Me and My Shadow

I'm told that when I was little, my favorite thing to do was to follow my Grammy around.  My Mom called me Grammy's shadow and I have always enjoyed that title.  I know I wasn't the only grandchild to tag along with Grammy anytime there was an opportunity; but I'd venture a guess that I was in her shadow more than most because my family was blessed to live so close to her and Grandad.  Now I have some of my own shadows from time to time and there is nothing sweeter.  I love each and every one of them more than life itself.

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High Will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. (Psalm 91:1)

Keep me as the apple of the eye; Hide me in the shadow of Your wings (Psalm 17:8)

Time Well Spent

Moms do not like for their children to be ill, or to feel poorly, or be sad.  I'm no exception.  Even now with my children grown and caring for their own children, I don't like for them to be down.

Rock Star recently had to have surgery (she may blog about that some day) and I got to help out with the kiddos.  Pop was working so he didn't get to play as much as I did and we missed him. He stopped by when he could and was always warmly (and loudly) welcomed.

One of the worst things for Rock Star was being restricted...she couldn't lift her smallest superhero and he wanted so much for her to pick him up...check out this precious lil guy...he has mad climbing skills so when his momma would sit down, he'd climb up and snuggle up next to her.  It is so hard when they are too little to understand.

We made the most of the time we had and the days went quickly.  PhoJo is a one-of-a-kind superhero dad...When he wasn't working, he was working at home taking care of things...we tag-teamed the kiddos, did laundry, and made meals.  Even though Rock Star needed to rest and recover, she thought of things to do with the kids.  Check out our play dough fun...What a kick!

We built Trio block buildings and bridges.

We watched some fun shows.

We made a birthday card for Nana (Grammy's Mom...not Daddy's Mom).  Making cards was fun but taking a picture of all the kids with their cards was painful for the littlest guy.  By the time Rock Star gave up, he was still crying and the big brothers and sister were bored.  

We played in the water.

We even took down a dead tree in the front yard with our bare hands - with permission, of course!!  

On one of Pop's visits, he had a serious conversation with the smallest superhero about the pros and cons of playing with the electrical outlet.  Ha!

Of course, the sisters (except the currently Indiana sister) came over to visit and cheer up Rock Star and the cousins had some stellar play time and shared a meal.

Rock Star is recovering nicely and hasn't needed our help to run her household for a while now and I never want my children down...but...spending time with our grandchildren is always time well spent.  I'm grateful I am here and available.  God is good!

Songs in the Morning...Unclouded Day

Many mornings I wake up with a song running through my head...usually it is a praise/worship song of some kind.  I feel like it is God waking me up...sort of like my Mom waking us kids up by singing "Wake up, wake up, you sleepy head. Get up. Get up. Get out of bed!"...but not exactly.  ha ha  As we grew older and were harder and harder to rouse, she resorted to an 8 track player located in our formal living room at the bottom of the stairway that led up to our bedrooms.  I haven't verified it, but I think she used Danny Davis and the Nashville Brass most often because she knew at least one of us would race downstairs to stop the noise!!  

The songs I hear in my head are a much more gentle wake up!

Now I know that at the last trumpet there will be all kinds of waking up happening (1 Corinthians 15:35-58); however, I'm fairly confident it will NOT sound like Danny Davis and the Nashville Brass (here's a clip in case you're curious)!!

So a while back, I woke up with a song playing in my mind from the previous Sunday's praise time at church.  It was an old song...not one of my very favorites...but a good one nonetheless.  We attend a church where you are likely to hear all genre of music at some point.  I think there may not be an instrument that the music minister there cannot play; so there is a place for everything from the cello to the banjo,the piano to the accordion, and the bongo to the washboard! When we heard this song, Unclouded Day at church, Pop leaned over and said that his mom and aunts used to sing this one sometimes when he was a kid.  Sweet memory for him. 

Anyway, I thought I'd share the lyrics and a snippet of this oldie for you.  I hope God wakes you up with a song in the morning...it's a great way to wake up.

Unclouded Day (listen to a clip here)

Words & Music: Jo­si­ah K. Al­wood, cir­ca 1880

O they tell me of a home far beyond the skies,
O they tell me of a home far away;
O they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise,
O they tell me of an unclouded day.

