Winter Beauty

  Although this has been a long, cold winter, we certainly have seen some beautiful sights!!

Herman

When I was little, Herman and his wife Thea moved their little house in the country right next door to our family.   Herman and Thea had no children, so they probably should have thought twice before moving next door to a family with 9 kids!    I'm sure Herman was a nice enough man, but he did not have much tolerance for children.   He was constantly  watching to make sure we didn't step onto his yard.  There were times that I went over there and visited with his wife out on the front steps.   I surely had to step on his grass to do so, but he never said anything to me...I now wonder if he was inside, gritting his teeth!   Anyway, you can imagine with a bunch of kids and their friends, there was plenty of playing out in the yard.  Herman had a beautiful garden in the back yard so we would usually play in the front yard to (hopefully) avoid his wrath!   If we happened to cross the property line, we would hear "Hey, you!  Keep off of my yard!!"   Often, we would play catch, and if the ball rolled onto his yard, we did not dare go and retrieve the ball.  Over the years, this happened more than once.    One time we decided to trick Herman - we made a snow/ice ball and tossed it into his yard.  (Weren't we nasty!?)   We didn't see if Herman went to pick up the "ball" or not, but we were pretty proud of our little trick! As the years went by, we no longer played ball in the front yard.  Years later, when Herman's health was failing, he called our Mom to send my brother over.   You can imagine the surprise when Herman handed Jim a bag of balls!  (The snow/ice ball was not included.)  I guess this was Herman's way of apologizing, or making amends!   He died shortly after that.

Sunday Driving

These are a couple of my favorite pictures taken last fall.  

Kids & Faith

When  my oldest daughter was about 4 years old, she came home from Sunday School singing "Onward Christian Soldiers."   She got one of the lines slightly wrong when she sang, "Christ the Royal Manager"  (instead of Royal Master).    I'm thinking that line wasn't so wrong as one might think!

When my son was about 3 years old, we had a long spell of cloudy, rainy weather.   Everyday, he would look out the window and pray, "God, please make it sunny!"   After several days of this, he woke up one morning to see the sun shining.   He bolted out of bed, ran down the stairs and outside, shouting, "Thank you God, thank you, God! - A lesson we can all learn here!

When my youngest was baptized, I overheard her older brother (age 5) explaining the whole thing to her: He said to her, "Oh, Amy, you are so sweet.  You were babatized today.   You don't know who God is, but God knows you!"  

And one day, I called and called for Amy - and she didn't come...Finally, she came downstairs and I asked her what she had been doing, "Well," she said, "I was praising the Lord!"

It's fun to remember when the kids were little and some of the silly and not-so-silly things they said and did; there are definitely some great lessons we can learn from children!