A Little February Wednesday Evening Fun

Still catching you up on our February!

How about a miracle!

Loaves and Fishes anyone?

A little reenactment



Maybe not a basket to gather the extra fish and bread but how about a home-made chip clip to save our extra popcorn snack?

Dad is looking a tad confused constructing his chip-clip.



Some songs with Odell helping lead our praise and worship.



To finish our night off a fun game of Heads-Up Seven-Up!





Warmly,A Patchwork Mommy

What's Been Cookin'

this past month?

I have all these yummy pictures that I intended to make into multiple blog posts this past month.

I thought I would condense them into one tasty compact blog post for you!

Farm fresh scrambled eggs on the left. Store bought eggs on the right. What a color difference. Which ones would you like for breakfast?



Fruit granola bars.



Not your school cafeteria toasty-dogs!




Our weekly soup had the addition of these BEAUTIFUL noodles



Thank you to whoever thought to send these our way!



and getting ready to mix the dough for our tasty pizza rolls



Ready for the oven.



Inspire you?

And guess what is my favorite show to watch on Netflix these days?

None other than

The Take Home Chef

Curtis Stone is great!

Ummm...Curtis...we apologise for laughing at your lavender shirt in the past HyVee food flyer.

I am not sure why HyVee tends to make you look kind-of dorky.

You really are pretty cool.

Warmly,

A Patchwork Mommy

Drama Be Gone!

Origami begin!!







Warmly,A Patchwork Mommy

What Happens...

when you wake up one day and realise your dreams of the future (which is now your present) and your true reality crash?

You realise they do not match up.

Some things are better than you hoped

but then

there are things that are not at all the way you envisioned them to be.

~Sigh~

Life can be so messy and hard.

I am not the person I thought I would be.

I am not the wife I thought I would be.

I am not the mother I thought I would be.

I am weak, fearful, tired, a doubter, a run-away-er.

Did I already say weak and fearful? I guess I did. Well double it. Double everything.

To be totally humble, and maybe face judgement from those who are not as weak as I am I will share I took a 'vacation' from the home this past week.

By vacation I mean a 'Tina blows her top and runs (yes,like runs away) to a hotel' kind of vacation. At least I ran away before I blew more than just my top. Good thing 'cause for a few moments it could have gone either way.

Those who really know me can (with my blessing) insert an eye-roll about now.

I love you that you know me, you eye rollers, 'cause you know me, the real me, and yes you know this will pass. You know how I tick!!!

Anyway,

It was just a hotel down the street. Joel and Lily went with me and I had a few visitors looking for some quiet-ness and maybe better food than dad's lentil soup experiment. Never-the-less, it still was running away.

That's it.

My mess.

Messy me.

I am not quite sure what made my top blow like it did.

I really think it is a few things going on in this head of mine.

I fear getting older. I mean really really fear it.

So many things come along with getting older. Things like the kids growing older. Elena you CAN NOT turn 18. I forbid it!!

Getting older means my baby-less season of life has seemed to knock on my front door. I forbid that too!!

Getting older means looking older. Forbid!!!!

Getting older means more time to experience hard issues.

I am also mad that I seemed to have gone backwards not forwards in my walk with God.

Ok and the shallow me hates that I am not small anymore.

A weak,'fraid-y cat who just can not at times, especially lately, trust God's wisdom in my life.

~sigh~

Warmly,A Patchwork Mommy

General-ness

I am now back onto the old Blogger interface. I am so glad I had a choice!!

My 'yesterday's' post took over two hours 'cause I could not figure out how to use the new interface.

Of course,this is a future dated post. I am really writing it in the wee hours of Friday morning.

I am tired so I will write this post and trust I will be able to access Blogger in a few days once I log off to go to sleep.

I wanted to show off my great breakfast.



Hard-boiled eggs (compliments once again from the Byrons) and big generous pieces of cinnamon coffee cake.

The smell is delicious.

Wish you were here,don't you?



This is how I serve most of our meals. I dish everything out before hand (for the sake of fairness). Ha ha. Saying 'serve yourself' to a growing teen somehow is translated into 'eat half the pan and leave everyone else the crumbs' and we have seven growing teens here. ;~}






Warmly,A Patchwork Mommy

272

relationships.

We have 272 relationships at work in our house.

If I did my figuring right that is.

Seventeen people having to work together with sixteen other family members.