Refrain

O the land of cloudless day,
O the land of an unclouded day,
O they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise,
O they tell me of an unclouded day.

O they tell me of a home where my friends have gone,
O they tell me of that land far away,
Where the tree of life in eternal bloom
Sheds its fragrance through the unclouded day.

Refrain

O they tell me of a King in His beauty there,
And they tell me that mine eyes shall behold
Where He sits on the throne that is whiter than snow,
In the city that is made of gold.

Refrain

O they tell me that He smiles on His children there,
And His smile drives their sorrows all away;
And they tell me that no tears ever come again
In that lovely land of unclouded day.

Refrain

Snow Day at Four Sisters Farm

True Cleaning Confessions

It's "true confession" time...my name is Grammy and I used to be a slob. If you've seen pictures on the Four Sisters Farm blog, most likely you have seen me at or near my best (unless we were blogging about a project we were working on). My Mom can testify (and indeed she has) that I used to loathe cleaning of any kind.  I could pretty much walk over, around, or through the same mess multiple times with no desire to do anything about it.

Even as a young wife and mother, I was terribly inconsistent about cleaning...I knew HOW to clean...Mom made sure of that...I just didn't do it often enough!  Our first apartment when Pop and I moved away from our folks to go to college was a dark, depressing dungeon of a place that was built around an octopus of a heating system. It was such a small dwelling that we warmed the bathroom with a blow dryer! The kitchen wasn't really big enough to be called a kitchenette...the sink was a small bar sink...try doing dishes in that!

But somewhere along the line I gradually got better...probably because I had to teach the Four Sisters how to keep house.  I now LOVE living in a clean house and even enjoy the process of cleaning.  I keep a pretty clean house now...which leads to the whole reason for this post...

I recently decided it was time to mop the floor...the whole hard surface floor...and I still believe I can clean it best the old fashioned way...on my hands and knees with a bucket and a rag...that way I can see and feel what needs cleaning.

So I was dunking, wringing, scrubbing, and thinking (it seems to me that thinking is one if the luxuries associated with mundane tasks like mopping). I was thinking as I mopped that I could use an actual mop...but down on the floor on my hands and knees I could see so much more clearly what needed cleaned up...I even cleaned things off the table legs and chairs that I hadn't noticed...things that had definitely been there a while!

Then the parallels began coming to mind...in my walk with God, when I am in a position of humility, I am more aware of the things that need cleaning up in my life...thoughts and actions that need to be dealt with, people I need to forgive, grace and mercy I need to extend, wrong thinking that needs to be exposed to the truth of God's Word. 

In a position of humility, I can make choices about whether or not to allow God to work in me...letting Him convict me by His Holy Spirit...hearing Him tell me He loves me enough to come alongside me to provide what I need to affect change...and sometimes even witnessing Him making the changes for and in me, simply because I was willing.

When it comes to deep cleaning, God is the Master Cleaner.

Psalm 51:1-3 says, "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.  Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.  For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me."

It Just Can't be Done...Family Photos

Every now and then I get the urge to start in again...that's right...to sort through all the family photos and to finally get them organized.  I recently sorted a bunch of digital pictures and put them away in their folders by year.  I'll take the next step someday when the first step is done.

But here's my problem:  how do I sort the pictures of all my beautiful daughters, their handsome hubbies, and their perfect children?  I mean, there are SO many pictures...and SO many of them have the faces of more than on family unit...which of the Four Sisters gets which photos?

I have boxes...not kidding...boxes of photos that I haven't already given to the girls.  Then there are the thousands of digital photos...literally!

So many memories...so many sweet pictures...and the number is growing exponentially.  Maybe by the time I am too old to work a computer I will have scanned the photos and digitally filed all the images.  (It's not polite to snicker, you know!)  Anyway...some day.

In the meantime, every once in a while, I flip through some pictures and stroll leisurely down memory lane.  I like to take someone with me when I go...usually one of the Four Sisters...they humor me sometimes. And sometimes they ask me questions that I don't know the answers too about the pictures we are looking at.  Our girls are all uniquely beautiful and certainly don't qualify as twins, but let me tell you, they have all gone through ages and stages when they looked so much alike I wouldn't be able to tell who was who if the photo backgrounds were not different.  I end up saying something like, "I think we were living in whatever city and whatever house and I think that is whichever sister's 3rd birthday."

