Day Two of 10 Days of Proverbs 31

I have to admit that I struggled greatly with being involved with this 10 day blog event.

First off, I am not a writer.

I am a very poor communicator.

Ha ha. Sentence structure and things like spelling and punctuation are SO very over-rated!

I have a lot to say about things like sewing, laundry, raising a large family, orphans, adoption, homeschooling, being a wife. All which developed from the lengthy list of what I have done wrong in those areas.

In fact, I can communicate very passionately about a few of those subjects.

But when it comes to God's word I get very flustered and my thoughts jumble up. Yes, even more than they usually do.

If you ever met me in real life you would know how much I ramble. You would also have been caught in one of the 'Tina never got to the point or answered the actual question' conversations.

A simple question on your part like " How is the weather?" would commit you (unknowingly) to ten minutes of odd obscure rambling that had absolutely nothing to do with the weather!

To top it all off I am sort of a Proverbs 31 woman rebel.

Did I just hear a few gasps?

It is not because I do not agree or desire to have the character traits this woman has.

I do.

Maybe a more accurate statement is that I rebel against the 'look' of this particular woman. You know ,the stereo type image of the Proverbs 31 woman that pops into our minds.

For years I felt that to be the best wife/mother/christian I could be, I would need to 'look' like her.

I would strive.

I would try.

I would fail.

How dare she (really meaning God) put me in a small box, a box so small I can not even move about in and to top it off, create me with my own unique quirks, oddities, talents,etc...but say sorry Tina here is the mold. You need to be her.

No!

I am me!!

So I rebel.

I thought how unfair is it that here is this woman, this standard so seemingly lofty and hard to obtain in my own life.

Then it clicked.

Even without Proverbs 31:10-31 being included in the Bible everything she demonstrates, the character qualities she possesses can be found and also modeled in other areas of the Bible.

And to top it all off, this is the real zinger, If you get to the core, to the bottom line of who/what exactly this Proverbs 31 woman was about you will find it has little to do with whether she sews, or buys fields, or makes terrific meals for the whole city.

No.

Look real close.

It is about this:

"My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

John 15: 13-14

and this

" I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it will produce many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it,while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life."

John 12:24-25

I think that her whole life was a purposeful choice to die to herself and serve others and most of all Love God with a confidence and depth that not many do.

That I want to do.

So whether my sewing machine breaks down, my dinner burns, I over sleep, or my kids wear un-matching hand-me-downs, I can live my life with a purpose, with a choice. A choice to serve, to love, to die to myself. Most of all I can cling on to a very powerful, strong, compassionate, understanding, patient God.

The God who made this quirky, odd, rebel named Tina

Warmly,A Patchwork Mommy

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here are the other twelve blogs joining in on this 10 Days of Proverbs 31 adventure.

Enjoy!!

Contributing to famHeily income/2 better than 1

The Fear of the Lord/ Satisfied by Love

Using time wisely/BlessedBeyondMeasure

Taking care of needy/ Shadow Wonder

Using money wisely/Jennifer Sikora

Keeping an eye on home/Just a Glimpse

She can laugh at the days ahead/faith filled food for moms

Clothed in strength and dignity/One thing I’ve Learned

Taking care of others/ 2 savvy gals

Bringing Variety to Family/ Karen Dawkins

Extending your Hand to the Poor/ Women’s Fellowship House

Organization/Teaching what is Good

Our Very First

Wednesday night Home Church group was January 11th.

We had a lot of fun!

It was a good start to our newest family adventure.

We had prayer and praise



a little coloring




verse memorizing



some snacks




a project



a Bible lesson and skit



and games!



One more thing...

I just had to include a snippet of the Joseph skit Jeff and the boys entertained us with!

Forgive the poor quality.



Warmly,A Patchwork Mommy

Happy Birthday Lily!!!

My blog respite made me a little behind in Frye house news!!!

So for a few days I will be double posting!!

This way I can get in our fun random family stuff and my 10 Days of Proverbs 31 posts.

So ready for a great but crazy double day posting ride?!!

