The Cottage on the Hill

You can get this print at www.art.com January was a very trying month. I'm hoping for a more pleasant and relaxing February. Granted, I am starting the month still ill with Campylobacter Enteritis, (a type of food poisoning) I am much improved. I also start the month with a trip to the OB/Gyn! I don't know about you, but I look forward to my appointments. For one thing, it's a happy trip to the doctor's office. For another, it's one of the few times I get to go somewhere completely on my own. The baby has been moving more and more during a certain time of the evening. I look forward to the rolls, bumps and wiggles. February is normally a cloudy month where I live, but when the sun does shine, I love where it is in my house. In the morning, it pours into my bedroom and splashes across my bed. I like to indulge in a cat-like state and spread myself across the quilt and feel the sun and heat. Although, I often have to fight the dog for it. February is also th...

It's not viral, it's bacterial.....from contaminated milk. After an evening of calls to a ton of doctors and a trusted midwife friend and fears of the worst, I found out that we're ok and with this bacteria, we can just have to let it run it's course. There is a slight risk of delivering the baby preterm, so please pray that the baby lives and stays safely in my womb.

The title of this post is sarcastic in tone. I know that today's culture and society aren't conducive to someone staying home while ill or contagious, but I wish they would! Someone was careless enough to be out and about sick and passed it on to my daughter and the disease ripped through this household like a tornado. We're all STILL sick. What gets me mad is that I was SO sick the other night that I should have gone to the hospital, but hubby was away at work and I was too sick to get to the phone. This careless person could have harmed my unborn baby. As it is, I'm still quite ill. Thankfully, my mother came to care for the children so I could rest. She wore a surgical mask and we practiced careful sanitation. Despite how sick I was/am I wouldn't let her change any diapers. I am saddened on two counts: 1. That today's culture and society don't make it easy for someone to stay home and recover. Have you ever cringed at the check-out line because ...

You can get the print at www.art.com By: Alfred Eisenstaedt Ok, so the title of my post may sound a bit dramatic, bringing to mind the black plague, scarlet fever, leprosy, pox, etc. Really, we only have a stomach/intestinal bug, but I am doing a quarantine of sorts to avoid spreading it. Someone carelessly spread the disease to my little girl, who gave it to brother and I (despite my constant efforts at handwashing, etc). Keep in mind that sometimes the disease is still contagious after the symptoms have abated....like rotavirus, which we may likely have. I'm doing all right. Mine isn't that bad. My son is greatly improved, but my daughter is still ill. Of course I'm taking her to the doctor if this continues onto tomorrow, or sooner if I feel it is needed. She's thankfully not dehydrated, but I am worried about lack of nourishment and the fact that this is so on-going. I've never seen a stomach bug last this long. Please keep us in prayer. This winter ha...

You can get this print at www.art.com The Bath by Mary Cassatt Mud, wind, rain and hardly any snow this morning. It feels more like March than January. While I don't mind this early spring teaser when we should be buried in 3 feet of snow and dealing with temperatures in the teens, I wonder what the rest of winter will bring.....and summer. With such a lack of snow (we haven't had a storm yet) we could face a drought. Will we be more temperate this year instead of the usual extremes of arctic in winter and tropics in summer? How will all this affect the farming industry and my own little garden? Is this milder weather the cause of so much sickness going around? Yesterday my daughter caught a stomach bug. She was tired, listless, feverish and vomiting. She even put herself to bed at 6pm. Looks like it is just one of those random 24 hour bugs, though. She's much improved this morning. My son, on the other hand, has just started his 24 hour marathon. I'm prayi...

Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality. ~Beatrix Potter~

You can get this print at www.art.com I spent a good half an hour in Target hemming and hawing about which storage unit to purchase. Should I get the metal shelves that cost more than I was planning on spending, or should I get the Sterilite drawers that I could stack and cost much less? I finally settled on the drawers since I could stack them, they already offered enclosed storage and they're made in America. If I went ahead and bought the metal shelving, I would have still had to purchase loads of boxes with lids. The purpose of all this is to make room in the children's room and closet by removing many of their toys to designated storage in the basement play area. I'm already pleased with the results. This morning my son followed me downstairs as I started a load of laundry and was thrilled to explore the drawers. He settled on pulling out the drawer of plastic revolutionary war soldiers and dinosaurs and playing a game where the soldiers kill the dinosaurs. (He ...

I've been feeling the tug more lately. I have mentioned before my desire to give my daughter her own feminine space. Now, I know this isn't the be-all-end-all of her feminine development. Daily, I can marvel at the natural femininity God placed within her as soon as she was conceived. For example, the other day she joined her brother on the floor to play with his toy cars, trucks and tractors. My son has one of those little area rugs that has a scene on it, roads with houses, a farm, police station, school, gas station, post office, firehouse, etc. While my son raced his toy cars with an emphasis on noise and possible accidents, my daughter carefully guided the toy car in her possession along the roads as if running little motherly errands just as I do. While my son and daughter both play with her dolly, their roles in play are naturally different. A male family member teased my son for pushing dolly in the little stroller as if we were harming his masculinity. My hus...

For homeschooling today I really wanted to emphasis to my son not only the history of Martin Luther King Jr. but also the importance of how we're all created equal in God's eyes. We discussed people's skin color and other attributes. I sang "Jesus Loves the Little Children" to him several times. I printed out two coloring pages of Martin Luther King Jr. I colored one while he colored the other. Being the realist that I am, I immediately grabbed a brown crayon and started coloring in Dr. King's face. While doing this I handed my son a brown crayon and told him how skin color doesn't matter. Well, he took me quite literally and rejected the brown crayon and colored Dr. King and handsome green and blue combination! I started telling him that Dr. King's skin is brown, but after all, I did just tell him that skin color doesn't matter!! Gotta love 3 year olds! He also colored a picture of Jesus surrounded by children of different ethnic backgrou...

Or, should I say that my computer is back!! I can blog again! Although, I have to admit that I really did enjoy my time away from the computer. I'm already wasting time now that it's back, but I do have so much catching up to do! January offers me very little to do with few outdoor chores. I've returned to knitting, luceting and sewing. My daughter and her dolly now boast matching nightgowns. Speaking of my daughter, she just woke up rather grumpy, so I better see to her.