Normalcy

     It sounds funny, but this year it hit me for the first time in my whole 17 years of living that my family isn't 'normal'. Yeah, my entire family laughed at that. It just never hit me, I think I need to come out of the clouds more often. Not being normal isn't a bad thing at all though; different is good sometimes. :)

     Apparently it isn't 'normal' first off, to have 11 kids in your family. To be able to buy and cook food in bulk (Quadrupling recipes is the norm here) and have all of your siblings (except for the 4 and the 1 year old) to be able to cook at least one thing. It isn't 'normal' to drive a 15 passenger van, and consider it downsizing when you switch to a 12 passenger. And you gets weird looks when you exclaim over how small it feels. ;) It isn't 'normal' to have had 6+ cows, know how to milk them, process the milk, make yoghurt and multiple varieties of cheese, take care of them, and process their meat, all on 1 1/2 acres. To have raised over 200 chickens over the years, both meat birds and layers, and many, many rabbits.

 

       Also to have adopted three siblings from West Africa, that isn't normal. They're awesome. To have all of your siblings know their chores, and being able to do them, I mainly just supervise. *happy dance* We can get the entire house clean in 45 minutes. We have a pretty efficient system, and distribute the work pretty well amongst everyone, and switch things up so no one is stuck with anything. It also isn't normal apparently, to have push-up and sit-up contests, and battles with wooden spoons in the kitchen. :P But they're all awesome, and get pretty intense, so they're fun.


     We buy our yoghurt (the cows are gone now) in 5 gallon buckets, cook 20 lbs of chickens at once, check out over 100 library books per trip, (our largest fine was $1,357.49. We returned every single book very quickly), have a commercial kitchen sink, walk-in refrigerator, and 4 other freezers besides. We've done bulk buys consisting of over 2,000 lbs of Himalayan pink salt, and literal tons of fruit. We dance around the kitchen to Mr. Heatmiser and '80's hits (my parents...not my idea...), get in trouble together, throw the football, and run around in random costumes we put together.

We're just a weird, crazy, wonderful, happy family, not to say we don't have hard times and strife, because we do, but we have Jesus, so it's good. I love being the big different family that we are.
I didn't mean for this to sound like a rant, because it isn't, it's just em celebrating our wonderful differences. :)

Blessings,

~Gracie
    

Little Thoughts

     Today was busy day in my life, and now I'm curled up in a corner on our (apparently real) leather couch. The lights are dimmed, the kids are cleaning up dinner, I finally convinced mom to let us listen to something other than Christmas music, the fire is blazing cozily, and Baby Girl is running rampant and alternating between giving people plastic cups out of cupboards and trying to drink out of water bottles, smiling the whole time.

     I sat down to write this, and mom asked me what the subject of the post was going to be. I replied I didn't know. I just have hundreds of miscellaneous thoughts rolling and swirling through my head, and when I sit down to type, they all come out and find voices.

       I admire the beauty of our living room. Seriously. The kids found some green hydrangeas and vibrant purple mums, and they're sitting in a vintage floral porcelain vase on the wooden table -that one of my brothers made- with my Bible next to it. It's just a nice picture, and really pretty. The fireplace is all stoked up and roaring, and the heat causes the dried leaves Faith hung above it to dance. I love the little moments.

      Another one of my thoughts is how we can get so wrapped up in living life and focusing on what's happening around us and to us, that we forget to talk to the One who has scripted our life. He already knows what's going to happen. I sat down with my Bible tonight, for the first time in far too long, and started reading. I flipped to the psalms, and perused through those words, as I have before, but I saw more in them, and different things on them then I have before. I love the psalms. I've found a psalm or a verse for pretty much everything I've ever gone through in my life. I love the variety of things David wrote. There are prayers for vindication. There are prayers of joy, of thanksgiving, of repentance, of praise, of sorrow. Prayers pleading for forgiveness. 
  
