Gratitude Monday

A good habit of naming the
things I am thankful for:

~ almost a year ago I got a new
hip! I'm thankful because it moves.
It moves without pain of osteo -
arthritis!

~ doing part of that surgery was my
youngest brother . He is a PA Orthopedist .
He did more than the usual of following up
with his patient: his older sister. I highly
recommend his office!

~a job for our second son

~ I love Advent, so here's another book:

Christmas Spirit by George Grant and
Gregg Wilbur

Advent and Reading

It seems very quickly that Advent
arrived today. This morning was
"For Unto Us a Child is Given" from
The Messiah. Just on the heels of
Thanksgiving we turn to Christmas
and the great joy of celebrating.
Sara has blogged on her Christmas
shelf ~~ it will get you in the mood
and also to start those Advent books.

By the way, the turkey came in handy
tonight as we had more at the table
than usual: college son and girlfriend.
Just stopping by from the mts. to have
dinner!!

I'm trying to remember some Miss Read
Christmas stories ~~ one is on my shelf.
Stayed tuned............

Here's one from GKC:

Another Turkey

There's another turkey IN the oven tonight.
Just got a fresh one marked down and finished
up the meat on Thanksgiving's bird tonight.
Need to make broth and soup with the carcass.
Always using up every flavor ( Julia Child!).
I do have her cookbook from
the library. It is one to READ. To learn
how to get flavor is key. I hope I can
read it before it needs to go back.
I did finish Counterfeit Gods by Tim
Keller and now to get my own copy
to study. Excellent!

Doesn't it feel like we've had an extra
day? And the Winter Solstice is upon
us . It gets dark so early and then feels
like 11:00 at about 7:00!!!

Our List of 100

Ann Voscamp, Holy Experience,
has her Multidude Mondays:
listing to 100o what you are grateful
for. That stuck in my mind Thanks-
giving morning to find an empty
journal and set it out. Number to
100 and have all 8 of us write. We
got to about 70, so today when
Evan left for Boone and then back
by our city (taking a "foreigner" she
calls herself to Columbia, SC ~~ a
visiting South African music teacher
who is going to speak at universities
during her summer break plus his
girlfriend who was in South Africa
last summer)( long story
to follow!) STOPPED BY. So they added
to the list. Isn't that cool. Glad there
was more to list. Guess what the music
teacher put! Yes, indeed , music.

We are up to 93.
The weekend is not over. Doesn't it
seem like Saturday today!!!

Listen to the Irish Brogue

Here is where the faith comes
from:

Krystyn Getty reading
The Watches of the Night
as we pass from Autumn
into Winter.

Listen to her say ACHE!
Sign up for their newsletter.
They sent this poem out
to bring strength to our souls
as we head into a busy time
of the year.

Another blog I love...........

To my surprise when I remembered
the name of the blog and went to it,
Clarice is having a giveaway!
Storybook Woods...........one of two
books.

The last pie is in the oven . Roast is in
the crock pot! We're celebrating on
Thanksgiving Eve the call from the
Police Academy to my second son ....
he's been waiting since July! He
graduated in May with a degree in
Criminal Justice so now to put on a
uniform! We are so thankful.
Waiting is hard. Hard to have faith
and very much needed when the Lord
is working things at the right time.
I keep praying for faith for my kids and
the world seems to snatch it away at times.
I will lift up my eyes unto the hills..........
have to keep those eyes upward!

Finding lost blogs

I have had to rebuild my bookmarks
and just remembered some blogs I
read ALL the time.
Here's one: Turkey Feathers

Great name with Thanksgiving!

A Pile of Books and Tea

Emma and I picked up two stacks
of books at the library this afternoon.
"Are all of those for us?"
So we have a cup of Sugar Plum Tea,
homemade pumpkin bread (given to us)
warmed with whipped cream,
and our noses in our books.
In the background :Awake my Soul
by the Gettys. I'm practicing my
Irish brogue to say that how she says it.

I started a children's book called
The Mouse Butcher
that makes me giggle. Now that we have
sweet Oreo the cat world intrigues us.
She sure is cute. I got books off of Jerram
Barr's Book List.
He is at Covenant Seminary, L'Abri worker,
and if you ever get to hear him in person,
don't miss him. I have learned alot under
his teaching and from his books, in
particular Being Human cowritten with
Ranald Macaulay.

Sing a song of thanksgiving

Yesterday we had a special celebration
having Keith and Kristyn Getty to lead
worship all day at our church. Then a
concert. They brought the joy of their
hymns with a Celtic fiddle and
a piper who played an Irish bagpipe and
a wooden flute. I was lifted up to a place
of joy, filled with some sort of supernatural
energy. If you didn't want to dance unto
the Lord, you must have been deaf! I know
a family who does Irish dancing and I
should have been up in the balcony with
them..........they were doing jigs in the aisle!
Amen and a heart of thanksgiving this
Multitude Monday for an awesome day
of worship. I'm sure it pleased the Lord.

