Singing Praises

My family is reading Ether chapter 6 for our family scripture study right now. They've built the barges, which were the "length of a tree." Even supposing that the trees were the huge sort of trees, that's still not all that big for an ocean crossing. They're dark inside, except for 2 small lights at either end. They're full of people, animals, and bees. We read about conditions in the boats tonight. The scriptures are a little light on the detail, but I got to thinking about what they do say, and what that might look like, to the families experiencing it. It's all pure conjecture, but this is what I thought about tonight.

Being tight "like a dish," there's no draining water that comes in if they open the hatch too soon; deal with the sloshing at least until the next time we come to the surface. Oh, and that bucket of last night's pee? Gonna have to hold on to that. Sorry about the smell. Put it with the dung from the animals. Don't bother the bees.

But that's not all. That's a "furious wind" that's making "mountain waves." Waves that crash on the boat and bury it in the deep until they want for air. You know, hypoxia. Fun stuff that. Headaches, nausea, vomiting. Maybe a seizure if things get really bad. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that they didn't die of it, but the scriptures don't say. Maybe some of them did, particularly the very old or very young. And then you'd add a smelly body of a loved one and grieving to the list of things going on in those boats, until you came to the surface again and could put it overboard. It says they cried unto the Lord when they needed to come up. I imagine they did! And he brought them up... into the teeth of the storm driving them.

But that's not all. They built eight barges and got in them. Pushed them into the sea and trusted they'd get there. Wherever there was. I imagined talking to Hero about it, rocking around, seasick, in the bottom of the barge, about day 3:

"How long till we get there?"
"I don't know."
"How far?"
"I don't know."
"Will Aunt Kate and Baby T be there when we get there?"
"I think so. The Lord will take care of them."
"Can I talk to them?"
"No. They're on another boat."
"When can I see them again?"
"I don't know. Getting there takes as long as it takes."
"What if they don't land in the same place as us?"

Turns out, the promised land was quite some distance away: took 344 days to get there. Seems reasonable to me to presume that for about 343 of those, they had no idea how many more days were going to pass before they got out of those boats. And it's not like they had good weather; the winds, which caused "great and terrible tempests" never stopped. For a year. And then there's that word in verse 4, when they're talking about what they ate: subsist.

Sounds like fun, right? Yeah. Hero didn't think so either when we talked about it tonight. I asked him what he thought the people felt about it, and he guessed they didn't like it. He predicted some complaining. So I read him what the scriptures say in verse six:

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And they did sing praises unto the Lord; yea, the brother of Jared did sing praises unto the Lord, and he did thank and praise the Lord all the day long; and when the night came, they did not cease to praise the Lord.

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I knew the story; I saw it coming. Hero was very surprised. Praises? But that's hard! Praises?? Even at night? All day long? Without ceasing?

By this point, my voice is shaking and I'm just fine with it when he says he's tired and falls asleep on me. But I'm not thinking about the Jaredites any more. I'm thinking about my Baby Girl.

I took this picture of her today.

Last Saturday I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Yesterday, I came home from the hospital without her. We left our daughter behind at the NICU. In pain. Stuck full of tubes and wires, some of which go deep into her body. Even when I visit, I can't hold her. My boys can't visit; it's flu season, and they're not allowing children in. We don't know how long she'll be there; it takes as long as it takes. It's hard.

Oh my goodness, this is hard.

The Lord's tender mercies are so apparent, even in the difficulties. Especially in the difficulties.

I need to be more careful to "sing praises." To say thank you to Him. And once I started thinking that way, I started seeing even more to be grateful for.

It makes it easier to bear, and that's huge.

Birthday Boy!

World's Cutest 1 Year Old!

Weekly Wrap-up: the One Where I Had a Birthday

This week was my birthday! One of my best friends had us over for dinner. She made the best squash I've ever eaten - little chunks on the salad. Raven was loving it, and I want to get the recipe. She got me cupcakes. I took pictures of them with the new DSLR that Hubs got me. (He actually gave it to me at the tail end of December, so I'm starting to be more comfortable with it, and to get more good photos again. I love it!) It was an awesome day. Plus, I got new boots so the snow doesn't get on me when I'm going to church. It's good to have a birthday!




In school this week:

We had a great time doing science: we did "Sinkers and Floaters" from Mudpies to Magnets. Monkey predicted which toys would sink and which would float surprisingly accurately. The duplos were especially cool because they both sank and floated, depending on how they were sitting in the water.


For Art, we actually did two projects. This is the first:

Raven got to try it out too. It was his first time to participate in a project like this: I let him play with my birds, and showed him how crayons work. Coloring wasn't nearly as interesting as the little paper bird itself. Good thing cupcake papers are relatively tough!

The finished products. The one Raven & I did is on the left. Monkey's is on the right. He did his nearly entirely on his own, and told me his birds were flying over the ocean, which is what those colored streaks he drew are.


The second project, eggs in nests in trees, was interesting to me because we did it while Monkey had some friends over, one a year older, and one a year younger. I thought the differences those years made in their art was amazing. Here they are, in age order:




Our Math book has moved off of focusing so much on the numbers 1-5, and is starting to work with 6-10 now. We did shapes on the flannel board and graphing to work with these larger numbers, and I helped Monkey find what the book calls 5-groups in the numbers. We also introduced skip counting. We're counting by 5s first, because Monkey wants to learn to tell time.





Phonics was a bit of a struggle this week. We're practicing, waiting for fluency to increase before I introduce too much more. It's coming, but Monkey just wasn't into doing the games this week. I'm seriously considering giving this a rest for a week again. I don't want to have power struggles over this, or to have him decide he doesn't like reading.

