Norah Jones Concert

Mike and I attended a Norah Jones concert this week and it was absolutely fabulous. Her voice is completely amazing. She has been my favorite vocalist for several years now. In my opinion, the tone and quality of her voice is unmatched by anyone else. She has what can only be described as a God-given gift. I thoroughly enjoyed the concert and could listen to her sing for hours. Actually, I believe I have listened to her music for hours. A great big thank you to my wonderful husband for taking me to this concert when I know he would have rather been doing a number of other things. I know the photo quality isn't great but I hope you enjoy the pics anyway.

Sky Cap Sleeve Top

Love, love, love this top! I’m very pleased with the way it turned out. It was fairly easy to knit, although you have to really pay attention when you start the cross-over section near the neckline. The yarn was great to work with and the color is absolutely gorgeous. The fit is perfect. I highly recommend this pattern. I can’t wait to wear it out! :) The only modification is that I omitted the waist tie. Here is the link to this top on my Ravelry page: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/Maybabie/cap-sleeve-top. Pictures by Ryan.

Summer Break

Hello all! I'm not sure how many people regularly read this blog. It really doesn't matter. I am trying to do something in this blog that I feel the Lord is prompting me to do. I didn't want to start this blog and felt sure that many of my friends and family would think I was completely nuts when I started blogging about God's word and His work in my life. I really don't care about that, though. All I know is that I am obediently following my Lord and Savior. That is the most important thing here. Honestly, this blog takes a lot of my time. Getting the words, scripture and photos just right actually is very time-consuming. I can literally spend hours on just one post. I try to make it just the way I think the Lord wants it.



Mike, Ryan and me

 As summer break quickly approaches, I am faced with a very difficult decision. I could continue to blog through the summer or I could take a little break. I certainly want to honor the Lord in this, so I prayed about it. I actually got the answer when I was praying for my son. I feel that God wants me to spend quality time with Ryan without exception. Being a good mother is important to me. I want to raise Ryan in a way that is pleasing to the Lord. I want to create lasting memories with Ryan over the summer. I love him beyond what I could have ever imagined. The answer seems so clear to me. While I strongly feel this blog is honoring the Lord and drawing others closer to Him, I must go with what I know is right and what I feel God wants me to do.

Proverbs 22:6

Start children off on the way they should go,
    and even when they are old they will not turn from it. 

Proverbs 29:17

¹⁷ Discipline your children, and they will give you peace;
    they will bring you the delights you desire.

This will be my last post for a while. I will be taking a summer break along with Ryan. I will try to post some quick pictures or very brief posts throughout the summer but there will be no extended posts until fall. I hope you all have a wonderfully blessed and safe summer. Enjoy your family and friends and try to live every day to it's fullest. You don't know what plans God has for you and what day will be your last. God bless and take care. :)
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Squirrels! Ugghh!



Our front yard

We live on a  scarcely wooded four acre lot in the country. The setting is really quite peaceful and beautiful. The trees are spaced fairly far apart and create a wonderful habitat for wildlife. We have a variety of birds and small woodland creatures in are yard. I have seen rabbits, raccoons, geese, an occasional snake and of course squirrels. We have a ton of squirrels in our yard. Apparently squirrels like Shagbark Hickory trees and boy do we have a lot of those! Well anyway, I'm sure that you probably think we coincide peacefully with God's creatures around us. This is not the case. When we first built our house in this wooded area, I loved watching all of the squirrels playfully chase each other around our yard. I thought they were adorable creatures that wouldn't harm anyone. Now I have a very different opinion of squirrels. I truly feel like they have literally waged war on us and our house. I'm pretty sure they are quite angry that we built our house smack-dab in the middle of their paradise.

I remember how distraught I was the first time I found my partially dead flowers laying on the concrete by the pots I had planted a couple of days earlier. "Who or what would have done something like this?" I thought to myself. Oh how many plants I have pain-stakingly placed in a pot or a flowerbed that have died at the hands (or paws, rather) of a squirrel. The senseless deaths of so many poor, defenseless plants. So sad.

And then there are the holes that I have found in the siding of our house. One day I was walking through the dining room when I heard some kind of scratching on the front porch. I looked out the window to see a squirrel chewing on our house. (Seriously!) I went out onto the porch to see several holes on the edges of our siding that I had never noticed before. The holes were all along our front porch siding from the concrete to about 3 feet high. I couldn't hardly believe it!



Bird feeder with squirrel-guard



I also recall a couple of years ago when we got a birdhouse for Christmas. We put it out on a post in our back yard that next spring. The bird feeder turned out to be a squirrel feeder. The feed lasted approximately three to four hours with those hogs around. The birds didn't have any food because the squirrels ate it all. We could see squirrel after squirrel shimmy its way up the narrow pole to the feeder. We tried putting sheet metal coated with Vaseline around the pole, thinking the squirrels would slide right off. The only thing that happened was that our squirrels got a sixties fur-do and I had to clean fur-encrusted dried Vaseline off the pole a few days later. It was literally a game that the squirrels were certainly winning. We were so excited when we finally beat them with the lovely round metal "squirrel-guard" that you see pictured.



Herb garden, squirrel-style



Just days ago another squirrel incident occurred. I planted an herb garden and I was pretty excited about it. I could practically see myself cooking up all of the wonderful meals with my fresh, home-grown herbs. I had worked in my flowerbeds all day and didn't get my herb garden finished that first day. I had the ground worked and the herbs planted but I still needed to put down some kind of weed barrier and mulch. I also needed to edge the garden with rocks. I decided to call it a day and finish it the next day. I was shocked when I looked out the window the next morning and saw that the squirrels had done their own landscaping in my new herb garden. There was one large hole and a few other small holes with various piles of dirt scattered about. I guess the squirrels didn't like the change in their habitat. (Obviously!)





