Grandpa's Quilt (and my Resolutions of 2025 Reflections)

Be the kind of woman who, 

when your feet hit the floor in the morning, 

the devil says 

"Oh no!  She's up!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am”

― John Newton

Looking at last year's goals, here is how I stacked up...

~ Read Paradise Lost and take Hillsdale's College free course on it .  (NAILED it!  Sort of.  I read the entire book but didn't finish all the video lessons.  Finishing the Hillsdale course on it will be a roll-over goal for this year.)

~ Make a quilt (NAILED it!  I can't describe to you how proud and happy (and surprised!) I am to have accomplished this task.  And I am so pleased with the end result!  Even moreso, my Father-in-law was pleased, as it was for him.  I don't know that I would recommend a first quilt being done with misshaped and odd pieces that you must somehow jigsaw puzzled together, but it somehow miraculously worked.)  Photos of it at the end of this post)

~ Repaint the Dining Room (FAILED.   Another roll-over into the new year... this goal has been rolled over three times now. Third times a charm?!)

~ Create a monthly budget and use the envelope system to be sure it is implemented. (FAILED.)

~ Begin a SAPHOUSE FUND (Well, we set aside extra but it wasn't earmarked for the saphouse.  I am gonna call this a success because it can always be used for the saphouse if Matt wants to.)

~ Keep a home journal this year.  (Nailed it!)

~ Use up enough of my cotton yarn to fill a single basket- or less.  (NAILED IT! I still have cotton yarn leftover, but I used up a basket worth of yarn this past year- which is kinda crazy to me since I didn't knit or crochet anything impressive, really. Just a few sweaters, hats, a dress, a tiny purse and lotsa dishcloths)

~ Try to make a new variety of cheese (Nailed the attempts.  Did NOT nail creating a delicious cheese.  I tried three times to make Gouda- but all three wound up being ruined in one way or another. I discovered that I am very bad at babysitting cheese.)

~ Invite individual families from church over once a month.  (FAILED IT.  We did have families over but not once a month and not all the families of our church.  Still, better than nothing.)

~ Read through the Children's Story Bible with the Littles.  (While we spent time reading this book together,  we did not finish the entire book -and we could have- so I call this a FAIL.)

~ Create a better schooling schedule for the Littles- and then implement it.  (FAIL.  Once again, the Littles get less than they deserve.)

~ Make Morning Time Great Again.  (Overall, better than the year previous.  Could do a lot better.)

~ Keep my commonplace book more faithfully.  (NAILED IT!)

And the HEALTH GOALS:

~ I AM NOT GOING TO WEIGH MYSELF for all of 2025.  (Nailed it.  That was easy.  And freeing.)

~ I AM NOT GOING TO TRY TO LOSE WEIGHT.  Instead, my only focus will be to EXERCISE (in some capacity) at least 3x/week. (Nailed it with the exercise.  Every SINGLE week last year, I did some sort of exercise three (or more times) except the last three weeks in December, when I was only able to squeeze in two.  I am very proud of this accomplishment because there were many times that I just chose to do it even when I DID.NOT.WANT.TO but my track record was so good, I didn't want to ruin it.  And I was always happy I had done it after the fact.  Soooo happy with this accomplishment.

~ I AM NOT GOING TO CUT OUT FOOD GROUPS.    And I will be tracking my protein because I know I don't eat enough of it.  NAILED.  I upped my protein to consistently getting between 100-175 grams of protein a day.  (I ate A LOT of yogurt.)  And I tracked my calories and protein the whole year- probably 75% or more of the time.  I ate breads and pasta and potatoes every now and again which is healing for me because I've struggled with a lot of internal guilt by labelling those things 'bad'.  And I spent the majority of the year in a calorie deficit.  

~ I AM NOT GOING TO DRINK MORE THAN 12 DIET COKES this year (I had way more than 12.  Let's leave it at that, shall we?)

I weighed myself the first day of last year, and the first day of this year.  And entire year of exercising three (or more!) times a week, establishing routines, tracking my food, eating in a deficit, upping my protein...and guess what?!

I only lost three pounds.  

Which is about what my weight fluctuates on a day to day basis.  So, basically, I didn't lose any weight.

I know that my goals were to NOT try to lose weight, but of course, making so many improvements to my lifestyle would result in that naturally.  I mean sheesh!  I am not gonna lie, I am super depressed about this!  I am going to continue to implement these goals because I know they are much healthier for me than the way I was before... I can actually squat in the garden without pain again... and my body will thank me later for being stronger as I age.  But I hate to think I am going to be 'thick' for the rest of my life, no matter how hard I work at it and that just seems to be my sad, sad reality.

And yet, I can honestly say, I did everything I could to change that reality... and I am really proud of myself for doing it.

Over all of my goals, not just the health ones, I saw a lot of improvements and successes.  I count 2025 as a win for my goals, overall.

(Tomorrow, I'll share my goals for 2026)

And now for Grandpa's quilt:

My floor was a scrappy mess a lot of the time as I tried to sort things out.  Over and over again.  And then, because we LIVE here, I'd have to pack it all up and start all over the next time.

I had some completed blocks to work with, lots of strips of fabric to work with, and then I filled it all in with blocks of my own to make it all 'fit'.

