Catching Up

 

Whew… I think I’m being held hostage by my garden! To all my friends I’ve neglected and not kept up with, I’m sorry!  The craziness should end soon… I hope!  Unless I plant that fall garden I’ve just about talked myself back into after talking myself out of it last week.

The good news is I’ve put up a LOT of food for the family and our produce stand is doing great.  So there is always an up side!

The bad news is my kids have also been neglected, although I don’t think they’ve noticed to much.  You know it’s getting bad when they don’t want to eat hot dogs anymore! And when swimming in a dirty swimming pool counts as their bath!… not that I’d really do that, right?

One of the benefits (or headaches, depending on how you look at it) of raising independent, self-sufficient children, is they will take that ball and run with it if you give them half a chance. 

Yesterday I came in from picking tomatoes and Jake met me in the living room with a cake mix in his hand. “Mom, we can make this! Look, 3 eggs… we have eggs. A cup full of water… we have that!”  I laughed, said “hmmm”, and went back out to pick more tomatoes.  A little bit later, when I returned with another basket, I found Jake and Cade at the kitchen table.  Cake mix in mixing bowl, eggs already in mix and just about to pour in a plastic Pizza Hut cup full of water.  Being the good mother that I am, I stopped them and quickly showed Cade how to use a measuring cup, warned them not to turn on the oven… and went back out to pick MORE tomatoes.  I met Travis on the porch, told him to help his brothers and also gave him permission to use the oven. 

Their cake turned out fairly decent!  There were a few little mistakes but they did a good job.  And if they’ve been eating cake for breakfast and lunch the past two days… well at least it breaks up the monotony of hot dogs 3 times a day!

I also have a praise…

My wrist started hurting yesterday.  I don’t know how in the world I could have sprained my wrist shelling peas, but that’s all I can figure!  It hurt to move my wrist at all, I couldn’t put any pressure on it and even moving my fingers to type was excruciating.  So I did what I always do… ignored it and hoped it would be better in the morning!

Well, it wasn’t.  If anything it was getting worse.  I babied it through the morning but then I needed to can tomatoes, really need two hands for that.  Lifting pots of water was killing me and my fingers on that hand were beginning to feel numb.  So after almost 24 hours I did what I should have done at the start… I started praying.  Just stood right there in the kitchen, laid hands on myself and started calling on God!  Immediately the pain lessened.  I was able to can a bushel and a half of tomatoes without a bit of pain, and sitting here now I can type with no problem and move my wrist in any direction with barely a twinge!  I’m so thankful to be serving a God who still answers prayers… no matter how small the matter might be or how long we put off coming to Him!