     Tonight though in Psalms, I flipped to the 40's. (I grew up reading the Psalm of the day, but that means I missed out on everything after the 31st Psalm. So it's been fun to discover them. :)

~*~

     Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall yet praise Him. The help of my countenance and my God. 

       Psalm 42:11

My soul pants for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually say to me, where is your God? When I remember these things, I pour out my soul within me...O my God, my soul is cast down within me; therefore I will remember You from the land of Jordan... The Lord will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night His song shall be with me- a prayer to the God of my life. 

      Psalm 42:2-8

Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust..

Psalm 40:4a

Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and shield. For our heart shall rejoice in Him, because we have trusted in His holy name. Let Your mercy O Lord be upon us, just as we hope in You.

Psalm 33:20-21 

~*~

      These are some verses that spoke to me tonight. Learning to trust God has been a lesson I'm relearning, I tend to try and plan my life, to decide that this is what I want, and it's going to happen. Just like that. My life, my way. I tend to hold too tightly to what I think is "mine". But God has been showing me that this life isn't mine. He asks me if He is my all. If I can still find my happiness in Him. If I will let Him love me and fill me. If I will trust Him to work out His plan in my life, even if it's not what I had planned. If I can let go of my desires and trust Him to work out the best in my life. And honestly, it's hard for me to trust. It's hard for me to wait sometimes. 

     The family is watching Les Miserables, so I think I shall go join them. I hope you enjoy this little excerpt from a chapter in my life, and I still have quite a few musings I didn't get to writing down tonight, but I shall write more soon. 

     Thoughtfully,

~Gracie

Cold Day Musings

    I sat on the wood steps outside of our mudroom door. It's cold out here, about 34 degrees tops, but I've got a hot drink in my hands, so it doesn't bother me much. I watch the way the cold air swirls through the steam rising from my coffee and my breath. I've been in a contemplative mood lately. I watch the last robins, juncos, and woodpeckers of Fall and listen to their harvest songs as they ruffle through the fallen leaves, I admire the way the cold sunbeams fall through cedar tree boughs, giving a hipster-ish look and sunflare to this scene. I ponder Life, as much as a seventeen year old Dreamer can.
     I think on how you have to die to live sometimes (1 Corinthians 15:36 "How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies"), how sometimes you have to step back in order to someday step forward. How hard giving things up can be. How weak I am. How great God's plan is.

      I muse on people, on how God has such a wonderful and perfect plan for each of us when He created us, and we all have so much potential. But sometimes we waste our potential. We choose a different path, or decide what we want, and throw away our potential.That makes my heart hurt. That's not to say that God still doesn't have a plan for us, He can still work it all out for good, no matter what mistakes we make. But still. Free will is such an interesting subject, and one I continue to ponder on, and part of me wonders if I'll never fully understand it, like the Trinity. But maybe someday I will. I finish my warm drink and look at the empty mug, still retaining heat even though it's empty.

 I think on a quote in a book I just read again for the umpteenth time, Passion and Purity by Elisabeth Elliot, and the thought strikes me that when we get to Heaven, we'll be all of what God planned us to be. We'll be whole. Fulfilled. Complete. It's so strikingly beautiful. I stand and walk inside, rubbing my chilled hands together to get the circulation going, still thinking on that glorious thought. Another reason to look forward to Heaven.

November Adventures- Leavenworth!

Hello people!

 Two adventures in the same week! :D Whidbey Island and Leavenworth, both of which I had never fully explored before. From beach island to Bavarian mountain village. Good times... <3

  

I love all of the colors of fall. Especially the bright golds that were up in the mountains. 

 

Because sometimes leaves have to fall manually in order to get a good picture...

 All five of us that went walked around, looked through all the shops, admired the trees...

             Had to laugh at this sign, so true! :P

      We got a 'Robin Hood' lunch,  (you go to a store and buy meat, bread, cheese and drinks. Simplicity. It's amazing) and walked down to the river to eat.

