Dec. 17, 2007
Merry Christmas from the Ozarks!
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Merry Christmas from the Ozarks! This is a bit lengthy but so many of you have asked how we're doing, what the children are up to and such that I thought I'd finally take the time and write it out. Probably two years worth since due to illnesses last winter we didn't get too many Christmas cards and letters out.  Our year started out off with a bang in January 2007 with a major ice storm grinding normal, modern life to a halt. Worst one around here in 50 years the old timers told us. Our home was without power and water for 6 days but many of our friends and neighbors were without for up to two weeks. At the time, we only had the outdoor woodstove Harold built a few years ago for heating our home but without electricity to run the fan to circulate in the house, it was useless to us. Because of Harold's allergies we had removed the indoor woodstove that had served us for many years. We have a small ventless propane heater in the living room of the house but it cannot heat the whole house in the winter. It's mostly used for those spring and fall nights when it's chilly but not cold enough to start a fire. Thankfully, we were fortunate to have a small vacation home of my parents to evacuate to in NW Arkansas, about two hours south of our home. It was still chilly there with the below average temps. and only a gas floor furnace in the hallway but we were so thankful for a place to stay with heat and running water. Harold continued to drive back and forth to work during that time, 1 1/2 hours each way. He also stocked up on supplies in Arkansas (bottled water, batteries, non-perishable food, etc.) and drove them back up to our community a number of times to distribute to friends and a shelter set up in a church in Buffalo (pop. 3,000), the little town near our home, when he came back to check on our home and animals. The whole town of Buffalo was shut down due to lack of electricity and the stores in Springfield (45 minutes away) that weren't closed due to power outages were completely sold out of the basics. Gas for cars and generators, kerosene for lamps and heaters were also in short supply. Despite looking like a frozen tornado hit the area, some scenes were quite beautiful and some of the photographs folks took were stunning. Many jokingly said the only ones not effected too much were the Amish in the area. In truth, most folks had a pioneer experience. We, along with just about everyone else in our region, are still recovering from the ice storm with downed trees and limbs in addition to the unexpected expenses incurred. There was no damage to our vehicles, house or outbuildings for which we are grateful. The downed trees and limbs will make for some good firewood for the ol' woodstove. We have since reinstalled an indoor woodstove in a different location and Harold ran the stovepipe through a different part of the roof to help with the smoke that was bothering his allergies. I am so thankful! Not just in case of another power outage but there is nothing like the smell of oak logs burning in a woodstove, radiating heat throughout the house on a cold winter day. As soon as we get home from somewhere, or come in from doing chores outside, the first place everyone gathers around after kicking of their shoes is the woodstove! There was a mini ice storm last week but it only lasted two days and we didn't lose power. We were more prepared this time with the indoor wood stove, extra supplies and every available bucket and container filled with water. Next on the farm wish list is a generator to run the water well pump and maybe an appliance or two during power outages!  We also started attending a new church in January 2007. God led Harold and I to a great, small non-denominational church in Lebanon, about 30 miles away, that has been such a blessing to attend. We appreciate the lack of various programs that so often split families up in larger churches, the casual enviroment (coffee, muffins and donuts available to eat before and during the service, ha, ha!) and the sincerity of the people. Zech likes the youth group on Wednesday nights and because there are a few homeschool families there that also attend the same homeschool co-op we are a part of, he felt at home right away. We are normally a bit leery of church youth groups but feel comfortable with this one. The youth pastor is also the worship leader, is the director of the pregnancy care center and owns a lawn care business, so a great hard working guy. Our kids all participated in the Christmas musical this year and did very well. The senior pastors are from Jamacia and are very knowledgeable and yet personable. I have to admit I love to hear the sermons with a Jamacian accent! (You can listen online at www.crosscreekministries.org) Another favorite pastor of ours was at a church we attended when we lived in Oklahoma. He and his wife were from South Africa and had British accents. Maybe we have a thing for hearing the Word spoken with foreign accents...ha, ha! Seriously though, we are thankful to be in a church that ministers to us so that we can minister to others and worship as a family with like minded believers. Harold has been experiencing healing from issues in his past and his traumatic childhood through the ministry of this church for which we are so thankful! Our homeschool journey continues and we are enjoying teaching and learning with the children. I am in my second year as the co-advisor/editor of the homeschool student newspaper at the co-op in Lebanon. I also started a Yahoo! e-group for homeschoolers in our county last year. We take the children to the big library in Springfield (where they each can check out 50 books each at a time and usually come close to meeting that limit) once a month to stock up on reading material. Harold and I have also taken them to the theater, art shows, music performances and various area festivals and events as well as day trips to explore neighboring towns and state parks. We enjoy traveling as a family and visiting new places. Harold's sister came out from CA to visit friends and family in KS and MO and Harold was able to take the children and drive a couple hours to a town to meet and visit with her and their aunt and cousin this summer. Another memorable trip this year was to the Oklahoma City area for my grandmother's 80th birthday in October. It also served as a field trip to the Natural Histrory