Of Cheerfulness.

This is from the 1824 Blue Back Speller that was used by many of our founding fathers to educate their children and grandchildren.


Q. Is cheerfulness a virtue?
A. It doubtless is, and a moral duty to practice it.

Q. Can we be cheerful when we please?
A. In general it depends much on ourselves. We can often mold our tempers into a cheerful frame. --We can frequent company and other objects calculated to inspire us with cheerfulness. To indulge an habitual gloominess of mind is weakness and sin.

Q. What are the effects of cheerfulness on ourselves?
A. Cheerfulness is a great preservative of health, over which it is our duty to watch with care. We have no right to sacrifice our health tby the indulgence of a gloomy state of mind. Besides, a cheerful man will do more business, and do it better, than a melancholy one.

Q. What are the effects of cheerfulness on others?
A. Cheerfulness is readily communicated to others, by which means their happiness is increased. We are all influenced by sympathy, and naturally partake of the joys and sorrows of others.

Q. What effect has melancholy on the heart?
A. It hardens and benumbs it—It chills the warm affections of love and friendship, and prevents the exercise of the social passions. A melancholy person's life is all night and winter. It is as unnatural as perpetual darkness and frost.

Q. What shall one do when overwhelmed with grief?
A. The best method of expelling grief from the mind, or of quieting its pains, is to change the objects that are about us; to ride from place to place, and frequent cheerful company. It is our duty so to do, especially when grief sits heavy on the heart.

Q. Is it not right to grieve for the loss of our friends?
A. It is certainly right; but we should endeavor to moderate our grief, and not suffer it to impair our health, or to grow into a settled melancholy. The use of grief is to soften the heart and make us better. But when our friends are dead, we can render them no further service. Our duty to them ends, when we commit them to the grave; but our duty to ourselves, our families, and surviving friends, requires that we perform to them the customary offices of life. We should therefore remember our departed friends only to imitate their virtues; and not to pine away with useless sorrow.

Q. Has not religion a tendency to fill the mind with gloom?
A. True religion never has this effect. Superstition and false notions of God, often make men gloomy; but true rational piety and religion have the contrary effect. They fill the mind with joy and cheerfulness and the countenance of a truly pious man should always wear a serene smile.

Q. What has Christ said concerning gloomy Christians?
A. He has pronounced them hypocrites; and commanded his followers not to copy their sad countenances and disfigured faces; but even in their actos of humiliation to “anoint their heads and wash their feet.” Christ intended by this, that religion does not consist in, nor require a monkish sadness and gravity; on the other hand, he intimates that such appearances of sanctity are generally the marks of hypocrisy. He expressly enjoins upon this followers marks of cheerfulness. Indeed, the only true ground of perpetual cheerfulness, is, a consciousness of ever having done well, and an assurance of divine favor.

My, how far school has come. Or more precisely, how far it has degraded...

I hope you enjoyed, and be of good cheer!


I Used to be a Night Owl.

Why is it that first children to rise in the morning are the ones with the hungriest tummies and the least ability to help themselves?
I am typically greeted in the morning by one or all three of the youngest children and they are almost always asking for food.
It's like a contest for Dad and me to wake-up at least an hour before them so we can have coffee and bible together before the hustle and bustle of life begins. Seems that no matter how early we get up though, the little munchers are right behind us! Since dad has not been here to coax me out from under my down comforter with coffee in the wee hours of darkness, I have been oversleeping (until 7am!) and therefore being greeted by all sorts of 2 and 4 year old bright-eyed conversation.

This morning over oatmeal that tiny hands helped make (by help I mean sprinkle the cinnamon all over the counter, stir melting butter onto the back of the stove, and have a most delightful time doing it! BTW~ the joy they have is totally worth the mess!) Butter (4) decided to give Pops (2) a lesson when I left the table to change the baby:

"Pops, China is a bad place. We don't want to go there. That is where people talk Spanish like "see-da-den-ma-doh" and that is how bad guys talk so China is bad." In a very matter-of-fact-teacher voice.

After a long pause Pops replied "uh, say thank you to me for making the oatmeal."

"Oh, thanks Poppies (that is Butter's newest nickname for Pops), it's soooo good and I made it too!"

Where do they get this stuff? It was so hard to not bust out laughing. I love it!