Many, many, many opportunities to love, serve, forgive, support, encourage, overlook...

Grant (16) Alan (14) and it's just Mountain Dew in a glass bottle :~}



Elena (17) Alan (14)



Joel (7) Anya (9) Josh (11) Josiah (15) Joyce (15)

Grace (7) Lily (4)

Lily (4) Ekie (10) Naomi (9)

Lily helping fold the Saturday morning paper for the big kids

Elena (17) helping a not so happy Anya (9) with her math

Sometimes things can get pretty intense here.

We can rub each other the wrong way, not want to forgive, or share, or be patient, or overlook, or love.

But just as hard and intense as things can get, you would find things can be just as fun, encouraging, loving, supportive.

In a large family our weaknesses are exposed more quickly and intensely but so is God's grace.

Being a lump of coal in the hands of our sweet caring Father and being squeezed (via our daily interactions with each other)...is right were I want to be.

And someday God will open up his hand and you just might bear witness to seventeen of the biggest diamonds ever!

Warmly,

A Patchwork Mommy

Something New?

Ok.

NOW what is going on!!!!

My whole Blogger post writing page is different!

I want my old post writing page back.

Why do things have to change?

I am feeling a little like I am standing on shifting sands here in Blogger-ville.

Maybe the changes with the Blogger interface (?) was what is causing troubles with me not being to access my Blogger account? Time will tell.

Ok.

I will now move on to less complain-y posts.

The posts that will appear over the next few days I will belt out now and future date them just in-case I can not get back into my account.

There will be a mix of February happenings and current happenings.

Enjoy!!

Warmly,

Patchwork Mommy

P.S.

Is there really no spell check on this new post page?

I am in trouble...

Found it.

It is under the Compose tab.  I usually wrote under the HTML tab before.

Changes.

Changes.

I am not fond of changes.

Not Sure What To Think

As you see I was able to get on to blog a post but this is after at least three hours trying and trying to get my google sign-in page which in turn signs me into Blogger.

I am SO SO SO frustrated!!!!

I might actually switch to Wordpress or something because this is just crazy. Is anyone else having problems with Google or Blogger?

These past weeks I have not been able to sign in to Blogger by means of my Favorites link (which was what I usually did for years) or even the little sign in link from another Blogger blog. Nor can I sign in via the Blogger link I get by using various search engines.

FRUSTRATING!!!!!

The way I was able to access my Blogger (actually Google) sign-in page yesterday and after numerous tries this evening was to search blogger and click onto the chased link under the main Blogger search link on Yahoo. Make any sense?

Tell me why Blogger and Google have to be connected?

I have actually been having many problems with Google so I have been using Yahoo as my default search engine.

What is the deal?

Anyone know?

Maybe it is just my stupid (sorry for the strong words) computer.

As long as I can get on to blog I will try to get a few posts in but I am seriously thinking about switching from Blogger if I can not figure out what is going on.

Warmly, A Patchwork Mommy

Pinch Me

I can not believe this!!!!!

What!?

Well since my last post on January 24th I have not been able to get to my blogger account!!!

Ugh!!!

What the deal was I have NO clue!!

Am I really here?

Am I really posting?

It is awful late at night.

Maybe I am dreaming!!

I really do not even have a blog post ready.

I will post again tomorrow now that I can access my blog.

...well...

...unless I really am just dream blogging...

Warmly,A Patchwork Mommy

Another Wednesday Night

Here are highlights of our second Wednesday night home church group.

We SO need to find a better name for it!

Dad's Bible lesson.



A few of the kids role playing.



Working on a project





A little impromptu mentoring...don't say anything like 'how sweet'. Trust me. It wrecks the mood. I just know.



The 'braiding' of the bread.



Someone is pleased with his braiding!



This will be a good treat!



Hot potato!!




Ok, I just HAD to include this video!

THIS IS A MUST WATCH!!!



We are some crazy cats!!!

Warmly,A Patchwork Mommy

P.S.

Wondering what Jeff taught about?

He talked about compassion using the story of Jesus healing the lame man (found in John 5) as illustration.

We made sleeping mats out of construction paper.

Worked on memorizing:

Be kind and compassionate to one another,forgiving each other,just as in Christ God forgave you.

Ephesians 4:32

Worked on a word search.

We made Challah bread.

Colored, sang, and prayed.

We are still fine tuning everything but this is a fun time!