We all have those times in our lives that stick with us. Some are good and others are not so good. In looking in the old testament we find some of the faithful building alters in places that GOD had met them, other times we find alters being torn down. In my life I have built a few alters , not of stone but of the mind and heart. Today is one such day . This is the annaversery of the day that my Mother broke her hip and started the events that ended her mortal life. A moment and the course of lives is changed. The alters we build tie us to time and can help point us in new directions. My beloved wife is doing some alter building of her own. With the passing of her Mother and all the stress with the "misplaceing" of her Father this will be such a place in time for her. My job as her husband is to helper build a GOD approved alter, one of rememberance of life. My prayer for her and all of us is,

 Lord grant us the strength to build the kind of alters that will last, ones that show life to ourselves and those who come appon them. Let us be ever mindfull of Your mercy and grace even in the midst of trials, morrning and hardship. Bind the unhealthy thoughts and nurture the life afferiming ones. Help us always to seek first Your kingdom. In Jesus name, amen.

It's Thanksgiving day (well early morrning) my beloved reminded me to up date my profile it some how got changed. So doing that I found that I haven't posted here in a while. Thoughts are on the day ahead and food, Family and food and well food. It is at this time of year I generaly go into a funk, it might just be the weather or it's all the hussel and bussel for reasons utterly un related to why we honor the Day. I would  like to get back to the roots of Faith and try to strip away the layers of humanist nonsence that has covered the truth of what we believe and why. In my youth our family had a cabin in the Hi desert of southern California we would offten spend holladays there and enjoy the peace and quite. It was just a three room building, a living room/bedroom about 8 ft. x 20ft. a kitchen maybe 10x8 and a bed room also about 10x8. It had a large fire place at one end of the great room and the cooking was on a wood burning stove we used an Ice Box (as in you had to put Ice in it ) and the nessasaries were out the back door down the path to the little house behind the little house on the prarie.All in all it was a great place. No phone no running water (execpt what was pumped up to a tank on the roof) . Lighting was by colman lantern or oil lamp. The entertainment center was an old Victrola record player, crank type that played 78 rpm records. One of the things I recall was how your ears would ring from the lack of sounds. That would last about a few hours then you would be treated to the wind in the pine trees or the call of wild birds and other critters. No car alarms horns honking or loud radios. I think I miss the silence the most. The Bible tels us to " be still and know I am GOD" I wonder sometimes are we able to do that in this day. I for one am going to try and unplug, be still and wait on GOD.

Have A Happy and Blessed Thanksgiving

Once again it has been way too long a time between posts. I have no excuse save sloth and the tyranny of the urgent, The sloth is just my own failing to stick to typing out my thoughts, the tyranny comes from all the things that seam important but maybe are not so.

The school year and all the attendant activties are in full swing.

My beloveds TTP is in remission and she is doing well, although she is having some problems with joint pain. This is mostly in the A.M. but will act up at other times as well. 

Dads ( my father) ALZ is staying stable for now and the other medical issues with him are also under control.

At work the powers that be keep trying to fix the non-broken and seammengly render useless that wich does work. Oh well I guess that is all part of the fun.

An  odd set of cercumstances lead to my attending two funerals in one day. Two unrelated people in two parts of town both just an hour apart. The first was for my former employer/friend who had passed away sept.12. He was a mentor a friend and one of the best bosses anyone could ask for. If you know the Christmas Carol, he was Fozzywig ( Ebenizer's master whe he was an apprentice) jolly and fun but able to inspire good work habbits.I will miss him. the second was the father of a girl I first met in high school, lots of years ago.He passed on Sept.13. His life ,wile not as involved with mine was important and worth the attendance. Each was unique as were the men they were for but each shared a message of hope for those left behind. I was moved to contact another old friend and found him and his family well. And I take some comfort in knowing that I am GODs and when this race is run I'll go to be with HIM forever.

No big finish, no deep message save this ,cherish everyone  all the time. our days are too short to waste not loving and being loved.  One of the things I herd the most was..." I had just been thing about..... when I found out he had died" How offten do you get the chance to say "I care "and don't do it? How much would it mean to you to know you were being thought of ?

Call whoever you think about right now, just to say Hi.

Grace to you and yours ,Tim

The last month or so has been a blur. My beloveds TTP and all that that entailed has been a trial for sure. GOD is great and greatly to be praised. The blessings are still comming and I am surprized just how much help we realy do need. I was talking with a brother at church last week and relized that I had driven back and forth to the hospitial (aprox. 20mi  roundtrip) as well as almost daily trips of maybe 5 to 15 mi for a month on one tank of gas. I know that might seem like a small thing but the fact that I didn't even need to get fuel was a blessing. That as well as dinners, bags and bags of food  and even money, it is all so wonderful.

