I wonder how many times I have looked up verses in the Bible about the tongue and copied them down in the pages of my journal and prayed those verses over my own mouth?  Just-- a lot.

These are the verses I am currently praying:

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.  -Psalm 19:14

A wise man's heart guides his mouth, and his lips promote instruction.  -Proverbs 16:23

Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. -Proverbs 16:24

For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.  The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.  But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.  -Matthew 12:34b-36

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. -Ephesians 4:29

Set a guard over my mouth, O LORD; keep watch over the door of my lips.  -Psalm 141:3

I desire to have a mind that thinks beyond any particular moment of irritation and turns to GOD, and chooses His ways.  I want to allow the Holy Spirit to guide my words; to make them pleasant, gentle, encouraging and life-giving.  I want to actually think before I speak, yet I am so quick to rush into my sinful reaction and not give any pause, and spill out harshness or criticism.  Ugh.  I am thankful that He does not leave me to myself. 

Here's another verse:

May my lips overflow with praise, for you teach me your decrees. -Psalm 119:171

What might it be like to have my lips overflow with praise?  And- do you see here that God teaches us His law and THUS we are able to have our lips overflow with praise?  May I have lips that overflow with praise; may I be diligent to take in His Word and out of that good-- stored up-- my lips can do so.

Show me your ways, O LORD. 
Teach me your paths; 
guide me in your truths and teach me, 
for you are God my Savior, 
and my hope is in you all day long.  -Psalm 25:4-5

Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.  -Psalm 86:11

Fall!

I know fall isn't *officially* here- and the weather around these parts is decidedly more summer (except for the nights and early mornings) but I decided this morning that I'm officially declaring it fall and decorating accordingly.  Here's what I've done:

-The kids and I made this cute fall banner the other day and I hung it this morning.  I love it because it is fallish but also schoolish.  :)  So that's perfect since we're going to start school sometime this year.  *grin*

-I'm making a yarn wreath to hang on the window frame above the mantel.  I've never done this before and I have no idea what I'm doing but I'm giving it a go.  I'm envisioning something like this (scroll down to see the finished wreath) but I didn't exactly start with a round wreath.  Mine was definitely more flat.  So... we'll see how it turns out.

 
-I went out to the back garden early this morning and picked all of our gourds and whatever pumpkins I hoped Mark wouldn't notice were missing and decorated our window box.

That might be all.  I tried to convince the kids to make me a scarecrow:
 "Kids! {excited voice}  I have a great idea!  You can all make a SCARECROW!!"

And they all just stared at me like I'd gone bonkers.

I think it might be a little outside of their realm of something they want to tackle on their own.  Or maybe it's just that I'd interrupted their imaginary game and now just isn't the right time.  I'll go with that and try again another day.

Happy FALL!

Our chore system [Part 2]

You know all those household jobs that don't need to be done on a daily or even weekly basis but it would be nice if they got done once in awhile?  Things like wiping the oven door or dusting the baseboards?

(If those items happen to be on your weekly cleaning list, you're all kinds of amazing.  I don't even have a weekly cleaning list.  Basically, we clean Before People Come Over and occasionally in-between those times.  And we do quite a bit of daily tidying up.  But that's it.)

Anyway.  Then there are the areas of our home (maybe yours, too?) that just need a whole lot more help than others.  I've tried to zero on some of those areas and break them into quick little jobs, like: pick up three things from the bathroom floor and restock TP in the bathrooms.

This year I created a chore jar to account for all of those types of jobs.

The jar itself needs a name.  Mark and I spent probably an hour one evening trying to come up with one, and laughing all the while at all the silly names we came up with, things like: Helper Hub.  Teamwork Tub.  Jar o' Joy.  But we haven't settled on anything we actually want to call it.  (Any and all suggestions welcome.)

Twice a week, the kids will draw a job out and do it.  Most of the jobs will only take a couple of minutes.  So, while these jobs are in addition to their regular chores, they're quick- and they're only doing it twice a week.  AND- the best part?  There are "jobs" in there that aren't really jobs at all, but fun things, too.  Tucked in there right beside the slips of paper saying find three pencils to sharpen, check for cobwebs, and sweep the front porch is one that says go choose a snack from the snack bin.

