Happy Birthday, Mother!

Happy birthday today, dear Mother! I want to publicly thank the Lord for the wonderful Mother I have in you.

I am so glad you are my friend and that you care for the personal needs of each of your family, from Dad, to all of us kids. You are always working for our success spiritually, physically, industrially (is that a word?), in ministry.

You and daddy have built us up in character; through talking about things, giving advice, setting down rules - with reasons, all these things. Trusting us with more responsibility as we grow up... things like this.

You are an example to me, in your love of the Lord. In prayer and Bible reading, and in teaching of your children the same devotion, you show your love of God.

You are an example to me in your hard work - when it's not fun, easy, or when you don't feel like working - doing it anyway, for the Lord and for us. I pray that as I grow into a woman, I will follow your example in these important areas. "She watches over the ways of her household, And does not eat the bread of idleness." (Proverbs 31:27) If something needs to be done you do it without complaining, or have your kids help you do it (so that we'll learn your ways), like the little red hen! Diligent not lazy.

You are a friend to so many; from homeschoolers, to neighbors, babysitee parents, associates, relations, you are a friend. A friend who prays, when asked, or even when not asked, you pray faithfully until the need is met. As God guides you to speak or advise, or just visit, you are careful and willing to help. "She opens her mouth with wisdom, And on her tongue is the law of kindness." (Proverbs 31:26)

I thank God, that He is doing His work in your heart, and making you more like Him all of the time. I thank Him for the humility He has helped you to have, serving the Lord.

I love you, Mother, not because you're perfect, (because pobody's nerfect) but because you are so special to me, and I am delighted that God gave you to me as Mother, and that I have the privilege of seeing your example.

Happy Birthday! I love you!

P.S. (It seems as if I will always forget something(s) :) ) Thank you so much for making the new quilt with me, for pinning everything, and for being brave enough to let me use your sewing machine on both of my quilts. Now you may go spend your 200,000 Mommy Points (MPs)! (By the way, is that enough to pay for it?)
P.S. #2 Thanks for homeschooling us too!
I could go on and on you know, but I guess I'll stop here.

Love you.

Your

Babysitting and Quilting (AKA: Life this past week)

This week we have been babysitting, and babysitting, and babysitting, oh yeah, and quilting.
On Monday (as you know if you read the post 2 posts back) I babysat Lincoln B. On Wednesday afternoon Lincoln came again. Mother was already babysitting Alia and Kara R. that same day. Yesterday, Thursday, Mother babysat Alia and Kara again, and I babysat Olivia H., who Brenda used to babysit (Brenda and I also babysat Olivia's two siblings that go to school). Then, today I babysat Olivia and her siblings again. Understand, that whether Mother or I babysit, all of us play with whoever is here.

Now that we've gotten the facts down, how about some personal feelings about it all?
Well, I am pretty accustomed to babysitting Lincoln, so it wasn't hard for me. He is very sweet.
Alia and Kara are a bit on the wild side, so it is harder on the nerves. But, we made it through another (~)12 hrs. with them this week.

I was nervous about babysitting Olivia and her siblings because I had only done it for an afternoon before and didn't have the "off to school with the older kids, get Olivia ready for the day" routine down. Also, (just like Bren did when she worked with them) I had to get up early both days (at 5:30), which although some people love doing (like my dad), I am not partial to! Olivia was good most of the time, and we had fun with her, so it all worked out okay.

Sharing my new mp3 player with Olivia - she actually liked it.

Olivia.


Also, as you'll know if you read my family's blog we finished the quilt top this week. I am so happy about it, and can't believe it took Mother and I just less than a month to do it all. Now we are going to send it to some people in Missouri who are going to quilt it for us. You can see some pictures by clicking here.

Although not on the subject of babysitting or quilting, I decided to share a couple more pictures.

Sometimes we put some chai tea powder in our ice cream. The first picture is of a chai drink with vanilla ice cream afloat. The second picture is vanilla ice cream with chai tea powder on it. It is yummy.

