WoRdLeSS Wednesday

Or in my case Wordless MOnths.....

Romans 12:10

Sometimes It Isn’t Easy
This devotional was written by Jim Burns
Love one another with brotherly affection; out do one another in showing honor. —Romans 12:10 RSV

No one ever said that living the Christian life would be easy. The following words help give us perspective.

IT IS NOT EASY
To apologize
To start over
To take advice
To be unselfish
To admit error
To face a sneer
To be charitable
To keep trying
To be considerate
To avoid mistakes
To endure success
To profit by mistakes
To forgive and forget
To think and then act
To keep out of a rut
To make the best of little
To subdue an unruly temper
To shoulder a deserved blame
BUT IT ALWAYS PAYS OFF

South to North

This year we decided to move our very small and very first garden from the south side to the north side to get more sun and also to make it bigger..I'm not sure exactly how big but I would guess John tilled up an area of about 12ft by 20 ft. We got a truckload of horse manure from a friend of mine who has a farm and John mixed that in.. We probably should of waited to put plants in but we get antsy once we start projects and so put in cucumbers, tomatoes, green and red bell peppers, jalapenos, broccoli, strawberries, zucchini and most exciting asparagus.. I still have a row and half to put something in.. I was thinking some sort of lettuce or green beans..any suggestions from y'all? Gabe wants to do watermelon and cantaloupe but i think we will have to build a raised bed and mix sand with soil if I remember correctly. I told him we could plan for next year. Ive been looking online how to make some solid and cutesy garden markers for each row of plants...The very cutest idea is buying spoons at the goodwill and then somehow stamping the lettering in the hammered spoon head and shoving the handle into the ground..cute cute..... I think I'm going to use shims and paint them...ill post as the garden grows..its so rewarding and so much cheaper than the sky high veggies at the market..

There Aint Nothing Like An Oklahoma Girl

26 years later Amy, Brooke and I met again. It was so much fun to learn what had been happening all these years. I did not think I would ever see those gals again. I am so glad I found them. They sat us up for a night in the most beautiful hotel in OKC in the middle of Bricktown.... and we looked at old photo albums, went dancing, played pool and ordered room service and drank chocolate wine. Chocolate wine????? I had not ever heard of it before then. We plan to stay in touch and make more effort to visit each other now that we have found one another. It was a blast from the past ..It was also emotional to say bye again to the girls... They are some sweet Okie girls with hearts of gold..

John Gabe Jack and I also spent much time with Grandma Gay and Aunt Teresa. We took boat ride through the bricktown river, took the kids to Cabelas where they bought play rifles. Gabe taught Jack to climb the tree in her front yard and Grandma made chocolate shakes all weekend for them. Grandma and I had many heart to heart talks , more than our usual, but then again my life has not been so usual the last few months.. We drove to Rush Springs for a day to Joe's farm and orchard.. The boys hiked through the woods and pretended to hunt. Grandma house is small and so I slept on a twin bed and the boys slept on couch and a blow up mattress..It was not easy on the bones or my only nerve but every morning we woke to that woman frying bacon, with your choice to either pancakes or eggs. John enjoyed this immensely because that does not happen here at our home EVERY morning...I told my grandma I could make my own toast and she simply told me ....Honey let me serve you, I don't get to see you often enough and I'm not good at much but I know God made me good at serving people...Bless her heart she has made a life out of serving everyone but some for far too long... Her birthday is Thursday and she loves to get flowers and I try every year to make sure she gets some..I got a huge bouquet of Peruvian Lillie's from us to be delivered tomorrow..Ill post some pics tomorrow of her from our trip..

A Boy & His Big Ol Brain

So I know I am the laziest blogger ever but WOW my angel Gabriel isn't lazy at school. The last 3 weeks we have received numerous reminders from school to get our kids to bed on time and make sure they have good breakfast because of the very important State assesment tests... Gabe almost never eats breakfast but these 3 days he did...sooooo any way he scored 92% on Math, 91% on reading and 93% on science... All of those scores fall into the EXEMPLARY category which is all pretty obvious by reading this but a Mother should take the time to brag this stuff... So here it is...Gabe's hard watermelon head has a whole lot of brain in it...Praise GOD for my children. Gardner has by far one of the best school district scores ratings etc...all that good stuff...people move to Gardner just to get the kids in the schools because our pupil to teacher ratio is low and they just flat our know what they are doing with our kiddos. We are one of the only school districts who are not in debt and pay the teachers very well from what I hear....So even though Gardner really makes me want to scream with their sky high taxes and mill levy and I could go on and on....but I wont...WE love Gardner and Gabe loves living here, right here in this town, on this street, in this house on Pine St...

1985

1985 I was 8 years old and these were my bestest buds, Amy and Brooke Aday. My brothers and I lived on a street called Nail Parkway in Moore OK. My grandma Gay was raising us at this particular time . Living with her is definitely the most treasured times of my growing up. Even though she was tired and worn out, she took us three kids on when my Dad was in one of his many low points and she loved us like crazy and we drove her crazy, especially my brother Mark... He was so ornery to her.. She was and still is my favorite person. Even at my age now I can still curl up to her on the couch and have her scratch my back or run her fingers in my hair.. She is peaceful and funny. Her love is unconditional, forgiving, and understanding. I miss her .......... and so were getting into the car tomorrow morning and heading to Oklahoma to see her!! And I'm going to also see Amy and Brooke, who I have not seen since the summer of 1985. I just got into contact last month on Facebook.. They told me that had been looking for me for years and years but pinning down a Melissa Smith is rather difficult.. SOoo this will be a really fun trip. We used to make snow cones with the Snoopy Sno Cone maker. We would reenact the Grease movies. We made bird nests and mud pies. We would put quarters on train tracks together. We even made our own potpourri on one of those electric heaters that runs along the wall in my bedroom. We even made sour grass stew with those weeds with tiny little yellow flowers. The three of us walked to school together and were together two different times when a car pulled up and tried to get us to get into the car... I am sure Saturday night when we get to together we are going to have a lot to talk about and a lot to catch up on and I'm cant wait!! I will be sure to get a pic posted here to compare to this one..

Three

Happy Birthday Jackson Wayne!! You are more than a handful little man but we love you dearly.
Some things you are doing right now. You are singing a lot. You like to sing ABC's and Little Teapot, Where is Thumbkin (but you say pumpkin). You also have some pretty mean dance moves as well. You can say your whole name now and are very interested in cutting, gluing and taping stuff. You are almost completely potty trained...just an accident here and there. You love your B's(blankies) very much which is to be expected being a child of mine. But you are very particular about the way you have to have yours.. You have to find the corner and then tuck it under your neck and of course you gotta have the choc milk.. We are currently buying 3 gallons each time we grocery shop. You are still getting up in the middle of night and sneaking into bed with us which has got to stop JW! Your a little clown and ornery as ever, but wouldn't want it any other way...Happy Birthday my baby boy Mommy loves you xoxoxo