Rush the Spring - Wild Wednesday

"Where's my tie?"

In with Eligh.

"Uh... Mom?  I need a belt."

Haha! Yes you do! Unfortunately, it is also in with the little sleeping beauty...

"My tights??"

Why didn't you guys get all your things out before I put her down?

"I don't know..."

"I don't know..."

"ME DON'T KNOW EITHER!"

As doing something as effort-full as this usually goes... we were short on time and everyone needed something. 

Everything needed ironed. Oh, and we should be leaving now, but no one's hair is done. And make-up.

We manage.

We made our way out the door, through six inches of snow, in our fanciest of attire and in to town for lunch at Pizza Hut.  Boy howdy, do we ever know how to do fancy!

It was a big day after all...  Not only were we celebrating life as us, but we had a couple of readers on our hands that had earned their Book-it's last month!

Here are a couple of pictures of another participating Wild Wednesday family!

I love it!! Thanks for sharing!

_________________________________________________________

On to this weeks Family Fun Challenge!

In honor of this weeks snow, today's challenge is: "The Spring Rush" from a book called "Let's Make a Memory (here).

Google Image

Choose at least one but, if you are so inclined to do more, please do! 

Before Spring actually arrives, watch for it's promises.  When the snow is still on the ground in late February or early March:  (All you fun-in-the-sun-all-year-'round bunnies, just play along, would you?)

• Pick limbs of pussy willows and bring them inside.  Put them in water and watch spring pop out!
• Pick forsythia (click here for picture) or any other limb at the first sign of budding, and bring it in and put in water
• Plant tulip, daffodil, or hycinth bulbs inside.  Keep them watered and in a sunny window.
• Fill the house with construction paper daisies.  Tape them to windows, doors, refrigerator, and hang them with thread from the ceilings, etc....
• Welcome the birds with suet, tiny balls of meat, and seeds.
• Cut off the tops of milk cartons. Fill the carons with soil and plant dwarf marigold seeds.  They come up and grow quickly, and they may even be ready to bloom by the time it is warm enough to transplant them outside!
• Have a contest of Spring First's.  Make a sign from a poster board or chalk board, etc... and title it "Spring Firsts".  Place it in a prominent place in your home.  Discuss typical signs of Spring and make a list on the board. (Ex: A Robin, a tree blossom, green grass, crocus, etc...)  Then, as the season starts to change, little by little, everyone is to be on the look out for the items on the list.  Whoever is the first to spot a "first sight of Spring" gets to put their name next to it.  Make it a competition or just make it a fun way to explore God's gift of SPRING together!

Google Image

It has taken a bit of extra effort and a lot of just plain committing to do these challenges, but I (and my husband and children as well) have been exceedingly blessed by doing these simple things once a week! 

I can't wait to get a rush on Spring!

Alicia Grace

Dads and Doors

Pops/Dad/Dad-in-Law...

Thank you!

He's only been here for a day... and today didn't even get started until 3 this afternoon.

As of 8 pm, this is some of what they've (Pop's, Husband, and even Husband's brother) accomplished...

*sorry for the phone pics...

(^ old door )

(go ahead... chuckle to yourself. But know this: this door served us well.  This house was a hot zone of trouble before this door with the sign was posted.  So... Thank you for your service.  You may go now.) 

( v new door)

Hard to tell here that the new door is a grey metal door... but we are all about turning what is free (or cheap) and/or albeit hideous into elements of  grace and style. 

And this door actually fits. And this door actually has a door knob. And this door knob actually locks. Is it not now agreed that door #2 is the preferred door?

 We have something in store for this door.  Yes we do.

( kitchen door removal)

This is big.  I've been wanting this done almost as bad as I've wanted the "I'm not going anywhere with out a fight" edge of the flooring gone.

Nice.  Thanks men!

I didn't realize it until now, but they were all about the doors today weren't they...

(This was a window.  Now its the back door.)

Well, if that's not progress (the most we've yet seen accomplished in 5 hours), then how about this as well:

He has just closed off chimney #2 access, (not only was it chimney access, but bird access, and who knows whatever else kind of "vermin" access) and patched every crack and crevice on wall and ceiling. 

