Tag: Gabriel David

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Sharing With You

Some pictures:

A Scripture passage:

Colossians 3:1-17
If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.
Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.
But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.
Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

A prayer:

Worker of wonders,
Continue to make my [family] righteous, so that [we] may have peace, quietness, and security forever. O Lord, be gracious to [us]; I wait for You. Be [our] arm every morning, [our] salvation in the time of trouble. For You are exalted, for You dwell in high; fill [us] with justice and righteousness, and be the stability of [our] days, abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge; let the fear of You be [our] treasure. Arise, O Lord, lift Yourself up; be exalted in [our family].
Help [us] to become [a family] who walks righteously and speaks uprightly, who despises the gain of oppressions, who shakes [our] hands, let they hold a bribe, who stops [our] ears from hearing of bloodshed and shuts [our] eyes from looking on evil. Then [we] will dwell on the heights; [our] place of defense will be the fortress of rocks; [our] bread will be given [us]; [our] water will be sure.
Let [our] eyes behold You in Your beauty. Be with [us] in majesty, for You are [our] judge; You are [our] lawgiver; You are [our] king; You will save [us] (Isaiah 32 & 33).

~Andrew Case, Prayers of an Excellent Wife~

A quote:

“Our whole relation to God is rooted in this: that His will is to be done in us and by us as it is in heaven. …[O]ur first object ought ever to be to ascertain the mind of God.”
~ Andrew Murray~

A poem:

As the misty bluebell wood,
Very still and shadowy,
Does not seek, far less compel
Several word from several bell,
But lifts up her quiet blue–
So all my desire is before Thee.

For the prayer of human hearts
In the shadow of the Tree,
Various as the various flowers,
Blown by wind and wet by showers,
Rests at last in silent love–
Lord, all my desire is before Thee.

~Amy Carmichael~

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Joys in the Morning

Psalm 30:3-5

O Lord, You brought my soul up from the grave;
You have kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit.
Sing praise to the Lord, you saints of His,
And give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name.
For His anger is but for a moment,
His favor is for life;
Weeping may endure for a night,
But joy comes the morning.

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Loving a wee layer of snow

Our home looks so lovely covered with a wee layer of snow. Enough to cover up the vestiges of the construction site and lack of yard, but not enough to require plowing yet. It’s the best of both worlds. 🙂

The boys and I went out to enjoy the frosty world. Okay, let’s rephrase that: Asher slept through it in some awesome cuddly coziness, I tolerated the cold biting my legs through my jeans (one of these days I need to unpack my snow gear!) and took pictures, and Gabriel thoroughly enjoyed the frostiness of the world around our home. Picture perfect examples? You got it.

     

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Paint

So I am a couple weeks behind on posting anything about our new house… but we are still moving at the end of next week! I know: insane, right? 😉

But a couple of weeks ago I did remember to take some pictures of progress, and this is one (okay, two…) of my favorites. Gabriel wanted to help paint his new bedroom, and we documented a wee bit of the process.

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Loving My Boys

Have I mentioned lately how much I cherish, love, and adore this man? He blesses me so much and in so many ways that I can not begin to describe it to you. But my husband has my heart, completely, and I am beyond thankful for the gift that he is to me, our children, and everyone else that we know.

And this big boy? I love him, too, more than I can tell you. His life, his vibrancy, his cleverness, his curiosity, his passion, his tenderness ~ they constantly surprise, encourage, humble, bless, and amaze this mommy.

And how about this tiny boy? I have never so much as even seen his profile, but he already has me wrapped completely around his little fingers (which I do see every week on the ultrasound machine). His life stuns my socks off every morning. Our little Baby Nine is quite the charmer (he has charmed his big brother completely!) and I think God has great plans for him to impact the Kingdom and the world! I can just tell.

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Baking Bread with my Big Boy

I know this articleis going around a lot online (at least in the reformed community) right now, and I’ve heard that people are specifically tweeting, facebooking, and blogging this quote from it:

A friend of mine, a homeschool mom, just passed away of cancer. In the week before she died, I asked her if she had any regrets in her life. She told me she wished she had baked less bread – she said if she had it to do over again she would buy bread and spend more time with her children.

