Lots of Pics

I know there are people who read this blog who don't share DNA with me... you will just have to humor us.  My relatives have been awfully good sports about this whole move-to-a-foreign-country living-in-the-South thing. They deserve to see the kid pics occasionally.

Littleman hasn't mastered posing for cameras yet.

The whole "not blinking during pictures" thing.

"I KNEW Kate Middleton would wear that dress!"

"Royal weddings are really boring... 

"...I came outside before they even got to the vows part."

"He's so CUUUUUUTE."  (Said in intervals of freaking out over a bee 200 feet away who was "heading RIGHT FOR US!")

Don't play with water? Why not?  Whaddya mean I shouldn't play with water?

Can I write with chalk on the patio furniture?

"Put my sandals on, Grammy."

"Sanks."  (Translation: Thanks.)

"MMMMMMM!"  (Translation: Remove my helmet for me please, Mother.)

"MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!" (Translation: Really, I can't get it off and I'm starting to panic.")

Phew.

You mean I'M not allowed to play with water right now either?  It's not that chilly  in the wind.

"Gimme a minute.  I'm not ready yet.  Take another picture of the girl."

Staying carefully away from the bee and hoping that she will be able to pour water with the cup soon.

"There, now I'm ready."

All devastatingly handsome men will wear soccer cones as hats this season.  Even the  TV says hats are in because of the Royal Wedding, but most people don't have the vision to use sports equipment.

Has the advantage of ventilation holes...of course, if you're bald, you do have the  risk of getting a target-shaped sunburn on the top of your skull and tempting the pigeons.

Or you can go bald-headed, in defiance of your mother's worries about your hairlessness and relative sunburn-ability.

Seriously, this is the most hair he's ever had.  At least he's not a hairless girl.

"Fine, if you're so worried about sunburn I'll put the soccer cone back on."

A Hot Wheels bread-delivery truck.  Outside.  Because where would YOU park a bread delivery truck?  In your bedroom?

The other day she came up to me mournfully: "Mama, my mascara is RUNNING."  Not even sure she knows that mascara goes on the eyes, but it sounded like something ladies should say.

Grammy is SOOO fun to stare at.

I STILL can't play with water?

Wow, that water IS kinda cold...

She's looking at Grammy here, but Grammy is shy about pictures.  Mama understands.  Mama doesn't like to put her picture on the blog either, preferring those who don't know her personally to picture her as a willowy redhead who never bangs her shins into the kitchen counters, forgets to put on deodorant, or trips over nothing.

In other words, we are having a ball with the grandparents.

Late breaking headline: We discovered what the gurkeys (or teese) at the park are--the critters that look like a weird turkey with webbed feet.  They are apparently really called Muscovy Ducks.  They look like this.  You can see why we were puzzled.  One doesn't expect to meet a Russian duck from Mexico that lives in Texas.

Also, the tree in my backyard which drops spiky balls, which the Husband insisted was called a gumball tree, turns out to be a Sweetgum tree.  I never disputed, mind you, that the tree could be referred to as a gumball tree, but I doubted it was ONLY known as a gumball tree.  I am silenced.

Cheers,

 Breanna

Tornadoes and Grammy and Baba

We had tornado sirens on Monday, but nothing yesterday except the very exciting arrival of the grandparents.

We are thrilled.

We don't hardly let the grandparents move without a child attached somewhere on their person.  Consequently, until we have cute pictures, we might not post a lot.

Just thought you would all like to know that we're still doing just fine in the wind and rain.

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S.

God is sovereign, and He knows whether or not we are supposed to have our house knocked down by a tornado and/or go to heaven faster than we had scheduled.  Given that a tornado can't stir a hair on our heads without His permission, and that He always knows best, we are studiously trying to bonk our natural fear of tornadoes on the noggin.  This does not mean we are prancing around outside in the storm, of course, but we are trying to glorify God in the middle of the storm.

Easter Sunday

He is Risen!

We had a busy Resurrection Sunday.

Now the kids are abed and I should be too, but I have a kitchen to clean and a lunch to pack, so I will simply say, Happy Easter!

Cheers,

BReanna

Holy Saturday

In silence...

...the earth awaits the Resurrection.

Good Friday

I'm sorry I couldn't find an attribution for this on the web.  If it's your picture I apologize.  (I sort of doubt it though, it looks like it was probably painted two or three hundred years ago.)

Have you ever wondered why "Good" Friday?  I mean, this is the day the Lord was crucified.  It was a terrible day in every sense of the word.  The best, most innocent Man that ever lived was murdered in the most painful, humiliating way possible.

Our picture today says it all: the politician who just wants to get on with his life.  The woman to the right who wants to intervene but is being told "There's nothing you can do."  The soldiers, who are bored.  The onlookers, who are mildly impressed by the crowd.  And Christ, who isn't looking at any of them.

He was thinking about you.

I had a friend whose husband got indignant when he watched The Passion a few years ago.  He would, he said, have done something to stop it if he'd been alive back then.  It was all so unfair.

Right he was--it's one of the wonderful and difficult-to-understand ironies of reality that the Lord used the ultimate injustice to pay for His perfect justice.  Fair would have been my friend's husband (and me) paying for our own sins, for eternity, in hell.  We don't want fair.  We need mercy.