Not light work since there were more than a few of them.  Quite a few more.

YOU DUDES ROCK.

Thank you.

I will be painting tomorrow.  Feels a little closer to reality when you get to bust the paint out.  This will be the brown room. (see: Too Much Color)

Good day.  Good day.

Praise be to God for days like today. 

And for help in the form of DADS.

Today, much thanks goes to Jerry.

-Alicia Grace

Farmhouse fever or just plain fever?

What do all these pictures have in common?

I have no idea if you'll be able to guess or not... but if you guessed we must have been sick, you were right.  Why we cannot free ourselves from this fish hook of illness, I am with out an answer. 

Except for this: Can we ever free ourselves of anything?

With all my best efforts and knowledge-into-practice... the most I've come up with in the last two months is: near recovery.  He was gracious to allow us that much with out the need for medical intervention and He will take our healing from "near" to "full" in His good timing.

Not that I've been uncomplaining.  Whenever a new round hits, it is knee-jerk to cry from the depths of my exhaustion, boredom, impatience, "NO.  NO!  I refuse this!"

Do we have the option to refuse what is?

After my childish tantrum, I start. 

What do I know? What do we need? Pulling from the archives of my mind things we need to get going on to head off this life halting monster.  Sure, the sniffles provide a blessing in disguise... time to cuddle, and read, and hold your dear-to-yous.  Bronchitis and severe infections where your right eye swells shut from the pressure in your sinus' don't exactly promote the same bonding experience. 

THAT life halting monster.

I'm a believer in 100 years ago and even further back.  What did they do when they were consumed by a virus or bacteria? 

I got out my homemade Double-E Immune tincture (click here for quality herbs and how-to's), our essential oil arsenal (click here for 100% therapeutic grade oils), probiotics (click here see #5, but really, the whole list is right on), homeopathics (click here and here), oh wait... and WATER (click here, yes... really), not to mention raw garlic, garlic and onion chest poultices, aloe vera juice (highly nutritive), ginger baths, epsom salts, nettle tea, etc...  Then we got our sleep on!

(True, it hasn't been an over night miracle and it takes some effort, but we are winning the battle of sinus infections, bronchitis, and any other make-you-shiver-under-a-mountain-of-blankets infection you can think of with out the help of antibiotics.  And our immune systems are thanking us!  I will say too: Praise the Lord! that we live in a time that, when we can't get ahead of an illness naturally, we have the help of the modern way... no double standard about it.  Just a healthy respect for our bodies, God's creation, and the medical world.)

That was our weekend.  Supplements, oils, water and sleep... oh my!  And dishes that piled up and pretty much messes everywhere... and I missed out on an incredible God-filled women's event that our church hosts annually, but it turns out that the keynotes message was about the very same thing the Lord has been speaking rather boldly to me all week... I know I didn't miss a thing.  I have been in communion with God Himself.

...okay, maybe I missed a few gals smiles.

Now, today is Ben's first day off from his eight day shift and we woke up to a blizzard.  Hasn't snowed since his last four days off.  Not a single flake!  Isn't that amusing?  There is a reason it only snows when it's time to work on the house... just don't think I'll ever get to know what that reason is.  So here is me thanking God for the snow today.  There is, however, still no heat in the house and husband is, yet again, braving the floors in these freezing cold temperatures! So, as the children and I are warm in our bed schooling and reading for one more day, Lord willing, to recover and get well and B is out in the frigid temps... we will so humbly covet your prayer. 

Also, we think it's settled now.  Ben will work one more shift and then our two weeks of renovation madness will begin.

Extra time is always good...

Blessings to you!

Alicia Grace

Oh the JOY! The WINNER!!

#19...  Dustin Renz!  Congratulations and may this framed manifesto be a blessing to your home and greatly enrich your family!

Thank you to everyone who entered. It blesses me to hear your hearts and stories!  I encourage all those who did not win to visit A Holy Experience and print off your own 10 Point Manifesto.

...Until the next Freebie Friday!