Come Visit!

we feature your very own guest master suite with private bathroom!

Plus, if our mini zoo isn't enough (I'm talking about the animals, not the children),
there is much to see and do here on Whidbey Island!

(click the words "see and do" to see more!)


Just for Fun.

We play with blocks.

And make dinner.

And paint Solomon's Temple.

And discover popcorn that expired in 2009 from our camping bucket. (It was good.)

My Pickles Are NOT Frozen!

Remember this?

That is frozen pickles... and eggs stored on the counter so they don't crack.

My homemade pickles aren't frozen anymore.  I love my new refrigerator.  I can fit in it every fresh thing my little organic heart fancies.
It has a freezer on the bottom.
That is so practical.

Especially for playing with horses!


Our first dinner (as a family, in our new home)

Dad bought me the most perfect gift while he was in Colorado. I put it to good use the very first night he was home.
I turned my attention away from dinner for just a moment, and dad caught my dinner helper red handed tounged.

Couldn't be this sweet lil bird, could it?

we had Taco Pie - Dad's favorite- for our first "in the oven" meal in over 18 months.

It was very nice!


Oh, my darling!

Who? Me??
Those baby blues...
And do you see those eye lashes? (click the picture to make it bigger)
My, oh my.  

What a sweetie!


I Like This Ship!

It's exciting!!!

What a whirlwind!
The two big boys (that'd be my husband and my oldest son) left for a "Take Two" on the cross country adventure the very same day we got our keys to our new home.  That means the girls (plus a lil bird) got to unpack our move all by ourselves with our super awesome new church family.  What a blessing it was to get plugged in right away!  They really made our transition warm.

So we got our stuff, and it was like Christmas.  We hadn't seen much of it in 18+ months and I must say, I was pleased at how little-what in the world do I have this for?-stuff we had.  After going through every box, I only had one large donations box!  Yeah! There is a place for everything, and everything actually means something.  That is very exciting.  We got almost everything unpacked in under a week, despite the nasty fever/snot/cold virus that attacked us as our welcome gift.

I always think it is fun to know the very first new purchase in a new house.  Sometimes it's a rug, sometimes a paper towel holder.  This time, it was a plunger and it wasn't me 'nuf said.

So, the boys missed out on all the unpacking (that means I got to put everything exactly where I wanted it) but the girls were all scared with no one to protect us.  There are no curtains on the back side of the house and our dog doesn't like (that is putting it mildly) the cats the owner of our new house was feeding  (They all ran away now, save one.  She is holding out that I'll let her sneak in the front door and then pet her mangey backside) and the dog sounds like a rabid wolf when she decides to inform the cats she wants them to leave the back patio. That is an alarming sound when you are almost asleep, but quite comical in the middle of the day (think Scooby-Doo running on wood floor).

I love it.  I absolutely love the new house.
I have been meaning to share pictures, but I was holding out for when it looked all perfect.  Perfect, like THIS. But then I remembered that would be a lie.  I have 6 children.  I am ok with that.  My house is a mess.  I am still learning to be ok with that.

Open kitchen.  Running hot water.  Amazingness.
I'll have to take pictures of the upstairs and the guest room later so that is all you get for now...

So the boys had a good trip coming back.  Minus the part where their van broke down.
In the middle of Nowhere, Texas.
On a Saturday night.
As in, auto shops aren't open on Sunday so you are stuck in the middle of Nowhere, Texas Saturday night.  I was stressed.
But, they are easy going, they slept in the van and made faces at each other

until Grandpa showed up to tow them (400 miles) so they didn't have to wait in Nowhere, Texas for four days while the van got fixed...

Then they got held up because of some snow. The snow that the Whidbey locals said didn't exist...

9 inches of-Whidbey doesn't get snow, and Whidbey doesn't have a plow-snow...

So they spent and extra day at Aunt and Uncles house near Seattle.  We missed them sorely. But the dog sure enjoyed it.

Moving to Whidbey has been very expensive.  Like, more than what the Navy pays us expensive.  Two broken vans, ridiculous gas prices, RV park rent... not what we had planned on spending our tax return on... but,
But we are loving it here! This place is great. and we haven't even gotten out yet.  We are so excited about what God has in store for us here.