The quilt top, finally put together!

The back.  (An old flat sheet and some piecing to make it big enough. And more interesting.)

I love the red and blue block in the corner.  It's my favorite.

These are the oldest blocks on the quilt... all handstitched, fragile fabric and even some of the small squares were pieced using two tiny scraps sewn together to make a complete little square   Very impractical to include in the quilt, but I just had to.  

blowing in the wind

I had to decide how I was going to actually quilt it... without a longarm sewing machine, the options were hand-quilting and tying it off.  I was under serious time constraints so hand-quilting was out of the question.  Tying it off would have required borrowing a frame and would have resulted in those little ties sticking out, which felt like it would take away from the beautiful top.)  A friend from church has an "in" with a reasonably inexpensive Mennonite quilter, so I decided to send it off to her to be 'professionally' done.

This was the hardest decision to make and I regretted it so much- until it was actually done a week before I had to give it to Gary.  Then I was SO THANKFUL I was not killing myself to get it done in time.

Finished the binding.  By the last corner, I actually did a good job. :-)

Guess you'll never know who my holder-uppers were!

I'm pretty sure he liked it.

WoodsWalks 1-4

                 January begins a new year and with it, new goals and aspirations.  I love the openness and expectancy of a new year; the fresh, clean slate.  And I love the reflection on the last year- where I can improve, where I did improve, what I was able to achieve, what really needs my focus now.  Now that it is nearly FEBRUARY, I'll soon be doing a proper post on reflections of last years' goals and what the new ones are for this year.  But for today, I want to share one of the goals for this year that I am most excited about...  a weekly woods walk with the children.  All year long.

CONFESSION: I turn into a hibernating bear in wintertime.  A hibernating SLOTH would be more accurate but sloths don’t hibernate.  I move as little as possible.  I avoid anything to do with the cold unless I absolutely must.  And, it's no wonder, winter can be a very challenging time for me- despair and anxiety and stress creeps in little by little.

(Apparently, sunshine fills my proverbial batteries.)

Coupled with that, I have been thinking a lot lately about how my mothering looks differently, now that I am older,  with my Littles than it did with my Biggle babies.  With the Biggles and some of the Middles, I was growing up with them.  I was making snow angels alongside them and playing hide and seek with them.  Somewhere along the line, the children started playing with siblings and I began staying inside.  I realize this and want to remedy it.  Playing with siblings is so, so good but I do not want to become a dull mother in my old age.  

I hope that this weekly woods’ walk will help with ALL of these things.  I will move my body, even in winter.  I will breathe in deep the fresh air.  I will exhale long.  I will soak up sunshine.  I will feel revived.  I will be encouraging my children to do the same.  And, maybe best of all, I will be a mother who plays, explores and experiences alongside her children once again.  I have already been sledding twice- and I haven’t done that in YEARS!  Moses and I had a very fun time rolling down the pipeline two weeks ago.   Imagine!  Me, 43 years old… rolling down a hill, arms tucked tight and legs flailing- laughing like a child.  It was amazing. 

I am going to take a picture every week for accountability and later, a rememberance book.  At the end of the year, we will have witnessed the woods in all its' seasons, we'll watch it transform and come alive.  

And maybe, just maybe, we'll see the same in ourselves.

WoodsWalk 1:

(First Week challenged My resolve almost immediately when we went out in the middle of a winter snowstorm)

Right behind us was where Matt fell from the sky and lived to tell the tale

Woodswalk 2:

WoodsWalk 3:

Not clever enough to bring sleds along, the pipeline hill begged to be sledded down- so we used coats instead.

Woods Walk 4:

We came prepared this time

 

 “Everyone begins as a child by liking Weather. You learn the art of disliking it as you grow up. Haven’t you ever noticed it on a snowy day? The grown-ups are all going about with long faces, but look at the children—and the dogs? They know what snow’s made for.”

                                                -C.S.Lewis, That Hideous Strength

Birthday Wishes Do Come True (Ineke turns 10!)

Ineke, going in to her 10th year, has a deep and abiding love (infatuation?) with horses.  

And so naturally, horses had to be a part of her birthday.

Besides horse socks and a horse notebook and a little horse lantern, she got a beautiful horse card...

and on that card, she got a ticket.

And on that ticket, she got a birthday trip to ride a horse for the first time!

(I think, from those tears, that this was a very Special, Secret Wish that she had been holding close inside for a long time.)

Thank goodness for friendly, generous, homeschooled horse-people like Kate, who are willing to make birthday wishes come true.

This is Boon.  

I think both Boon and Ineke had some trepidations about trotting.  Poor Kate had to practically pull the horse to a trot...

But eventually trot he did. And Ineke was glad that she had done something that made her nervous.

What a brave, beautiful, boisterous girl you are, Ineke Beaneke. 

And we love you more than a barn FULL of horses.  ;-)

For her dessert, Ineke requested a fruit cheesecake.  Here is a fruity cheesecake at dusk.

 And here is her fruity cheesecake on fire.

And here is her attempting (and failing) to blow out the MANY candles upon her fruity cake:

One can only assume she had such a hard time because all her wishes had already come true.