Twas the Day before Thanksgiving

  This quilt was delivered on Monday. Before you get any ideas, these are orders and I don't think up the color or the design. I just follow orders. Sometimes I am thankful that I can give that disclaimer, but other times I wish I had all those great ideas. The color does not show right on this picture. The sash between the "flying geese" should be a brownish gray...very old looking. The purple and "rust" are true to the real color.

   Fitting gloves on our little girl's hands poses some challenges so this year I drew around her hand and made gloves out of a felted wool sweater that I had picked up at Goodwill. She was delighted to get to use them in the snow today. I was pleased with how well the fabric kept her hands dry considering she was carrying a "pet" snowball around for about 40 minutes.
Yes for the record we had about 3" of wet snow/slush today...too wet for the snow blower to toss off the drive.

Now early to rise and to put the turkey in the oven.

Thankful Post--Comedy at 11:20 PM

Last night Zeke went to a local church with the youth group and then was going on to one of the youth leader's homes for snack afterward. He was traveling on all familiar territory, so I wasn't too worried.   Ben was off in the opposite direction for a meeting.

Around 10:00 I heard someone come home, I had fallen asleep on the girls' floor so I got myself into bed. It crossed my mind that someone came home a little early (In our area 11 PM is curfew for the under 18's)  I usually can tell who came home when they crawl into bed, one of the bed creaks more than the other....hmm I believe it was Ben. Meeting must have been over a bit early.

I dozed off, at 11:20 PM Ben came into our room, "mom where is Zeke?  His car isn't here and his phone is on the desk."
Groan--he must have forgotten his phone...did he get lost?  Did he get confused on those crazy back roads? Did he even have the GPS with him?

Ben:  "I'll text the youth leader's son and ask if Zeke forgot the time."

Dad came up,  " Andrew says Zeke's brakes gave out on his car, Tim took him home a while ago."

A few moments later   "umm Zeke is sleeping in his bed."

In the morning...."yeah I sent you a text, wasn't sure if I should call at that time of the night, nothing you could do anyway."   Dad had heard the text notification, but "couldn't figure out your phone."(it is a strange phone)

Thankfully the brakes gave out just as he parked at the church and the afterward was close by so he decided to take it easy and go there. After church today dad and Zeke went to check it out...looks like the squirrels struck again, the brake line had a hole in it.

Squirrels= fuel pump twice and brake line once

We relocated about five of them, but there must have been one still waiting out there.


I also wanted to post something Zeke read at our  Thanksgiving themed mid-week church:   

Today in America we have so many things to be thankful for, but because we have so much, we take a lot of those things for granted.

 We just start thinking of them as things that we deserve, and lose the thankfulness that we should have for them. 

We are extremely blessed to live in a country that allows Christians to worship freely, but we get used to it and take it for granted. We forget that this freedom of religion is not allowed in many other countries, and Christians in other countries are risking their lives to serve God. 

We must not forget what a blessing that this is.

 We have no fear of being sent to jail for what we believe. But instead of being thankful for the persecution that we have been spared, we end up complaining about how bad the government is. The government is changing and becoming more secular, but we still have much more freedom than many other countries around us.

 Another thing that I am thankful for is the Christian heritage we have. Our traditions and our Mennonite culture are not things to forget about and I am thankful for them because many other people just don't have that type of positive culture around them. I am thankful for my parents who brought me up to love and serve God and taught me to know what I believe. 

I'm thankful for my siblings who make life interesting. I don't know if I would be able to concentrate on anything without noise in the background.

 God has also blessed us all with so many possessions. None of us are at risk of going hungry or without a house to live in. In America, we have some of the best living conditions in the world and other resources that many other people just don't have.

 I am thankful for the time that we live in where we can travel almost anywhere in the world within 24 hours, and we can communicate with other people who are thousands of miles away.

 God has blessed us so much with our possessions and our resources but we forget about them and start complaining that we don't have a new phone or a nicer car or a bigger house or whatever. Lets remember what we have and stop worrying about we don't have. 

We have a day for thanksgiving, and then the day after, we have black Friday, a day not of being content with what we have but a day to go out and buy things that we do not need.

 Thanksgiving is a good time for us to remember all of the things we have, but we should not limit it to one day; we need to remember to be thankful during the whole year.

Winner!

She was one of the e-mail commenters.
I always have trouble figuring out how to leave comments on your blog, so I’m choosing to enter your book giveaway this way. I had a nice juicy and interesting note all written up and then it disappeared in my publishing efforts, so I’ll try to recreate it here! I thought it would be easier to come clean your bathroom (if I didn’t live in Massachusetts) but since that’s not an option, let me try to think of two things you don’t know about me. One, I’m a homeschooling mom of two. So my family is about as different from yours as can be, but I so much enjoy reading about you all. And two, I love to read! What a surprise, right? But you didn’t say it had to be anything earth-shaking – so that’s my two bits. Have fun with the giveaway!

It was a lot of fun hearing from the 31 people. Some live in far away places, found a snake in her bed, have lots of snow already,eves-dropped on the Amish ministers. Some were adoptive mamas, some just found my blog through Dorcas' blog.

 For the rest of you that didn't win, you can enter in one of the other drawings, look at the schedule here  OR


Footprints on the Ceiling is available for $15 per book, postage included.  You can mail a check to Dorcas Smucker, 31148 Substation Drive, Harrisburg, OR 97446.  US addresses only.  To send a copy to Canada or overseas, email Dorcas at dorcassmucker@gmail.com.  

