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Showing posts from July, 2011

Keep Holy the Sabbath

Exodus 20: 9-11 Six days you may labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD, your God. No work may be done then either by you, or your son or daughter, or your male or female slave, or your beast, or by the alien who lives with you.    In six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the LORD has blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. I’m embarrassed to say that I do not keep holy the Sabbath.   My family and I are often guilty of working on Sunday.   My goal in writing this is to help myself be more accountable.   If I’m writing about something, I need to be living it.   So, if I write about keeping holy the Sabbath, I will be more inclined to do it myself. Eventually, I would like to have a Sunday tradition of having a nice family dinner every week.   I would also like to spend Sunday’s doing some fun, engaging activity with the kids.   Knowing myself, I jump in wi

Simple Saturdays

Do you know where the term Christmas in July came from?   A search of the internet shows many different answers.   The one that I prefer is from one of my favorite books, by one of my favorite authors,   Mrs. Sharps Traditions by Sarah Ban Breathnach .   In the book she explains that frugal Victorian families would make their Christmas presents.   They would start the list in mid-June and be finishing them by the end of the summer.   In addition, she also gives wonderful suggestions for gifts such as dried potpourri or dried-flower bouquets gathered from your summer garden (I currently don’t have a garden of any type, that’s one of those projects I would like to do!).    If you’re taking a vacation at the seashore she suggests making seashell picture frames.   Or, if you’d like to have fun in the kitchen with your kids, she suggests making things like spiced tea bags, nine-bean soup mixes or preserves.   She also suggests that celebrating Christmas in July, allows for plenty of time

He Died.

{I apologize for the length of this post.   I had intended for posts on Sunday to be short and sweet and to the point about the Lord’s Day, keeping Holy the Sabbath, resting, relaxing, rejuvenating, meditating and prayer.   However, something happened yesterday that changed today’s post.} From Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium Mr. Edward Magorium : [to Molly, about dying] When King Lear dies in Act V, do you know what Shakespeare has written? He's written "He dies." That's all, nothing more. No fanfare, no metaphor, no brilliant final words. The culmination of the most influential work of dramatic literature is "He dies." It takes Shakespeare, a genius, to come up with "He dies." And yet every time I read those two words, I find myself overwhelmed with dysphoria. And I know it's only natural to be sad, but not because of the words "He dies." but because of the life we saw prior to the words. [pause, walks over to Molly]

Simple Saturdays

Were Saturdays of the past lazy?   To be honest I’m not sure if they were, I’m sure if you lived on a farm there was lots of work and before labor laws people probably worked all the time.   Maybe in the 50’s?   I don’t know, what I do know is I would like my Saturdays to be maybe not lazier but more enjoyable. My house always looks like a bomb has gone off in it.   One of my favorite quotes is “Cleaning the house while the children are growing is like shoveling snow while it's still snowing.” - Erma Bombeck.   I would like to get my house to a maintenance mode, so that on Saturday morning my family and I could do a Weekly Home Blessing Hour and then have the rest of the day to do projects that we really want to, or something that must be done, or just have a lazy or fun day. If you’re like me and are working toward that goal, a simple search of the internet will bring up lots and lots of ways to declutter, deep clean and get to that point.   Here are a few of my favorites, Fly

From the Cobwebbed Corners of My Mind.

This post has nothing to do with faith, family or homeschooling it’s just something that I’ve been contemplating for awhile so I thought I would write about it. Have you noticed in the past few years how Human Directionals (I just learned that that is the official name for people standing on the corner holding signs.) have popped up on just about every major street corner?   I do not get this at all!   I thought sandwich boards and human billboards were a thing of the past.   When seeing one of these Human Directionals, the first thought I have is why would anyone want to stand in 90+ degree Florida weather and hold, twirl and throw an advertising sign?   Then I think well maybe it’s the only job they could get.   I wonder how much they get paid to do that.   How much money would it take for me to be willing to stand in the Florida heat and do that job?   I think I would have to be pretty desperate, honestly I think I would rather scrub toilets in air conditioning than hold a sign a

To Blog or Not to Blog that is the Question!

(Disclaimer ~ This first post is a bit lengthy for history purposes.   I do not plan, nor do I have the time to post long posts in the future.) I come from a family of fairly technically savvy people.   Growing up my family had several computers in the house, long before most families had a home computer.   We also usually had the latest gaming systems.   I’m dating myself but I’m pretty sure we had the first Atari gaming system.   My brother is basically self taught and has managed to make a lucrative career from his humble beginnings of playing hours of computer games, always upgrading his system by pilfering and plundering my father’s usually better computer.   I married a mechanical engineer turned IT guy.   At one point he had his own software company and he is now a Senior IT Director for a major corporation.   I was on the internet and e-mail well before people knew what the internet was and AOL was about the only e-mail system around (wish I’d bought that stock!).   I have don