Here are just a few of the other non-jobs:

Go for a swing outside
Help the person who drew right before you with their job
Eat a chocolate chip
Read a picture book to the younger girls
Go say hello to the chickens

The kids know there are some surprise non-jobs in the jar, although they don't know just what they are, which makes them eager to draw-- seriously. they LOVE this!-- in the anticipation that they'll draw one of the fun slips of paper.  And now those little random jobs are getting done occasionally.   (I also have blank slips of paper tucked into the jar so that I can keep adding as I think of new fun things or see things that need to be done.)

Why NOT make chore-time fun?

NOT back-to-school activities

Everyone seems to be heading back to school this week.

Not us, though.

We're drying fruit.  (That's school, right?  The girls are helping.)

Our bounty: mostly apples and prunes, but some bananas, blueberries and pears in the small jars

Audra, my early-morning helper yesterday

Adelia and Ella, my early-morning helpers this morning

I have several boxes of (free-to-us) apples and prunes sitting on my kitchen floor ---oh, and in my fridge, too, and in my mom's fridge!--- so our trusty dehydrator is hard at work.

Mark has a hard time seeing any food go to waste, so as he's out delivering mail on his route, and walking through peoples' yards all day, he sees apples lying on the ground, and he knows the people who live there, obviously- so he'll ask them: "Are you going to use these apples?" and well, they aren't. So we've gone out to his route to pick some and my mom and brother-in-law have prune trees, so we've got plenty of fruit!

Homemade fruit leather

God has been so generous to us this season- our garden was more productive than ever, and we've been able to put up so much food, and we keep getting more from others, too.  A couple of weeks ago my aunt and uncle offered us green beans from their garden, and so we went out and picked and after canning it all we ended up with 16 quarts of beans.  Then this weekend they called again and had extra corn, so we got nearly 50 ears of corn, and my aunt had already done the work of husking it all.  What a gift!  So now we have corn in the freezer, too.

 

Corn for the [exceedingly grateful] chickens!

I do hope to post more about school soon.  And next up is the "Part 2" of our chore system.

Oh, and: comments are back on.  In order to try the no-comment thing I have to remember to turn off the comments on each post, which I kept forgetting.  So nevermind that.

Hope you have a great day!
~Stacy

Excerpts from Andi Ashworth's book Real Love for Real Life: The Art and Work of Caring, (italics my own):

     We also normalize frantic lifestyles when we don't need to. Whether we take a job that requires a long commute, sign our children up for too many extracurricular activities, or take on more projects and commitments than we can handle, our decisions have long-range consequences that we need to consider. Even when we are the ones who made the series of choices that got us into our schedule crunch, we often feel that our schedule controls us. We yield to the pattern of continual intensity without offering any resistance. We have a growing realization that overcommitment and overwork are destructive, but in general, we don't seem to change.
     And as we give in to the standards society sets for us, we gradually internalize what our culture values: efficiency, speed, control, and quantity over quality. In this paradigm, caregiving seems very much out of place. Caring does not "maximize" our time. Its richest rewards are not tangible. It's results are not quantitative. Caregiving needs are unpredictable, and sometimes meeting them is a slow process.

And this one:

     When we live in light of the gospel, we view time and people from the perspective of eternity. Even the small things we do to show people they matter can make a difference. We make our offerings, not knowing if our efforts will even be noticed, but knowing that each person matters supremely to God, and he notices. We live by faith, not by sight, entrusting the outcomes to God and knowing that we're participating in his work of caring for the people he loves.

