O, The Wonderful Things That a Girl Can Do...

...with some spools of thread... 

...and paints and things too!

Grandma sent us a tin of wooden spools of thread, so we spent the afternoon making wee people for the Twinkles' doll house! Aren't they too cute? :)

Meet Lucy and Polly! :)

Happy Birthday, Gracie!

Hard to believe this girlie is 12! She's just so...so...
- hilarious
- dramatic
- crazy (in the kindest, most loving sense of the word)


On the other hand, it's hard to believe she's only 12! She's so...so...
- good with taking care of kids
- creative
- crafty
- able to converse with any age on a variety of subjects
- fun to be around!


I love my li'l sis! This afternoon we fixed her hair and put on a leetle bit of makeup (shhh...don't tell dad! :) and did a photo shoot. I was really happy with how they turned out - 'course, it would be hard for them to turn out badly with such a great model, dontcha think?

Blessings - What's On the List Today

A few weeks ago, a friend and I started keeping a “blessings” list for two primary reasons: we wanted to cultivate grateful hearts, and we wanted to ‘force’ ourselves to see the blessings in daily challenges. I am still working on the habit of writing down every-day blessings, and as a result my list is still shamefully short – but today I have been blessed multiple times, and remembered to write them down!

1.       Sunrises, music, and siblings (specifically those who make up the string quartet with me)!

This morning three of us got up early – well, it felt like ‘early’ since we’d stayed up so late – in order to practice quartet for an hour before Ben had to leave for work. We set up the chairs, stands, and music.

And waited for our sleepy other member.

We tuned our instruments.

And waited for the now-showering sleepy member.

We practiced some pieces as a trio.

And finally welcomed our now-awake, freshly-showered member.

After making *ahem* him pay penance by running through Pachelbel’s Canon (evil laugh), Rachel and I were struck with a brilliant idea: Who cares about the frost? The sun is rising – we should go play “You Raise Me Up” on the sport court! Emily was not enchanted by this idea, but Ben obligingly lugged his stand outside with us and we played the sun up (I do hope our neighbors didn’t mind!) It was freezing – I couldn’t feel my fingers when we finished – but so fun and beautiful! Music and the outdoors… ahhh

2.       Pretty things 

   I’m so grateful I can afford pretty things, not merely the practical! My hope chest is filled with lovely items, and I got to go through it this morning while getting out my teapot and a couple cups for tea with my friend. Is that incredibly weird to use things in my hope chest before the hoped-for happens? I…hope…not. If, in fifty years, I die a shriveled-up old maid, I’ll be glad I used at least some of the things, rather than letting them sit as dust-bunny dens that whole time.

3.       Tea, Sharpening Friends, and Scripture

As mentioned above, a friend came over today (this is the same blessings-list friend) for Bible study and tea. We’ve been memorizing and studying our way through the book of James (MAJOR conviction!!) and are almost done!  I am so blessed to have friends who challenge, learn, and pray with me!

4.       These Little Twinkles

…who popped into my room while I was writing this, saw the teapot and cup on the table, and rushed to get their teacups and join me for the “tea party”. J

 5. Fun Siblings!

Today we-the-kids are going to see “Tangled” together. Only the littles and I have seen it, and we had long-established that we would all go together during Spring Break (now that it’s finally in the Three-Dollar Theater)!J

Have a blessed day!

Spring Break Has Begun!

Rachel, in her...interesting...outfit. :)

It really began about a year ago. No, not Spring Break - I mean that what I'm about to tell you about began a year ago. To be completely honest, I don't remember all the particulars. Was it that Emily had been looking at joining a Christian flimmakers group, or that Ben had just completed the soundtrack for a friend's movie? Maybe it was simply that we were being, as always, incredibly over-ambitious in the discussion of creating a full-length film (have you noticed that ignorance can often appear as arrogance?).


Either way, Daddy overheard our conversations at one point, and came up with a challenge: Project Spring Break. At 6 am one morning during our week off school, we were handed an envelope containing a theme-word, a deadline (6pm the same day), and a $26 budget. Our goal? Plan, film, and edit a 5-minute music video.


