What I love about summer....

Eating EVERY meal on the back deck.

Swimming in Aunt Carol's pool.


Cutting down branches in order to pick the pie cherries....picking the cherries...


and making, baking and eating the BEST cherry pie!

Washing the car

Sad to say that it was a novelty to wash the car in the driveway. But we finally have a hose that reaches! The kids had so much fun.

Starlight

Kingdom come their will be done
and now the earth is far away
from any kind of heaven
Hallowed be these frozen fields
and every single one of us
still left in want of mercy
take us home

Richard heard the Wailin' Jennys on the radio and knew I would like them. He found their CD at the library today and as I was listening to this song the lyrics drew me back into the room and made me really listen.

Vacation

We spent the first night at Mom and Dad's and had a family dinner. The kids love playing with their Uncle Joseph and all the cousins.

On the way to the Oregon coast we got to stop at Uncle Brian and Amy's house and meet Tilly! So exciting!
And then a week at beautiful Depot Bay enjoying beautiful sunsets, the beach, the waves and watching the whales from our balcony.

Yesterday:Today:

Our girl has a new look

Here's all three of them looking very cute before church yesterday. Lily is adjusting to her new glasses, as are we all.
And yes indeed its Monday and snowing!

No Spring

Well, we've leaped right past spring and straight into summer - at least for this week, its supposed to snow again on Monday! We took advantage of the beautiful weather yesterday and went on a picnic.

Book Launch

It was so exciting to see Richard's name in bold letters in the window of MonkeyShines.

He gave a short history about the writing of The Nightmare Tree and then read a chapter, answered questions and signed copies!

Hwy 22

We took the southern route to Cranbrook and I throughly enjoyed the drive. I'd never seen any further south than Okotoks and it was fun to see the rolling hills and cattle country. Made me want to watch a Western!















Oh, and the Biggest Truck in the World was entertaining:

Its Arrived!!

 

Doll Quilt

I made this yesterday and got the binding sewn on this evening. It's so satisfying finishing a project, even a small one.

Craft Time

Pascha baking

Spring Break

Over Spring Break we did a major switch with the bedrooms.
The kids (all 3 of them!) are now in our former bedroom and we're in their's. They have much more room to play and are loving the new setup. They especially love the bunk bed and the colorful quilts on the walls. We were planning to paint the three white walls yellow but were just too tired. And the quilts look great and now we have more closet space.
So here's a few quick photos of the new digs.

You're Invited to a Nightmare! (Release Party)

My novel The Nightmare Tree is being officially released on May 12, 1:00 p.m., at Monkeyshines Bookstore in Calgary. You are all invited to attend! If you can't come, you can always preorder a copy of the book on Amazon.ca (here) or Amazon.com (here). Talk about shameless self-promotion!

First Campfire of the Year

Gabriel blow your horn!

What's for dinner? (An true story from my mom)

Here’s an entertaining dinner menu for you: As some of you may know, Vern has long been wanting a deep fat fryer, and I have long be saying the big NO. Like, where are we going to put it for starters? On the counter with all the other crap we don’t know where to put? And what about all that fat? But alas, he went out an bought himself a deep fat fryer. Now, don’t get me wrong. I do like French fries once and awhile, but have you ever made them at home? The house stinks for days!

Well, yesterday the good and dutiful husband stopped in at the local restaurant supply store and bought 30 lbs. – yes, three zero- of frozen French fries all ready to plop into the huge deep fat fryer now taking up loads of counter space in our kitchen. If a little is good, more is better; right? He also picked up some lovely shrimp, all breaded and ready to go. We have enough of these little critters for at least another five meals tucked away in the freezer next to their friendly companions, the abundant French fries.

When I completed my teaching schedule for the day, I traipsed down from the studio, and in through the back door to the oh-so-lovely smell of hot oil. (I was going to ask him to run and extension cord to the back deck and do his duty out there, but didn’t quite get this request relayed in time.) There was some panic happening in the kitchen at this point. He had placed the pan which holds the oil in the fryer backwards, and needed my help to get it out and turned around and placed in the correct direction. I was a little nervous, but we managed. I tried to stay out of the way of the frying frenzy, but did manage to steam some fresh spinach to counteract the evil effects of all that oil. I have to say, Vern made the best French fries and fried shrimp I have ever had. Maybe all the effort he went to is influencing my opinion, but it was yummy. We had plenty of good-old-American ketchup and cocktail sauce, a little margarine on the spinach, and wallah! – a blue-plate-special!

Just in case any of you are wondering what on earth happened to all that oil after the frying was done, we simply poured it back into the gallon jug and plopped it in the freezer for next frying frenzy.

Well, I don’t know if that was inspiring or frightening! But, if anybody wants to come over and let Vern fry them up a batch of fries and critters, I’m sure he would be more than happy to!! You may even luck out and get a home-brewed beer if you come on the right day.

