christy nockels concert

 Christy Nockels so sweetly spending time with my Lily

I'm a crazy mom. Crazy! We have VBS at church this week, which means early mornings and long days. So instead of tucking my kids into bed early, what do I do? I drive 2 hours north to a Christy Nockels concert and get home 3 hours past their bedtime. Was it worth it? YES!

We had such a wonderful evening. We got there early and were able to find seats in the front row! The only negative was that Phil had to work and miss the concert. The kids were excited to go, too, but Lily has been floating around and checking our calendar every day since I told her we were going. In recent months, she's come down to breakfast with handmade name tags taped to her shirts, saying things like, "Today I'm Christy Nockels" or "Today I'm JJ Heller."

Music is so powerful! One memory after another came flooding back to me as Christy sang her songs tonight--all revealing times where God has graciously pulled us through things like Phil's accident, med school, moving, losing a job, needing to sell a house that we worked so hard on. I never realized how much a part of my life her music has been. It was like listening to a soundtrack of my life.

After the concert, we went out to the lobby to see if she would sign the CD that we brought from home, but they didn't think she was planning on coming back out. Just as we were getting ready to leave, her husband, Nathan, approached us and said, "I saw you kids up there in the front row tonight worshiping along with us." And they were. They knew so many of the songs and sang right along. It was precious. We asked if Christy was coming back out, but he said no, because their kids were with them and they had a long drive to the airport. He motioned to us to follow him as he led us backstage and we got to meet Christy (we were the only ones)! She was so sweet to my Lily. She got down on her knees, gave Lily a hug and asked her questions like, "Do you like to sing, too?" She signed our CD, and then asked if Lily wanted a picture. My camera battery was dead (of course!), so she called over to their tech guy who took out his phone, took this picture and then emailed it to me. We felt so spoiled. I've never seen a happier little girl!

around the world in 60 days

Do you get Focus on the Family's Thriving Family magazine? I was so excited to see what was in their summer issue! Beginning June 2, you and your family can travel Around the World in 60 Days! Click here to download this colorful map, passports, stamps, itinerary and devotional guide.

Each week you'll visit a different region of the world and learn about a few of the countries in that region. There are Bible verses, things to pray for, crafts, activities, and sometimes recipes included in the daily entries.

 I hope you do this, too! It looks like so much fun. Happy travels!

life {the newly-condensed version}

Yes, this is an ocean and we still live in Minnesota.  :)

After being landlocked and covered in snow since January, we decided to take our spring break in sunny Orlando, Florida. Apparently this has been an atypical, long winter for Minnesota. We had snow fall even up to a week and a half ago.

We had a wonderful time together. Even though our days were long with lots of walking in the heat and humidity (to which we were NOT acclimated), the kids did great. They were real troopers and such a joy! One of the highlights of our trip was staying with Phil's cousin and family for a few days.

So here's a run-down of our lives these past two months...

Fun at Epcot!

 Kilimanjaro Safari in Disney's Animal Kingdom

 Disney World

 Disney's Hollywood Studios

Kennedy Space Center

We went on a few field trips with the homeschool group from our church and visited an old village where the kids attended 2 hours of school in an old schoolhouse.

Another field trip included digging for fossils near the banks of the Mississippi River. We found lots of coral, seashells and trilobites. Imagine--right here in the Midwest. Evidence of a world-wide flood!

Our first Minnesota Twins game and the kids' first baseball game. We had such a great time! The boys probably enjoyed it a bit more. The game was super long and the girls kept getting distracted by all of the vendors about half-way through.

And last, but not least, today was race day for the kids! Our city hosts a "Marathon" for kids by having them keep track of 25 miles of running, biking or walking for 2 months, and then running the final 1.2 miles on race day. Unfortunately, it POURED rain this morning. And I believe this is an understatement. It was loud and torrential. About 30 minutes after we arrived, the race was canceled, due to lightning. So we went to Super Target instead and did our final 1.2.

sweetness all around

Lots of sweet stuff going on around here. I  just LOVE this. Lily redecorated one of her little boxes. Look what I found inside...

When I asked her about it, she said, "He's my treasure." I could hardly stand it!

And here's a little song that she wrote yesterday called, "Hug Jesus." Talk about melting a mama's heart.

One of the things I love about my kids is that they truly are one another's best friends. I love to catch them snuggling on the couch. Caleb is such a good big brother.

 "Brother and Sister" 

Brother is happy with his toy airplanes; sister is happy with her purse and her lipstick (?)

