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| The Christmas Card photo. Taken with car running for Matt to go to work. We had only minutes to take the photos and it was after he left that I realized the settings were wrong and we were not in very sharp focus. Ah well. I wasn't about to get everyone all dressed up again. It'll do. |
If you've been following along with this blog, you probably already know all this stuff. Thank you all for sharing in our moments, in our words, in our messes, in our lives. I'm grateful you're here.
Dear Ones, December
12 Anno Domini 2016
Happy Christmas to you and the
merriest of days! I hope this Christmas
note finds you well; snug and filled and surrounded by love. A life so lived is a full and rich life
indeed. As I write, the snow is
blustering about outside (accumulation expected up to 6 inches tonight) and I
am listening to children slamming doors and counting overhead- a riotous game of
hide and seek going on upstairs. In the
living room, by the light of the glowing Christmas tree, a sweet baby Ineke
takes a nap- affording me a moment to write this letter- and the Papa is
outside in the woods as snowflakes swirl about him and the cold winds sneak
into his sleeves and down his neck. I
wish he would come in and snuggle. ;-) The white snow is turning a darker and darker
blue in the dusk so it won’t be long until he comes in for supper.
How shall I sum up the year? In a word, abundant. The Lord has been so good to us. We have had an abundance of milk from our
milk cow Penny (and thus, an abundance of butter, cheese, yogurt and of course,
ice cream!), abundance from a bountiful garden (well over 200 quarts of canned
tomatoes alone!) and plentiful meat from some cows we butchered before
winter. Of course, all of these things
required plenty of work- extra animals to feed and water, milking chores,
ridiculous amounts of cheese and butter-making (several pounds made a day in
many cases!) and daily garden and canning chores~ With the cow having since
dried up, the garden frozen solid and half as many cows- we find ourselves with
a little bit of a lighter load for winter…a welcome change!
Corynn’s
birthday this year added a ‘teen’ to her age and I realized afresh that my baby
(my BABY!) is becoming a young woman. This is particularly obvious when she
cares for the littlest baby like a proper Mother Hen. She stands not much shorter than me these days
and a bit taller than a few aunts and grandma’s~ which gives her great
satisfaction. She is very talented in
the arts and surprises me often with delight at seeing her many
sketched/painted/sewn creations.
Someday, perhaps, I will write a book and she will illustrate it. (Before she is famous and has no time for her
Mama’s stories anymore.) For her
birthday, Grandma and Grandpa gifted her with several horseback riding lessons
which will, no doubt, become one of those happy memories of her lifetime. She had grace, she had skill, she had fun…and
now she wants a horse!
Andrew tacked
on a second digit when his birthday rolled around and ten seems to suit him
quite nicely. He is the kind of boy
whose interests soon become infatuations and, as usual, they are usually in the
form of one animal or another. He has
become enamored this year first with deer and hunting and most recently,
rabbits, trapping and pelts. Tanning
hides and raising deer are the dreams that fill his head each night. I know because he relates them to me every
morning! He went hunting with Matt for
the first time this year and they got a buck the first day! This was both exciting and disappointing for Andrew-
since the only tag Matt had was filled in a day, leaving all the rest of the
hunting fun to wait until next year.
Adele just
recently turned 8 years old and is in that wonderfully delightful stage of
being just grown up enough to think deep thoughts and ask hard questions while
still possessing the wonder and fancies of a child. I love nothing more than to discover a little
voice chatting in the girls’ room and when I peek open the door, I find Adele’
and her dolls deep in conversation.
These moments are fleeting and so I hold them close. It is a hard thing to hold middle sister
status but Adele’ does so with grace.
She and Judah are the two children who never complain about doing school
and, in fact, look forward to it each day!
Adele’ is becoming quite the crafty girl too- she learned to sew on the
sewing machine this year and even made herself a very nice backpack with an
embroidered snail on it.