I did ask them if they had met Seamus
Heaney, that great Irish poet. Yes, Keith
had taken Kristyn on a date to hear a
reading of Beowulf at Queens College,
where she had attended. She told me her
favorite poem is Digging.
Mine is St. Kevin and the Blackbird.
I beamed with that conversation.

It came in at the library....Bon Appetit

Cover of Volume 1, original 1961 edition

There were 83 HOLDS in the
computer system for Julia Child's
cookbook when I added mine in
August after seeing the movie,
Just in time for Thanksgiving!
One of my sons wants to cook
that duck! Well, not for Thanks-
giving. No quacks, just a gobble!

A Letter from Port Royal

My husband
said I got a
letter from
Port Royal,
VA.........
that man.




Well, it was from Port Royal,
Kentucky.
I had written to Mr. Wendell
Berry a Van Gogh card of a landscape
of a farm and told him a funny story ,
well, several. I knew he would
write back at least to affirm the arrival of my
letter. He is of a generation who answered letters.
And he is a writer. Writers write. He had two
sentences that were typed thanking me and he
was glad I am using his work. Signed
Wendell Berry.

Rainy, one of those days

Alice in Wonderland, due out March 2010


A running sort of day in the rain
today. Thankfully the driving tonight
is done by one of my sons. I found that
if I had found 5 more minutes , I would
not have been late. BUT when I arrived
where a son needed to be picked up,
he was 5 minutes later. Then when I took
my daughter to piano 5 minutes late
because the son was late out of his class,
her teacher was on the phone! So sometimes
it all works out.

Summer......on this Fall Monday

Gratitude this Monday:

~ For a really good weekend
with a full house of sons and
girlfriends and our newlyweds.
Good conversations, good food,
and laughter. Even some book
shopping at a used bookstore
with two of them. Even good
coffee time!

~The day seemed like summer.
So warm.
Good for my small Fall Garden
to keep growing and producing.

~Good curriculum . Amen to that
for when you see a child's mind
be nourished, it is something to
be so thankful for.

~I don't have to hem Emma's choir
dress. That I am thankful for. AND
we found flat black shoes that are so
cute to wear with the dress for
the concert this Thursday.
Those details , you Moms know,
are much to be thankful for!


~

~

Imagine this kind of old house

From the NY Times:
Grand old house in N. H.

Separating Curds and Whey, City Life and Country Farm

On the third floor is a children’s haven, complete with a kitchen and a giant rumpus room with a river view. Downstairs, French period pieces from Ms. Cabot’s maternal grandmother mingle graciously and eclectically with early American antiques in the front parlors. A clutter of iPods and computers sits beside photos of Cabots cavorting through the centuries.

Ms. Cabot stenciled the Latin phrase “Quod cupio mecum est” on the wall behind a velvet sofa in the living room. “ ‘What I want, I already have,’ that’s the translation,” she said. “I read it somewhere, and I thought it a good maxim and nice reminder.” (On a kitchen wall, opposite a portrait of a bison that is original to the house, she has stenciled “Rejoice.” Mr. Lovell-Smith said he had retired his wife’s stencils before she got too carried away.

Friday ....looking to the weekend

Listening to Stacey Kent's CD
Breakfast on the Morning Tram
with the song I love: The Ice Hotel
The rest of the songs are really good.
They have made us smile today.
They have made us want to sing.
Indeed what good music should do
especially on a Friday and a rainy
week.

The house will fill up this weekend with
a son comes home with his girlfriend
who we adore. Another may have his with him
also. The Newlyweds will come over
also..............and Thanksgiving Feast on
Sunday night at our church. Can you
imagine serving 700 +?! It's an amazing
thing! Now to the store to get sweet potatoes
and have that ready with all the rest this
weekend. I did find this recipe of Tyler Florence
that I want to try : Roasted Sweet Potatoes
with Honey Butter.

More rain

It rained yesterday, all night and still today
it is wet and getting colder. We would have
a blizzard if it was really cold.

We have all gotten sweeter with this kitten!
She demands it by her presence because she
is so cute. She's on my shoulder right now and I
think taking a cat nap. She climbs up my
jeans and voila...."here I am" she mews.
My two youngest children are great as Mama
and Papa to her. They are taking turns having
her at night in their room. At least if one needs
sleep the other helps. Sound familar!!

