February Review ✽ Hello March

Highlights:

-Daddy and Mama's anniversary :).

-Enjoying some fellowship with a few families from our church.

-Realizing that if I wanted to make chocolate frosting instead of popcorn or chocolate for my snack, I could. I was like, I want frosting, but I don't have time to make a cake.... wait, why make a cake? Lol! 

-Valentine's Day. We always do a little bible study with the story of Isaac and Rebecca, and Daddy gives us each chocolate and roses, and then we do pizza and a movie (we watched the new "Pete's Dragon", and it was actually really cute, but nothing like the first one, lol!)

Daddy during our bible study: "What was Rebecca doing?"
Emmi: "Working."
"What was Isaac doing?"
Josiah: "FINDING HIS KINGDOM."

A little later: "What are we supposed to be focused on?"
Correct answer would have been, you now, the Lord, but Josiah yelled very confidently: "CHOCOLATE!"
Haha. Speaking of chocolate, he refused to eat his fruit filled chocolates. He mashed all of them with his thumb to see what was in them, licked the fruit filling, and was like, this does not go in chocolate, it is gross. So he got a couple chocolate kisses, too.

-Getting to help out at both special needs respites this month, and hearing of another that I may be able toy get involved in. I'm loving helping out with these! Although I have never had so many names I actually needed to remember thrown at me at once, and I'm having such a hard time with them, and it's really bothering me, because knowing people's names is super important to me. Actually, knowing any name is important to me. I felt so bad for forgetting a friend's cat's name one time. Lol1

-Getting to make that bunny hat that I have wanted to make for so long :). Really loved that! I've been able to do so much crafting this month; I just finished another set today, but it's a surprise, so I'll wait to share it :).

-Mama inviting me to study Ephesians with her :). A couple years ago a friend and I read through Ephesians together, and we decided someday we would study Colossians together, because the two books are so similar. We did Colossians 3 last month (which has the most similarities, I think), and then right after Mama asked if I wanted to do Ephesians, and it's fun, because it's like I've come full circle, and it brings even more out when you can compare the two :). While we're going through it, I went through and read all the references for Ephesians, and it was actually a pretty involved church in the NT. Now I want to study all the other churches and see if they were mentioned as much, and it just gets lost in all the places and names, or if Ephesus really was a bigger part of everything, haha :).

-Driving to Walmart WITHOUT running into a pole (I never have yet, but it came close once)... haha!

-Having a several hours long chat with my best friend. It was such a blessing! I love how we can go without talking for a while and then talk for hours; and yet if it's only been a few days, we can talk for forever if we get the chance, too. Andrew was tired of waiting for me to get off the phone, though, haha...

-Mama finding a new youtube channel (Summit Kids) with songs for children that have scripture truths in them, and the little ones, even Josiah, singing along to them every night when I watch music videos with them. It hasn't even been a week and Peter has already memorized the choruses, he's too cute with them stuck in his head, hahaha!

Laughing at:

-The fact that William Tyndale had a friend offer to buy all of Tyndale's bibles for a hostile lord, so that this guy could burn them. He paid Tyndale's friend for giving him that pleasure, this friend then went to Tyndale and they printed 3 times as many bibles with that money. I don't remember that story at all, but it is literally priceless, haha! Nothing shall prevail against God's word and His will!

-Me, teasing Josiah:
"Nooooo, I think you're a bug." *pokes the bugs on his pj shirt*
Josiah: "No, I'm not. I'm just a jamma bug thing." *pauses, realizes that came out wrong* "I have a jamma bug thing. See?"

-Reading through 2 Chronicles in our family bible time, and Daddy getting to the part about King Josiah. We all looked at Josiah to see how he'd take that, and he was asleep.
The second night, chapter 2 on King Josiah: Joey is once again asleep.
The third night, Josiah is awake, but Daddy says, "Funny, he's just called "the king" for like the first 17 verses."
Josiah at about verse 16: *eyelids dropping shut* He never did get to hear it.
And he goes to sleep soooooo fast when he wants!!! He likes for me to be in his room when he goes to sleep. If I leave without snuggling him, I hear he stays awake for a few minutes, but if I agree to lay with him for a minute, he tells me goodnight, very determinedly closes his eyes, and is actually asleep in about 75 seconds. I'm so jealous.

Quotes I liked:

-"He was a brave Lordling, and we need his like: a new weapon of the old metal" -Tolkien Reader, Beorthtnoth (I actually liked this story least out of the book, but I LOVED that "new weapon, old metal" analogy!)

