Our dear pastor's wife taught the children of our church a cute little song called "Showing God's Great Love".  In it, the children sing about everyday examples of showing God's love.

Our nearly 92 year old friend that we take to church had been wanting us to come eat with her. We put her off, mainly because we were afraid of the amount of work it would cause her. But she would not be denied---and we accepted. She was bound and determined to cook for us to repay our taking her to church.

We had the most fabulous country meal I've tasted since my own sweet Mamaw went home to be with Jesus. Garden green beans, peas, fried corn, cornbread, steak and gravy, strawberries, sweet tea, creamed taters and homemade slaw sounds homey, but they tasted so good! 

This little lady was living out what the adult Sunday school lesson was about: showing apprecation to fellow believers, little acts of compassion, hospitality. In short, showing God's great love.

Well, Miss Ruby, you'll probably never read this, but I love and appreciate you. And your delicious green beans!

March came in like a lion, but not with weather. Baby #3 has taken  Doehill Homeschool by storm.

However, nobody feels the storm but me. Morning sickness is like never-ending flu. I've always wanted to lose weight quickly, but this isn't what I had in mind.  FIfteen pounds in three and a half weeks---my pal kasey calls it  "The Miracle Pregnancy Diet".  I have a feeling that when my friends are swapping pregnancy horror stories, my name will crop up with this line, "She dropped two sizes with morning sickness!" 

Get this, my husband wants to take a short cruise for a nice vacation this year. Well, paint me green and call me sour apple, but the line from Shakespeare, "I would fain die a dry death," runs a steady rhythm through my brain.

With continued bouts of sickness and dropping weight, friends have come to the rescue with remedies that helped them. Sucking sour lemons, eating bananas, eating crackers in bed before getting up in the morning, chewing peppermints or Altoids mints, drinking Sprite [ick--I'm so over that!], and other helpful tips have all proved useless. Hopefully, the pickiness about what is coming into my body doesn't indicate baby # 3's temperment, or I'm in BIG trouble.

Everyone has been so kind to NOT talk about food or disgusting things in front of me [except son #1--who is mirthfully enjoying mom's discomfort way too much], but I've even had to miss church. It got to the point where I couldn't just take my pack of crackers and go sit in the outer room of the ladies restroom anymore.  At least the pastor hasn't preached out of certain nauseating passages from Ezekiel, but we did have communion last night at church.  I almost didn't participate--the unleavened bread wasn't a problem, but the juice nearly done me in. I didn't color eggs with the kids this year, a first around here. I just couldn't handle the smell of  boiled eggs and vinegar dye.

However, for some reason, I have the strongest urge to bake cakes. Weird isn't it? Can't stand drinking milk,  butter on toast, or eggs in any way, but I've been busy baking cakes lately. So far I've come up with four new recipes, some I've made multiple times in the last three weeks. They are Lemon cake with Orange Creamsicle Glaze,  Strawberry Pound Cake with a preserve topping [baked in--it goes to the bottom, which inverted looks fabulous], Orange Pound Cake with Orange Creamsicle glaze, and my favorite, White Chocolate Coconut Cake. 

For  a woman who can't eat, I've sure been making sure everyone else does. For the first time--and as a Tennessee native, I'm ashamed to admit it--I've finally gotten my pinto beans to taste right. Our church ladies served for a family who'd had a death this past week, and I took them. Hubby said, "Well, I hope you can do that again. Those smelled pretty good and I didn't get any. " So there's pintos and fresh cornbread waiting on him tonight.  What with the cruise idea and wanting some beans comment, I hope I'm not making him sound selfish. He just wants to pamper me with a nice a vacation and he also knows that fastest way to make me smile is get jealous of my cooking.  Oh, how I love that man!

So, I've not abandoned blogging totally, I've just not been able to sit down and give it the time needed.  Besure to check the sidebar link about the up coming Voice of the Martyrs meeting at our church--IT'S ON MONDAY APRIL 7 AT 7 PM!!!!! BE THERE--YOU'LL NOT REGRET IT!

Time to go--hopefully it won't be so long between my visits to my own blog.

You know in Luke where it says Elisabeth "...hid herself five months..."? [Luke 1:24] well, I have a pet theory about that. I think she probably had killer morning sickness and HAD to hide five months! It must have toughened up Baby John---how else could he grow up to eat locusts and wild honey?