Again, for those who are curious... I use a random number picker (here) to pick a number from the total number of valid entries.  *My replies to posts as well as anyone's extra posts that don't qualify as an entry are not included in the total number submitted and are not, therefore, counted as I look for the number among the list.

Oh the JOY - Freebie Friday!

Sometimes, you meet a new friend...

and from the moment she speaks her first words, all the years you did not know her no longer exist.

She knows exactly who you are, what troubles your mind. Your heart. 

She not only puts into words that which you long to hear but also the words you need to hear.

And you become changed.

I have recently made a friend like that.  And she doesn't even know it yet.

I had not known much of the blogging world until I decided a blog would be a great way to journal our experience ...and let the whole world know what we were doing at the same time! 

As if the whole world would care.

I began looking, searching, finding blogs to get inspiration on how to even embark this endeavor.  And I remembered... I had heard of a blog.  Unknowing that I would find more than a successful blog... I found wisdom.  The Lord, in His GOODNESS, reached through the miles of cyberspace, through the heart of a servant girl, just to touch mine.

My new friend is Ann Voskamp.  She shares her gift of eloquence and annointed wisdom on her blog at http://www.aholyexperience.com/.  I've linked to her site quite a bit in the mere two weeks that my blog has been telling our story. 

Today's Freebie Friday gift comes from a section on her blog called "Free Gifts for You" and is just that!  "A Free Gift for You"... whoever wins it, that is!  It is her list called 10 Points of Joyful Parenting. (click on link to read the 10 points)

I have framed and matted it -- The mat I have covered in a charming cream and earth green fabric. 

I can't compel you strongly enough to enter to win today's giveaway. 

I want to glare. Flesh consumes my desire to live the Light.  I storm. The weakness of one's mind is relative but always true.  My voice raises.

I need a reminder.  In my face.  Something beautiful to remind me...

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL.  Don't abandon it's beauty!  The calling God has placed on me as a mother is breathtaking.  Remember to breathe. The ability to live fully with JOY, despite the attacks of this world and the one from it, is priceless.  Though the cost is myself.

This week, again, there are three ways to enter to win... and please! Enter all three ways!  I have removed the need to sign in so, whether you are a single person, a mother, a grandmother... A DAD, this is for you.  It is for anyone who needs a little help in this life until THAT DAY.

1. Go check out A Holy Experience and comment below of anything you thought, felt, liked, whatever... from that blog.
2. Follow One Hundred Years Ago by clicking the follow button on the upper right side of this blog.  Leave a comment you have done so.  Current followers: again, just leave a comment that YOU ARE ALREADY FOLLOWING.  If you don't leave a comment, it will not count as an entry.
3. Repost this giveaway to your Facebook.  Just click the little "f" at the bottom of this post, and it's done.  You never know who might need what we are giving away today!  Leave a comment letting me know you posted to your Facebook.

Contest ends Monday at 11:59am (Who was I kidding last week?  I am not up-n-at-em by 7:59 am!)
Good luck to all!

Alicia Grace

Transforming Grace

 The rose was once but a shoot of thorns.

The violin was once not in tune.

The home was once under construction.

The butterfly was once a caterpillar.

The work of art was once a blank canvas.

The gold was once unrefined.

Anything of beauty, of worth, of value... has not always been.

It takes doing.  It takes time. It takes grace.

It takes seeing it before it is.

We just inserted three beams in place of a wall that needed removing.  The beams came  from an old barn on our property that was torn down years ago.  Old, raw, precious wood -- wood with a history -- that has been sitting in piles just waiting for someone to see the worth in it again.

I took to the sander.  Sanding and sanding.  Revealing, beneath the years of weather, between the marks of the saw blade, light. 

Beauty.

And I thought...

What if I hadn't taken this time?  What if I began this work but did not finish it?  What if the task was so big I chose to take an ax to the imperfections instead of the tedious work of sanding?

It's beauty would remain unbeheld.

It would never be appreciated for anything more than old, dirty, unfinished barn wood.

Sure it would be appreciated for what it represents.  Time and purpose...

But would it radiate of freshness, newness, and the splendor that comes only from undergoing transformation?

What if I did hack at the imperfections with an ax?

