The Violinist A little known fact about violinists: in order to hear themselves stand distinct from their orchestra colleagues, they unintentionally tend to tune their instruments slightly sharp or flat in comparison to the other violinists nearby.  Let me explain. As an orchestra warms up and tunes before a performance begins. The best violinist, known as the first chair or concertmaster, plays her open A string once. The rest of orchestra hears this pitch and adjusts their instruments to match. Concertmaster plays her A again and orchestra joins her forming the sound of one note and one giant instrument. Finally, the concertmaster hands the perfectly tuned orchestra over to the conductor and the show begins. This is the ideal situation.  However, inexperienced violinists have a hard time making this happen sometimes. The same musicians that can tune any violin in a matter of seconds, struggle. Additionally,  the instrumentalist that can hear a short s...

He told them many things and gave them God’s word- John 17: 13,14 Jesus spent time investing in the lives of a handful of people with the final goal of ensuring they will have the ability and knowledge to carry on his message to the rest of the world. He spoke with them about the laws of the land, customs of the day, incorrect teachings from religious leadership, God’s plans for the world, and other fabulous things. He shared personal prayer requests with them and found ways to connect their day-to-day lives with furthering the message he came to bring. Jesus took seriously the time he had with his disciples and spent it as best he could. If we use the same lens to look at parenting the way Jesus looked at discipling, then raising kids similarly to the way everyone else on the block raises their kids just won’t cut it. Our calendars and weekly schedules won’t look the same as everyone else’s. Our values and rules will take a shift from the average. Our household budget won...

My Move-Over Mondays will soon be ending, but this week I wanted to share an old post about when the girls were very little. I was reminded of this bff tendency earlier today when one didn't want to go outside without the other. Gil and I often talk about how they will need very strong, confident men to marry because their love and devotion to each other is stronger than anything I've ever seen. Good luck, boys. So, here is this week's Move-Over Monday, called Timeout Tag-a-long! ----- 4/22/2009 Timeout Tag-a-long  /[ tahym-out tag-uh-long ]/noun. Meaning- /a. to assist in the service and duration of discipline given to an older sibling for the purpose of not parting or preventing the potential boredom that might occur while older sibling is serving timeout sentence./ b. must place gluteus maximus as closely beside older sibling’s as possible. /Origin- mom moment in my kitchen. Our youngest has created a new self-designated post during her sister’s timeouts- rig...

And this week's FFs (Friday Favorites) are…. - our super warm pellet stove- because we live in the frozen north where spring doesn't seem to exist yet. - our super high powered blender that someone donated to us years ago. It's so super strong that it has it's own breaker switch on the bottom. It makes the best smoothies- which, by the way, can't be enjoyed in the presence of my 15 month old or he will drink it all. And my top pick of all things I read this week: - St. Patrick's breastplate prayer . This has been on my mind a lot lately because of two things- first, the girls are memorizing their list of prepositions in school, so each morning we can be heard chanting "aboard, about, above, across, after, against, along, among, around, at….."(those are just the prepositions that start with an A) and it makes me think of "Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ within me, etc. I also have thought about this prayer a great deal because of ...

Last week, I shared about a moment when Jesus prayed for his disciples and how we can use that as a guide to pray for our kids. If you missed it, jump here and catch up .   He received them as gifts, kept them and guarded them- John 17:6-7, 12 I think it is safe to say that since you are concerned about the future for your child and still reading, you consider your child(ren) a gift from God. Check. Next, I also think it is safe to say that you’ve done your best to “keep them and guard them”. If that’s the case, do you feel that trusting God to keep and guard them is something you pray for and will release to God?  Let’s look more closely at the words Jesus used when he said he had done this and requested God to continue to job. The Greek word that Jesus used for “kept” was /tēreō/ which means to guard against loss or injury by keeping an eye on, maintaining, to hold fast, serve, and watch. *   Jesus repeats this word in verse 15 when he asks God to “ke...

Three Friday Favorites: 2 random things I love and 1 to read. Homemade yogurt- my friend Jess taught me how to make yogurt back in our Farmville, VA days. I found this great blog post handy has a refresher. We go through a boat load of yogurt, so this is a cheaper way to get the good stuff.  Super bright orange Cabella's windstopper jacket that GB3 scored from the Bargain Cave last fall. Now that the harsh winter is slowly making its way out of New England, a little jacket is all that's needed.  In Constant Prayer by Robert Benson- a great part of The Ancient Practices Series. "We are unwilling, it sometimes seems to me, to leave anything in our lives to chance except the way that we live out our lives in communion with the One who gave us life in the first place. It seems odd to me…to pray the office is to anchor your life of prayer somewhere between the daily and the divine ". (79) Now it's your turn. What did you LOVE this week?

My awesome father in law gave me a pressure canner for Christmas. Wait… before you roll your eyes and jump to the Betty Crocker comments, you have to hear me out. Cooking with a pressure canner is great because it keeps so much of the nutrients in the food, forces moisture to remain in the foods and is fast (relative to oven cooking times- not in comparison to nuking the food). I was excited to get the pressure cooker for Christmas, but other than canning small batches in it, I wasn't too familiar with how to use it. I found some great ideas on pinterest but most of them came with such strong warnings of explosions, ruining the cooker, third degree burns and other science-lab type accidents, which caused me to just sit back and not use this thing for it's full purposes. But then I was sent the mother-load of all pressure cooker side-kicks . I flipped through and was so shocked to see the variety of things that could be made in my kickin', nutrient-retaining, kitchen g...