Every Hour

There is an old hymn that has become popular again, as so many fortunately do. My favorite version is by Matt Maher, although the Fernando Ortega version is beautiful and uses the original lyrics

The thing I love about this hymn is that, much to my surprise, it wasn't written out of sorrow or pain but out of love and joy (see below for the story). I love the reminder that we need the Lord even when things are going well and we're full of Joy. How quickly we turn to Him in times of trouble and just as quickly forget to turn to Him when things are good (and by we I mean ME).

Original: I Need Thee Every Hour:        And the Matt Maher, Lord I Need You lyrics:


  I need Thee ev'ry hour,                            Lord, I come, I confess
  Most gracious Lord;                                Bowing here I find my rest
  No tender voice like Thine                       Without You I fall apart
  Can peace afford.                                    You're the One that guides my heart 

  Refrain:
  I need Thee, O I need Thee!                   Lord, I need You, oh, I need You
  Ev'ry hour I need Thee;                           Every hour I need You
  O bless me now, my Saviour!                  My one defense, my righteousness
  I come to Thee.                                      Oh God, how I need You

  I need Thee ev'ry hour;                           Where sin runs deep Your grace is more
  Stay Thou nearby;                                  Where grace is found is where You are
  Temptations lose their pow'r                   And where You are, Lord, I am free
  When Thou art nigh.                               Holiness is Christ in me   

  I need Thee ev'ry hour,                           Lord, I need You, oh, I need You
  In joy or pain;                                         Every hour I need You
  Come quickly and abide,                        My one defense, my righteousness
  Or life is vain.                                         Oh God, how I need You

  I need Thee ev'ry hour;                          Teach my song to rise to You
  Teach me Thy will,                                When temptation comes my way
  And Thy rich promises                           And when I cannot stand I'll fall on You
  In me fulfill.                                            Jesus, You're my hope and stay 

  I need Thee ev'ry hour,                          Lord, I need You, oh, I need You 
  Most Holy One;                                    Every hour I need You
  O make me Thine indeed,                      My one defense, my righteousness
  Thou blessed Son!                                 Oh God, how I need You

  I need Thee, O I need Thee!                  You're my one defense, my righteousness
  Ev'ry hour I need Thee;                          Oh God, how I need You
  O bless me now, my Saviour!                My one defense, my righteousness
  I come to Thee.                                    Oh God, how I need You

Annie Sherwood Hawks tells about the inspiration for this hymn:

'I remember well the circumstances under which I wrote the hymn. It was a bright June day, and I became so filled with the sense of the nearness of my Master that I began to wonder how anyone could live without Him, in either joy or pain. Suddenly, the words I need Thee every hour, flashed into my mind, and very quickly the thought had full possession of me. Seating myself by the open windows, I caught up my pencil and committed the words to paper - almost as they are today.

A few months later Dr. Robert Lowry composed the tune Need, for my hymn and also added the refrain. For myself, the hymn, at its writing, was prophetic rather than expressive of my own experiences, for it was wafted out to the world on the wings of love and joy, instead of under the stress of great personal sorrow, with which it has often been associated.

 At first I did not understand why the hymn so greatly touched the throbbing heart of humanity. Years later, however, under the shadow of a great loss, I came to understand something of the comforting power of the words 1 had been permitted to give out to others in my hours of sweet serenity and peace.'{source}

Showered Again!

What fun it is to be having a baby! Last weekend Blake's family threw us a shower and what fun we had! There were three babies under three months and lots of people came. We received some really great gifts and are feeling very close to 'ready' for this little Pumpkin to come (if you can ever really feel 'ready', that is)! Here are some pictures from this shower.

This cake was soooo good!

Grandma Joan getting in some snuggles with Claire

We received so many great books! Including one that Blake's grandpa wrote and his aunt illustrated!

Heidi and sweet little Finn

Claire, Finn and Lincoln
Claire and Finn were born in February and Lincoln was born April 2nd!

Claire: "Eww, who dropped the diaper bomb!?"    Finn: "I think it was this guy"    Lincoln: "It was me.."

Showered and Thanked

As previously mentioned, I had my first baby shower the Saturday of Easter weekend. It was fun! So many cute outfits and some much appreciated practical things. It was a really nice mix of practical and fun, which was great. Here are some pictures:

We played the 'guess how big my belly is with this piece of yarn' game ... most people were WAAAY off!
(blurry, I know)

My first cloth diaper!

