up their things in a room and I'll follow this with a sweep. I have a pretty broom too. I figure if I am going to be sweeping so often and looking at a broom several times a day, I'll buy the prettiest one I can. right now it is hot pink cheetah pink but I have my eye on a rainbow colored broom corn broom at our local health food store.

I vacuum a few times a week. We only have one rug downstairs in our living room but we have old plank floors where crumbs can slip in between. There is something so satisfying about clearing these spaces between the boards. Our six yr old loves to vacuum and so he usually will ask (!) and I'll have him do in between the floor boards. I have only ever owned two vacuums, our first was an Oreck, which lasted about nine years. I loved how lightweight it was but it never fared well with dog hair. I was a pro at taking it apart and unclogging it. With one dog, it clogged just about every time I used it.

When it was time to purchase a new one, we went with the Consumer Reports best buy which was a Sears Kenmore one. This is a heavy vacuum and I am not fond of carrying it up and down the stairs. It handles dog hair well but somehow kid toys always seem to get wedged in it and so, once again, I am learning the quickest routes to unclogging it. Overall I am very pleased with it.

I should also mention that every time I have been presented with a house with carpeting, I tear it out as soon as possible and I never regret it. It doesn't matter how clean it looks, it always harbors stuff underneath and the off-gasses from the chemicals and petroleums are healthy for no one. If I did need to buy wall to wall carpeting, I would save and buy wool carpeting. For now, I am happy with wool rugs that I can roll up, scrub underneath and put away for the summer.

Perhaps it is to my shame, but I do not have a cleaning schedule anymore. A few years ago I had a schedule in which I cleaned a room a day but now I prefer a few minutes of tidying each room every day. It felt so discouraging to spend a day cleaning one room, have it messied by kids by the end of the day and start all over this way the following day. Now I evaluate which space needs the most attention, take care of it and then work at clearing clutter from the other rooms and keeping them swept during the day.

My favorite book on cleaning is Organic Housekeeping by Ellen Sandbeck, which you can most likely order from your library. It is chock full of cleaning goodness.

Have any cleaning tips for me?

How Do We...Do Laundry

Staying on top of the laundry has been a many year long goal for me and depending on the season of life I am in, I may be doing better or worse at it. Take for instance a few days after Addie was born. Our dryer chose that wonderful season to give up the ghost. It was our family's third dryer in four years. Can you imagine how many more we would burn through if I did not hang laundry outside half of the year?

Sean blessed me so much with a new front load set to mark the passing of the third dryer. I can fit so much more laundry into the washer, it comes out less wet, and the dryer dries it quicker so less energy is being used, which saves us money. I've also noticed the laundry is coming out CLEANER! A washer and dryer may not sound like a romantic gift but they spoke volumes of loving serenades to my soul because eight people and cloth diapering makes for a lot of laundry.

Our washer and dryer are in a nook at the top of our stairs, open for eyes to see. Our old washer and dryer were behind bi fold doors in the same spot, but the new washer and dryer are slightly bigger so we took the doors off. That has been great motivation for me to keep them tidy.

My routine now is this. At night before bed, I start a load of laundry. This is everyone's clothing from the day, a pile of kitchen towels and washcloths, and cloth diapers. It all goes in together and it all gets washed hot. If there is a big variety in the colors, like a pile of blue jeans and white t-shirts, I'll throw in a color catcher sheet.
If it isn't too late when that load is done, I'll sort a dryer pile and a rack pile. Some of my flannel cloth diapers I hang on the rack to dry in front of the wood stove because they are so thick and this dries them overnight quickly. Heavy items like jeans and sweatshirts get hung in front of the wood stove also. Small items like sock and underwear go into the dryer. I also put my flannel nursing pads into the dryer too because I like the high heat to kill anything that may have survived the washing machine. If I am in bed when this load is done, I sort it the same in the morning.
In the morning I wait for everyone to get dressed, chores to be done and start another load of laundry. Usually this is more diapers, washcloths, pajamas, sheet sets if needed, and any clothing that was soiled during chores or breakfast.
Two loads a day usually does it. If I'm good, I sort it as it comes out of the dryer. I sort the oldest four kids laundry and they fold it and put it away. I'll usually assign Ella to towels and Chase loves to carry his papa's laundry and put it on the bed. Mismatched socks go into a laundry basket (which is currently half full...grr....).
Speaking of socks, if you have a genius idea for avoiding the abyss of mismatched ones, please, please share. My current train of thought is to go spend $25 and buy everyone their own unique pack of socks so we easily know who's is whose. In the past I've just bought whatever packages of socks that have been on sale and it is a big confused mess, especially with boys that wear the same size socks.