Museum at OU to see some great exhibits (including dinos!), the Capitol, downtown OKC and the Oklahoma History Center. It was also fun to visit the small town outside OKC where we used to live and see how it changed. Harold continues to work at 3M in Springfield as a maintenance mechanic and enjoys his job. Over the past few years he has been having to study certain training books and take tests and have them done by Feb. 2008. Because of his dyslexia, the books and tests have been very challenging for him. He has to study twice as hard as some of the other guys in his department. He started out with 20 books and is down to his last one. When he isn't working or studying, he likes to spend time with the children and often is the biggest kid of them all! He enjoys taking them on outings to parks, swimming in the river near our home or to Dairy Queen for dessert but also has them working alongside him at home doing repairs to the house and farm, cutting and stacking firewood and working on the cars. Harold loves to cook and has passed that on to the kids. He and Zech often try to out spice each other seeing who can make the hottest, spiciest meal. He and the older boys like to wrestle and goof off. They will turn all the lights out downstairs and play cat and mouse. The little kids and I just stay in my room and read stories while they chase each other, holler and scream. Harold is a wonderful father and the kids love spending time with him. Zechariah will be 14 in January 2008 and is already 6'3". He likes to play soccer, swim, bike riding, hunt, loves anything Scottish/Celtic, duct tape and a pocket knife are his number one tools and history is his favorite subject, esp. ancient, medieval & WW II history. He is a good cook and his famous homemade oatmeal honey wheat bread (made in the oven, not a bread machine) is always in high demand among our family, friends and Harold's co-workers. He has an air gun my sister bought him last year that he attached a pair of binoculars to with duct tape for a more accurate aim to shoot at stray dogs that attack our chickens. I think he's been watching the Red Green Show a little too much! (www.redgreen.com) He loves hands on science...in other words he's always trying to blow something up! We always buy extra fireworks on the 4th of July so Harold can shoot them off throughout the year and Zech has taken advantage of having extra explosives on hand for his "experiments". His new project is to blow up a snowman and to borrow a video camera and tape it. He's also been wanting to build a life size catapult and trebuchet and keeps telling me it's educational. It didn't help that PBS had a documentary on it a while back, further fueling him. Zech is active in a homeschool co-op in Lebanon and has taken classes in contra dancing, English Country Dancing, public speaking, cartooning, newspaper, art, photography, current events, world cultures and is part of the homeschool drama troupe. Jane Austen's 'Pride & Prejudice' was the spring play he was involved in, performed at a state-of-the-art 645 seat theater at the civic center in Lebanon. Each drama student had to raise $100 in fundraising for the production and Zech met his goal, largely in part by selling his bread! He played Daniel Webster, the U.S. senator, in a small play last month called "An American Patchwork". He is now in rehearsal for the '08 spring play 'The Lady Vanishes', an Alfred Hitchcock thriller that takes place on a train. He is also a part of the co-op's teen community service club and has volunteered at a community blood drive (he dressed up as a bloodrop and stood out on the street corner with a sign to recruit people), participated in a stream team project (canoeing down a local river picking up trash), served as a waiter at a pregnancy care center's fundraising dinner and helped set up and distributed food for Thanksgiving and Christmas at a Christian ministry outreach. The homeschoolers in the Lebanon group also have contra dances/English Country Dances once a month with a formal one each May where students are encouraged to dress in historical costume or formal wear. This past spring, Zech conned me into making him a Scottish outfit, kilt and all. He enjoys his friends at co-op and the youth group at church (where some are from co-op). He is a typical first born, confident, strong, and independent. He and I are very much alike! Benjamin turned 11 in September and is trying to catch up to Zech with his height at 5'9". He is such a sweet boy and is so much like Harold. He is gentle, loving and a lot of fun to be around. Ben is always smiling and is a such an encourager to others. He likes baseball, soccer, swimming, bike riding, art, nature, photography and Legos. He spends hours hiking in our woods taking pictures, watching birds and animals, collecting fossils, Indian artifacts, rocks, leaves, etc. He is very talented in drawing as well, something I, a stick-figure-only-artist, admire! His favorite subject is science, esp. natural/earth science. He's another hands on science kid and is usually helping Zech with the 'blow-em-up' experiments. Ben is not old enough yet to audition in the homeschool drama troupe but will be a part of the backstage crew for the first time in the spring play. Ben also participates in the homeschool co-op in Lebanon and has taken many of the same classes as Zech. Many of you may remember that Ben was hospitalized for pneumonia last year and we almost lost him. He has had a clean bill of health since then but every little cough or sniffle puts me on high alert. We so appreciate your prayers for Ben last year! Zech gave Ben the nickname of Bob-Dog a while back and for some weird reason it has stuck. It used to upset Ben which is why Zech kept using it (of course!). I would scold until one day I found myself saying "Go get Bob for supper...I mean, Ben! Go get Ben for supper!". The kids, including Ben, laughed and laughed at me. Now Ben says he doesn't mind it. Luke was born on Zech's birthday and will turn 8 in January. Luke is also a very sweet boy with a kind disposition but can be a bit of an imp at times. I sometimes think of him as Puck in Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. Not mischievous in a naughty sort of way, but usually in good fun. Luke looks so much like my younger brother that half the time I want to call him my brother's name. He likes Legos, to swing on the tire swing in the yard, climb trees, swim and his favorite chore is collecting