Scarring the wood.  Deeply.  Undoing not possible.

Are we more than old barn beams... Unrefined gold... Mere caterpillars...?

Like the polishing of river rock under the current of the river, we can lead one another, and our children, to the smoothing waters of Him who made us.  Who made us to be

beautiful.

Refined.

In love...

In love with each other, with life, with Him.

We have got to stop rushing the process with a chain saw when all that was needed was a simple chisel. 

We can no longer jump to the end of the book -- and hope for it to mean something -- with out putting in the time to get to know the story. 

When we say what we see... That is taking an ax to what's un-lovely.  Wounding deeply.

Can we choose to see through God-filtered lenses and speak only His truth?  Will we love -- love intensly what God loves, refusing to see our children/each other any other way? 

And speak that love.

We have the power, in Jesus name, to speak away, like a gentle sanding, that which is harsh, raw, hard, and ugly.

Patient persistence pierces through indifference; 

gentle speech breaks down rigid defenses.   Proverbs 25:15

"Today, I will pray to speak words that are only STRONG words, words that make these children feel strong. Grace words. Grace is the only non-toxic air. All other words I breathe are death words."  Ann Voskamp

Let us be patiently persistant in our dealings with those young or old and speak only words of life...

It is in this practice of GRACE that you will see those raw beams in your life...

tranform.

Make it Fancy -- Wild Wednesday

Rushing. Hurry. Rush. Rush. Go.

Wake up.

Morning routine

Eat. Eat. Eat!

School. Quick! Let's go.

Cousin's, Grammey's and friend's for the days. For the nights.

And again.

With a week like that, doing our Backwards Day challenge was a joy.

I'm a little off in the mornings to begin with, but our 13 month old had one of her worst nights yet due to a fever, so I decided to forgo the plan to have hamburgers for breakfast and make grilled ham and cheese instead.

(The picture did not turn out!)

We wore our clothes backwards, walked backwards most everywhere,  and said "thankyou" instead of "please" and "please" instead of "thankyou"...  I tried teaching Nia pig-latin.  She memorized a few key words. "I hay Racie gay and Ade Zay!"

My oldest son got to go snowboarding with his dad that day, so he missed out on most of the fun (I have a  feeling he didn't miss it too bad!).  My three year old wouldn't have anything to do with putting his clothes on the wrong way or even walking backwards, and the baby would have just been more effort for the sake of my satisfaction... So, it was just Daughter and me. 

We headed off for lunch and a prayer meeting at my sis-in-laws, so the cousins got to join our fun for a few hours.

We had breakfast for dinner -- biscuits and gravy.  Homemade.  Can I say that, for me, there is something deeply satisfying about making something from scratch and seeing it transform into something pretty?  Whether in the kitchen our in the craft room.  I got way happy from our breakfast-for-dinner long before I took my first bite!

The two that were home wanted to sleep on the floor to end Backwards Day with a bang.

Brother came home smiling from ear to ear.  He had fun.  I know this to be true for that was the one repetative statement that kept coming out of his mouth accompanied by an unfading grin.

He didn't want to sleep on the floor.

After boarding all day... 

I can totally understand that.

What a way to tell my kids with actions how much I love them. We had fun together.  It is so much easier to just get through the day.  Rush through the day... days, with those extra pieces of luggage that almost seem like figments at times.  Our children.  Slow down, I urge you, even if it is just from time to time, though, the more often the better.  Make a moment special if not a whole day. 

_______________________________________________

This weeks challenge is "Have a Fancy Dinner", inspired by none other that the expert on all things fancy herself: Fancy Nancy.  (I highly recommend the book!)

Dress up in your Sunday best, black tie formal, or for those truly extravagant, do it Fancy Nancy style.

Decorate you dining room table to the hilt...

or again, for those more extrovert family types, go out! 

Dress up, then go out for pizza, or Chinese, or even "Oo la la, Italian"...

What fun!

If anyone participates in this weeks challenge or even if you still want to do last weeks challenge this week,  I'd love to see pictures!  I'll have to figure out how to make it so you can upload your pics to these posts.

So go on now... make some memories!