Cute outfits abound! This one is from my aunt Sandy.

My diaper (hand)bag :)

This simple blanket is pretty special to me. My grandma Bonnie made it and it is really similar to the one
that she made me, which was my favorite blanket as a kid. Somehow, this blanket has the same feel
as my old one did (only it feels slightly less worn!)

Flowers from my Grandma S.

The favor I took home :)

The party favors, or what was left of them after the party anyway.

Onesie confetti... isn't it cute :)

The following week was my spring break... oh glorious spring break. This one was a little different than last year! I'm surprised to say that I hardly touched my computer, I think maybe once I opened it up to edit pictures, only to realize the pictures were still on the memory card in my camera, which was across the room. So I just turned it off. I'm guiltily admitting that I hardly touched my camera as well [inserting guilty admission to photo challenge friends here. Yes, I had an entire week to get caught up on prompts... but zero inspiration]. So. What DID I do during spring break?

Well, lets be honest. I slept in. I'm awake a lot during the night, so I was usually awake when Blake left and could have easily gotten out of bed, but instead I stayed and felt Pumpkin roll around until I fell back asleep, telling myself something like 'I deserve this' or 'I might as well get extra sleep while I can'. It. was. glorious.

And somewhat unproductive. Productivity is what makes time stick in my brain, so an unproductive week turns in to only a few days and I leave the week thinking... where did the time go!?

My primary project for spring break was to get as many thank you cards made as I could. For some reason, a store bought thank you card just doesn't feel adequate in expressing the gratitude I have for all the people that want to shower us with baby gifts. I feel like I need to put a little heart into the card so they know how much I appreciate their thoughtfulness. Why.. I don't know. I sure don't feel any less thanked when I get a store bought card! I'm going to blame it on pregnancy hormones. So without further adieu, here is a sample of the cards I made. It was really fun! I enjoyed coming up with different ways of doing them and really enjoyed the assembly once all the cutting was out of the way.

Re-purposing the onesie confetti ;)

These ones had various background papers, all some kind of pink pattern.

I also ended up putting a single pearl on the collar of these, but didn't get a picture of it.

I also enjoyed the nice weather by being outside some and getting a few walks in; and I did the usual stuff like grocery shop, keep the house clean, make dinner etc. The week at home completely and utterly made me so excited for summer and the switch to being a stay at home mom/wife (we'll see how many weeks Pumpkin gives me to be a stay at home wife). This week was a little sweeter knowing that it's close to the last time I'll have the house to myself! I imagine it will take some time of adjusting to life with an infant before I have as peaceful of a week at home as spring break was ;)! Really though, it would be boring to have too many days to myself, so whenever little Pumpkin makes her entrance is fine with me (provided it is preferably after school is out and at the very least after 37 or more weeks gestation).

The Power (and Peril) of Praise

This article was just too good not to share. I'll warn you, it's long (five web pages). I'll also summarize for you, but would encourage you to read it for yourself too. I liked how they didn't just reference a study and leave it at that, they really followed through and wrapped up the topic.

How Not to Talk to Your Kids: The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids -- New York Magazine

The article starts out looking at the difference between praising a student's intelligence and praising their effort. The first study they reference discovered that students praised for their intelligence often gave up on or avoided new challenges and did quite poorly when given a challenge. The students that were praised for their effort took on new challenges and tried harder - usually doing better.

“Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” Dweck [the researcher] explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.” In follow-up interviews, Dweck discovered that those who think that innate intelligence is the key to success begin to discount the importance of effort. I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to put out effort. Expending effort becomes stigmatized—it’s public proof that you can’t cut it on your natural gifts.

The article goes on to discuss praise as it relates to self-esteem, and the effects of the 'self-esteem movement' which espouses that "praise, self-esteem, and performance rise and fall together" (you know, the 'everyone gets a trophy' movement). 

After reviewing those 200 studies, Baumeister concluded that having high self-esteem didn’t improve grades or career achievement. It didn’t even reduce alcohol usage. And it especially did not lower violence of any sort. (Highly aggressive, violent people happen to think very highly of themselves, debunking the theory that people are aggressive to make up for low self-esteem.) At the time, Baumeister was quoted as saying that his findings were “the biggest disappointment of my career.”
Now he’s on Dweck’s side of the argument, and his work is going in a similar direction: He will soon publish an article showing that for college students on the verge of failing in class, esteem-building praise causes their grades to sink further. Baumeister has come to believe the continued appeal of self-esteem is largely tied to parents’ pride in their children’s achievements: It’s so strong that “when they praise their kids, it’s not that far from praising themselves."