Sean and I share a teeny, oh so tiny closet in our room. Really teeny, like less than two feet wide. We each have a dresser also.

I was hanging all of our children's clothing in the same place, but recently took out the girl's dresses and moved them to their own closet because space was getting too tight on the one bar.
Each child has their own color hanger. I love this and it works great.

Their clothing is kept on shelves, where I can quickly and easily check it for neatness. Socks, pajamas, and underwear each have their own plastic bin, which I purchased at our dollar store.


This method works a thousand times better for me than dressers ever did and takes up less space. Altogether the shelves housing the clothes for six kids takes up about five feet in width, floor to ceiling. I also have fabric and some books stored on the same shelving so there is room to spare.

One final laundry tip is to go through your clothing and your children's clothing with a critical eye. I noticed that whenever we went out into public, I'd have to have the boys change their stained shirts and so I tossed a pile of them or repurposed them and kept maybe one or two dingy ones for outside play. Any items that would take serious time to repair, were faded or ill fitting I donated. Wool socks I have darned in the past because they are worth the extra life. My current mode of thought is to pare down how many outfits of clothing we each have. Less clothes = less laundry.

Finally, we make our own laundry detergent. It is so inexpensive, smells great and I know exactly what I am putting on my children's skin and into our ground water. I use the Duggar's recipe, which you can find on this page, but I use an all natural bar soap instead of the Fels Naptha, which is very smelly and strong. Any castille bar soap makes a great substitute. I also add in essential oils for a great smell.

Toss me your ideas now. What works for your family. Do you have a separate laundry room? A marvelous sock idea?

Edited to add: I completely forgot to mention that Annaliese does her own laundry, and whatever laundry Ella has left lying around their bedroom. Her laundry day is Tuesday and she can do it all on her own.

How Do We... do naps

A big question is how do we do naps with so many people in the house and kids sharing rooms and the noise of people and so on.

Our youngest is a sound sleeper. We're pretty sure she sleeps better when it is noisy than when it is quiet. Our two year old, not so much. So here's what we do. After lunch eaten and we've tidied up, I bundle up the older kids and send them outside to play. This works 90% of the time. They have rain coats and umbrellas for rainy days, snow clothes for winter and so it is only in extreme stormy weather that they need to stay indoors. Chase is tucked into his bed and Addie into hers. Ella is four and plays outside with her older siblings.

Generally, they'll play outside for about an hour with trips inside to use the bathroom or get a drink, which is fine by me. I'm pretty much settled with the idea that our floors will never be spotless unless it is five minutes after they've been mopped.

When everyone comes inside, I have them put away their things and find a quiet toy to play with in the living room. Ella goes upstairs to her bed for a nap and depending on the day and his temperament, Aiden, who is six, might lie down for a little while.

I've been trying to get the older three kids in the habit of doing their personal devotions during this time, taking time to be quiet, look at their choice of book from our Bible stories pile or their Bible and write in their journals if they like. The kids do great with this and seem to thrive on the ten minutes or so of quiet time, I just need to remember to remind them to do it.

To keep the three oldest kids occupied while they play during nap time, I turn on Your Story Hour on http://www.oneplace.com/ ,Jonathan Park on http://www.jonathanpark.com/ , Adventures in Odyssey on http://www.whitsend.org/ or one of our stories on Cd's. Librivox also has a lot of great children's stories for free. Right now the kids are listening to a story that takes place during the civil war, since that is the time period we're immersed in.

Alternately, I'll let them play a game together, which gets if-y because sometimes games can stir up conflict which gets noisy or a school game on their little laptops is also allowed.

All this keeps them occupied for about two hours every afternoon until the babies and toddlers wake up and the house is a busy hubbub again.

What about you? What have you found that works for nap time in your house?

How Do We

A portion of e-mails that I receive ask how we do different things as a family or how I do things in our home. I usually try to answer as best as I can. Having a larger than normal family doesn't mean I'm any better at running a home, but it often might mean that I'm forced to find a solution that works or else have the issue compounded times the number of people in our home.

I have a few questions and answers which I think are universally helpful that I'll share and if you have one, just send me a note to the "contact me" at the top of the page.

