His Abundant Gift; Our Baby Girl Is Doing FABULOUS!

Yesterday was truly the best appointment ever. I have been going to the doctor every Monday and Thursday for five weeks. We had our big growth ultrasound last week and our baby girl gained a whole pound. She's still little, but she's mighty strong. 

And at yesterday's appointment our doctor said that baby girl looked soo good that we now only have to come in once a week. She also said that we will probably look at inducing between 37 and 38 weeks just to avoid any late term, increased complications with my placenta. 

When we were given the scenarios of possible delivery dates, it made sense to us to chose small and feisty (delivering at 37 or 38 weeks) rather than larger with an increased chance of fetal death (delivering at 39 or 40 weeks).  In my mind, we have a win, win situation on our hands__ a strong little girl and a no-longer-pregnant Mama. {It's no secret how I feel about being pregnant__ I_AM_SO_DONE WITH_THIS_BEING_EXCESSIVELY_ROUND_THING!!!}

Ah_May_Zing news today for this Mama's heart!!!! 

We're still working on a name. We have one that we both like. But then a few months ago I came across a different one that means "God's abundant gift." I love it's meaning, especially in light of all we've been through with this little one, but I'm not sure that we love the name itself. We still have a few weeks to figure it out. :) 

In other news we took a train through the Royal Gorge this past weekend. My Grandma is visiting from Las Vegas and my Dad and Lori came too. It really was a fun family day. It's worth doing once__ but maybe not twice__and maybe not with a two-year-old. LOL. 

{When all else fails, let him play Peekaboo Barn on your phone.}

 I can't express enough gratitude to all of y'all who have been seeking the Lord on our little girl's behalf. He hears our prayers and blesses us beyond anything that we can dream up! Seriously cannot wait to introduce one of the Lord's little miracles to the world in a few short weeks. :) 

A Worker Like His Papa

Last week his Papa was out of town and left him with 50 T-posts to pound into the ground. 

I didn't have to say a word and each day he would go out to the field and use all his spare moments to pound in the posts. He built the fence all by himself in two days.

He's not like most 10-year-olds I know. He doesn't care for sports or video games. He likes' to work and shoot arrows and ride his bike and his quad around the farm in the afternoons. 

 He's a worker like his Papa. 

I think being a hard worker is one of the greatest gifts a man can give a woman. 

And I love that about both of my men.  

And this picture is just a bonus cuz these two are super cute! :) 

How All The Seemingly Mundane Is Really An Act Of Worship; Remembering Our Vision

It's so easy for me to lose my vision with these kids. I get caught up in the secondary things when I really long to stay focussed on the stuff the Lord says is important.

So I read.

I read a lot.

I read The Word and I read books about The Word. I read books about mothering and books about keeping my eyes on Christ.

I read because it's crazy how fast I forget.

The Cowboy has been traveling a lot this month. And him being gone has given us some glorious phone conversations that my heart has needed. Truth be told, there are so many parts about homeschooling that I stink at. And somedays I get so caught up in trying to keep up with the homeschool Jones' that I forget that my ultimate goal with these kids of ours, is Christlikeness.

The Cowboy is so good at reminding me that we are more concerned about their hearts than we are about anything else. He's constantly reminding me that we need to stay consistent and steadfast with their schoolwork but more important than completing their daily tasks, is their heart attitude when doing so.

I was adding in writing pages to our oldest's notebook on Sunday and in the very back I came across this...

It's something he wrote on his own time. I didn't even know he had written it. (And I asked him if he minded if I posted it here and he said he didn't mind at all.)

I was so blessed by his words and the evidence it produced of the Lord's work in his life. For a brief moment I was tempted to get caught up in the few mistakes he made in his writing. I texted a picture of it to the Cowboy and made a comment about the mistakes. And the Cowboy's response was simple and life-changing all in the same moment__ "Love, his heart is more important than his spelling."

For the past week I have found myself whispering that sentence more than once__ "his heart is more important than his spelling." In a performance based world, that is so hard for me to remember.

When I forget my vision for these years that I have with these kids under our roof, I miss out on such glorious gifts as watching them all grow in their own relationships with the Lord.

____
For the past three days I've been stuck on the introduction in this tiny, lovely book, Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full.

Stuck in a good way.

Stuck because  everything  she mentions in these few short pages is water to my soul. Everything she mentions on these pages, I long to be the center of my days with these kids. When I remember these words, it changes my mothering, my homeschooling, my daily decisions, & what I find to be the most important thing.