For now, I will continue my hit or miss approach to photo organization. I know it's okay to do that, because my mom is still doing that.  I guess if I leave this earth without having fully done what I intended, my girls will enjoy the photos in whatever state they find them.  

In the meantime...aren't they so cute???

Words on my Wall

I had a space I wanted (okay, needed) to fill up above the "pass-through" window between our kitchen and living room.  I checked out custom ordered vinyl lettering but decided it was a bit pricey.  So like any good do-it-yourselfer, I searched Pinterest and came up with what I thought might be a good solution. (here's a link to one of the tutorials I found.)

So I went to work at my computer and found just the right font and figured out the height to make the letters look right in my space.  Then I printed out what I wanted to say and cut/spliced my paper to put it all together.  This is what it looked like when I taped it up on my wall and tried it out for a few days...

Then I took it down and scribbled on the back side of the whole thing...each letter.

After that, I taped it back up in place and traced around each letter, which left a faint outline of the words.

I just now noticed that the word I focused on for the outlining picture is "love".  I think that is perfect.  It makes me smile.

I used an ink jet printer, regular printer paper, transparent tape (of course you could use about any tape), a regular #2 pencil, black acrylic paint, and a small slanted/angled artist paint brush.

I am really happy I gave it a try...now where else do I need to put words on the walls?

Happy Birthday to Me!

We came together at Four Sisters Farm to celebrate my birthday.  The whole gang made it.  I am a blessed and happy wife, mom, and grammy! The cheesy smile above is to oblige Rock Star so she could could take a picture of my teeth turned blue from the tasty frosting!

There was baby admiring...a LOT of baby admiring since we have so many little ones!  Lou loves babies like I do...she comes from a long line of baby admirers.



Bitty Princess sat in the high chair and enjoyed (well sort of enjoyed) some baby food carrots.

Our smallest superhero had all the celebrating he could stand and snoozed on his daddy's shoulder for a while.


There was dancing in the living room - at least Ladybug showed off her latest moves!

Farm Chick and EJ had been on a family vacation with Bubba, Wubba, and Q (the cowboys) and of course, with little Ruthie.  They rented an RV and the cousins thought it was the coolest thing ever!


All in all, it was a sweet time.  When we all gather, it is crazy, loud, chaotic, and a lot of fun.  Sweet memories are always made when we gather together for any event.  I am trying to store them up in my mind and in my heart for when these grandchildren grow up and can't make it to Four Sisters Farm as often.

Pop - My Hero (contented sigh)

We have cats at Four Sisters Farm. They are a necessity in the country as they keep the rodent population controlled.  Once they even killed a mole for us and brought it to the lawn for us to see. We were so proud.

With wild (feral) and semi-wild as well as tame cats on our premises, there is a new litter of kittens once in a while.  Recently, Pop discovered a litter of four that "Mama Kitty" was hiding in the pole barn. Of course we told the grandkids - especially Lou because she LOVES animals of all kinds, but has an intense fondness for cats.   Pop and I like cats okay and truly appreciate them; but we feed a lot of cats at Four Sisters Farm...not enough to keep them from killing mice...but we feed them.

So when the latest litter was found, Lou and I devised a plan to capture them when they were big enough.  She began doing research and passing info along so we would be prepared.  What we were NOT prepared for is just how sneaky, fast, and scrappy feral kittens can be!  We worked hard and captured one.  Only one.  We told Pop about it and he came out to the pole barn to help us.  Sure enough, semi-wild Mama Kitty had taught her babies how to hide and stay very quiet!  But Pop moved some firewood and found them and helped us catch the remaining three.

Fast forward now...past the kitty litter, scratches, and kitten chow.  My plan was to keep them long enough to find a vet to fix them, then turn them loose.  Well...we still have them.  By day, they play in a large dog kennel and all the grandkids love to play with them.  By night, they are moved to a smaller cage and wheeled via a wagon back to the pole barn for safety.

But I am still not to the point; so hang on...one dark and stormy night (literally), I had the kittens in their play yard on the front porch and had been so busy I hadn't remembered to transport them back to their night spot.  Pop and I decided to let them stay on the porch; but we hadn't accounted for their nocturnal naughtiness and noise...right outside our bedroom window...nor had we anticipated Mama Kitty's disapproval of our choice to deprive her sweet litter of their safe place for the night.  So imagine trying to sleep with kittens jumping, playing, meowing, and their mother expressing her opinion LOUDLY.