And this one:

     Busyness sends out a message to people that you don't have the time for them. The state of being frantic, overextended, and distracted drives people away rather than drawing them in and inviting them to the refuge of your company. No one is comfortable coming to someone when they feel like an interruption. This fear of interrupting feeds into the isolating trend of our culture where no one wants to be a bother to anyone else.
     In a world that so often values speed, efficiency, and change over continuity and relationship, we are challenged on a daily basis to consider what matters most. God invites us to resist the tangled webs of busyness that imprison us and make it impossible to respond in love to the people around us. If we want our lives to reflect the truth that people matter, we must live intentionally toward that end. If we really believe that people are important and that caring for each other is at the heart of our call to follow Jesus, we must thoughtfully and intentionally offer people something more.

Pickled vegetables

It's quite possible I'm done canning for the season.   Now we just have to make room somewhere for all of those jars!  I'm going to check my records, but at last count we canned well over 100 jars this year.  That's a whole lot more than I've ever done, and I'm so thankful.

I may actually do some more green beans, but... so far we've just been trying to eat them fresh.  My favorite way to eat green beans is to saute them in butter and garlic with chopped pecans, with a slosh of balsamic vinegar.  Seriously YUMMY.

Now we've moved on to drying fruit.  Mark got some free apples and I was SO mightily done with canning applesauce that we decided to dry them instead.  So we've got lots of dried apples now.  Then someone gave him some prunes, so we're drying those, too- and bananas and blueberries and whatever else we find to throw in the dehydrator.  More prunes are coming from Mark's brother and my mom, so next we'll tackle some homemade fruit leather.  Free, healthy snacks for the kids, I figure! 

Last night I made this recipe for pickled vegetables.  We used carrots, green beans, and cucumbers from our garden, and threw in some peppers and red onions and garlic and the spices and vinegar.  It's in the fridge for snacking, but I have no idea how long that will last in the fridge, so if you know, do tell.  :)  They're very tasty, and it's a good way to eat fresh veggies-- and they look so pretty and colorful in the jar, don't they?   Even my non-veggie lover was eating them!

Pickled vegetables

Our chore system.... done!

I finally finished our little chore system* on the side of the fridge, so here are some more photos.

The three older kids (11, 9 and 8) have the envelopes.  Here are their envelopes all ready for a day of chores:

The details:  I used index cards, then covered them with clear contact paper.  Each card is marked with the child's name and a symbol in the top left-hand corner to indicate morning, noon and evening chores.  As they complete their chores they'll move cards to their "done" envelopes.  Then either after chores are completed that evening or the following morning, the whole stack can be moved back to the "to do" envelope for another day of chores.

Here is a close-up of Ella's chores, as an example.  In the morning she'll be doing a load of laundry and tidying up the laundry room area and doing her living room assignment (each of the kids has one: hers is the clear the mantel and tidy the shoes).  In the afternoons she'll fold a load of laundry and do her living room assignment again and in the evenings she'll clean the kitchen with the boys.

And I just now realized as I see this photo that I forgot to also give the kids their living room assignments in the evenings- that was my original plan.  Sigh.  Well, we'll see how it goes.  Maybe we'll do a general 5-minute cleanup before read-alouds.  Or maybe I'll add another evening card.

For the younger girls (5 and 4), I went back to an old standby.   I had made a "Do... done" chart very similar to this when my older kids were younger.  It's just a little more accessible and visual for them.

The details: Their chores all have simple little pictures and I put them on cardstock and then covered them with clear contact paper.  They have sticky magnets on the back.  As they finish a chore, they can physically move it to the other side: the "done" side.

Honestly, it might have been easier to just do the envelopes for all of the kids, but I was a little sentimental about the little girls having the same chore system as the older kids had had-- we loved this one!-- and I knew they'd like moving their little chores over to the done side, and it is more visual- and there's less shuffling through of cards for their little hands.  So.  There you have it.

Audra (4) has the same three chores for morning, afternoon and evening.  Pretty basic, but these are her first "official" chores, so while she's been a helper up until now, she hasn't had to do anything.  She's a good little worker, though- so I have a few other ideas and may add more when she gets the hang of it.)

I'm happy to answer any questions in the comments!



*There is one other part of our chore system that I'll share soon, too- as soon as I take a photo of it.