Precious to God

I hold her fat warm cheeks against mine as she coos and I wiggle my nose in her neck, bringing about an erruption from deep in her belly of pure delight. I could live in this sound.

How precious are these little ones to God.

My hands deep in suds, gliding along the beautiful grain in the wood of the rolling pin from my grandmother, I hear sadness coming from the two year old's bed. "Sing with me?" I call up to him as I gently begin the first refrain of his favorite,"Jesus Love Me". Hearing him on the steps behind me, singing along, I dry my hands, meet him halfway and settle down on a step with his pajama-ed self on my lap. I take requests and we sing some more "Jesus Loves Me", "He's Got the Whole World", and "Amazing Grace" together, his head against my heart.

How precious are these little ones to God.

Tucked in, my hands back in the suds, I hear sweet squeaky song from his bed, "An Gaaaa, who calls me 'ere bewo, will be for-eeee mine". Heart melt.

How precious are these little ones to God.

She looks up at me, her little jaw slightly quivering. One big sibling has been asking about marriage and leaving home (he's six) and wondering how God will tell him who to marry. She is four with whispy pigtails sprouting from the sides of her head and bravely looks at me, tentatively asking and telling at the same time, "I'm gonna stay with you and Papa forever, okay?"

How precious are these little ones to God.

God help me to love them the best I can. Draw their little hearts to You. I am so undeserving of these beautiful six children. Your goodness to me in filling our home overwhelms my heart.

She sleeps

I think God knew I needed a good sleeper this round. I mean, reeeaally knew. And she is. She pulled 11-4 stretches at three weeks. At three months, she snoozles till 6, wakes, nurses and cuddles back up for some more shut eye.

My boys couldn't do this at a year.
I can't get enough of watching her sleep, the facial expressions, the lopsided dreamy smiles...

Her Papa made her a beautiful hammock, which sways and gently bounces.

Someone found her awake and sat down for a visit while I hung laundry on the rack by the woodstove.

I heard a little song begin.

"You're so sweet, I'm so sweet too. God loves me, God loves you. Sweet, sweet Addie, sweet, sweet, Addie...."

in the highest, sweetest voice one can imagine.

Blessed this morning by my two littlest girls.

The Cedar Chest

Cedar chest open before me.

Sunlight falling through iced windows.
Piles of unfolded sweaters strewn inside. I sort and fold.

To donate, to keep, to refurbish.

Underneath the sweaters lie sentimental treasures.

Soft with age.Annaliese passes in the hall with a math lesson and runs to call the other kids.

She's been asking to go through here for a long time.

We take them out; examine the fine stitches done sixty years ago by once nimble fingers eagerly awaiting the hold of a firstborn child. My father's baby blanket.

The varies colors of wool remnants, like Joseph's coat of many colors, unfolds thick and warm. Our kid's great grandmother pulled her boys, wrapped in this, across the snow in a runner sled. The black and white photo lies in a drawer.

An age old quilt in blues, reds, greens on a white background. Stitched by the grandmother of my grandmother.




Underneath it all, satin.

Just pretty fabric that will perish with age.

But representing so much more.

Love, faith, commitment, promises. Covenant.

Considering Homeschooling Part the Fourth

What We Use.

Every spring I begin thinking forward to the coming school year. Usually we are done with formal lessons, formal being said very loosely, around May. The weather is warming, the days are longer and none of us have any desire to be indoors more than we have to. Evaluating what worked and what didn't work so well as I had hoped is a part of looking forward. Mostly I try to tie the kids learning into real life but we use books too. Our favorite books for learning change every year, here are some of the ones that have been working really well for us this year.

Saxon 5/4 - Andrew is using this for his math this year. I had shied away from it for a long time because of it's enormous size. I have had to remind myself that one of the perks of homeschooling is you can do as much or as little as is needed to learn a math lesson, or any other lesson for that matter.



Rod and Staff Spelling 5 - we use this for Annaliese and I'm very happy with it. She is a voracious reader so I don't worry too much about her spelling.

Rod and Staff Time to Plant - this reader and accompanying workbook are great. While Annaliese likes to read a lot, these help her slow down, think about the deeper meanings, comparisons, analogies and such that she might quickly pass over.

A Reason for Handwriting D - We have lefties. Four so far. And for whatever reason, several of our kids need some purposeful handwriting practice. This is one great book for that. Another is:

Draw, Write, Now - all of our kids love these.

