re: weddings and babies

To:Julia Charlotte,

I am so busy these days! It feels like so many of the people I know from church are having babies or getting married. So this usually means lots of details for the church community of women to attend to.

Napkin batiking, blessings, showers etc.,helping to coordinate wedding receptions. Busy times! Lee and I both have bachelor/bachelorette get-togethers tonight. Thankfully my mom is in town.

Plus I am weaning my "baby" this week. Cold turkey. Busy times!

Pilgrimama

re:skillet granola

To: Julia Charlotte,

breakfast

Skillet granola and mulberries,banana slices and strawberries.

Plain yogurt. Yum!

Pilgrimama

re:sickeningly sweet cat post

To:Julia Charlotte,

Sorry for the sweet cat pics-I am mostly not responsible for these sweet pics.

Can you tell my sweet ones are really into this cat?

Pilgrimama

re: a cat!

To Julia Charlotte:

You may or may not want to see pictures of our little cat darling.That's ok, but humor us please! This little tomcat is large part of our children's day, especially Chelsea's.

Poor cat is put to bed in a doll cradle and carried around like a baby.

I have stopped her from kissing him on the lips though by telling her about parasites. Yecch!

He is the house cat and lives on two floors. This means that I can send him downstairs when I get sick of him. Awesome!

Pilgrimama

re: education outside the box

To Julia Charlotte,
I've been thinking today that perhaps one of the bigger challenges to the American family and community is the ability to use transportation to go here,there and everywhere, thereby leading us to participate in a pace of life that is not truly sustainable or healthful for a strong family and church/community life.
Supposing I had the many greenbacks to afford it I could enroll the children in all manner of enriching classes and proceed to run here and there keeping them and me frightfully busy and supposedly better for all our trouble.
Since I do not have the aforementioned generous supply of greenbacks nor the second vehicle to allow me to do this, I have proceeded to find, within my church and friend community, a far more organic way of training for my brood. One friend teaches them music and singing and we trade him lunch and gifts and on occasion a check. We all like this arrangement. He's young and single and seems to like hanging out with a family sometimes, we like his company and benefit from his talents.
Another friend teaches our boys bicycle repair. (Actually the music teacher also is teaching road biking skills to our children.) The bike repairing friend wants to do a simple version of Boy Scouts with the boys also. A grandmother without many grandchildren teaches Bible stories and crafts. One friend is willing to come do some drama lessons. Art may be in the works too.
And instead of running around to kiddie sport team events, our boys have adult mentors that play pick-up games with them and oftentimes children and adults from households that have extra needs.Our boys play hard and thrive in these unconventional setups and pose the question of the need for many of the somewhat contrived classes and teams that our culture has come to think of as needful and normal. And we do most of this using little gas and travel time for anyone involved. Green and community enriching, no?
Pilgrimama

re: family time!

To :Julia Charlotte:

Lee and I are passing up two birthday parties this weekend. It feels awesome!

Don't get me wrong-we love our friends and we often enjoy gettting to see them and love on them.

But we have a goodsized family of our own and also out of certain neccesities we have long work days around here. So our weekends are precious to us . We have very close family time then and too many events can just wear us out and take the joy out of our time together as we become frazzled!

So here's to happy weekending friends!

We've already worked and played together, a spy board game, basketball and supper in the park etc. We forge such deep bonds just spending time together and loving each other and we are so glad to fill our time with such LOVE!

Pilgrimama

re: around my house these days

To Julia Charlotte,
so we had quite the drought... Our backyard felt it badly it seems. One of the trees lost a lot of leaves, especially in the rainstorm that followed. Doesn't it look like fall to you?

Lee found a set of kid encyclopedia's at a " free sale" recently. I am thankful to have a man who puts up with and encourages my book habit!

Stoneware circles of yellow.

Sweet dreams amongst the book piles.

Painting rocks on a Monday morning with a friend. Wouldn't you like to have rock painting on YOUR Monday morning agenda? So happy to make things like this happen for the children!


Pilgrimama

re: book piles

To: Julia Charlotte:

These are a little portion of my dressertop piles these days........

We had a couple weeks of intense heat and drought set in, now we have rain, rain. Both lend themselves to reading and waiting it out.

Pilgrimama

re: Abba's plans

To: Julia Charlotte,
High temp today about 101 degrees Farenheit.

Something I am learning about Abba Father is this: When I quit fighting His plans for my life and mourning my own messed up plans, when I instead find the beauty, when I look for the bigger blessings that His plans bring and find peace in that, then, oh then is when more of me is cleared away and more of Him is stamped upon my features.

The calm and peace I find in this is amazing.

Now off to put a load of white laundry in the dryer and keep preparing supper food. It's so warm I keep sitting down to rest!

In Him, Pilgrimama

re: the temperature today

To: Julia Charlotte,

Current temp- 100.2 degrees

We live in the upstairs floor with no AC except lots of shade trees and two fans.

I work for a while then go splat on the floor.

I am trying to catch up on my laundry. Blaagh!

Good-bye!

~Pilgrimama

re: the campers are coming home!

To Julia Charlotte,
I'm so excited! My camper boys are almost here after spending 5 days at camp! Their first ever camp experience out roughing it in teepees and doing stuff like canoeing!
I am so happy to have my sweet ones coming home though. So blessed.
Pilgrimama