Preparing our hearts this year for Easter has been so special. Each year, I watch my kids grow in their understanding of how and why Jesus came to rescue us. Sometimes I think they "get it" more than I do and it overwhelms me.

And to add to the sweetness around here, we made Easter shortbread to share with new friends. I had to make a double batch, because I knew that my request of, "Please don't eat any. They're for tomorrow," would never fly with Phil. In order to do this, I had 6 sticks of butter out on the kitchen counter tonight. SIX! This should be illegal.

But it's so worth it! It's my favorite shortbread recipe, hands down. Tomorrow we'll dip them in chocolate. I promised Lily I would wait for her. :)

waiting for spring

from the archives...life in oregon

Lately I've been so lonely for our animals and have wished that I could slip my boots on and go hang out in the field with them. It's partly spring fever.

I know deep down in my heart that spring will be here before I know it. It just doesn't feel like it. As I drive around these parts, I love seeing the vast prairies covered in snow and dotted with an occasional silo on the horizon. It's so peaceful. But as the snow begins to melt here in Minnesota, what lies beneath is the shabbiest bit of landscape I have ever seen. Sorry to offend, Midwesterners. I was told that your spring is breathtakingly gorgeous, because everything here dies in the winter. And so I wait in anticipation to see your spring give birth to life and color all around me.

pursued

Last weekend I had the privilege of attending the Set Apart Conference in St. Paul, MN, where Ann Voskamp was one of the keynote speakers. One of my dear friends from Spokane flew out here for the occasion with her so-beyond-cute 7 month old baby girl.

Were we ever blessed! Ann's sessions were filled to the brim with truth and encouragement. I could go on and on, but here's one thing I've been chewing on this past week...

She introduced me to the Hebrew word radaph. It means "to pursue, to chase, to attend closely upon."

It's the word David uses in Psalm 23:6 when he writes, "Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow [radaph] me all the days of my life." The first time this word appears in Scripture is in Genesis 14 when Abram heard that his nephew, Lot, had been captured. He wasted no time. He was up and after that nephew of his lickedy-split!

I had always imagined God's goodness and mercy following me around in a sort of "Don't worry, I'm right here. I've got your back" kind of way. But it's a little more intense than that. He pursues me with goodness and mercy.

Ever since we've had sheep, passages like this in Scripture have really come alive to me. I get this whole pursuing thing. One day last spring, my sweet Caleb went out to the field to check on his sheep. He came running back to the house in tears, because a few of his sheep had gotten out and were running up the road alongside the irrigation ditch. We managed to get them back into the field--all except for our ram. Oh, this ram! He and I became good friends that day.

I took off and ran after him. I didn't follow him, by any means. No, I took off in hot pursuit for this guy.

{Radaph}

He ran and ran and turned at the bend in the road. When he heard the other sheep bleating in the distance, he tried to get to them by lunging forward and jumping into a ditch full of blackberry brambles. Down he went, disappearing into the brambles. I ran back to the house to put on a long-sleeved shirt and my rubber boots. I looked all over the garage for gardening shears, but all I could find was a small pair of wire cutters. I know. I know. But it was all I could find.

I spent about an hour and a half down in that ditch in an effort to cut my way through to him. He was scared, I could tell. He kept lunging forward, moving deeper and deeper into the blackberries. I found myself saying to him in frustration, "Just be STILL!" Then I had one of those light bulb moments.

Just be still.

I had lots of time down in that ditch to think about this, trust me. You know, all the times God says to me, "Just be still," and I'm not. And then I lunge forward because things are taking too long, or because I get scared. But I love that He still pursues me. He lunges forward, too, right after me. He doesn't have a sorry pair of wire cutters, either. He pursues me with goodness and mercy.

Oh, and the timing of it all! Not by coincidence, I was 2 days away from Good Friday. Two days away from Passover, and here I was in the thicket with this ram of ours. A sobering reminder of the ram God provided for Abraham in Isaac's place and the reality that Jesus, the Lamb of God, was sacrificed in my place. I was speechless. I've been wanting to write this down for about a year now, but it was all too deep for me. Not until I heard Ann speak this weekend did my thoughts start to form words.

As Easter approaches, it's all I can think about--our ram in the thicket and this beautiful picture of being pursued by my Good Shepherd.

grandma

My Grandpa and Grandma in Downtown San Francisco, walking home just after they had sold their car to buy things they needed.

She loved Patsy Cline, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra and Joe Montana.
She loved living in San Francisco.
She loved dancing with my Grandpa in her kitchen.
She's my Grandma and she passed away late Saturday night.

