Advent Calendar Sans CANDY??!!

Well, not quite.  But for the past couple years, I've been looking for a reusable Advent calendar that I could fill with whatever I wanted, be it candy or redeemable coupons for kid-size salads at dinnertime, seasonable veggies, etc.  You know, because I'm a fun mom like that.

So last year I got an unnatural urge to hit a post-Christmas sale and came out of it with this:

Pretty cool, I think, and so do the kids.  This will be our first year using it, and as I was racking my muddled brain for WHAT to fill it with, a friend of mine suggested using scripture...specifically, Biblical prophecy of the birth of Christ.  Of course, that led to a Google search, and I found a site called Teachingmom.com.  It's a couple years old, but the webpage on advent calendars can be found here, and if you scroll down, she has two links to Advent verse chain links for a 23-day Advent.  (You can fill the extra days with candy.  Or redeemable coupons for plain yogurt).  I'm thinking of printing these out on some red and green paper and making the actual chain link so we can add a bit of Christmas cheer to these plain, white, to-be-painted-someday walls.  And I'm excited that the kids will get to see the amazing accuracy with which the Old Testament prophets told of our coming Savior!

And the redeemable coupons for healthy food?  I'm kidding...I think.

Moo Blessings

I went to a local farm today to pick up a couple dozen eggs, since we are still chickenless. Indeed, our lives have been put on hold for the most part until Other House sells. There are little things we can do - such as paint the kitchen cabinets and plant a couple dirt-cheap fruit trees - but our house is more or less stuck in Ghetto Stage and our land will remain ungrazed until that mysterious buyer enters stage right.

Back to the farm...the real one. As I was paying for my eggs and so forth, I was asking the owner about meat prices and telling him that the last time I ate ground beef, I broke out into hives and got a stomach ache. And this was supposedly grass-fed, hormone-free beef! Anyway, he immediately went out to the cooler and returned with a pack of four hamburgers. He told me to take them and try them out. He laughed when I asked how much they were and said he was giving them to me because he's had similar reactions to beef and wants me to come back as a customer. I stammered several thank-you's as I left. So much for the hard-core capitalist...to me, what I just experienced was good business!

And it was a blessing. That's dinner for my family, and though it may not seem like a big deal, for me it's HUGE. An act like that is God reminding me that He is our provider. And since it was totally unexpected and involved someone I'd never met before, I'm even more convicted of Hebrews 11:1 - "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." I wasn't exactly hoping for free food! I honestly can say that I had no ulterior motive in going to the farm today, and how often, in both my speech and actions, do I have motives that are self-serving? All too often, I can assure you.

Don't get me wrong - waiting for Other House to sell has been and continues to be one of the greatest tests of my faith, and I'm more than ready for the curtain call, for the show to be over. For some reason, God isn't, but I was reminded today that He - not our land and not even a closing date on Other House - will sustain us.

Sanity in the Midst of Chaos

I admit it, I'm not a glass-is-half-full type of gal. I tend to dwell on the negative much of the time. My favorite band in high school and college was The Cure. And I still like to wear black sometimes.

So what is keeping me sane in the midst of the chaos we're experiencing at the farmhouse? As we uncover more of the hidden structure (or lack thereof) at the house, God has convicted me to list the little time bombs He's revealed just in time, as well as the blessings we've experienced and will experience by living there. Following are some that come to mind at the moment:

1. I recently found that a piece of baseboard was nailed into a drainpipe that runs from the upstairs bathroom (yup, that includes the toilet, folks). I'm thankful I found that before we used the bathroom again, and that there's a bathroom downstairs.
2. Since I've been away from the field for seven years, we hired the architect I used to work for a couple weeks ago to help troubleshoot the problems with the house. If he hadn't been there that day, I would not have been in the crawlspace in time to discover a leak in a water pipe.
3. The footings look good!
4. While I was ripping up drywall in the parlor (AKA motorcycle room), I thought, "Well, we wanted to paint this room anyway, right?"
5. We have two pear trees on the property that produce every other year, and this year, they're loaded with fruit.
6. The soil seems great for planting - not too sandy, and no huge chunks of clay.
7. Byron started pulling up the original hardwood floor. Except for the boards the termites ate, he hasn't splintered one yet. I'll be sure to post on the process.
8. We enjoyed blackberry syrup with pancakes this morning from the plethora of blackberry bushes around us. (Recipe to come!)