In search of...

I lost the truck keys. Not misplaced. Lost.
As in... 90% of the 5 acres of woods we live in is underwater, muddy, or covered 6 inches in dead leaves.
And they might be outside somewhere.
Or the dog could have buried them.
That is, if my 3 yr old didn't hide them first.
Have you ever tried asking a 3 yr old where something is? You will end up with at least (if you're lucky) five, different, totally credible, stories that you are compelled to verify or disprove.
 Yeah. That kind of lost.
So you can sort of imagine how I've spent the last week. Everything inside the cabin has been taken apart, shaken, moved or cleaned. You would think with barely 600 sqr feet of living space you would run out of places to look pretty quick. If only.
Other things I may have also lost:
Sanity.
Self-respect.
Time.
Opportunities.
And temporarily...Perspective.
 In recent years I've gotten pretty good at just rolling with whatever happens, but I gotta be honest. This one thing really got me.  Cause I had a ton of stuff on "my" agenda. (Not unusual.) And I definitely had a plan. And so far my plan had been working great.

•   Go to bible conference. Enjoy lots of fellowship. Come home.  Then go to Texas for cousin's wedding. Enjoy long awaited trip.  See lots of family. Come home. Cook like crazy and then spend Thanksgiving in Wiggins with more family. Enjoy lots of yummy food and more fellowship. Come home. Begin prep work for christmas building project (aka finishing boys and girls rooms). 

 Losing keys was not in that plan.

So now I'm in search of. Something. And yes, I overthink everything. I question and analyze and rehash. Every.Thing.  It actually annoys me that I do this sometimes. It would be much simpler mentally if, just once, something could happen and I would NOT attempt to find the deep hidden meaning behind it all. {sigh}
  Anyway, the keys are still lost, but hopefully tomorrow we will be up and running again. Living where we do, we had hoped to save some money by not having to call a locksmith all the way out here. So we ordered keys online. I guess tomorrow will tell if we are successful in that or not. I'll try to let you know how it turns out.
 Maybe The Lord wanted me to slow down. ( see, still looking for deeper meaning.) or maybe this was just one of those "trying of your faith worketh patience" things. If so I feel I'm pretty topped up on patience just now. 😊 Now for a little peace, hope and joy.
 Happy christmas prep to you all.

It's just a number.

 Today is my 36th birthday. I have already been texted and called and face booked and loved on with well wishes from sweet friends and family. Since the kids are insisting that I stay in my bedroom while they fix my "surprise", I have time on my hands and plenty of thoughts to keep me company.
     I read a quote some time ago, " I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I Say."
And I have found that to be true of myself  in some ways. Blogging helps me focus and clarify my thoughts. So I'm taking I-phone in hand and figuring just what I think about this day. This year. This life.
 One thing I am realizing is that your age is really just another number. It can define you or you can define it. I'd like to choose to be the definer this year.
 One of the biggest factors for me, and the thing that catches me off guard, is the realization of the passing of time. It's preciousness and it's fleeting nature. We all lost two very precious people in my grandparents this past year. They were anchors in ways I hadn't realized until they were gone. I also just said goodbye to my parents and younger sisters as we saw them on their way to their newest missionary adventure. Once again time seems almost mocking in its power. I find myself struggling to gain a foothold in uncharted territory.
 And why this seems so hard right now I don't know? Goodbyes are not new to us.
  The one thing that is certain, I do " ...know Whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day. " I can't claim to understand. But  He desires us to trust Him, not necessarily to understand Him.
   As I write this, it all seems so much simpler than the actuality of it. The what-ifs hover at the edges of my mind. It has to be an hourly excercise of committing the future to a loving Lord.
    You know when you read a devotional or self help book, how it seems like the author has all the answers and you just wonder how they got to that point? Well, it's my belief that authors struggle to practice what they preach just as much as the rest of us do.   I know Meemaw was always speaking of what she was struggling with and or still learning until The Lord took her home at 84.
  It would seem that no matter your age, all of life is a crazy trust excercise. And you should never stop learning.

Showers and bugs

There's something special about showering with the moon bright above you and the silhouettes of trees standing guard over the night just beyond the edge of your little circle of light. There's magic in the contradictions of the hot steam rising all around you and the light breeze blowing over your head and around your feet. The music of crickets and frogs makes you almost forget about the spider spinning it's web in the corner and the million moths that are attracted to the lightbulb overhead. No matter how primitive it is, and the seeming inconvenience of have to walk down the path to the shower house, I still always feel sort of sorry for folks that don't get to experience this delicious freedom.

I tried and tried to get a picture of the moon through the trees tonight, but it just wouldn't take properly. I guess in the end it's something you have to experience.  A picture can't do it justice. Over and over I am amazed and humbled at all the ways God shows us His glory. From tiny insects that we couldn't live without (even if we wanted to) to the moon that controls our tides and and so much more.