Happy Wednesday,

Cheryl

Wish you could see that he's wearing cowboy boots too. It really completes the image for me. I know that all of you in Texas would appreciate the whole ensemble. I really debated about letting him dress-up at church but he takes it so seriously that it seems worthwhile.

Raising Men

This is someone's brilliant post that I found inspiring. It also made me feel better about the sword we bought Gabriel for Christmas and the cap guns he received for his birthday.

When my boys were three and four, they spent a good bit of time patrolling the perimeter of the back yard with stick guns. One day they were making particularly gruesome sound effects and my feminine squeamishness, which I try to keep tamped down while mothering boys, got away from me. "I really don't like you pretending to shoot people," I told them.

"We're not pretending to shoot people," my older son said. "We're shooting pretend people. Dangerous ones."

Oh.

As one who has both boy and girl children, I can tell you they're different from birth. My daughter is something of a tomboy, and still she's nothing like her brothers. She has never hit anyone over the head with a zucchini, for one thing. She has never knocked her father's legs out from under him and laughed when he fell on her with bone-crushing weight. She has never lost a toenail or fingernail, climbed higher in a tree than the cats will go, picked up unidentified insects with her bare hands, or picked them up again after being bitten the first time. She has never captured a big black spider in my good Tupperware and left it for me to find unexpectedly while putting away leftovers.

My boys--sweet and well-behaved as they truly are--do those things regularly.

My job as mother is to keep my mouth shut unless death or dismemberment is imminent. "They're boys," Jonathan says, when I come to him worried about their latest escapade. "That's what boys do."

Now, my boys memorize poetry. They clean up the supper dishes, with a little reminding. They tell their sister that they love her, and they prickle with indignation when other boys talk about girl germs. They're not Neanderthals. They're going to be good men, strong and tender, trustworthy, confident, brave.

They aren't learning this from me (except by my refusal to squelch it). They're learning it from their father, grandfathers, uncles; from the men at church who greet them with outstretched hand and expect them to answer audibly and shake firmly, from the men who lead worship; from the male friends who take them up in cherry-pickers, bulldozers, fire engines, and out in boats, who stop by to show them a new motorcycle, who talk to them with great seriousness about dinosaurs, asteroids, and snakes. Thanks to these men, my boys are going to know how to be men--not bullies, not henpicked eunuchs, but men.

Unfortunately, they have many friends who won't know how to be men, who are already less than confident in their maleness.

Some of these are boys whose mothers watch anxiously the whole time they're playing lest they hurt themselves, who forbid toy guns and swords and urge their sons to play "games everybody wins," which to a boy means a game nobody wins, that has no point.

Some are boys whose fathers are gone and who carry the weight of guilt not their own, who feel somehow complicit in other men's abandonments, other men's unreliability, other men's cruelty.
Some are boys whose energy is treated by teachers and parents as a curse, whose enthusiasm is treated as naivety, whose curiosity is treated as a distraction.

It's almost as if some people don't like little boys.

I do. I like their energy, their toughness. I like their forthrightness, their ruthless logic, their dislike of cant. I like their natural gallantry, their instinctive desire to protect those who are smaller and weaker. And I like that they include me in that group, though I am yet, for another few years, larger and stronger than they.

So I sympathize with Russell Moore, who "is aiming to raise up violent sons." Moore is being deliberately inflammatory, of course, but in a very real sense he means what he says:

I am not seeking to raise sons who are violent in the amoral, pagan sense of contemporary teenagers playing Grand Theft Auto video games or carjacking motorists. I want them to be more violent than that.

I want them to understand that the Christian life is not a Hallmark Channel version of baptized sentimentality. Instead, it is a cosmic battle between an evil dragon and the child of the woman, an ancient warfare that now includes all who belong to the Child of the Promise (Rev 12). I want them to forgive their enemies, not because they are good boys, but because they understand that vengeance against the Serpent comes not from their hand, but from that of the anointed Warrior-King (Rev 19), whose blood-soaked garments don’t often transfer to the imagery of a Precious Moments wall-hanging. And I want them to exercise self-control of their passions, not because it is polite, but because they are called to struggle against the Evil One, even to the point of cutting off their own limbs rather than succumb to devices.

And as Gary of Both Worlds says:

Men are in the image of God. And our need to prove ourselves on some field of combat, to confront danger and, yes, to win a beauty, reflect a side of God which few hymns uplift. Men and boys are often bored in church because many churches have become overloaded with feminine sensibilities and sensations.

So men and boys light out, like Huck down the Mississippi--not irresponsibly, but in search of something. Into the unknown, or the backyard, we go, Aslan at our sides. There be wild things here, and adventures to be had.

Love cowboy hats!

Gabe turns 3

I'm a little behind times posting
but decided I should post a photo from Gabe's birthday anyway.
He got completely outfitted as a cowboy! Cap guns and horse included!

I just found this and it's even cooler than seeing Richard's book on the Coteau site!!

Check it out!

Check out Richard's book on Coteau's website.

The Boys

John in 2 months old

In some ways I can't believe that he's already 2 months old and in others it feels like he's been part of our family forever.