After I got the call, all I could do was lay in my bed, clutch the phone and stare off into the darkness.
I couldn't cry. Not until my little sister called me at 2:00 a.m.
Then I felt a few tears run down the side of my face.

I'm not quite sure how to grieve yet, because I am truly happy for her.
She was in so much pain, hardly being able to breathe.
My Grandpa died almost 5 years ago and she's been so lonely for him.
They were married for 60 years. Sixty years!
I know she trusted Christ as her Savior, so to imagine her with Jesus, not in pain and with the love of her life makes me truly happy.

My Grandma was Italian and she made the best mostaccioli.
The first year Phil and I were married, she hosted Thanksgiving.
We had the usual antipasto--olives, salami, pepperocini, cheese and foccacia bread--then came the salad, and then Grandma's mostaccioli.
Phil ate and ate and ate. I don't blame him-- it's good stuff!
But then out came the turkey and all the fixings.
I'll never forget the look he gave me, as if to say, "What?!"

"Didn't we just eat dinner?" he asked.
"No." I said.
"Then what did we just eat?"
"Um, that was the pasta. We're Italian, remember?"

Pasta with every meal. Pasta with every meal.

So tonight I made mostaccioli for my little family.
I thought about Grandma as I boiled my noodles and stirred the sauce.

I also thought about the wooden plaque she hung above her stove in every house she lived.
In fancy blue letters it said, "There's no Sauce in the World like Hunger." 
Yes, and there's no pasta in the world like Grandma's.

social injustice

I've had a little fire lit under me recently. It's a little spark, but the more I think on it, the more passionate I become about it. It's the whole social injustice movement. I'm a Christian, and I believe I have a responsibility to be the hands and feet of Jesus and to care for the hurts and the needs of others. Mostly this comes naturally to me, because I'm a mom. To prove it, I have 5 or 6 boxes of band-aids under my bathroom sink. Hello Kitty, Tinkerbell, Cars, Scooby-Doo--take your pick. I don't like suffering and I want to help fix anyone who suffers. But here's what is troubling me--more and more mainstream Christian authors and musicians are popping up with a cause to alleviate and/or abolish social injustice and human suffering, but when I visit their websites, or hear them speak on the radio, I hear about providing clean water or putting an end to human trafficking. Rarely do I hear or read anything about sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with any of these people.

As we approach Jesus' return, the human condition is moving along a continuum from bad to worse. Christians all around the world are rising up to show compassion to those who are suffering; but truthfully, the BEST thing we can do for those who are suffering is to point them to Jesus Christ--then offer clean water to drink and help to make sure they're safe.

Here's what concerns me. I feel like this movement, this good cause, is shifting us over a few degrees into dangerous territory. There's a lot of time, money and emotion being spent on ending human suffering right now and I think this is very clever of the devil. Just 1 degree off and we end up far from where we set out to be. He knows this, and it's easy for us to be fooled in this area because Scripture encourages us to help people in Jesus' name. I just wonder what would happen if our time, money and emotion was spent on sharing the Truth of the Gospel first, and then focusing on meeting physical needs. I don't want to sound insensitive to those who don't have clean water to drink, but it's more important that they be given Living Water, as Jesus said in John 4, so that they may have eternal life. It's more important that those caught in the horrible web of human trafficking be set free from sin's power so they don't have to suffer for eternity.

These influential Christian authors and artists have more power than they know. Their cause is good. But their passion and energy are wasted if they are meeting only physical needs of the people. This past week, I kept thinking about what Paul wrote to the Galatians.

^" I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all."

He rebuked the Galatians for sharing another gospel that was not the Gospel. This good cause is another gospel if Jesus' loving sacrifice and the hope of eternal life take a backseat to ending suffering here on earth.

God help us not to be so caught up in this social injustice movement that we fail to see that these suffering people have souls and not just bodies. They need eternal life. They need Jesus.

rest

I've been "doodling" with digital chalk art tonight, praying that the words from this morning's sermon on Matthew 11 will sink deeply into my heart this week.

I've been weary lately. We've moved, unpacked, started school again, etc. I should feel a great sense of relief, but I'm just too tired to feel much of anything. I know it's true, because of this tell-tale sign of motherhood: I'm snapping. No, not with my fingers, but with my words.

Here's what I learned this morning from Matthew 11:

It's a simple invitation, really...Come.

This yoke that I take up is made for 2. When I'm yoked to Jesus, I have direction, purpose, even comfort as I work.

