Small Town Hospitality in Swedeburg, Nebraska

This past Sunday I got a true taste of small town life in the country! What to do when someone invites you to a church picnic of a church you’ve never attended? Go, partake, and enjoy small town hospitality! It was a beautiful day. The smell of pulled pork tantalized the senses. And the music [...]

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Camping in the front yard…

Sounds like a good idea, right? Ahhh…memories of my childhood…running around the backyard with friends until 3 in the morning…practical jokes that weren’t so funny to some…eating junk food by the bucketfuls. Glad to pass on the tradition. The kids were super excited tired and in pajamas, ready for bed by 6:30…amazing! Music by the [...]

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Spontaneously Captured

My blessings this week dwell on the spontaneity of the moment. There have been several random “hurry-and-grab-the-camera” moments that don’t really fit anywhere photo category-wise yet are precious enough to save! Blessings that one day I will look back upon and smile at a memory that could’ve easily slipped away! Blessings # 591 ~ 600 Rainbow before a [...]

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Fresh Perspectives

What do you do when your work never leaves you? It is truly a blessing to be a stay-at-home mommy  yet sometimes the amount of work can start choking the life out of you. It is always there…always a constant. You do and do and do some more but there is always one more mess…one [...]

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Quintessential Summer

Summer essentials to do before we run to the safety of our air conditioners in the heat of July. Blessing # 558 ~ 567 ~ homemade ice cream ~ garden hose sprinkler ~ bare feet through grass ~ evening visits on the porch ~ cool summer beverages ~ shortcakes with berries and ice cream ~ [...]

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Garage Sale Blessings

I have continually found that when you pray before embarking on a shopping trip of any nature, the Lord will tend to bless you in ways you couldn’t have imagined before starting. As weekly blessings tend to go, this past week was a biggie! With the garage sale behind me I am finding places for our [...]

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Things Unseen…

Note ~ I wrote this post back in August of 2010. I think I meant to publish it or add a photo first before publishing. I’m not sure. But somehow it escaped posting and ended up sitting in my dashboard. While cleaning up I found it, reread and thought this is still just as important [...]

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My Greatest Blessings

It seems only appropriate after Mother’s Day to reflect on being a mother and where my blessings truly lie. Spring flowers are beautiful but fading. But these… …oh these children! How they make my heart ache with a love so deep They are the balm over their own chaos! Counting Blessings # 414 ~ 420 [...]

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Perfect Timing

His timing is perfect. You’d think I’d know that by heart after all these years. But still I fret and worry and wonder in vain. Our life is clicking into a lifestyle we’ve been praying for and yearning for yet not believing would come to pass. Yes, there is also the diligence of our hard [...]

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Needing to Count

I need to count today. I come to this day depleted and tired, cranky with only words that tear down instead of lift up. My children feel it. I feel it. It is like a snowball rolling through my days picking up negativity along the way. Two weeks of sick kids. Kids who were healed [...]

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Naming Love

I’m on chapter three of Ann’s new book and the thing that strikes me is the act of doing in naming. It is not that the doing is outrageous, extraordinary, magnificent. It is precisely that the doing is mundane. This naming of mundane is naming love…God’s love to us, our love to each other. Unconditional, sacrificial [...]

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Potty Training Mommy

We started potty training Ivy today. A two-fold reason, the first being that she is 21 months and showing all the cues (telling us when she pees and poos her diapers, showing an interest in sitting on a potty when her big sis does, etc.) and the second being that our hard water is rendering [...]

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Just Breathe…

It is Sunday evening as I am writing this (to be posted on Monday morning) and I am finally breathing again. My life has been a whorl wind of activity between Adam getting a new job, refiguring finances, deciding to move, moving, unpacking, running to a million doctor/dentist appointments, doing up Halloween with the children, [...]

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Summer Days

What is a summer day unless you can go outside in a brand new dress, find the one pot of water that we missed when overturning, mix a big batch of mud and cover yourselves from head to toe? Can’t imagine getting more basic then this! 247. Freedom to play as a child outside. 248. [...]

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Our New Joy

The gift of life is brimming full here this spring. We recently found out that we are to be blessed with baby number 6! Am I ready? everyone keeps asking. Well, are you ever? But we know this is a blessing from God. His timing is perfect even if I would’ve chosen differently. His grace [...]

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Clinging to Hope

I’m desperately clinging to a hope in spring right now. While Thursday was a blessing of warmth on my face, the weekend turned my household into a cabin-fever, horomone -spiraling mess! I feel dry and barren and am longing for a resurrection. Church feels wanting. Relationships feel old insecurities rising into new disguises. Motherhood feels [...]

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A Drumroll Please…

Just a quick note this morning as I count my blessings. Mainly becaue I was up so late last night accomplishing some of those blessings! (And I have a 10 month old who is trying to type at the same time I am!) 179) FINALLY GOT MY SCHEDULE DONE!!!!! (…that is until I need to [...]

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The Four Pillars of Too Much

As I am in the process of cleaning out my fridge and freezer and pantry, in order to embark on the first-of-the-month big shopping trip, everything appears cluttered, disorganized and it makes me feel panicky. It is not as if this is the first time I’ve noticed this. Every time I do I say to [...]

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Hope and Awakenings

My gratitudes and thankfulness lifted up in praise as the winter dies out and spring brings to us redemption. 125) Poppies caught in the sunlight. 126) Flowers reinvisioned to bring new life to a new room. 127) Secret love letters from a dear husband who despises “Love Dare” yet walks it out in our marriage. [...]

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Seeking Him First

This past week has been a weekend of growth in seeking Him first. Jesus is teaching me how to follow Deuteronomy 6 – talking to my children when they rise, along the way in the day, when they lie at night. If you are anything like me, we somehow think this needs to be a [...]

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