"The Christian mother's hands are full with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Eph. 1:3) and her work in nurturing her children in the fear of the Lord is her privileged participation in God's work in uniting all things in Jesus (Eph. 1:10). This Jesus, whom we gladly serve, offers rest to mothers and fills our hands with his blessings. Day and night, moment by moment, we must chose to rest in Jesus. That's what it means to treasure Christ when your hands are full, whether you have one child or a dozen.

When your eyes are fixed on the horizon of eternity, it effects your vision for motherhood. We need to have our eyes see a view of God that is so big and so glorious that it transforms our perspective of motherhood. In the context of eternity where Christ is doing his work of reigning over the cosmos, we need to see our mundane moments for what they really are__worship. In the daily and nightly work of mothering, we're given dozens of invitations to worship God as he reminds us of the hope we have because of the gospel.

{He rescued this awesome old ladder from the neighbor's burn pile and cut the ends off and gave it to me as a gift cuz he knows I love all things old. Love this kid.}

Our joy cannot be wrapped up in motherhood, but only in God.

Perhaps you woke up before the sun today so you could enjoy fellowship with the Lord and get some work done, and now the day feels like it is just dragging on. I'm with you. I don't know how many times I've wondered: "Is it bedtime yet?" On days like this we need to remember that each day is like a sigh that is too brief to measure, yet it is chock full of eternal significance. And into this brief sigh of an ordinary day, the Holy Spirit erupts and overflows with the love of God in Christ into our heart. This is astonishing! Jesus invites us into something far more steadfast and indestructible than the permanent purple marker that your child used to decorate your ivory-colored cabinets. Because of his love, Jesus invites us to himself. He says in John 15:9 "AS the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love." 

Yes please Lord!

These things. ALL of these things. May you stamp them in the depths of me and DAILY help me to have a mind set on eternity.

Help me to see my day to day as an act of worship.

Help me to find my joy always in You.

Remind me hourly of my vision with these kids__ that above all things, they might know your extravagant love for them. :)

{Excerpts from a lovely little book, Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full, by Gloria Furman.}

Eggs For Refugees

There's a prayer board up in our school room. I've been wanting to teach the kids more about prayer. More about not just praying for ourselves but praying for others. More about not just our community of family and friends, but also our nation, and our world. There are some hard things going on in the world today. Hard topics for kiddos maybe, but I long for my kids to know that there is a great big world out there and not everyone lives like we do. We have our struggles and other people have their struggles and we all get the privilege of praying for one another.

The morning I saw the picture of the little boy washed up on the shore in the newspaper, my heart broke for what so many families are going through. It feels heavy as a Mama. I have my daily things that I struggle with, but our struggles are not safety, or food, or shelter. If we're honest, we have way more than we could ever need in all those things, even in the seasons when money has been "tight."

I had a long discussion on the couch with the Cowboy the night I saw that picture.. and not a discussion without tears. I couldn't imagine being that Mama, having to risk to everything just to find a safe place, having to accept such a loss as losing my little boy to drowning, cuz the boats were to full or because the place of safety that I was seeking just wouldn't let me in. My Mama heart broke because in the thick of all that these families are going through, so many of them do not even have Christ. And that's when the tears started to fall in our conversation. It's one thing to be in a desperate situation, it's another thing to be desperate without the hope that comes from knowing Jesus.

The other hard part of seeing all the hard things going on in the world is that I constantly wonder what my part in all of it is. I want to fix everything. I want to be a part of the solution. Normally after the kids are in bed, the Cowboy and I catch each other up on the days events and then we watch a show and fall asleep on the couch. But that night, it felt almost impossible to watch some silly house show on HGTV with my heart knowing the weight of the day's events around the world.

I'm thankful for the Cowboy and his ability to care deeply, but not get swept away by emotion. Our current reality is that the Lord has us here in Colorado on our little farm. He does not have us across the ocean in the thick of this particular conflict. He has everyone in different circumstances so that we can serve others right where we are. There are needs to be met right under our nose, and the hearts and struggles of the folks in our  neighborhoods and communities are equally as precious to the Lord as the needs of those across the world.

And so we serve right here. And the Cowboy takes our oldest down the road to sweet Ms. June's house to mow her fields since her husband passed away last month. And when she calls that night after getting home from work, she cries tears of gratitude on the phone cuz something as simple as mowed fields feels HUGE to her.

There's a time for everything. There's a time to stay, and there's a time to go. There's a time to serve and theres time to give.

For our family and the refugees, there are still some things we can do even though we are not currently on the front lines.

Today, we can pray. We can always pray. And prayer, even though somedays it might feel like the least tangible thing we can do, it just might actually be the most powerful and effective thing we can do.