The herb garden after the squirrels landscaped





The finished herb garden



It was then that I decided these little creatures and my unusual relationship with them would make an interesting post for my blog. I decided to go outside to take several pictures of them in action. I walked around our yard several times at various points in the day and wouldn't you know that not one of those squirrels would show their furry little faces! It figures! I'm sure they knew I was up to no good and wanted to capture their true personalities.





Well, as you can see I finally did get some good pictures of the squirrels in our yard. I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed taking them. I have to admit that when I watch them play and scurry about our yard, I can't help but think that they are pretty cute. Even after everything they have put us through, I still kind of like having them around.

On second thought, after reviewing the damage from the plant massacre last night, I think I'll have to come to terms with the fact that the squirrels and I are never going to be friends. I believe our relationship will always be comparable to that of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd . . . Tom and Jerry . . . Wiley Coyote and the roadrunner. What do you think? Does anyone have any ideas about how I can win this war?


















This is what I sprinkled on my potted plants to keep the squirrels away. It obviously didn't work. 

The Many Jobs of a Woman

Women have many different jobs. In the last 24 hours I have been a . . .

I am thankful for all of the people in my life who help me to be a better woman. I am thankful to my Heavenly Father. Without Him, I can do nothing and am nothing. I feel blessed.

The Courage of Esther

I sat in church this morning awaiting the usual Mother's Day sermon, expecting to be crying by the end of the service. Usually Mother's Day brings a sermon that makes me question what kind of a mother I really am. I can still remember how completely incompetent I felt a few years ago when the Mother's Day sermon was about the wife of noble character from Proverbs 31:10- 31. I don't know a single woman who would live up to those standards. I'm not saying these sermons are bad. I will be the first to admit that I think everyone needs to hear a sermon that really makes them feel convicted every now and then. I believe this will make us evaluate who we are as a Christian, a parent, a spouse, etc and then strive to become the best person we can be. However, such was not the case this morning in church. The sermon came from a forgotten book in the Old Testament called Esther. When I first became a Christian, I read the entire Bible from beginning to end in about a year. For some unknown reason I completely did not remember reading the book of Esther. I found myself sitting and listening intently as the sermon unfolded, enthralled by the life of Esther.

Esther was a young Jewish girl when the king began his search for a queen. A quest for beautiful young virgins began in the kingdom. Esther lost her parents as a child and was being raised by her uncle. Esther, who was a young to mid teen, was chosen for her beauty and taken against her will to the palace with several other young women. She spent the next year of her life undergoing extensive beauty treatments before she could even meet the king. During her first meeting with the king, she lost her virginity to him. All of the chosen virgins would lose their virginity to the king. This could have been the only time Esther ever met the king. She did find favor with the king and became his queen. All along, she kept her Jewish heritage a secret. I thought about Esther's life and what dreams she might have had. What did she give up when she was taken from her family?

While Esther was queen, she learned of a plot to kill all Jews in the kingdom. Upon the prompting of a close nobleman, the king issued a decree to support this plan. Esther's uncle asked her to go before the king to try to stop this command. Esther informed her uncle that anyone who went before the king without being summoned would die unless the king held out his golden scepter to have that person's life spared. Her uncle again pleaded that Esther intercede on behalf of her people. She agreed to go before the king with this request. Can you imagine how difficult this decision must have been for Esther? She, a teenager, had the weight of every Jewish person's life on her shoulders. She knew she could have been easily put to death for approaching the king about this matter. When she did decide to go through with it, she instructed her uncle to have all of the Jews fast and pray for her for three days. She and her maids also fasted and prayed for three days.

Esther went before the king and he not only spared her life but the lives of all of the Jewish people. He sent another decree to allow all of the Jewish people to defend themselves against their attackers. (No decree from the king could ever be revoked, therefore the previous decree still stood.) The Jews successfully fought off thousands of enemies. The nobleman responsible for formulating the plot was hung and Esther's uncle took his place as second to the king.

I think this story is an amazing testimony of God's awesome power. He used Esther in her unfortunate circumstances to accomplish His will for His people. He placed her there in the palace in a position of influence. She was one person who followed God's prompting and saved the lives of thousands of God's people. What if she decided to ignore God's request? What would have happened to the Jewish people? Esther's courageous act completely overwhelms me. I think of my own life and the daily decisions I make and I can't even begin to compare them to the magnitude of Esther's difficult decision. I admire her for her selflessness as she put her own life on the line for her people. I wonder if I would have the courage to do the same. Sometimes I can feel God tapping me on the shoulder and telling me to do something that seems completely out of the question to me at the time. Thoughts of failure and ridicule plague my mind as I ponder the unimaginable task the Lord has planned for me. I will try to remember Esther and her inspiring story as I go about my own life. When I feel God telling me to do something, I will try to follow the Lord's plan, with His constant help, of course. I would hate to think about what would happen if I decided to ignore God's prompting and not fulfill His plan for me.

Oh, and one last thing. Did you catch the part about the fasting and prayer? Esther didn't do anything until she and many other people fasted and prayed about it for three days. God wants us to pray about things before we do them. He wants us to consult Him in all of our decisions and the way to do this is through prayer. I completely believe that if Esther and others hadn't prayed about it first, Esther may have failed. Esther was wise beyond her years when she decided to pray first. If we don't ask, we can't receive.

Matthew 7:8
For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
Mark 11:24
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
John 16:24
Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.
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Parenting

This post is going to be short and sweet. If you think having a good marriage is difficult, try being a parent. It sometimes seems impossible. How someone could be a parent and not pray every single day just completely baffles me. I certainly can't be a good parent on my own. A verse that I read within the last week seems very appropriate now.

Mark 10:27
Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”

I'm so thankful for the Lord and His presence in my life.