  This past Monday we got to see all of the amazing ways God expresses Himself in nature when we took the kids to the Aquarium and then the Insectarium in New Orleans. Beauty and majesty and sometimes comedy and creatures that make us say, What??? All just prove that we don't know a fraction of what we think we do when it comes to God. The insectarium really blew me away. I've always loved nature and as a kid loved to catch frogs and lizards and dragonflies with the best of them. As an adult I still love nature, but I'm not such a huge fan of certain members of the bug club. Aka spiders, roaches, and the more creepy of the littlest creations. But I was reminded yet again... through seeing the different displays and hearing about the way all of these amazing little guys work together to keep our world balanced and healthy on a level we can't even comprehend.... How great is our God!

The earth is full of the goodness of the LORD!

A Room With a View

We finally got our windows installed a little over a week ago, and it has been so enjoyable to see the outside world clearly again while still maintaining our warmth.
(Not that we needed warmth this week. haha)
 I know some of you have really been wanting to see some pics, and I'm afraid my only excuse for not posting sooner is I was just too lazy. It has been a very rainy, muddy week and all my energy and ambition looked about like my yard did. Therefore... not much got done that wasn't vital to existence.
 But today the sun is shining again, and since I have about 30 min of downtime before we have to leave for church again I thought I would share my "point of view". ;)

                                         Living Room before windows (All of them looked like this but this is the only one I remembered to take a pic of.)

                                        Living Room the night Ed installed them …I love the way the lights are        reflected in the glass.

                                         Living room daytime view

                                        My Sunny Kitchen! :)

                                           The dressing room/closet …didn't actually have an opening here before.

 Our yard since this week.                                            My Room! With a view

                     This is a panoramic of the loft, so it's a little skewed but we will put a window in here too.

                                    The new quilt on my bed. Yeah, the pillows will be getting a facelift.

                                        A gorgeous and rare luna moth we found one night!

                              Well, my time is up. Gotta run. Hope you enjoyed the view! ;)

A few of my favorite things!

I have been looking at milk paint for a couple years now, wanting to try it out, but it wasn't really a priority before. Now we are talking kitchen cabinets and other details and I wanted to give it a try. So I ordered a sample of all Miss Mustard Seed's milk paint from  The Ironstone Nest and it came in last week! I was giddy!
 I had also found a gorgeous piece of fabric on ebay that seemed perfect for the cabin, and that came in as well! I'm pretty sure there isn't much that makes me as happy as new fabric and new paint! (Ok, maybe a new book. ;-)
 I've already mentally painted every piece of furniture we own (and some we don't. lol).

 Keep watching, cuz I'll be posting some of my experiments in the not too distant future. =)

Adventures in Roofing (and other things)

I promise I haven't been spending all my time on Pinterest. Much as I would like to. We have also been living life and "getting stuff done".
 Several projects are coming to completion, and I'm so excited to share them. One of the biggest things is getting our roof finished. Hahaha. I'm sure you are wondering how we have lived for 16 months with no roof ?!?  Don't worry, we haven't been huddled in a hovel with rain dripping in. We have managed quite well and stayed cozy! But it has been a work in progress:
 
 Stage 1:  Oct 2013--We started with a heavy duty double layer of blue tarp and a layer of Tyvek over our rafters.
Stage 2:  March 2014--We transitioned to beautiful pine beadboard ceiling with a layer of Tyvek  for waterproofing and flashing trim (with tarp and Tyvek left on the porch roof).
Stage 3:  Feb 2015--We began our final stage yesterday by getting rid of our last piece of roofing tarp on the cabin and installing corrugated sheet metal on the porch roof. Today we added insulation and corrugated metal over the top of our beadboard and Tyvek on one side of the roof, and tomorrow, Lord willing, we finish the last bit.

It has been a bit of a slow process due to many circumstances. Not the least of which is doing all the work ourselves, with 8 kids in tow.  I will be the first to say they have been a HUGE asset in this adventure! But it also makes things chaotic interesting. One minute you are on a roof nailing down boards and sheet metal, the next you are mending a cut on a nose with super glue. Not me. Ed.
  Sure is handy to have a guy around who can handle everything from building cabins to patching up kids. ;-)
 We have gotten so much done in the last month though, and several more projects lined up to finish too. Our windows have been ordered and will be installed next week hopefully. And the kitchen got insulation and board walls. The intense work seems to go in spurts. Some months it's just a little thing here and another thing there, and others, it seems there aren't enough hours in the day, or days in a week.
 I won't even tell you when the kids had a bath last, but at least my laundry is staying caught up.  ;-) And we are doing the bath thing tonight.
  I had hoped to post a few pics from when we started, but those are inaccessible right now so here are a few from the last couple days.

 Side note here about the chicken nest….we have 5 hens and they have finally started laying again over the last month or two, after a long while of nothing. But the last few days (maybe a week?), not only were we not finding what I thought was all the eggs, but then one of our chickens went missing. After many searches, we naturally assumed the worst.  Then, suddenly, today she comes clucking into the yard happy and healthy and we were able to find where she had hidden out. 29 eggs, my friends! and that is a record.

 More pics later. =)

Happy world

Everyone has probably seen the meme " All I want is a cabin in the middle of nowhere…….and wifi". :) Well, my friends, I now have it all. A cabin in the woods and wifi! The best of both worlds if you will. So now if you are wondering what I'm going to be doing with my week ….wonder no more. I'll be on Pinterest!
        Check back later I might have a real blog post on here! ;)