But pardon me, if I may: one thing that I will not say on my death bed is that I wish I would have baked less bread. One of the best memories I can give my child(ren) is the gift of cooking & baking alongside me. (Perhaps that was this woman’s downfall? Shoving her kids aside and separating spending time with her children from doing other work? I don’t know, I can’t say, just reading between the lines in this out-of-context quote. And yes, I did read the entire article: and no, I did not very much like it.) Sharing in work and play and joy together. Learning and talking and laughing. Dumping in fluffy flour, making messes, punching down squishy dough, cleaning the messes & washing the dishes together while listening to music, watching the dough rise and being amazed at how it grows, smelling the deliciousness of baking all the way from the backyard where we took a soccer break, slathering on the butter when the bread was still steaming, and biting into the warm & crunchy goodness. So I just want to offer my perspective here. If there is one thing I am attempting to do more in my motherhood, it is include my child(ren) more in “my” world. If I were to die tomorrow, I would be so incredibly thankful that I have taken the time to (among other things) cook and bake from scratch, and include my child(ren) in the process, because it is life-changing and joy-giving for all of us ~ not because it is part of what will sanctify myself or my children, because the method makes no difference, but because it is such a beautiful opportunity to work together, rejoice together, and share together in some of God’s goodness.

I’ve got photo evidence of my big boy’s bread-baking joy for you. Wish you could hear his glee, feel the freshly ground grain in between your fingers, smell the rich bread, and share a crusty loaf with us. It’s like God’s goodness for all of my senses right here, right now. We’re loving it; and Gabriel especially loves his own little miniature round loaves. 🙂

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Art Time

Gabriel and I love doing things together: sometimes I carry him into my world (like last night when I gave him a table knife and he cut up an entire zucchini from my garden for me, which I was able to toss right into a skillet & sautee for dinner!) and other times I jump into his (like earlier this week when we played in the backyard with imaginary friends and had the silliest of conversations between our hands!).

Today we had art time, which is more like a melding of our two worlds. 🙂 We both love art time, I think. And now that he is getting a little older and a little better at following specific directions, it’s more involved than just plopping him down with paper and crayons to see what he randomly does. Now I can give him a coloring page and tell him, “color all the pants blue, then color all the peoples’ hair orange” ~ and he will. He loves to trace hands onto paper. He enjoys stamps and stickers. But mostly he loves painting. We’ve had Color Wonder paints for a while because I just can’t resist their amazingly easy cleanup. 😉 But while we were given some Melissa & Doug fingerpaints over a year ago, they weren’t really great and ran out quickly. So today I decided that it would be super fun to make our own fingerpaints and do art time. We were able to work on following directions, talking about colors, counting, etc. so it’s a really fun way to make “schooling” stuff super-duper-fantastically-fun!


Following this recipe, Gabriel & I whipped up a batch of fingerpaints real quickly ~ I did not leave the stove on low, so with the higher heat, it took about half the time but worked just dandily. 🙂 We only had a couple of food coloring options on-hand, so we ended up with three colors: beautifully vibrant, fun, cheerful shades of yellow, blue, and green.

Although Gabriel is one of the cleanest, neat-nickiest 3-year-olds I have personally come into contact with, he eventually dipped his fingertips in, and after about twenty minutes I even convinced him to plop his whole hand onto the pages. Too fun.

Now he is napping while his artwork is drying (although he insists that he wants to use fingerpaints again as soon as he wakes up!) , and the paints are in some little plastic containers (anyone keep practically every plastic container you ever get, just because you know it may eventually come in handy for giving things away or doing something kid-friendly?). In the background of one of the pictures you can see two buckets on the counter covered in bright green Duck Tape; those are our “art buckets” and we love them. One is filled with coloring books, paper, cardboard, etc. while the other is filled with crayons, pencils, stencils, stamps, stickers, paints, homemade playdough, markers, etc. Again with keeping plastic containers (these were laundry detergent buckets) for repurposing into random fun stuff. 🙂

I’m so thankful my redhead shadow loves art time just as much as his mommy. 🙂

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Gabriel Loves Swimming

On a recent overnight getaway to attend a friend’s wedding, we got to hit the hotel pool… and Gabriel was beyond thrilled!
We’ve enjoyed swimming this summer, and Mommy is thinking that swim lessons next summer will be right on point. 🙂

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Gabriel to the Rescue!

Gabriel is currently in love with playing dress-up. He’s not too into the cowboy outfit right now, but fireman and policeman? Oh yes please! He likes to “rescue people and things and stuff” while wearing the fireman outfit, but hasn’t quite figured out yet what to do as a policeman ~ he told me that policemen “just watch things” so he doesn’t get too adventurous. 😉 But he’s certainly the cutest little firefighter and officer you ever set your eyes on!