Stuart Little spent most of the week lost, so we read poems, but not the regular read-aloud. We added Leviticus 19:11 to our scripture box this week:

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Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another.

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It's been an extremely busy week, so I plan to see if we can't squeeze in another science project (Dunking Raisins) and a narration today. Shouldn't be too difficult.

Weekly Wrap-up: The Sickly Birthday Boy

Monkey had his birthday this week: he's now Four Years Old! This works very well for him, as four is his favorite number. Unfortunately, he's spent the bulk of the week fighting an icky bug, and so we got nearly nothing done, as far as homeschool this week. Doing our preschool - kindergarten mix is fun, but not when you don't feel good. At one point this week I suggested a short walk, thinking we'd collect some of the beautiful fall leaves and call it nature study, and he cried and then asked for a nap. We didn't go.

But the birthday party was a screaming success: he was feeling mostly good on Tuesday, which was the birthday. I'm so glad we had it! We let him choose who to invite, and had a fun list: half a dozen little kids, ages 9 months to about 7, 2 teens, an engaged couple, and some adults. Almost everyone he invited was able to come. Several of his guests are also my friends, and they were happy to help out, since Daddy unexpectedly had to work that evening, poor guy!


Pre-party: the cake, and Monkey eating dinner quick before everyone came.


We had a balloon race: push the balloons with air blown through a straw.

Then the really cool stuff started. A.N. got out his balloons. Some folks just rock like that. A.N. is one of them.




Happy Chaos is a Balloon Man and a house full of Munchkins.


Monkey started things of right: he asked for a pirate sword. The Balloon Man also knew how to do ninja swords, so it quickly became Pirates vs Ninjas. That made a bit of noise!






And of course, birthday cake.



Turns out the candles I bought were trick candles. Monkey worked pretty hard, but in the end someone pinched the last one to make it stop! Then he opened presents and our friends had to go. Happily, Daddy made it home for the tail end of the party. He'd worked hard, hurrying so he could be there for part of it.

Guido Cake

By Monkey request, for his 3rd Birthday.

Happy Birthday, Monkey!

Keepin' Busy

My, but things are busy around here! My neighbor has a pear tree that's heavy with pears, which she told me I should take a whole bunch of, as she can't eat anywhere near that many herself. So far we've picked an estimated 80 pounds. I've given quite a bit of that away, but I've also canned more than half of it. Whew!

Monkey's birthday is coming up next week, and he wants a Guido cake, as in a cake shaped like the little forklift of Cars. This is tricky. And the cake that I made last night stuck to the pan and tore in a most terrible way. I may have to just buy him one with Guido on top, rather than making one that's shaped like a forklift. Though that would be sadness. Additionally, I'm working on a puppet theater for his gift. The lion puppet turned out really cute. Now I just need to make the curtain, so Monkey's got somewhere to hide while he does his puppety thing.

Monkey's making good progress on the whole learning to read thing. He's at the learning to hear the sounds at the beginning of the word stage, which in our phonics program is step 3 of 8. He's getting pretty good at it too & spontaneously asks me, "What letter starts with?" and even occasionally, "Does 'umbrella start with U?" Happy Phonics is games-based, so we're playing quite a few different letter games these days, and it's lots of fun. We've got some letter books in the works: A is done, we're still looking for D-words and N-words, so I'd take suggestions on good nouns to include! I think next time I make the little books I'm including fewer pages.

Happy Birthday, Monkey!

Happy Birthday to you,



Happy Birthday to you!



Happy Birthday, dear Monkey,



Happy Birthday to you!



Monkey's a lucky kid: he had 2 birthday parties. There was the first one with just Mom and Dad. He had a Superman Cake, and for several days after he wanted us to sing "happy to you" over and over to him. It was pretty entertaining.



The next weekend Nana, Grandpa, and all the local aunt and uncles came over and we went to the zoo. Monkey enjoyed this quite a bit as well.



Monkey was much photographed.



We wandered all around seeing strange critters.



He played on some statues. Those are always a good spot to take more pictures.



He got to feed the giraffes. I was amazed at how long and flexible their tongues are! Those things are crazy! Not to mention they're purple. That was a bit odd.



Some animals were tall and friendly



Some were shorter and a bit more stand-offish. This guy I used my whole zoom to get the picture of. He was not going to come and be sociable.



Monkey had a good time watching them all.



Then we came back and unwrapped the load of presents that came with the crowd of folks who love Monkey.



Monkey got several bear items. He and Grandpa share a love of bears, so it works out very well. He's sleeping with that polar bear he's got on his lap here these days.



In addition to the bear items, he got a completely hilarious cookie monster toy that laughs from the tickles until it (literally) rolls around on the floor. At least it did. It's well into the process of being loved to death. I'll have to post the video I took later, when I find it. I've got to go to the dentist again right now. They want to talk about doing another root canal. Oh boy am I ever excited.

Wanna Have a Party?

Looking at this birthday party makes me want to have a party for little kids. Just because it would be fun.

Of course, the birthday princess had a crown. Mom did one for the Prince a while before, they're both pretty cute. The princess post includes a tutorial for the crown. I should make one of these and borrow one of those capes... the I'd have myself a little King!

The reason that the party makes me want to host one (not that I have time to do so; it would just be tons of fun!) is it was a MONSTER party. What's not to love!?! Juicy Bits shows how she got ready for the party: favors, pre-made ice cream sundays, Monster games with Monster prizes, the works. It just looks like so much fun! She's even got little monsters to give away.

Then she did a post about how the actual party went and it looks like they all had a blast.

Happy Birthday Monkey!