Learn from Him. This was the clincher for me. He is gentle. I am not. Just ask my kids. This reminded me of something I noticed years ago while reading in the book of John. John was a volatile man, known as a Son of Thunder. When people didn't agree with Jesus, John told Him to send down fire from heaven and torch everyone. Ouch! Then at the end of Jesus' life, as He's hanging on the cross, He looks down and asks John to take care of His mother. Why would He do that? Why pick the guy with the bad temper? I think John had changed. How could he not? He had walked and talked with Jesus for 3 years. 

Learn from Me.

I don't want to be a John. I want to be like Jesus with all of my heart, and I want my children to see Jesus in me. I can blame it on being tired (oh wait, I already have!), or I can fit myself in under this yoke made for 2 and walk beside Jesus throughout my day, imitating Him by being gentle when I speak.

Come to Me.
Learn from Me.
And you will find rest for your souls.

"I heard the voice of Jesus say,
'Come unto Me and rest;
Lay down, thou weary one, lay down,
Thy head upon My breast.' 

I came to Jesus as I was,
Weary and worn and sad;
I found in Him a resting place,

And He has made me glad."

  -Horatius Bonar

be mine

 Happy Valentine's Day! Feeling quite festive today, I made this yummy flour-less chocolate cake for dessert tonight. It's one of my favorite things to make, especially on Valentine's Day when I'm listening to Frank Sinatra and wearing my red sweater and pink rosette earrings. My friend, Andi, shared the recipe with me years ago. Good friends have good chocolate cake recipes. :) You can't go wrong with chocolate and 1 1/2 sticks of butter. I think the cake is smiling back at me.

 Pink and red are so cheery!

 My girls and I had fun reading our Valentine's books together. The boys opted to play Lego instead.

After breakfast, Lily and I made a few more Valentines to hand out today.

Hope your Valentine's Day is a sweet one!

well hello there, february

It may be cold, cold, C-O-L-D outside, but we're enjoying our first February here in Minnesota. The kids love playing in the snow, and this month sure is jam-packed with fun holidays to celebrate. I'm a big fan of Groundhog Day (strange, I know). I woke up on Saturday, February 2, and my Lily met me in the hallway around 7:00 a.m. and said, "Look, Mom! I made a groundhog craft!" Sure enough...she had gone through our craft supplies and made the cutest little groundhog out of brown craft foam and affixed him to a wooden stick. Wow, does she ever take after her mom! The other day she asked me if we could make eclairs. Don't they look yummy? I've always used Susan Branch's Profiterole recipe and I've never been disappointed.

And my crafty little girl painted this painting of the presidents for President's Day

Friends of ours in Medford gave us paper white bulbs to plant as a going away gift. We planted them two days after we arrived here in Minnesota

They certainly have taken root and are blooming well, as we all are here in our new home.

The view from my kitchen window

so happy together

Having so much fun outside together with my little family

Oh, to be seven again!

The size of Jared's snowballs for our snowball fight--his favorite quote for the day..."You can expect me when you least expect me."

Gracie is a snow-ball-rolling and snowman-making EXPERT!

Phil in the hat that he brought back from Siberia (no, I'm not kidding)

house tour

 I've been wanting to post pictures of our new life here in Minnesota, but we couldn't find the camera cord to transfer pictures from camera to computer. Phil found it yesterday!!!

We're loving our new life here. It's C-O-L-D, but we manage to stay toasty warm inside the house. The nice thing about living in a newer home is that it's well insulated. We have our thermostat set at 60 degrees and feel very comfortable.

We've been here 2 weeks and have already done lots of exploring in the area. Phil starts work Monday. We've enjoyed having him home to help us get settled into the house. Phil and I got our Minnesota driver's licenses and our cars registered yesterday, and we've already checked books out of the library twice. We're certainly feeling at home here.

Here are a few pictures of around the house...

 In the dining room. This old dresser is home to my tea stash, stationery and office supplies. The kitchen is to the left with a powder room down the hall. There's a door across the hall from the powder room that leads down a flight of stairs to a heated garage.

 Here's our view from the living room window.

 This is just inside the front door. The stairs that lead to the second floor are to the right of the bookshelf.

 

 One of the things I love about moving is a chance to start over and reorganize my life. :) Here's my little coffee drawer.

  

and here's my fun little stash of tea

 

 

Looking into the kids' bedrooms from the upstairs hallway/landing

 Children's books in the upstairs hallway

 I made the upstairs linen closet my homeschool storage closet

 The boys' room

 Their wonderful Lego table

The girls' sweet little room