 To-night was Reginas first time out in public on a big scale( our three girls AWANAs Awards night) It was so great to see the number of people who were so happy to see her. We are blessed by the preyers of the saints and I am encouraged to know that GOD is alive in this generation and for such a time as this.

GODs peace be with all who pray. You are the voice and ears of the LORD. Thank You.

Praise GOD My beloved is home with us again! She stil has a ways to go yet but at least she will be able do it out pataint and it is down to only 3 days a week. We still have the issues of my work  times and getting my Beloved  to her treatments. Also trying to get ourselves back on a "normal" routine, Three girls, homechooling and keeping up with caretaking of my father. All things work to the good for thouse who love the LORD.

Be Blessed,  Tim

when your computer isn't working.Or why this hasn't been updated in a wile.

  The news around our house has been that I have been a stay at home single dad for the last three weeks. My beloved wife is in the hospitial with a blood dissorder called  TTP. The short story goes like this. On Monday eve we were picking up a few things at the market and my beloved had a tingeling and some numbness on her left side (Face,Arm and Leg) . We took her to the ER and they checked her out and said that it wasn't a heart attack or stroke ( Praise GOD) but...... Her blood count plateletts were dangerously low down to around 10 thousand nornal is 175-200 thousand. Needles to say she was checked in right then. She was transfered to another Hospitial downtown the next day and started Dyalisis to cleen out the bad stuff and replace the plasma. This is a 4-5 hour process and has been going on daily for over two weeks. At least the numbers are comming up and they  say she should bee relesed next week.

  All that and trying to be Dad, Mom  and Homeschool teacher as well as caretaker for my Father (ALZ) it has been a trying time. But GOD is good. We have been blessed with dinners most nights and the hospitial has been a missions filed for my wife.

  We are blessed " All things work to the good for those who love the LORD"

It seenms as though the year is just flying by my last post was before September and now it's november. Seasons come and go, not just in terms of time or the weather but in our lives as well.

   The season has come to our house to move into new rolls as Caregivers for my Father. He has been diagnosed with Alzhimers and this is changing the ways we do things in our daily routine. In some ways I am now a dad of four ( my three girls and my Dad). As with so much in life the burden is eased by helping hands and hearts.We have found help at the Alzhimers Association and in the prayers of our Church family as well as with my aunt Dad's sister. One of the hardest things I need to do is to be able to just go with what ever Dad says and not try to correct him when he says somthing off the wall or at least not correct. The girls have been realy great in execptng the changes and not adding to the chaos.Dad has his routine, he has always been a creature of habit, so for the most part he dose look after him self. It is mostly getting him to Dr's appointments and such that is hard. I love my Dad and now he needs me to be here for him so here I am.

   GOD  gerant me the grace to care for my earthly father as you care for us and let me teach my children how to show lovingkindness to my Dad. And prepair ther hearts to care for there Mother and me if the need comes. Amen 

Well in just a few short weeks September will be here. Public Schools satrting and all the back to school sales are already starting to pop up.

 But at our house the bigest change is our "baby" she hates being called that , just lost her first baby tooth.  Her older sisters have been trying for a week or better to "help" that tooth out. Finaly it was on its way and just needed that final touch and out it came. The older sisters were very kind and printed up a letter from the tooth farie I was touched for a "Gold Dollar coin" and our littelest one is one big stepp closer to full  big kid status.  

In the context of world events it might not seem like much, but I'd much rather be able to post a small joy than pass on the worlds big hurt.

A proud and happy Dad

Hi, It's been a long time since my last post. Not much new to report. Dads issues are still being investagated and thr Dr has changed some of his meds so we need to wait and see. As a homeschool family we have taken the summer off sort of.We still do some teaching when the moment is right,so we dion't stop alltogether. Our outside activies ie: 4H,music and AWANAs all take the summer off so that kinda frees us to do some outher things. Our public libuary has a summer reading program that the girls realy love. Another fun activity is VBS (Vacation Bible School) .It only is a week long but we all look forward to it every year. This years theam was Fiesta and the kids did a project of malong blankets for donation to kids in other countrys.That's about it for now. We are getting ready for our vacation trip to the Above Rubies retreet and then spending time visiting with my beloveds mother in Riverside. Mama is a great cook and she incesets on feeding us. We have been sending our requests and are looking forward to some good eats.