Here we goooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

~~~~~~~~~~

Shouts out to our youngest!!!

Lily turned 4 January 7th!!

Happy birthday to my baby.

My princess.

My Lily!!!

I LOVE YOU!!






A little Frye trivia.

This is the first time we have had our youngest this old.

Usually,there has always a younger baby hanging around.


Warmly,
A Patchwork Mommy

10 Days of Proverbs 31

I am back!

I took a little blog respite this last few weeks.

I kept up with blog posts in my mind but they never made it to my actual blog!

I bet you were all wondering what I was up to.

Well...

I sat on the couch a lot...

Thinking

And just enjoying the slow down after the holidays.

I have not been called in for Jury duty yet. Just 3 1/2 more months left!

Our Christmas tree is still up.

I have not washed our bed linens in what seems like years.

I decided I have a special gift. It is called Poopy Sense. You know like Spidey Sense but instead of being able to swing from building to building using spider webs, I can smell a poopy diaper in my sleep. It is a handy gift. I have not had to buy diaper rash cream for years.

See...

Lots of thinking.

Ok

Ok

On to the actual real part of today's post.



For the next ten days I am going to be doing something new on my blog.

A sweet friend of mine over at 2 Are Better Than One organized a group of 13 of us to participate in 10 Days of Proverbs 31.

Each of us 13 will address a particular attribute of the Proverbs 31 woman for 10 days.

The attribute I will be sharing about for the next ten days is being creative.

I LOVE being creative!!

There are many attributes of the Proverbs 31 woman that I fall very very short with.

I am not an early riser.

I have a hard time taking my worries about tomorrow to God. I tend to hold tightly to them and am most of the time pretty sure the sky will actually fall tomorrow.

I do eat the bread of idleness. In fact,it is one of my favorite dishes.

but I love to put on my creative thinking cap. I have so many ideas that flow through my head that sometimes my head feels like it will explode.

In my opinion, there is almost nothing as exciting as taking a bunch of scraps of this or that and making something beautiful out of it.



Creating something out of a bunch of nothing.

Seeing a seed of an idea in my thoughts become a final product.

Do not laugh, but sometimes I get so exited in the process of making something that it is hard to breath.

I am very thankful God saw fit to include that part of himself in us his created ones.

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:27

Hmm...there are SO many ways the Proverbs 31 woman demonstrated her creativity.

Her creativity was not just confined to sewing garments and robes.

I will post more tomorrow!

Warmly,A Patchwork Mommy

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here are the other twelve blogs joining in on this 10 Days of Proverbs 31 adventure.

Enjoy!!

Contributing to family income/2 better than 1

The Fear of the Lord/ Satisfied by Love

Using time wisely/BlessedBeyondMeasure

Taking care of needy/ Shadow Wonder

Using money wisely/Jennifer Sikora

Keeping an eye on home/Just a Glimpse

She can laugh at the days ahead/faith filled food for moms

Clothed in strength and dignity/One thing I’ve Learned

Taking care of others/ 2 savvy gals

Bringing Variety to Family/ Karen Dawkins

Extending your Hand to the Poor/ Women’s Fellowship House

Organization/Teaching what is Good

The Mission

to provide warmth for the cold children...



and animals in the house.



using a steel wool scrub pad and a nine-volt battery.



Is the mission possible?






Well, lets put it this way, if this was a true survival situation we would not be alive to let you know.


Warmly,A Patchwork Mommy

A Random Thursday

Today is a day of rambling thought.

Nothing profound.

Just a string of disjointed Pooh brained musings.

Are you ready for some reading?

Here goes.

I started jury duty this week.

In our county one is on jury duty for four months. I am not sure if that means there are a lot of trials by jury in our county or not very many. I am supposed to call a hotline in every Monday evening to see if I am needed to go to the court house for duty that week.

My initial thoughts when I received my notice last month was utter panic. I was not sure if this timing had God's hand in it or not. I know by faith it does but in my Pooh brain it seems so unfortunate.

Of course, if I am off in a jury Jeff will not get paid and that will be very bad. Then again, this is the beginning of Jeff's new vacation period so I could not claim that being on a short trial would create a hardship on our family. It would not be what I would call a fun use of Jeff's vacation time but then again we really do not use his vacation time for vacations anyway. They are usually used for things like taking the kids to the doctors or dentist,car troubles, or if Jeff or myself are sick.

The biggest thing that bothers me about the timing is that there are friends of ours that will be going to trial sometime in 2012. I assume it would be a trial by jury. That could fall within my four months of service. Although, Jeff is sure because we know them and a bit about their situation I would not be picked as a juror as it would be hard to be non-biased. I still lay awake at night worrying a bit. Still sitting on a jury no matter who is on trial will be stressful. Besides in a county our size wouldn't most of the jurors know each other and possibly the ones on trial?

One thing I know is God's timing is good. I might even enjoy the time away from the house for a bit. It would also be exciting to see how a non Law and Order trial would be like. This four months will go fast enough and I probably would find my worries are not needed.

