Seven Quick Takes: All the Exciting Stuff

1. Swing dancing! The Junior Ladies of Charity held a swing dance to benefit a local pregnancy center.

Dancing add helping others?  What's not to like?

Mxyl, Klenda, and Leena went, but Zorg was off camping, doing night time hikes and climbing tree houses.




 2. For Valentine's Day, the Emperor surprised me with a gas stove.  I can not tell you how over the moon happy I am about this!

He told me, "I wanted you to pick it out, but I thought you'd tell me no, it was fine, the electric stove still worked and you'd already cooked on it for 15 years."

Guilty as charged!

It wasn't just that we would need to buy a gas stove, we would need to run a whole new gas line into the kitchen... which has now been done!

And I love it!  And I can not resist saying at least once a day, "Now we're cooking with gas!" (the picture is Klenda, making pappadam)

3. With all the warm weather last week, we saw the First Turtle of Spring.

And also the First Scary Big Spider of Spring.


Followed by the First Mosquito bite(s) of Spring. (Sorry, Zorg)

 4. Choclo asked me, "Mom, when you think "Intimidating Chicken," is this what you think of?

It is now.



5. In other news, the couches arrived!  These are the couches we ordered way back in October with our inheritance from Grammy Ann.

They are beautiful!

And they are washable!

And I can sit in them for an entire evening without my back hurting!




And now I can knit on the couch with some of the yarn she gave me!

6. On the homeschooling front, my kids like to do worksheets about once a week, and I like to give them interesting reading comprehension  passages with a few questions at the end.

Oob just presented me with this one.

He told me I did very well!

7. It's LENT!  I love it! All our Lent stuff here.

It's not that I enjoy sacrifice as such (mortification, it kills!), but I'm a person who needs a new start, a second (third, umpteenth) try at being who God created me to be.

To me Lent is about new growth, second chances and becoming a new creation. 

It's about God getting a chance to work on me.

Honestly, I'm terrible at "giving things up," but I have a much easier time with giving to.


So, the way I like to look at it,  I'm not "giving up" chocolate, I'm putting chocolate in the Lord's Easter basket.


Any small opportunity to sacrifice is a chance to put something in His basket that will make Him smile come Easter. That I can do, and even do happily!

Have a great week end, and may you meet no intimidating chickens. More fum with Kelly!