Well here it is the end of June already, summer weather is upon us and the days seem much longer than I remember as a child. My children have tried slipping into a summer mindset and are trying to stay up later each night and sleeping later each day. My beloved and I are not having it and so the battle continues. The kids have friends over to play on our tire swing and it seems as though we always have an extra child or two in the mix. I may sound like I am less than happy about this but really I love that our yard is the favorite hang out. I grew up in this house and often had friends around and the house was always open for "strays"  Guests were generally welcome for meals. That was one of the things my mother taught, always welcome the extra child. Many of whom remained close even when I had moved away. It was good to know that my friends were always welcome in our house. I belive that it helped me know GODs love in a special and real way. I hope to be able to give that gift to my children and there friends.

Well it has bin a wile since my last post. A short recap of past events.

Middle daughters chin is doing nicly almost no scar,Yea. The homeschool year is winding down at least for our homeschool group, for our family we will be keeping on with lesons as they come up as allways. That's one of the wonderful things about this HS thing is the freedom to "do school" when and were and how works best for each of our children. This evening my oldest and I had a great chat about reality and fiction. I was starting to sence that she  was not too clear on the fictional side of stories on TV and in movies. I would like to let her explore some of the classic mythology and folk and farie tails of my family background (Irish) as well as her mothers (African Amercian).

 A prayer request, My father is showing signs of early dementia and we would like prayer for guidance on how best to serve him in these hours. We are going the Dr. route but have run into a snag. It seems that the Dr at the clinic he goes to for his insurance is not doing Nuro/psych evaluations any more and we haven't bin able to get a answer from the insurance co. about who they will let see him. GOD is in control even(especially) when we are not.

Peace Tim

Last week we did a lot of traveling, at least for us. Our Homeschool group took a train trip to Los Angeles. We departed Santa Barbara at 6:50 AM and arriver at Union Station Los Angeles at around 9:00 AM. The trip was lots of fun I realy enjoy the train it's so nice to be able to just sit back and chat with friends and see some interesting sights and NOT have to fight the traffic. Execpt for the early hour I'd do this a whole lot more. When we got to L.A. we found out that Union Station has no storage lockers, that ment that all the things we had along needed to be shleped along with us. Oh well my beloved got a new purse out of it and I was smart enough to be useing my daypack so all in all it wasn't as bad as could have been. We toured Alvera St. a multi cultural area just across from Union Station. After some shoping and a very good lunch it was time to join up withthe others in our group. Two families had gone to the same museums but had decided to take diffrent modes of transportation back to the station.Each was late and this was cause for much worry and prayer by one all. Prayer works the train was late too. The next day we drove aproxamitly 100mi north to San Luis Obispo, this after 8 hours at work and getting stuck in a traffic jam caused by a high speed chase and shootout on the 101 freeway (fun). The SLO trip was for a 4-H event a regional presention day that our eldest was invited to as result of her placeing at the county level. So in 400+ miles by car and train in three days I have come to some conclusions. 1st get out there and do it. A day, weekend or more trips can be fun. 2nd you get out of it what you put into it ( and so will your children). And last Dads attatude is everything in assuring a smooth and rewarding trip.

I just spent 45 minuets wrighting a realy great bolg and then realized I was on my wifes page oh well it's OK I just do it again later.

Words,we use them every day. GOD used them to speek everything in to existance, and was refered to as "the  word" John 1:1

 All thruogh Proverbs we see how the heart is judged by what the mouth speeks. As parents/teachers we are given the great honor/responsabilty to model the Godly use of words. How offten do we say things that are just not true ? Not lies for  gain but un-truths to motavate our little ones. I'll confess I'v said "if you don't do-------  your staying home. Well that is a lie, I know it , my children know it and the LORD cerntly knows it. So why do I do it? It's the abundance of my heart speeking I want my child to get on the stick and get out the door, I don't want to be late or  more offten the case is I dont want to go  myself and am looking for a way out. Whatever the reason it's wrong and needs to stop. This channel to our heart works both ways we are blessed by what we hear as well as give blessings by our words. Speek Blessings  to all you encounter and restore the pure wellspring in your heart.

Well as the husband of a homeschooling mom and daddy ot three wonderful girls I don't always git the chance to share about  all the good stuff out there. I allways seem to be able to receve negative reports I think it's time someone said somthing good for a change. I'll try with GODs guidence to express HIS heart at work changing mine.