Or
 at Amazon  here

You can also keep up with Dorcas' writings here:www.dorcassmucker.blogspot.com

Book Giveaway!

The time has come!  I'm a little slow today. I had a load of wet bedding and a late night last night to blame for that!  But I'm now fueled by coffee, steel cut oats and peaches and should be able to write a book report in short order.

Two years ago, I had the privilege to review Tea and Trouble Brewing.  When I saw that Dorcas Smucker had published another book and was asking for bloggers to review, promote, and give away a copy of her newest book I made sure I volunteered for the job.
Starting November 10 and continuing through the 29th there will be a blog post somewhere in blogger-land promoting this book and offering a  free copy to one lucky reader. If you want the complete list go here and you can follow along.

I confess that I have not read the entire book yet, but am over half way through and can tell you that you will enjoy these short stories.  Read why the book is titled Footprints on the Ceiling (not The Foot Book as Shekinah insists on calling it) in the introduction. Read her grandmother's pronouncement of unfaschtandich  on "those Japanese beetles" in "Grandma and the Media"  Read their adventures in Thailand in the section on Steps on Faraway Soil, the fun of in-laws in  "The Right Way to Tell a Story", and the sorrow of sorting through your elderly parents belongings and making hard decisions.

Yes, she sprinkles Dutch words throughout the book bringing nostalgia. If you didn't grow up hearing Dutch, she inserts the English translation in a way that does not seem clumsy.

 I can't resist the Mennonite joke -- "How many Mennonites does it take to change a light bulb?"

There are two answers to this one, I'll only give you my favorite, you have to find the other answer in the book.

Answer:  Eight. One to change the light bulb and seven to bring the food.

I guess I like her stories so much because I can identify with her in so many ways, she is about my age, she loves the Frances books, quotes Dr. Suess and couldn't part with her shelves full of books.  (Dorcas, don't get rid of those kids books, grandchildren will eventually bless your life too and they will need to hear those classics). She has adopted (only once, but...), she has a son Ben that likes to sing, and she lives close to Harrisburg.  Only her Harrisburg is in Oregon and mine is in Pennsylvania.

So gather your tissues and a cup (or a pot) of tea and settle in to read the new book.

Oh! I need to tell you how to enter the drawing.....

I think I will need to make you work for it a little....

Come and clean a bathroom.....

No, I'm pretty sure there is a rule against that....

Ummm....

You will need to comment with:

 two things that I don't know about you

and some way to contact you if you win the drawing.

You can comment on my blog,  on  Facebook, or at  raychris@dejazzd.com


I will do the drawing Sunday evening and post the winner then, that should give the busy mommy's time to read blogs and catch up on Facebook while the littles have their afternoon naps.

You can order a book if you don't win this drawing, details for that after Sunday night.

Stay Tuned....Book Giveaway! Details tomorrow.

No it isn't about the "Foot Book" as Shekinah calls this book. 

It's the new Dorcas Smucker book.

Tomorrow I'll post the details on how to win a free copy.

Love these things! Brings all the "lurkers" out of the woodwork.

Musings # 25 ( I have no idea)

       So can you get PTSD from you daughter's science project? I thought I might flip this weekend,but I told myself to be a big girl.

 Thursday evening a certain someone told me "Mom, we need to get the bird project done!" So sorry kiddo, but I had no memory of signing up for a bird project . I saw the paper with the instructions then and supposedly I had 2 weeks to do it! But, it was due Monday. 

 I had a project that I needed to finish namely, a quilt to get assembled so that a certain bill could be paid.  I told her that she needed to pick the kind of backyard bird that she wanted to study and then she could look in her science book and draw it. 

PANIC! the child really could not produce anything that resembled a bird. I figured she wasn't trying, but printing a picture from the internet was not an option....the instructions said so!  She tried again...and again. I finally went online for step by step instructions. DELIGHT! yes she did it!  Then we needed habitat, food, nest size and type, egg size and color and description of the song.

Found out I never taught her to draw a pine tree!  Finally the holes were punched on the papers...never mind the holes went right through some of the words.  

      Pre-planning isn't a strong point.  

The yarn was knotted on the hanger.

The hanger looked pretty hanging at the window, but daddy noted that the moisture from the window might not be good for the paper....so he nicely moved it to a different spot and twisted the hook a little so it would stay hanging......

and broke the hanger!

Thankfully it happened to my easy-going child, she said it is OK if we just tape another hanger over the first one so she doesn't have to re-tie the yarn knots. Miss Martin....that is why she has two hangers.

I did get the quilt done

                                         

 Today Miss Shekinah had a friend over. I almost thought we were gonna give the poor child trauma.

Something set Shekinah off and she screamed for an hour (yes I timed it) as soon as we got home.

I'm pretty sure there was some jealousy involved because every time I talked to her little friend she screamed louder...cleaned off hooks...flung toys across the room and kicked everything in her way.

Suddenly something flipped a switch and she settled and ate her peanut butter cracker and drank her milk.

Her little friend looked at her side wise and said, "you happy now?"

As you can see they played nicely

Bedtime was a bit of a challenge,but by 7:40 the three youngest were sleeping.

Shekinah told me she NEVER wants someone else to sleep in her bed again and she DOES NOT want to sleep on the floor. She kicked the wall a few times for emphasis. I finally leaned in close to her and hissed nicely suggested"Be quiet! you are keeping her awake and I'm getting angry! GO to sleep!"  Then I lay down on my pillow at her side and read the rest of my book.  And she went to sleep ...the end