And we can give. We can give to those who are on the front lines. We can give the needful things, like blankets and shoes and clothes. There is an organization here in the Springs that collects all the items needed to set up an apartment for refugees just arriving in our city with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.

As I shared these things with our kids they wanted some way to raise their own money to give. And together we decided we could sell our farm fresh eggs and give the money we make to the refugees. 

When the Spunky girl came in from collecting the eggs this morning, she told me, "Guess what Mama? While Jed and I were collecting the eggs this morning, we prayed for the refugees that Jesus would help them to find a safe place for their families to live." 

Helping others one dozen eggs at a time. 

Sometimes it feels small. 

But it's a great start for our little tribe of treasures.  

It's giving our kids a tangible way to reach out across the world, to pray, and to give.

Tons of Soul

Driving to Costco with this kid__

Him, sittin in the back seat, belting out every last word to his favorite country song in "spoken word," cuz the kid don't sing.

No rhythm__ But tons of soul__as if no one else was around.

It's one of the many things I love about him.

When You Discover It's Not About You___ HAPPY Becomes The Understatement Of The Year

On Wednesday, the Cowboy texted me and asked about bringing home ponies.

We wrote back and forth all afternoon and I was determined to put my foot down with a resounding NO!

I mean, after all, we already have 20 animals on our little farm. There is a possibility of us having a baby in the next few weeks, one who just might have to stay in the hospital for awhile. And oh ya, those other five kiddos we already have that need to be fed and clothed and schooled and....

It just seems like the absolute wrong time for ponies.

Oh, but my man...

He's persistant and he convinces me of all kinds of crazy things (how on earth did I end up on this farm in the first place????).

When he got home, he put his hands on my waist  in the kitchen and looked into me, "come on Kace, you know it'll be awesome."

Him. That smile. That voice. His touch. That's all it took.

"Okay, bring home the ponies."

I still wasn't thrilled about the idea.

Then on the way home from my appointment on Thursday I was talking with a friend about the ponies, and I don't remember exactly how she said it, but this is what I heard...

"Kace, maybe this time it's not about you? Maybe in this season the Lord is just trying to lavish His love on your little Hal? She has had a time of it with all the stuff going on with the baby and maybe He just wants to overwhelm her heart with joy by bringing her these ponies?"

Oh__my__goodness!

Why didn't I think of that???

Sometimes I get so wrapped up in what's comfortable for me that I can't even see what the Lord might be wanting to do for someone else.

My Hal has been asking for horses since she could talk. And that the Lord would lavish such extravagant kindness on her in the thick of this season of her learning to trust Him with her little sister in my belly, is beyond me.

{All afternoon, you could find her hugging a pony.}

There is this amazing couple that Joey does some work for throughout the year. They just might be the most generous people I have ever met. Seriously. And this weekend my Joey went out to their house in Nebraska to help them with some things. And they sent him home with 3 ponies, a trailer, and everything one could possibly need to care for ponies, and ALL as a gift to our family. I don't have words for the kindness of this couple towards our family. They have enabled us to do so many things with our kids over the years that  without their generosity we would not have been able to do. And we are grateful beyond measure.



{And if she wasn't hugging a pony, she would find her Papa or me and give us the biggest hug, saying THANK YOU over and over again. We kept telling her it wasn't us and that the Lord had provided through Co & Kevin and that these ponies were a total gift to all of us.}

We didn't tell the kids that Papa was bringing home ponies. So when he pulled in the farm gates Saturday afternoon and had a horse trailer attached to his truck___ you should have seen those kids faces. My Hal went back and forth between laughing, screaming, jumping, and crying. And me, the used-to-be-animal-hater, I wept. Tears streamed down my face as I saw the uncontainable joy fill all of my kids, but especially my Hal.

My friend was right__ Today, these ponies, they weren't about me.

I really do believe it's the Lord blessing my Hal's heart in a season of hardship as she learns to trust Him in ways she's never had to before.  And today... He brought her a joy soo deep by bringing those ponies to the farm!!

I just keep thinking about that verse in Ephesians, "His love was not cautious, but extravagant! He did not He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that."

{You can see all my kids personalities in this video. They are all STOKED in their own ways.}

Today felt like a very tangible touch of His extravagant love on the farm. He's reminding me that He cares for these kids hearts is ways that far exceed anything that I could ever think up or imagine.

He doesn't always bring us ponies when our hearts need a boost of joy, I know that. But today was a gift... an extravagant gift. And I'm so so so thankful.

Around the farm this weekend__
Happy has become the understatement of the year! :)