Rod and Staff Stories About God's People. At the beginning of the year I determined that Andrew and I would work through these short chapter stories and the accompanying workbook one sentence and one paragraph at a time. At that time he could read the sort of "fat cat sat on a hat" stories. Five months later we've worked halfway or so through the book and I think I could just skip him ahead to grade 3 now if I wanted to. I have loved how everything with Rod and Staff is tied together and it presents the same material from different views. We'll keep reading through this level 2 book for now, since Andrew loves, loves the Bible stories.



For history this year we've been using A child's Geography for a guide and for science we've been loosely using Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day and we are enjoying both.
Four year old Eleanora is working through the Rod and Staff kindergarten books, which include a lot of tracing, coloring, cutting and gluing. She loves having her own "school" books. Other than these I've mentioned, we use a few other workbooks but mostly we order stacks of books from the library.

Twelve Below

Twelve below...that's what the temperature is in Fahrenheit tonight. It was zero, wind howling, when I did the children's poultry chores for them tonight, thankful that they (poultry, not kids) are tucked in with lots of straw. You bet I said a "please don't freeze" prayer over them as my numb fingers fumbled to pour them water, empty the kitchen scraps for their culinary delight and tuck them in safe for the night.

Thanksgiving, the turkey by that name who has obviously outlived her destiny, came over for a petting. The children are convinced he or she is part cat, as she rubs against their legs and loves to come visiting in nicer weather. We were anticipating turkeys as being cantankerous, but not Thanksgiving. Maybe that's why she is still alive. She even lets the smaller birds snuggle under her wings. Sean has mentioned wishing she were meaner.

Once inside, eye glasses fogged, ears aching with cold, I plunged by cold fingers under the warm faucet water and slurped down a cup of hot Earl Gray to push the chill from my bones. Sean and I warmed up the kitchen by making four apple pies while the older two kids took turns entertaining Addie and the younger three entertained and antagonized each other over toy trains. We ate a pie and a half after dinner and the rest will be breakfast tomorrow along with kefir smoothies.
Later, Sean lit our Aladdin lamp in the living room, kids layered on pajamas and soaked in the wood stove warmth before piling into beds loaded with blankets, sleeping bags and quilts.
Wherever you are tonight, I hope it's warmer than twelve below.
Blessings,
Hannah

The Sort of Conversations we have around here:

Considering Homeschooling part 3

Higher Learning

As I've mentioned, learning at home gives children the fantastic opportunity to learn at their own pace and pursue their own interests. Now, every state is different, but one question that often comes up is what about college or what about subjects that we, as parents, are incapable of teaching.



To give some honest background, I never went to college. I graduated 5th in my class and went to a trade school to become a nurse while I was still in high school. When we were first married, the option to go to college was there but I knew I wanted to be a full time mama someday. It didn't make sense to me to pursue more college debt for a degree I wouldn't use. As for Sean, he has his associates degree. By God's provision and blessing he is able to make more moola-moola than many college graduates being self-employed and he has no student loans. But let me back up a little. Even when Sean did work for other companies in the field of computer programming, they were more concerned about his experience and what he knew, than they were about a degree. I share all this to say that while college is beneficial in some instances, it is not a cookie cutter solution to life. Obviously none of us want a doctor poking at us who hasn't been educated. Both Sean and I love learning and it is fair to say each of us is always studying on one topic or another, but a college education will not be the determining factor for us in whether our kids have"made it" in life. If that is where God leads them, then we will be all for it.



So...about college. In NY there are different options for getting into college after being home schooled. Granted, we've only made it into 5th grade with our students, so I am in no way an expert on the subject. We know many home school graduates who are in college and their professors love them because they are self motivated.



In our marriage, God has given Sean the math brain. That is not my gifting and so once the kids surpass my math wisdom, I will pass them on to Sean. I can't think of any other subject that we cannot teach off hand. We study German together as a family so that will take care of their language requirement when they are older. If parents do not know a foreign language they can learn along with their children or use a tutor or video class. Higher sciences that require a lab we can order supplies for. Also, know that there are a lot of different resources available for high school classes that include video classes or online classes, for parents who need or would like to have help in teaching. You can actually get entire video curriculum that self grade and do just about everything for the parent.