      There was the sweetest lock on the bridge... Love this idea. <3

     And the boys both bought some mini dice, we walked around some more, bought salt water taffy, sang Beauty and the Beast, Singing in the Rain, Ella Fitzgerald, and Phantom of the Opera on the way home, passed garbage around the car, and laughed our way back. It was an amazing time, I'm grateful for these friends of mine.

     Blessings,

~Gracie

November Adventures- Whidbey Island!

Hey everyone!

  First off, sorry for taking so long to update, life has been busy!

So, let me update you on things that have happened since last I wrote.
For one,, my brother who is in the army has been writing and calling us, and he's doing really well, and that's been really nice to hear from him. :) He's making some friends and starting to enjoy it more, and he gets more mail than anyone else. (Boo-yah!)

     Then this last week I got the blessing of a whole day with one of my close girl friends! We went to Whidbey Island and explored the whole island. I'd never been all over it before, and I now definitely consider it one of my happy places, it's just so unique and whimsical. Makes my heart happy. <3

We met up in the morning and went on a ferry, and headed off on our adventure.

      We got lattes in Langley, and the barista did cool latte art on it, which was a first for me, and the whole drink and the shop was beautiful.

      We walked on the beach, despite it being a little rainy. (hey, it's the Pacific Northwest. What's a little rain?)

 

We saw a lot of animals- sea lions, rabbits, bald eagles, hawks, almost ran over two great blue herons, a deer, and a stray cat. :P

  We gathered sea shells and rocks, and my friend tried to wash her rock off, but the waves kept a'coming. :) 

 

  Me: Oooooh! Cool! A driftwood house!!
  Tawney: *staring skeptically at it* Yeah. I just hope no one is inside it...
      Oh, the adventures we had. :)

  

     An old telephone booth. In a Langley garden. Who woulda thunk?

 We visited Fort Casey, and it was really cool, but I walked over to one of the huge rings in the wall, lifted it to feel how heavy it was, and let it fall. Almost immediately creepy music doorbell music started playing from the inside of the fort, followed by a mans voice yelling. Both of us got thoroughly creeped out, and we decided right then that we were most definitely *not* going into the fort. 

    

     We visited the cool lighthouse, the inside was locked up, but it was still super interesting, and there were paths leading from it to really neat views of the beach.

 

   When we were driving home we were talking (to tell the truth we actually never stopped) about personality types, and our differences. Lately we've both gotten into MBTI, which is about discovering your personality type, and we realized that we have enough similarities and differences to work together really well (we knew that already, but it's neat to see facts backing it up). I'm and INFP, she's an ENFJ. She's an extrovert, I'm an introvert. She likes to have things resolved and settled, takes her job seriously, pays attention to time and is almost always on time :), actually finishes things she starts, will work before playing, likes to schedule and plan, and finds comfort in schedules. 

     And I love her for all of that. Different is good and I admire all of her traits.<3

     I like to keep my options open most of the time,  am *ahem* less aware of time, start projects and then halfway through find ANOTHER great thing to do (working on that), can be indecisive, like to keep my plans flexible, and  find comfort in spontaneity.

We both like looking at the big picture, admire creative things, work in bursts of energy, like figuring things out ourselves (for the most part), think about the future, and trust our intuition. 

     We both tend to look at our feelings before logic (but that doesn't mean we don't use logic), value harmony and peace, and are motivated by appreciation rather than achievements.

     We were surprised at how different our thought patterns were too! We were both thinking for a moment, and I brought up a subject we had talked about 45 minutes previous, because I had been mulling over it, and had a question about it. She turned to me and was surprised that I was still thinking about it! We had a good laugh over that. :) So that led to us both analyzing how we think, but I think I'll save all of this for a future post, as there's a lot to say on it. :)

 All in all, it was a wonderful, lovely, adventure.

     Blessings,

~Grace