"[Children's] books like their clothes should allow for growth, and their books at any rate should encourage it" -J. R. R. Tolkien

"Let me reckon my old life dead because of crucifixion,
and never feed it as a living thing.
Grant me to stand with my dying Savior,
to be content to be rejected,
to be willing to hold unpopular truthes,
and to hold fast despised teachings until death.
Help me to be resolute and Christ-contained.
Never let me wander from the path of obedience to thy will.
Strengthen me for the battles ahead." -"The Valley of Vision"


Reading:

-"God in a Manger"... because I never finished it at Christmas, lol. I did, like, no optional things during Christmas, haha.

-"The Tolkien Reader", a small collection of stories and essays by Tolkien. I enjoyed this one :).

-Matthew Henry's commentary on Ephesians to go along with our study. I love his commentaries, it just takes a while to get through them, haha :). So much depth -which is a good thing!

I feel like I read a good bit this month (compared to how little I had been doing of it), but I didn't add much to my list. I've still been reading "Foxe's Book of Martyrs", because I didn't finish that last month, and I'm continuing to go through "The Valley of Vision", but that's about it. I'm just happy to have it back as a part of regular life again. I had so many things out of balance, and I'm just trying to egg back to a more consistent way to go about all the lovely things that life holds!

Fails:

-Mama asks me if Polycarp was martyred or just persecuted, before we start a movie about him.
Me, who had just started Foxe's Book of Martyrs, internally: "martyred. oh, but wait, there was that one guy who was just persecuted. that might have been polycarp. now i don't remember."
Me, out loud: "I'm not sure."
Movie starts, and they come to take him.
Me, internally: "drat it. i knew that's how it happened, why didn't i say so?"

I'm sitting on my bed answering emails, Andrew brings me so food.
*pulls the lid off my yogurt*
*goes to take a drink of my yogurt*
Ambrielle, WHAT are you doing, something is wrong with me.

That letter writing challenge I was going to join? Yeah, I wrote 22 letters or cards. I missed six. This is why I never join any challenges. Even the ones that are completely easy and part of my every day life anyway, I somehow end up missing. I HAVE other letters to answer, even, I just haven't found the time to sit down and do them, because once I start I can't stop, and so I didn't finish. Oh well, I'll write the other six, and I'll be glad that I at least gave it a shot. Lol!

-Getting Christmas posts up. I give up, y'all. I'm scrapbooking them instead, and I'll try to do better with my time this next Christmas, and actually do something with myself, ha.

Also, I fail at winning Monoploy Deal. I can't do it. Tori beats me 70% of the time, and the other 30% it's usually someone else...

Grateful for:

-Lemon juice (it makes the fruit tea we drink even better!) Josiah was funny when I first put it in, though. He usually helps me prepare the tea; throws away the tea bags, watches me pour in the ACV, puts the spoon in the sink. He saw me pouring lemon juice in, and he asked me, "What is that even?"
-Noah <3. The little guy is just such a snuggle bug, I love him so much!!! He's a doll. And he loves his feet, haha :).
-Waking up early enough many mornings lately to enjoy listening to the birds singing in the morning. And be productive and have that first little time of quiet to do my bible study, and various other reasons, but hearing the birds singing in the morning and hearing trains at night are two of my favorite favorite "little" noises, and that first morning in forever when I woke up that early again, I was so delighted.
-That Mama knew to give everybody activated charcoal and grape juice when Abbi got a stomach bug. Either it's a really weird coincidence (I don't think she could have been that sick and it's not really be something), or the stuff really works, because nobody else has caught it!
-All the wonderful things that have happened this month :).
-That we are saved by grace as the gift of God.
-That I, as a gentile, was welcomed into the family of God by Christ's sacrifice on my behalf.
-Our new bed spreads :)! Our old ones were looking pretty bad, and these new ones are a lighter color and really brighten up the room. Ad they're cute. I love them :). We went with "matching" ones again, except we each chose a different color of the same print, so that is fun :).
-That Daddy left FCS several years ago to join LifeWay. Now that FCS is closing, it's a big blessing not to be going through that uprooting that so many families are going to be going through now. It's so sad.
-Bibles in different translations, to compare and study.
-All my pillows, haha.
-Finding children's books I used to love that I didn't know we still had, and getting to read them to my little siblings.
-Words, reading, and writing.
-Letters and emails, so I can keep up with friends who are far away (the phone, too, although I don't use it that much).
-Peter's spontaneous hugs.
-People who ask how they can pray for you <3.

I hope you all have had a wonderful month!
Rejoicing in Hope,
Bri :)