I am also excited about pursuing outside resources for our children as they age. Andrew has expressed an interest in flying lessons, Aiden in farming, and Annaliese in midwifery. In NY a kiddo can have a junior pilot's license at age 14 (crazy, no?) and how great would it be to drop Aiden off at a local farm for a few hours a week to work along and learn farming? If Annaliese decides to pursue midwifery, there are midwives she could shadow and nursing classes she can take.



Our hope is to give our kids a fuller and rounder education than they could receive in a classroom of twenty of their peers.

The Quotable Chesterton

I had honestly never read anything by Chesterton and just vaguely knew who he was when I was sent a new book, The Quotable Chesterton: The Whit and Wisdom of G.K. Chesterton containing some of his more famous quotes to review.
The quotes are nicely organized by topic and I suppose any fan of Chesterton would love to have this quick reference.
Reading his thoughts on life, God, religion, famous people of his day and all other manner of daily life has encouraged me to pick up more of his writings as the man clearly had some God gifted wisdom and wit.

I was sent this book by Thomas Nelson Publishers to review. It's freeness did not influence the above review.

Why Choose Homeschooling - part 2

Academic Reasoning

A few years ago I read a fantastic book on education titled A Thomas Jefferson Education. This book and Every Child has a Thinking Style are two books I recommend to any parent when considering their children's education. Neither are pro-homeschooling or pro-public education and so not likely to offend.

Our children are unique and wonderful and blessedly different from each other. We have a child who is brilliant at math but just learned to read at age eight, a four year old who uses big words and explains complex thoughts to us, a ten year old who devours books and reads at a college level, a six year old who likes to correct the textbooks.... and those are just some of their intellectual characteristics. Throw in the jumble of diverse personalities and we have really got a mix. This is one reason we teach our children at home.

From experience, we know the challenges our children would have faced in a one-size fits all classroom. This is not an insult on any teacher; this is us knowing our children and their personal bents.

Along with giving our children a Biblical world view, we also want to give them an accurate world view. I won't weigh this down with links, but you can google "how many errors in textbooks" or something to that effect and see that history and science are being taught differently, inaccurately. Politial parties change and influence the content of public school textbooks to fit their agendas. They know what conscious parents know - that children are moldeable and pliable. This is another reason we teach our children at home. We are able to research and use trust-worthy resources.

As I mentioned, each of our children have a natural bent, and as they learn at home, they are allowed the freedom to pursue a subject that interests them and drink of it as long and as deeply as they like. We have a weaponry and arms expert living under our roof. As we read about the Civil War last night, he ran to grab one of his books and show me two pistols that belonged to Abraham Lincoln and explain in detail to me how they worked. Another child is gifted mechanically. He put together a table set for a friend when he was two, takes apart any cast off appliance and shows me how different parts of it work, often reassembling the parts with his knex or legos to make a moving vehicle. Now our kids aren't geniuses and they will, most likely, have regular lives, but they have been given the freedom to love to learn. This is another reason why we let them learn at home.

Why Choose Homeschooling?

Spiritual Reasoning

As Christian parents, there are a few things we needed to consider in raising our children.
One was our responsibility for giving our children a Biblical world view. How would we go about doing this?

Is Sunday school enough?

Is family devotions at breakfast and prayers at bedtime enough?

What does that mean to us as a family?

It means that, as much as possible, every moment and experience, every portion of learning and living, is, as much as possible, is pointing our children to God so that they learn to live life acknowledging and loving His existence. It is our prayer that by learning of Him, that they will decide for themselves to live their lives in relationship with their Creator.

Deuteronomy 6
4 Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah:
5 and thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart;
7 and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
8 And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand, and they shall be for frontlets between thine eyes.
9 And thou shalt write them upon the door-posts of thy house, and upon thy gates.

It did not seem reasonable to us, that if we let our children soak in a secular world view for eight hours a day, the few hours we would be able to spend with them in the evening and on the weekends would effectively counteract a world view contrary to God's Word. We would be telling our kids to respect and listen to their teachers at public school and then have to contradict at home some of what those teachers would be teaching. Talk about sending mixed messages.


Private Christian school is not currently an option where we live and when there was one, we opted out because it would have taken another income (literally) to afford it for our large family.

Homeschooling was not a last option that tied our hands, instead it has been a huge blessing to our family and has provided a huge opportunity for witness in the community as we are out and about.

