Too Much Pepper!

These days I use a lot of Cayenne Pepper in Dad's dinners, but I over did it tonight!  While cooking up some fish I used the usual seasonings with some cayenne and began to cough, which has happened to me before. No big deal.  Then Sam came in the kitchen and began to cough..........then David in the dinningroom began to cough.......................then Ben, who is way over in the livingroom, began to cough................and so on.  At one point everyone except for Dad was coughing for about ten minutes!!!   *heavy sigh*

Here are a couple of pictures I found on my camera.  I'm sure David took them as usual.

My Birthday Ginger Bread House

Molly Helping Decorate

Reasons for Not Blogging................

• Someone put the black food coloring container on the kitchen window sill - laying flat with the lid ajar. 
• Put Dad's "Do not dry-Lay flat" sweater in the dryer and am trying to stetch it out before its fully dried.
• Had to catch the parakeets that were accidently let out.  
• Teaching Sam the right way to head a paper for spelling.
• John wants to drive me to the bank to get driving practice.
• Cooking two different dinners - one for Dad and one for everyone else.
• Teaching kids how to deep clean (so I don't get so overwhelmed doing it myself.)
• Reminding Pete and Ben they love eachother more than they know.
• Re-organizing computer area to equip Amy how to help in Dad's business.
• Molly wants me to hold her and play Mommy Deer and Baby Deer.
• Bread maker smelled like it was making burnt toast. I think it's time for a new one.
• Got lost in Joanne Fabrics (not really, but I forgot about the time.)
• Correcting school papers.
• Playing Spider or building birthday puzzles after dinner clean-up; sometimes it helps my brain relax.
• Teaching boys the right way to open a pomegranate (and that it STAINS!)
• Trying to finish the laundry before the weekend, but this is only load six.
• I (not the kids) spilled 5 pounds of sugar all over the floor!
• Cuddling David's soft ears before he thinks he is too old for that kind of stuff.
• And the list goes on...............................................................................

"Actually, Godliness is a great source of profit when it is combined 

with being happy with what you already have.

1 Timothy 6:6 (CEB)

Photos by a 4th Grader

Our last few October days have been very beautiful around here. Here are some pictures David took when I let him loose with the camera.  He might be working me out of a job.  David is creative and I think he has a pretty good eye for creative pictures.  I always like seeing what he's come up with.

             Then we Your people, the sheep of Your pasture, will give thanks to you forever; we will show forth and publish Your praise from generation to generation.           Psalm 79:13

While Entering Church

O my God, I am a sinner, and yet I am not a sinner.  Alone and apart from Christ, I am a sinner.  But in my Lord Jesus Christ and with Him, I am no sinner.  I firmly believe that He has destroyed all my sins with His precious blood.  The sign of this is that I am baptized, cleansed by God's word, and declared absolved and freed from all my sins.  In the sacrament of the true body and blood of my Lord Jesus Christ I have received as a sure sign of grace the forgiveness of sins.  This He has won and accomplished for me by the shedding of His blood.  For this I thank him in eternity.  Amen

                                                                                                      Luther's Prayers

Finally, Our Latest Family Picture

O'Briens 2011

So here is our lastest family photo.  We ( I ) never "got it together" enough to get a formal family photo while Seth was here, but a friend of mine was kind enough to come over and take one for us.  And here are other random pictures she took in the slide show below.  I have a new "therapeutic" activity to add to my list; there's gardening, puzzles, sewing & crafts and now playing with Movie Maker.  I am certainly an amateur, but this is addicting and fun. The pictures are not perfect or edited but neither are we : )  Enjoy.

Seth's Smallest Fan

This is one of my favorite pictures!  I seem to have a lot of pictures of Molly and Seth lately.  Molly thinks so highly of Seth and Seth just loves his little sister. By the time Seth is back home Molly will be quite a bit older, so it's fun to capture these two on camera now.

Seth is in Hawaii right now and will be deployed to Afghanistan in May.

To be a Mother.............

I know this is kind of long reading, but it is good reading!

"To be a Mother is to be the sacrament--the effective symbol--of place.  Mothers do not make homes, they are our home; in the simple sense that we begin our days by a long sojourn within the body of a woman; in the extended sense that she remains our center of gravity through the years.  She is the very diagram of belonging, the where in whose vicinity we are fed and watered, and have our wounds bound up and our noses wiped.  She is geography incarnate, with her breasts and her womb, her relative immobility, and her hands reaching up to us the fruitfulness of the earth......................" 

"..........You are not only a link with something.  You are the thing itself; and you are the sacrament, the instrument, by which we learn to love the things that are.  Your body is the first object any child of a man ever wanted.  Therefore dispose yourself to be loved, to be wanted, to be available.  Be there for them with a vengeance.  Be a gracious, bending woman.  Incline you ear, your heart, your hands to them.  Be found warm and comfortable, and disposed to affection.  Be ready to be done by and to welcome their casual effusions with something better than preoccupation and indifference.  It isn't a matter of how much time; only how much intensity....................."

R.F.Capon

Bed and Board