the eggs. He enjoys all school subjects but loves math! I tease him that he is the family accountant because he can do mental math faster than the rest of us. Luke has taken a few classes at the homeschool co-op and has made a good friend there. He is excellent with children younger than him, esp. babies and toddlers. He loves to help babysit. Several friends have asked if they can take Luke home with them because he can calm their babies down better than they can! So he is the math whiz/baby whisperer. Jonathan turned 6 in September and can be a hand full. He can be very sweet and loving one minute and other times can try our patience. He goes through phases where he is obsessive about a certain subject for a time, exhausting all possible books, videos and information before moving onto another subject. It started with Bob the Builder and everything construction related when he was 2, then it moved to weather, esp. hurricanes and tornados, then pirates, esp. Blackbeard, and now he is in his military/war phase. He has taken a couple of classes at the homeschool co-op and deemed them "bor-ing!". Oh well. Maybe when he's older he'll appreciate them more. Jon likes to make books and takes a stack of copy paper, staples it together and draws all kinds of wars and battles, some real (he loves WW II & the Romans) and some imagined (aliens vs. the Greeks). He will ask us how to spell the words for his books so we write them down and he copies them. He even gives them ratings and copyrights! Some he keeps and some he gives away to friends and family. He loves to swing and will sometimes swing by himself for a half hour or more non-stop. He told Luke recently that swinging is his thinking time for his stories. Although not offically diagnosed yet, Jon has almost all of the symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome, in the autism spectrum, which explains the obessive behavior, the swinging, spinning around, etc. so we have been working to educate ourselves by reading lots of books and articles and talking with other parents of children with Asperger's. I have always known there was some different about Jonathan from day one. It's a relief in a way to know my gut instincts were right and yet still a struggle to sort it all out and try to help him and educate the family on how to work with him. Jon is also still little enough that he loves to be hugged and held. When I am working I often will feel a pair of little arms around me and I say "That must be Jonathan needing a hug!". Laura turned 4 in March and is content being the resident princess. Her full name is Laura Elizabeth (after my great-great grandmother, Laura Mae, and my favorite author, Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder) but we nicknamed her Laura Belle early on because she has always been like a little Miss Southern Belle. She loves to wear dresses and have ribbons in her hair. She likes to sing, dance (esp. with Harold and my dad), play with her dolls and little kitchen, swing, swim and play outside. She and Luke are the best of friends. Laura is an excellent caregiver and we all appreciate her nursing efforts when we're not feeling well! She's always feeling our heads and saying "Let me see if you have a fever. You feel hot. Go lay down and I will bring you something to drink!". She enjoys homemaking and likes to works with me. One of her best traits is that if she sees something that needs to be done, she just does it. The boys will do something if I ASK but Laura takes it upon herself to do tasks that she sees needs to be done. Last year, if asked what her favorite color was she would reply "pinkpurple", as if it was one word. I took this year off from professional photography due to some minor health issues and burn out from too many Bridezillas.  Not sure if I am up for spring wedding season or not. I am enjoying spending more time with the children, realizing that they will be grown before I know it. There will always be time to make money and advance a career but the time to invest in the hearts of our children is short.We downsized the farm and sold off quite a bit of livestock this year, partly due to my health, partly to being so busy with other things and partly due to lack of money for better fencing. In oher words, the kids and I got tired of chasing the animals when they escaped! The kids enjoy feeding and caring the animals we do have left, our Great Pyrenees dog, Katie, the chickens and guineas, and collecting the eggs. We're enjoying winter and hoping for more snow for a decent sledding and snowboarding year. We have a great hill cleared with a couple of different runs and the boys have added a ramp to one. In the warmer months Zech, Ben and I enjoy mowing our large yard and trails through our woods with the lawn tractor. We also like to play a game of baseball in the yard, have bonfires and cook dinner outside. The boys enjoying camping outside, playing in the creek, catching frogs in the pond and picking wild blackberries. We do not have cable or satellite TV but love many of the documentaries and programs on PBS. Friday nights are usually family movie night. Right now we are in the middle of watching season 3 of 'The Waltons' . Chicken TV is also a favorite pastime  The year has not been without it's challenges, of course. We lost a close, dear friend to cancer last year and his wife, also a wonderful friend, is struggling with her new status as a widow and the changes that has brought. We try to help and support her in any way we can but it is hard to see loved ones go through trials. There was a propane leak under our house last month and we lost our winter's supply of propane for the cookstove, dryer and supplemental heater. In the same week, the septic tank had to be pumped and our well went dry. However, we praise God the house didn't blow up, Harold was miraculously offered a few days overtime to help pay for new propane and the septic and my parents were gracious enough to give us a loan for a new well and pump as well as be on hand during the two day excavation and installation for advice and help. The Bible says the rain falls on the just and unjust but we are thankful that we never alone. God is always with us through the storms. I pray God's blesings on you and your family this Christmas and in the new year! We'd love to hear how you're doing! Post a comment here or send us an e-mail and keep us posted on you and your families. |
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