Homeschooling

Annaliese kicks off my intro to homeschooling week over at Happy Homemaking Lessons. I must say, as her mama, it was very interesting to read what she had to say on the subject.
To begin, I gave her a list of questions to answer as she wrote her post and one of them was "what do you like the least about homeschooling". She read the questions out loud to her brother (while bemoaning the need to for complete sentences) and at that one, they both stopped and stared at me like I had two heads. Ahh, to be young and naive and love everything about learning...
(But really, she doesn't like math all that much.)

Chasing Francis

Out of all the books I have ever reviewed, this one, Chasing Francis, by Ian Morgan Cron, is my favorite. I like a challenge and this story challenged me to examine my own faith.

Chasing Francis is a brilliantly done fictional book that explores modern Christianity in an eye-opening, sometimes politely painful way. As the main character of this story, a pastor of a large influential church, takes a forced pilgrimage learning about the faith of St. Francis of Assisi, I was drawn into my own pilgrimage of examining my faith. This is not a Catholic book and its not a Protestant book. Its a book for examining the heart of Christianity.

Cron dwells more on the how-to's of true Christianity more than the gospel message but I believe this is because he wrote the book for folks, like myself, who already identify themselves as Christians.

The book is loaded with stunning quotes to mull over and I'll share a few of my favorites with you:

• "I shop, therefore I am"
• "You'll never be able to speak into their souls unless you speak the truth about your own wounds. You need to tell them what our Lord has come to mean to you in the midst of your disappointments and losses. All ministry begins at the ragged edges of our own pain..."
• " we want "worship centers" where homeyness is more important than holiness"
• " (the) usual approach is to read the Bible, try to understand what it's saying, then apply it. Your (St. Francis's) formula was the reverse. You applied the Bible and then came to a fresh understanding of what it actually meant. What a concept"
• "there is a law in physics that applies to the soul. No two objects can occupy the same space at the same time; one thing must displace the other. If your hearts crammed full of material things and a thirst for wealth, there's no space left for God."

and, finally, one last quote:

• "We (the USA) represent only 6% of the world's population, yet we consume 40% of its resources. We're demonically possessed by materialism and hyper consumption. Unfortunately, Christians are as caught up in the system as everyone else... We say we don't believe it, but our lives betray us... Our next door neighbors must look at us and think, You Christians say you're citizens of a different kingdom, yet you're just as consumed by malls, money, cars, clothes, vacations and homes as we are. What's the deal? Why should anyone take our gospel seriously as long as we continue to serve two masters? A faith that doesn't speak out against the sick assumptions of its culture is really no faith at all - its just religion..."

I received this book free from NavPress Publishers as part of their Blogger Review Program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

Heart of the Matter

Talking about depression and the beauty found in the valley over at Heart of the Matter today. Why don't you come join the discussion?
Blessings,
Hannah

Boo-boo

Sweet fellow of mine flew off his sled and landed nose first into his sister's sled while sledding at great grandma and grandpa's Sunday afternoon. We're thankful nothing's broken and new skin will grow on his sweet swollen nose.

Making Tallow

I used the fat from the cow Sean butchered to make tallow. At first it was a joke, but then I wanted to see how it was done and what it was like and I'm so glad I did. I used this tutorial and found the horrible smell I had read about was no worse than the smell of fat hitting the coals when cooking burgers on the grill. Once finished and strained, the meaty smell is gone. I chopped ours and put it in the freezer for later use. Hopefully soap making will follow soon.

Quiet

A pot of speckled cranberry beans simmering on the wood stove, I push another log in, an attempt to coax up the digits indoors. Meanwhile our oldest are busy chatting and bundling in layers, piling on hats and scarves and thick gloves to head outdoors to play. Babies and toddlers down for their nap, the door closes with a thud as the three push out into the snow. Then...silence. The house sighs and quiets.

It is just me and the quiet here now. Quiet has it's own voice and now it begins a throaty, solemn melody, humming along with the blower fan for the wood stove and harmonizing with the whistle of the tea kettle. A cup of energizing black tea should be just the thing.

I slip my pink granny slippers on and shuffle towards the stove.

Phone rings and I listen to Sean tell me how many hours till he's home.

Home. It is more home than ever when he returns.

I soak in the quiet, knowing it is brief and like a breath will soon have passed through.

A rustling from the cradle upstairs, a small little grunt, a last quick slurp of my tea before setting the cup in the sink.

Quiet waves goodbye and floats away with the chimney smoke.

I am glad to see her off.

More butchering

Sean and Andrew have been busy cutting steaks. Andrew has been keeping my big canning pot full of fat and loves working alongside his papa.