Oh, man, I wish I hadn't just typed that. See ya later---the way I feel now much later........

My friend Kim sent this out this morning. She was right---if there is one link you can visit today, make this the one:

http://www.gratitudecampaign.org/fullmovie.php

Dear hubby--whom I've resisted giving a nickname on this blog like I have the children--is celebrating his birthday today.

Dear son--code named Earnest T. Bass--quipped, "Gee, Mom, now he's the same age as you."  Boy, did I get that nickname dead-on or what?  My children get an inordinate amount of pleasure from the fact that I'm OLDER than their dad [by about 3 piddly months]. 

Anyhoo--Happy Birthday, honey. I'm blessed because of this day! 

You know, it's a good thing I've already made up my mind [see earlier posts] that my Christmas focus will be more spiritual this year.

Because after what I did to my husband's beloved Dodge Ram truck the financial part of it probably isn't going to be such a thrill, anyway.

Friends and family who read this blog will be shocked to hear this--because we've haven't said a word about it. But I--yes I, WonderDrip---seriously injured my husband's "third baby". His truck.  He hasn't so much as uttered an angry unkind word though. He has merely cautioned me to be more careful, to pay  more attention.  Of all the men to have their trucks abused by their wives did it HAVE TO BE MY SWEET MAN?

While at a friend's house [um, that would be you, Jennifer] I was backing into what I thought was her driveway to exit her subdivision. THEN....

THWUNK! THWAP! CHU--U--GGG! [CAN YOU TELL WE STUDIED PHONICS DIGRAPHS TODAY?]

I backed into her telephone pole. The stinking pole was fine--but my husband's truck! 

I thought I had just damaged the bumper. "We'll find a junkyard and get another one," I thought, nearly in a panic. "After all this IS Tennessee--we've got nearly as many junkyards as we do mountains!"  Not so.  Upon careful examination, I not only damaged the bumper, but the truck-bed-door-thingy, the bed liner, and something else that I can't remember the name of.

He took the truck to a body shop today to get an estimate and called me. "Hon, do you want to guess how much it is?"  "NO, just tell me, "I said, while in the back of my mind I was trying to calculate what I had in the house to sell on ebay or homeschool buy to cover it and cleanse my conscience.

"Only over $3,000." 

So, I couldn't have a Martha Christmas right now even if I wanted one. I thought about jumping over to the SewSensible website to see if she had patterns for portable holes to crawl into when one pulls a boner like me.

I don't know if there are 'memes' for "fessin' up on Friday".  If not, I officially start it here at Doehill. Sheesh, for $3,000 worth of damage I ought to at least get a little blog traffic out of it.

Oh I have so many sweet ones!  Share your Christmas memories by leaving a link below. Dropping by Dot's blog reminded me of a Christmas memory about my little brother. We used to have  family get-togethers for Christmas before Mom died with cousins, aunts, unlces, you name it. We drew names. One year, my brother's name was drawn by cousin Bo. 

More than anything my brother wanted some hunting dogs of his own. He was disappointed when everyone opened their gifts and there was nothing left for an eleven year old boy. But Bo had disappeared with my Dad outside to bring in a bouncing box with a huge red ribbon.

Inside were the two sweetest little redbones I've ever seen! Seeing my brother's reaction was one of the best Christmas memories I have--almost like having "Where the red Fern Grows" come to life.

Leave a link to a story of your own below. I'll be leaving more Christmas memory blog posts soon, too. Enjoy--and pray I've got this "Mr. Linky" thing loaded right. I'm not tech savvy and this is the first time I've put this on my blog...I hope I don't blow it up or something.

Thelma Lou is at it again.

My new favorite thing is the e-book "Haircuts for Little Men" by Nancy over at Homeschooling Is Life.  Yesterday, I used it to cut my son's hair. My daughter watched us closely. I'm typing right now and she's styling my hair.

"Now Mom, do you want the Dixie Doodle haircut or the Chair Rocky haircut or the Long Girly cut? "

She was just combing when all of a sudden I heard brother say, "NOOO!!! NOT THE SCISSORS!!" 

It's time to stop typing.

I'm pretty picky about putting pictures of my family on the internet.  (Perhaps I'm just living up to my unsocialized homeschooling sterotype.) But here are my blessings in disguise---literally!

Can you tell that I'm enjoying putting  pictures on my blog yet? They will be so tickled to see these!