Good books by my bedside. One is on Poetry
by one of the Southern Agararians from
Vanderbilt: Alan Tate. I highly recommend
his essays to anyone. Well, anyone who loves
poetry and teaches or wants to understand
Modernity:

The reader will expect to see here only the consistency of a point of view. I hope that he will not be disappointed if he does not find it. Yet I believe that all the essays are on one theme: a deep illness of the modern mind. I place it in the mind because that is the level at which I am interested in it. At any rate the mind is the dark center from which one may see coming the darkness gathering outside us. The late W. B. Yeats had for it a beautiful phrase, "the mad abstract dark," and we are all in it together.

Plus I have Tim Keller's new book: Counterfeit
Gods. I only get a page or two and fall asleep
because it is late at night when I get to it. Now I
do have some time so I'll start earlier!
Hear Keller on his book site.( the theme is idols)
hmmmm............

And a sweet book came in my box from Canon
Press from their 1.00 to 5.00 sale this past
weekend: Sketches of Home by Suzanne Clark.
It may be a book I pass to friends to read and
write comments in. I did that with Friends for
the Journey by Luci Shaw and Madeleine L'Engle.

Autumn Colors

Just a drive to the store today,
brought a great joy of thanksgiving
for Autumn Colors.
There was a hue over the landscape with
the deep red and orange and yellow and
brown. To this Lord , I am thankful.

For the deep greens of Fall harvests:
kale and swiss chard and lettuces.
To this Lord, I am thankful.
Even out of my own garden!

A new kitty brings a high pitch out
of even my husband: hello little kiki!
To this Lord, I'm thankful, Become
as little children.

And now, starting Dante's Inferno
with my high school literature students.
To this Lord, I am thankful. I will learn
much!

Rest and a lovely evening

We had a feast last night on butternut
squash soup, cream of chicken soup, then
the next course was salad, then discussion,
then desserts! Sometimes it takes a feat of
juggling around dates to get the Book Club
girls together. We had a new "blogger" with
us and when she posts her photos I will link
to it. This blogger already did! Take a look
at our evening.

I am glad it is the weekend. Need what the
book title says!!! There's a stranged sound
in our house now: HIGH MEW~

Book Club tonight

Meet Oreo! The newest member of our family,
Parents are my two youngest!


It is one of my favorite evenings to
gather up a group of ladies for
Autumn Feast ( soup, salad, bread,
dessert, cider, even some wine) to
discuss a book. This time it is on
the Sabbath: The Rest of God by
Mark Buchanan. I love what my
pastor said in a recent sermon:
"The Sabbath is a gift. It is a gift
to do nothing!" Wow, why would we
not receive it? Hard to stop and rest.
Not sleep, although it can be that,
but even rest from noise and clutter
and chaos and drink of living water.
Tonight will certainly be a taste of it.
We have wonderful Julia Child kind
of cooks amidst the group.
Amen. Amen.

Books and books

Dr. George Grant was asked to talk
about books and here is the stack
he showed us. I've read many of them
but do have some new ones to find. He
also made me want to reread Schaeffer.
Start with him as the easiest and each is
a disciple of the previous. Thus Schaeffer was
a student of Frame, Van Til, etc....back to
Abraham Kuyper. All the men who influenced
Schaeffer.

Francis Schaeffer's Trilogy:
The God Who is There
Escape from Reason
He is there and He is not Silent

Being Human by Ranald Macaulay and
Jerram Barrs

The Doctrine of the Christian Life by John Frame
plus his book on The Doctrine of God

The Defense of the Faith by Cornelius Van Til
( others by him)


The Calvinistic Concept of Culture by Henry Van Til

The Doctrine of God by Herman Bavink

Abraham Kuyper: Centennial Reader
Lectures on Calvinism by Abraham Kuyper

Our Saga

How do we know what is true, good and
right? As we looked at movies this past
weekend, we looked how each gave light
to the question of Epistomology. Modern
man without some epistomological roots
is a tragic figure. We have to engage the
whole of Beauty, Truth and Goodness.
We can't have one without the others:
trinitarian words that make a whole.
Film is one of the best ways to get us
thinking about truth. Our saga is the journey
to Franklin, Tenn , travelling
over the Appalachains and returning within
3 days!We eat at the same wonderful eating
places. We look forward to church
early Sunday morning, usually Reformation
Sunday, then walking to the coffee shop
to get our drinks to start out back home.
Pumpkin Fest goes on in town on Sat.
and we taste of the fun during lunch and dinner.
Met this blogger and Amblesideonline Advisor
as well seeing a dear friend
(click on the word to read two articles for Childlight
USA). There are a few transplants from my city
so it is always good for the soul to reconnect and
catch up on what God has done and is doing.
Indeed, even with Dr. Grant!