New mp3 players

My generous, hardworking, young brothers, Jeff and Jason, gave Mother and I our birthday presents early on Saturday night. We both were given mp3 players and we are very happy about having them. We are enjoying listening to them and are trying to figure them out. Thank you Jeffrey and Jason! Now Mother and I can listen to music and stories more easily while we work.

Cleaning and babysitting

I got to clean on Friday as was planned. The main thing I did was clean the living room of the house. I also cleaned a couple of other smaller areas. Cindy, the friend I was working for, and I had lunch at Subway.

Yesterday, we started a new babysitting job, caring for Lincoln B. We call him Linky-dude (like dinky-dude). He is a sweetie. He liked playing with our (usually used as a bathtoy) toy duck. He says "duck, duck, duck". Emily was wearing a tee-shirt yesterday that had some ducks on it and he pointed to them and said "duck".

Me reading to Lincoln. (Notice the clench-fist duck.)



playing with a ball.

Quilt

Mother an I got all of the blocks sewed into rows-we finished that yesterday. Mother is now sewing the rows together, since it is much harder and more tedious than other parts of this project.
Here are all of the rows laid out. You can see the yellow tags on the left, labeling the row numbers.

The starters of rows 1 & 2.

Mother sewing yesterday. In this picture she is listening to her new mp3 player.

Yet more quilt top pictures

Here are Mother and Emily laying out quilt squares and deciding position for each.

Me and Mother. I am putting some out.

Mother and Em and all the quilt blocks.

A closer view.

We are getting excited as we see the quilt "coming together"!!

The promised quilt progress pictures

This is about the progress we have been making on the quilt. We've sewn thousands of stitches, but we've been using only 3 pincushions worth of pins (the same ones over and over).

Mother pinning. She is kinda getting tired of pinning, and pinning, and pinning and is ready to help me with sewing the blocks together.

In this picture you can see the 5 different kinds of quilt squares there are. In each of the upper left and lower right sides are blue-ish triangles. The left bottom and right tops of each vary in the other miscellaneous colors we are using.

From the right to left this picture shows how a 9 patch turns into the quilt blocks. We add two triangles opposite each other, then the other two; always starting with the miscellaneous colored triangles and adding the blue.

My poor "thoing ma-thing"! (sewing machine)

As I was sewing along (on the quilt pieces) innocently a couple of nights ago, we realized there was a problem with the sewing machine. Daddy figured out for us that the belt was in the process of breaking, with chunks of plastic coming off. I don't understand all the technicalities, but the belt has gone kaput. The problem is that the sewing machine is not name brand and is most likely ~50 years old. So parts are hard to find. Dad is looking for a belt diligently though.

So... my quilt sewing at present has to be done on Mother's machine (which I am more used to anyway).

You can look forward to a post with pictures of our quilt progress soon!

Work? who me?

Emily and I got to babysit together on both Monday and Tuesday.
On Monday we babysat a 6 1/2 year old, Gage, at our neighbors' house. We haven't ever watched him before. I was glad Emily was there with me, because of not having even met him before! What did we do? We played with a plastic bat and ball in the backyard, went to the park, colored; he played the computer and played with Lincoln logs; and we watched a DVD about sheepdogs. We only watched it after we could finally figure out how to get the channel turned to do DVD rather than the TV, which was showing the Olympics in China. Since I don't have experience with TVs, I couldn't figure it out; plus, I had the wrong remote, so it was quite the adventure! Oh, and we played the old game "Tiddly Winks" twice with Gage.

Yesterday, I got to babysit for the Browns, for whom I have babysat several times. Their 5 1/2 year old and 1 1/2 year old, needed to be here while their mom and older sister went to a movie. Lincoln, the 1 1/2 year old, slept for a while, while Emily and I played with Hope. Hope and I put a puzzle together, and Em played with us a Go Fish Bible character sort of game. Hope was a lot of fun to play with. We played Hide-N-Go-Seek too. Then Hope wanted to play with our matchbox cars, and a few she had brought. By that time Lincoln was up from his nap and ready to play with toys too.