I threw on my robe and flip flops, grabbed my flashlight and made the transport.

So, still not to the point.  I know.

Pop and I laid down and finally got to sleep...then Mama Kitty showed up on the porch again...like she had lost her mind and couldn't find her kittens.  Pop reassured her that her brood was safely put to bed and came back in.

Pop:  "Do you think she could be smart enough to tell us there is a problem in the pole barn?"
Me:  "I don't know."  ( Especially at about 2am.)
Pop: "Do you think I should go check on them?"

I envisioned one of the little darlings stuck in the cage trying to escape and said, "Maybe." hoping that he would...and he did.  There were actually no wrongs to right and no kittens to save.  Pop is my hero just for being willing to come to the aid of four defenseless little kittens on the word of their somewhat confused mother cat.

That is the latest reason Pop is my hero.

And how I know you want to see the kittens.  They are so cute!

Windy Trash Day!

The wind blows hard at Four Sisters Farm sometimes and I learned a valuable lesson when I brought the empty trash cart back up to the house.

Sometimes I push it.  Sometimes I pull it.  Sometimes Pop loads it in the back of his pickup as he comes up our drive.  This time, I was pushing it along...hearing the rocks in the driveway under the plastic wheels and thinking about what I was going to do next when all of a sudden a crazy gust of wind came and flung the lid of the trash cart open so fast that it hit me right in the face!

My vision blurred...I was dazed and confused..."Gee", I thought..."Shouldn't I be knocked onto my knees if I got hit so hard I can't see well?  Wow, that hurt!  Am I bleeding?"  I lifted my hand to my face to assess the damage and found that I wasn't bleeding.  As my inquiring hands checked for major trauma I found that one of the lenses of my glasses was missing...hence the blurred vision.  Ha!

The joke was on me...Wind: 1, Grammy: 0.

I found the lens, put it back in my glasses, now I can see.  I will not be beaten...at least not by the wind!

Note to self:  fasten the trash card lid down when it is windy. That is all.

So many projects!

I think that since mankind is created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), we exhibit characteristics of our Heavenly Father.  One of God's characteristics is creativity...just look at what around you at what He made!  


Because we are created in His image, Pop and I constantly have ideas for new/creative things to add beauty and joy to our surroundings.  For me, it is usually house and garden ideas.  For Pop, it is often bigger things...like conquering the outdoors and building tree houses. So even in the midst of our renovation at Four Sisters Farm, our growing number of grandchildren, a garden to tend, etc., we have all these ideas of creative things to try...


Here are a few of my latest creative projects:

We will continue to chip away at the renovation of Four Sisters Farm.  We are preparing a place that is peaceful and safe for our family and friends...a place they will feel loved and welcome.  I can't help but wonder what kind of projects Jesus is working on in heaven as He prepares a place for us! 


John 14:2-3: My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

Renovation Progress Update

Master Vanity

Two become one...two vanities trimmed down to fit into the space for one vanity in the master bathroom that is.  It was a crazy plan but it worked.  Pop figured it out...he always seems to be able to take some nutty thing I think up and make it work.  EJ came over and helped us most of one day and our biggest and best accomplishment of the day was the master vanity.  It makes me happy every time I use it.  

We started with inexpensive unfinished vanities that I painted. Then Pop, EJ, and I cut them down and I found something else to do while they put them together on a base they built so the vanity would be taller. I added some really cool paintable wallpaper that looks like beadboard and some furniture legs and we finished it off with a custom built double sink.  Then I "beadboarded" above the back splash and added trim.  Fantastic! Thanks for the help, EJ...how is that thumb?

I still need the cup pulls and knobs but I could not wait to show it off!

 Bunk Beds - Pop Style!

 Pop came up with plans for a triple bunk bed for the bunk room...he and I gathered up the lumber and supplies and got to work.  We cut, sanded, stained, and partially assembled. Then one day the superheroes came over and helped us complete the bulk of putting together. Little Super Girl made sure we had all the screws we needed. :-) We're pleased with the finished results and plan to build more to accommodate all our grandsons in the bunk room!

Stay tuned...the progress is slow but it is coming!