On a much more exciting note, Jeff and I made the decision to take our kids out of the AWANA program at our church. Currently, Jeff is one of the AWANA T&T leaders,our six older kids are AWANA helpers, and our other nine children participate in the AWANA program (ok,ok I just stayed home to relax). HaHa Do you think our absence will be noticed?

We so enjoyed the AWANA program. It worked well for our family for so many years but it is time to move on. We had been seeing the signs for a couple years. There were recent circumstances that motivated us to make this decision mid year but then again these circumstances were a blessing in disguise.

What will we do instead? This is the exciting part.

Jeff will head our own Wednesday night kids church and I am his side kick! I really think Jeff will shine doing this. I REALLY am looking forward to being a part of Jeff's vision. The things Jeff is the most excited about is the singing/worship and what AWANA referred to as council time. The meaty/teaching part. He is good at that. Some of the older kids will help Jeff with behind the scene planning or helping the kids work on their verses etc...much like they did for AWANA. HaHa and guess who gets to plan the projects?! Me!!! I LOVE that part!! The news was met with a mixture of tears and/or enthusiasm but even with tears this is a good thing. The older kids will still go to their own youth group,though.

Now this is an answer to desire for me. Why? well, most of you will understand what I am saying...or maybe not...I am an odd-ball. We can as husbands and wives, forget that we were put together to work together. God had a plan, a vision. We are one as husband and wife. It is false (in my opinion) to think that we will have greater success independent from each other. Second to our independent relationships with the Lord, our spouse is the well we should be drawing from. In the case with Jeff and myself, it seems that Jeff and I have been maintaining things side by side but not together, not as one. We can raise kids side by side, have a relationship with each other side be side but forget that we will be most usable by God being a unit of one. It is kind of like two people putting together the same puzzle but using two different tables to place their completed pieces on. Sometimes all it takes is just one thing, to work as one to remind us of God's vision for our family. In this case, Wednesday night kids church. Of course, not forgetting to mention that we have the greatest group of kids around to work with!!

Ok, I understand that there must be SO many holes in my reasoning. Please forgive me for that. A reminder this is our situation, our family, our experience, our leading by God. My words fail me in getting my point out but I get it and so does Jeff. He understands my disjointed thoughts

Whew...long winded I am today...

I need to end my post with a few highlights of this week.

Grant is playing his different cell phone ring tones to Joel and Lily.



A couple computer artwork pictures from Joel.




Ham and noodle soup with my ultimate favorite, fresh cilantro. SO SO good. If you ever met me in person you would understand my food pictures on my blog. I am not a thin woman. I am short but not thin. And I LOVE food.



Warmly,A Patchwork Mommy

The Bug Bit!

The quilting bug that is!

So out came the books



and the scraps



I finally decided on a book



I decided on the Quarter Log Cabin pattern. I am going for the scrappy look so I am not paying much mind to the placement of lights, mediums, and darks so the end result will not look as orderly as the quilt in the book...it will look much better.



So far,so good!



Warmly,A Patchwork Mommy

Who Can...

Who can turn a moment like this down?

An intense round of The Bear Matching Game



A bowl of very buttery (and Oh SO good) popcorn



Watching these little toddler hands finding all the matches at record speed



And seeing this pretty little smile.



Who can turn this moment down!?

Actually, I almost did miss it (you know the busy mom things that need to get done) but I am glad I didn't.


Warmly,A Patchwork Mommy

Sweet Carol!!!!

Oh, I LOVE getting surprise packages!!!!

It is from a sweet friend I knew since my early college days!

Gee...has it been 25 years that we have known each other,Carol?

I wonder what is is?



Homemade granola!!!!



This really is beautiful granola!

And it tastes SO very good!!



Thank you Carol!!!!

Warmly,A Patchwork Mommy

Happy New Year!!!!

Here are my

BIG

BIG

BIG

HAPPY NEW YEARS

wishes to you everyone!!!!!

Sadly, my camera was having major issues New Years Eve!!!!

What was the deal!!??

Nothing focused.

Some might have hinted around that it was operator error.

Hmmm....

Well, that could have been the case if I was not the operator but I was the operator.

Directions are very overrated anyway.

Needless to say, life is not always neat and tidy and picture perfect, at least not life over at our house.

But we have a blast

so

on with my less than perfect New Years Eve pictures!!

We never get tired of Christmas sugar cookies so we thought we would sneak in one more batch before the New Year.




We were a pretty unorganised group so midnight came and went as we were still assembling to get ready to

go out with the old (you know out the back door)



an out with the old straggler



and in with the new (in the front door)




Happy New years!!!



The below is an attempt to reenact the stroke of midnight.

Take one

Happy New Years!!!!



Take two

Happy New Years!!!!



Take three

Happy New Years!!!!




Warmly,A Patchwork Mommy