We. Had. A. Blast.


So much so, in fact, that we decided to hold a 'Family Film Festival' that summer, with remarkably similar guidelines. All participants were given a 12-hour time frame, beginning when I posted the word and ending when they were required to show up at our front door, DVDs in hand. It was...an adventure. Each family had their unique story of catastrophe, and no one made the deadline exactly (in fact, two of us holed up in the bonus room for the final minutes of burning). Actually, I take that back. One family had impeccable timing, but that doesn't make quite as good of a story. Anyway, adventures are rarely anything but fun, and we decided a repeat of the experience was definitely in order.


So here we are, at Spring Break one year later, and the second Family Film Festival has just concluded. We tweaked a couple of the rules this year, just for fun. Instead of a "skin-of-the-teeth" twelve hours, we were given nearly 60 (that is to say, the weekend) for this film! In addition, 'music video' was not the required format, though it maintained the 'format of choice' status for most entries.


Despite these o-so-cushy guidelines, however, we the Coders managed to still not finish our DVD until the last minute (*ahem*, that is to say, after guests had arrived). 'How could you be so negligent?' you may ask. Well, I blame it entirely on circumstances "beyond my control" (does anyone know that movie quote?? :). You see, we diligently planned, costumed, stage-propped, and filmed all day Saturday and all afternoon Sunday - we were, bluntly, done with all but editing (and one scene, but that hardly counts, you know).


Then, the unthinkable happened.


And all the filming was worth...


Worth nothing, strictly speaking.


You see, at 12:30 last night - or this morning, or, something - I had just finished uploading all our footage and was doing a quick play-through to make sure it had transferred correctly, when I noticed the most curious lack of sound on the footage! O dear, our in-camera mic had decided to take a holiday - or move away, or, something - and all we had to show for the last two days of work was a silent movie, minus the black-and-white and o-so-dramatic music. So, I roused the house (after going to bed for a couple hours, of course), borrowed a friend's video camera, and the movie you now see before you was filmed, uploaded, transferred between computers, edited, and burned between 9:45am and 5:30...ish...pm today. Enjoy! - or cringe, or, something - :)

I hope to have the other entries posted on Shutterfly by the weekend. Happy Spring Break!

A New Tradition

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

This is a day that just makes me all happy-skippy inside, and a day that makes me want to cry. A day where I can’t help smiling and feeling a bubbly excitement (that often turns into a laugh and a twirl), and a day that makes me sad in some deep-down place. Why? Well, the reasons are numerous.

 I love this day because I’m part Irish, and, in case it wasn’t obvious from the blog title, "Irish word of the day" widget, and profile ramblings, I’m proud of it!

I love this day because my family goes a little over-board, and has fun with celebrating! Green waffles, Ireland shirts, Celtic fiddle music, "Poor Paddy Works on the Railway," corned beef with cole-cannon for dinner - yes, it’s a true day of celebration!

I love this day because, at some point (I think we’re doing it tonight), I get to sit down with the Littles and watch St. Patrick's story with ‘Lutfie’s Fanciful Flannel Graph’ from whichever-veggie-tales-episode-it-is, and laugh at the quote "no soccer balls in church!"

But this day makes me sad because, on this day, we remember the reason anyone knows of a ‘St. Patrick’. We remember one man’s burden for the spiritual depravity so prevalent in the people of the Emerald Isle. I was doing some research this morning on Ireland's spiritual state and the results were quite sobering. *Did you know that 87.4% of the Irish peoples are Roman Catholic? Of the puny 12.6% left, 2.9% is the Church of Ireland (essentially Anglican) and only 1.9% is "other Christian" - an ambiguous title I find disheartening.

Join me in beginning a new St. Patrick’s Day tradition. Among your green décor and clothing, amidst your Celtic songs and tunes, between your meals of unique coloring or culture, will you pray for Ireland?

*Information taken from the CIA world factbook, 2006 survey.

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