back again

Hello to you all once again. No...I did not fall of the face of the earth although at times it might be nice to do that. Just been so busy lately...not sure why I ever complained about being bored the first two weeks we were here. It was never my intention to allow this much time to lapse between posts so I shall try to do better.  Honestly, I am so far behind with pictures I am not even sure where to start, but I will try to bring you all back up to date. For now I guess I shall just show you a few more things I have been up to....

I keep seeing these cool letters and numbers that people have been incorporating into their decor and I thought our house needed an "M" for Martin of course...so i set to work....printed a large M out of the computer...traced it onto a piece of ply....rounded up my hubby and convinced him to do the jig sawing for me (he really is great like that), sanded the edges and decided I didn't feel like painting them...so I just wrapped it in baler twine so you don't see the rough edges.  Did the same thing with the bird below....and then got hubs to drill a hole in the bottom...stuck a stick in...and hot glued the stick to a little square support thingy. Made the rolled cloth and twine balls out of some old foam that Ben was gonna throw away...I saved it cuz I knew that one day I would find a use for it and sure enough. :)

For some reason the following picture seems peaceful. I found this old bird at a thrift store before we came here and decided to give it a white paint job....midway through that paint job while it was on the garage floor drying, our dog, Daisy decided to have a taste of glass bird with a hint of white primer. Well, apparently she wasn't impressed cuz I heard the crash from the inside of the house and knew right away that my bird was in trouble...so anyway, part of the face cracked off, but I liked that little bird so much I decided to salvage it anyway..and really, if you don't look to close you might never notice. I still like my little bird, she just has a little more character I guess. The other white thing there is a sea egg that my hubby got out of the ocean for me :)

Here is the bookshelf partially decorated for Christmas...I once heard a wise woman say that unless you do a little decorating for Christmas down here, it just won't ever feel quite real, so I started doing a few things...have a few more projects that I want to work on yet for that. Notice that flip calendar in the bottom left hand corner. What a tremendous blessing to find that surprise this week!! Thanks to friends, family & church for blessing us in this way!!! And a big shout out to my dear mother for organizing it all! love her!

Becky Fox kindly took some time out of her day to teach this girl a few things about painting. I had never picked up a paint brush before coming down here so things seemed a little foreign to me, but I am thinking that I might actually enjoy doing a little painting. Don't think I will ever go too far with it, but it certainly opens up a new door of possibilities..so this poppy is my first painting, but most of the credit goes to Becky for telling me what to do. It is alot easier to paint when someone is telling you what strokes to do where and all that good stuff. I came home and tried it on my own & lets just say I wasn't very successful.  Gotta do alot more practicing. :)

And this fellow here............ trust me this picture does not do justice. When I saw him walking across my floor I freaked. I don't know if I ever saw a bug as big as him & I know he looks little on here but he wasn't. Now I am not a real freakish person when it comes to bugs but it took all the courage I had to run for the closest flip flop and toss it to Ben. He did the dirty work for me & kindly picked him up and threw him in the toilet for me.  but wouldn't you know it...he was too light and no matter how many times I flushed that toilet her wouldn't go down. So he sat there staring at me for a couple days from the toilet bowl. Needless to say I didn't spend more time than I had to on the hopper. Finally Ben had enough of him so he worked with the guy a little to get him to go down and wouldn't you know it he was still kicking....ughhh...had i known he was still alive.............

Is there anything as peaceful as a sleeping child??? I think not! My poor soul needs some peaceful sleep right now. It is nearly 1:00 AM and I am awake. Couldn't sleep partly because my stomach hurt and partly because of the craziness that is going on here right now.  I won't even try to explain what it all is, but I can guarantee that I might just be going to the funny farm real soon now if something doesn't change. I trust that God knows our limitations and surely he knew what He was doing when he brought us here in such a time as this... I don't question God. I just wonder what lessons I should be learning through all of this?????  He has been faithful before and I trust He will be faithful in the future. If you feel the Spirit prodding please remember to lift us to the throne of grace. We can in our humanness do nothing, we are just trusting that God is able to use us despite our imperfections & frailties (don't know how to spell that word)

"Black Eye" kindly washing my dishes for me. What a sweetheart!!!

And "Fuffy" kindly frying my chicken for me...I thought he was being a real sweet heart too until I noticed a bunch of chicken gone missing and Ben caught him with his "hand in the cookie jar" so to speak.  Anyway, they just love any chance they can get to "help" in the kitchen, whether that means frying chicken, washing dishes, taste testing, or licking off beaters. They are more than willing to help!! :)

Well, a couple tums later and I think I shall once again try to get a few winks before the sun rises once again! It seems to happen all to quickly and tomorrow is another busy day working on painting the church & we have crusade all week at Laura so that fills our evenings. Wish you all a blessed week!!