On our own we are no better than Pilate; on our own we are one of the mob outside the window, yelling "Crucify Him!"  Unfair?  You bet.  Thank God.

Stop it?  All creation couldn't stop it.  He had twelve legions of angels at His beck-- you think this was some kind of accident?  Nobody took His life from Him.  He laid it down.

He did it for us.

For me.  For you.  Our salvation was part of "the joy set before Him."  When we fix our eyes on Him, we can partake in that joy.

That's what makes it "Good" Friday.

Breanna

{Not for young viewers.}

Holy Thursday

I don't really think it was much like Da Vinci's Last Supper.  For one thing--tablecloths?  I don't know if they used them much in Judea, especially not in small upper-room celebrations of Passover, hastily assembled by fishermen.

Perhaps it was more like this.  Look at the disciples--they seem confused, as who wouldn't be, when the Messiah is in your midst making innovations on a ritual that is as old as Moses.  Not to mention He is talking about dying, and you're beginning to wonder if He means it, after all.  Perhaps it isn't a metaphor.

(I don't think, by the way, that Judas really carried his money out in the open like that--he was a prudent fellow, and not given to what he would consider stupid mistakes with money--nor that John the Beloved fell asleep in the platter of roast lamb.)

We're having lamb tonight, and our own version of a seder plate--spinach, flatbread, apples, and red wine.

We're reading the story of the Exodus, and the story of the Last Supper.

Sit at your table and linger over your wine (or grape juice), sopping up bits of lamb juice with a bit of unleavened bread (tortillas, pitas, whatever if you can't find matzoh).  Imagine the mood, changing from festal and a bit competitive as the disciples find their arguments cut short when He, of all people, starts washing feet.

Judas's feet among the rest.

And then the garden.  He's praying, and you can't keep awake.  You can smell the crushed grass under His sandals when He wakes you.  Torches are guttering in the darkness.  There's the clank of metal, the hiss of a sword exiting its sheath, and then suddenly there's a face you recognize.

(Note: Of course the Romans did not wear sixteenth-century plate mail.  Just look at the faces.  See Peter {or is it supposed to be John?}, behind the Lord?  He's getting ready to square off and fight.  See how the Lord's hands are folded?  He's not resisting arrest.  They're not taking Him, He is choosing to go.)

Everything begins, from the perspective of the disciples, to go wrong.

Everything will continue, to human eyes, to go wrong.  Peter's last stand comes to nothing.  Nobody with government connections can do a thing.  It's even chances whether Christ's followers will be rounded up and imprisoned with him.  For hours you don't know what's happening to Him.

You thought He was coming into His kingdom, but now Palm Sunday seems such a long time ago.

Now it is getting dark.

Tonight we eat roast lamb, we wash feet, and we remember.

Breanna

{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}

{Pretty}

Easter lillies and snapdragons-- I can't think of how to get more springtime for  $4

{Happy}

Buddy, snuggled up with Dollybaby (who is not alive, rest assured) under a quilt Grandma made.  Sometimes Dollybaby is the only way we can lay still long enough to rest.

{Funny}

The kinds of pictures a two-month old takes of himself.

{Real}

Good intentions.  These have been out for 2 days, and not touched, but we're going to do it tonight.  We are at least going to read the story.

Thanks to LMLD for the great idea!

Cheers,

Breanna

Birthdays Should Mean Bananas

Forgive the dark photos.  It's been dim as a Batman movie all day today, what with twisters and rain and the cheapness of a mother who doesn't want to turn on the overhead lights in the daytime.

That's right--birthday written for today, and the other exciting thing on my calendar is "rack mead" (i.e., put in bottles) on Friday.  It doesn't seem super proper to do on the most solemn fast day of the liturgical year, but we aren't drinking it, just putting it in bottles.  Time and fermentation wait for no man.

How does one fast on Good Friday if one is a nursing mother, you may ask?  One has Hot Cross Buns for breakfast, peanut butter sammiches for lunch, and something meatless for supper.  One wracks one's brain to think of a meatless German dish before deciding red beans and rice are more apt to one's surroundings.  Ditto for Holy Saturday, excepting that it's lentil stew instead of beans.  

One is heartily thankful for the marinated lamb scheduled for Holy Thursday and the ham waiting for Easter.

One is not fasting on Wednesday because the Lord saw fit to put a birthday here.

I found a birthday cake without eggs, which has the lovely advantage of making the bowl lickable.  We enjoyed ourselves.

The cups are full of...

...icing.  It is banana-tofu-peanut butter-honey-vanilla, which I made not in a fit of vegan healthfulness but because Buddy loves bananas.  It's a real recipe out of the same cookbook as the awesome eggless chocolate cake.

However, the icing is more of a glaze--runny, a smoothie-like consistency.  Thus, after "frosting" the cake with smoothie, I put the extra in cups and let the kids drink up.  Luckily it tastes really good.  (An advantage of tofu is that it just absorbs the taste of whatever you mix it with.)

One of these days I will accept that I should just buy a cake/cake mix/tub of frosting like everyone else.

Candle pictures when I get them. :)

Cheers,

Breanna