Judah is now 6 but is often mistaken for being
older than Adele’ due to his size (much to Adele’s chagrine)! He is a Hoss of a boy, a Samson, and must
learn to use his strength well. Admittedly, this can be a hard thing to learn
for a six year old. Especially one with
an older brother! One way to get that
crazy boy settled down is to sit on the couch with a story book. He’ll make his way over and snuggle down
deep. And one book is never, ever
enough. He went hunting with Matt and
Andrew- and they all went camping in our woods earlier in the summer. Judah follows Matt around everywhere when
Matt is home and wants to grow up to be just like him. I hope he does too. But for now, I love my raucous, not-so-little,
little boy.
Ineke, our
December darling, will be turning one on December 22nd. She has brought so much joy to our lives this
past year! How I missed those precious
baby years! She took her first hesitant
steps a month ago and now gets around on super speed (the first of the children
to be walking before their birthday), a far cry from her slothlike tendencies
of babyhood. Her first few months
worried my mom who insisted babies shouldn’t sleep ALL the time. J She recently perfected her pivot and can turn
a full circle, which is a skill she is most proud of! She has spent her entire nursing life baby
pinching me as a form of affection, like a kitten pawing at its’ mother with
claws out (She is my little lobster) and she has, most recently, developed a
piercingly shrill screech- which she lets loose when one of her brothers is
picking her up and she doesn’t like it (all too often). But don’t let the lobster pinches and screech
owl tendencies give you the impression that she is an unlovely baby. She is a deliciously sweet child, through and
through. Every time someone picks her up
she will give a nice long hug in thanks- and she’s been giving real, wonderful
hugs for months now! She revels in the
task of making someone smile and is infatuated with all people her size. She wants to hug all little people and moves
to do so- an excited, gleefully shrieking crazy girl running at them with open
arms like a grizzly about to devour!
Those who are able run away, screaming in fear.) Poor Ineke stands bewildered and then tries
to comfort them with a hug and so it goes.
Matt is, as
ever, the steadfast, hard-working one of the bunch. He improves home and Hopestead as time and
money allow (and occasionally, when they don’t!). This year’s big project for him was gutting
and re-doing the boys’ room…insulation, wiring, etc. I was so thankful that was done- particularly
because of the dangerous state of the original wiring. He also added railings to the porch- making
each baluster himself in order to save money.
The thing Matt was most excited to do this year, though, was what we
have coined ‘the Ornamentation Project’ which involved building a stone wall to
support and house some old horse-drawn farm equipment he found in the
goonyweeds of the property; an old oat binder and an old corn binder. When he first mentioned it, he knew I would
be thrilled at the prospect of a Matt-made stone wall. Having no real farm knowledge, I had no idea
how large and….rusty….an old oat binder could be, let alone two pieces of farm
equipment. When he hauled the junk (er,
I mean antiques) up to the road, my eyes grew large with the realization of it
all! He loves the end result and I love him, so it
all works out. (And the stone wall is BEAUTIFUL.) Seriously though, Matt never ceases to amaze
me with his talents and know-how. His
most epic work though is one that is not so easily checked off or admired from
the road. He leads this family
well, adds laughter by the bucketfuls,
encourages us in the Lord and makes us all better, stronger, wiser and more
confident.
And then there
is me. By the length of this letter, it
appears that I am in need of some adult conversation! ;-) There
are never enough hours in the day to do all, read all, make all, write all, learn
all, be all or think all the things I would like to, but I am thankful that
with each new dawn I have another opportunity to try!
G.K.Chesterton once said… “The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an
ordinary woman and their ordinary children.”
While we may be ordinary, we live an extraordinary life made all the
more obvious during this Advent season- a season of expectation, of Christ’s coming and a looking
forward to His coming again. He is
everywhere, all around us. He is the
reason we love, the reason we rejoice, the reason we have hope. May you be overwhelmed
with these good gifts and see clearly the Giver as you live out your
extraordinary lives in this coming Anno Domini, 2017.
Love,
Rebecca (the Verbose), Matt (the Stalwart), Corynn (the Creative), Andrew (the Ardent), Adele (the Gentle),Judah (the Rugged) and Ineke (the Sweetling)
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| The one I *wanted* for the Christmas card photo. See that full blown smile on Matt's face? That NEVER happens in photos. Usually he looks like he hates his life in family pictures. Andrew asked that I use the other one for the cards but I had to post this one here. That is a grin for posterity. |