I am scheduled to help a friend (who Mother babysits for often) clean a house (which her family has been renting) this Friday.

I thank the Lord for the jobs He's given me!

A lesson for me - It is more blessed to give than to receive

Has it ever happened to you? You are [sitting, standing, laying or whatever] there reading your Bible, and all of a sudden a verse jumps out at you. Your thought may be something like this, "I wish I would've had that verse earlier today when...", or "Oh, so that's what I should do about this or that..." or "Oops, I shouldn't have done that..." or "Ok, so...".

Well, maybe a little example might help. Your going to think I'm terrible, but I guess I'll just tell the story anyway. One day, probably 3 years ago, we had our annual home-schoolers game day (held around/on Valentine's Day (for no particular reason)). I got stuck playing easy games with the little kids. You may say, "What's the big deal, you aren't too good for little kids are you?" Well, no, but I was "supposed" to have a fun time playing on this special game day. "Well, someone needs to play with the little kids, it might as well be you." You're right, but I was indignant by the end of the game playing time.

So when we were eating lunch, Mother asked me why I had such a long face. And after some tears and expressed disappointment and anger, my loving Mother decided to play some games with me that afternoon, which did not cheer me. Then, I was mad at myself for being so selfish, and all in all didn't have a good attitude or outlook on the day!

That evening, I was reading my Bible in the book of Acts when I came upon this verse, "And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive." (Acts 20:35) I can't remember exactly how I felt, but I think it changed my viewpoint of how I should've been more than glad to play with the little folks. The lesson that it is more blessed to give than receive, whether in time, fun, money, or whatever else, was spoken to my heart that day. Oftentimes, I should remember this when asked/needed to do something for someone, which if I had my "rathers" I wouldn't want to do. I don't think I've learned the lesson entirely, but I trust the Lord will help me in the future.

That was one day I was glad that in the midst of having my devotions, God specifically spoke to me about something I was dealing with.

Making a quilt top!

Mother and I have starting putting together a new quilt top. I am loving every minute of it!! We are making it for Jeffrey and Jason to use on their new queen sized bed. The pattern we are using is Crossroads to Jericho. (See picture at end of post.) In a Crossroads to Jericho pattern there are 9-patches turned diagonally with triangles on each of the sides. To make this quilt you use a strip piecing method. You cut the strips with a yardstick and rotory cutter. That makes it faster than drawing out all of the pieces and cutting them out with scissors. The strip piecing method is also faster because you sew the pieces a couple of times compared to trillions!

We have been going pretty fast since we started it a week and a half ago. I think we have more time because of not having school, and because Tim and Brenda's wedding is over and all the rush with that.

As some of you may know, Mother and I have already made one quilt together (Mother did the pinning and cutting, and I did the sewing).
A picture of that quilt on my bed.


Mother has also made 3 other quilts by herself through the years.

Sometime this year (probably in June) the Lord provided for me by giving me a sewing machine for free from my great aunt Hazel, who was moving to an assisted living type of place and couldn't keep her sewing machine. I am very thankful for it and I love using it already! Mother did a cleaning, oiling, and ajustment on it (she plans to teach me how next time).

Mother and I cutting out the strips and triangles for this quilt top.

Our hands.

This is when we had the strips (3 pieces each) sewn together and several of them together on a table.

A view from the other way.

After sewing all of the fabrics into strips we cut them into 2 1/2 in. pieces.
The piles of cut strips.

Next we arranged the strips into 9 patches.
Lots of nine patches waiting to be sewn.

Mother pinning the 9 patch pieces together for me to sew. She's holding a pin in her mouth.

The pinned pieces just as they are before I sew them.

Me sewing on my new (it's old, but new to me) sewing machine.

When I am sewing the 9 patches I do them all in a string, so as not to waste thread cutting it in-between them.
This is something like they will look like when they are done.


We got this quilt pattern from the book "Scrap Quilts - fast and fun" compiled and edited by Patricia Wilens.
This is the page of the book that we got the quilt from.

P.S. This quilt is made almost entirely with scraps, so it is cheaper to make than other quilts.