The article brings it back home with a discussion about how we should praise and reward our kids. It ties back into the initial suggestion that praising the effort or the process is more effective and productive than praising the outcome or their intelligence. By praising kids differently, or rather by praising them specifically, we can help them build their cognitive and problem solving skills and teach them that persistence does pay off. There's reward in trying and not just in winning.

Cloninger has trained rats and mice in mazes to have persistence by carefully not rewarding them when they get to the finish. “The key is intermittent reinforcement,” says Cloninger. The brain has to learn that frustrating spells can be worked through. “A person who grows up getting too frequent rewards will not have persistence, because they’ll quit when the rewards disappear.”

-----


This rings true with what I know from being a speech therapist. Have you ever seen a completely prompt-dependent kid? They don't even think about what they're doing/saying, they just watch your face for cues of praise and land on the closest thing once they see it. We've taught them not to think but to look for the reward (but that is fairly rare, thankfully). I've also noticed this when assessing students and the difference between the effort put out when you tell a kid, "I like how hard you are trying" or "I like how you looked at all the pictures" vs just saying, "you're so smart, you're doing great". I'm reminded of neurological studies of dementia patients that show that even in a state of deterioration, the brain can still learn new things. Regardless of our innate intelligence capacity, our brains are amazingly designed to keep learning.

This also strikes a tone with my personal values. I've never bought into the idea that giving everyone a trophy was going to make the world a better place. I don't really think that making everyone feel good produces better work ethics, and I think that learning from our clearly defined mistakes is a valuable part of life, academic and personal. I'm also a believer that positive self-esteem is a mask for empty pride and that we shouldn't 'believe in ourselves' as much as we believe in God (Proverbs 3:5 comes to mind).

I know there is balance in all things, and we can't walk around living like doormats. However, my value isn't found in my opinion of myself but is found in God's opinion of me - and although humbling, it is also pretty encouraging. He unconditionally loves me even though I don't deserve it, and walking around with that in your head will get you farther than believing in yourself. Knowing that God finds value in you gives you a purpose and success is found not in achievements but in dependence on and reflection of Him. This is really the kind of praise I want my kids to get: praise that builds their character, teaches them to put others first and to live by a higher standard than one they or the world sets. Praise that teaches them to persist in all that life brings (academic or otherwise) and in faith and to trust in their Creator.

Anyway, very interesting and worth the read!

Fixated

I'm trying not to use the word 'obsessed' here. An obsession implies an extreme focus on something, usually with some anxiety. I don't have the anxiety piece, just the extreme focus. So instead I've decided I'm easily fixated.

I realized the other day that this time last year, I was obsessed fixated on getting my camera. I spent all of my discretionary time looking up reviews on cameras and lenses and reading photography blogs. It's not to say that photography doesn't take up any of my discretionary time anymore, but rarely is it a fixation (unless I'm in the middle of making a photobook or editing a batch of pictures). I occasionally read a photo blog post or forum, but usually just to answer a specific question.

My latest fixation is cloth diapering, but it changes every few weeks. Not long ago it was carseats and stroller combos, and not long before that it was my weight. Moving on from one obsession fixation to another and back again isn't uncommon. Understandably, I'm fixated on all things baby. Whether it's reading reviews as I work on our baby registry, or reading about natural labor strategies or breastfeeding tips or knitting patterns... my brain is baby focused these days.

I've decided that my brain works in a divide and conquer fashion of acquiring information and a little bit all-or-nothing. I'm either obsessed fixated on the subject and thus it consumes my thoughts until I feel like I have a good handle on the information, or I don't really get into it at all.

I say this to make myself feel better and to keep from feeling like I'm flighty or fickle. It's not that I move from topic to topic because I lose interest (although I have found myself moving on from a topic because I didn't find enough good information), it's because I've established the level of understanding that I decided was necessary for the time being. Sometimes I revisit a fixation because I realize there is more to learn than I originally thought I needed.

Take cloth diapering for example. About a year ago I did the research and chose a brand (if you've ever looked into cloth diapering, you realize what a battle just choosing a brand is). I also looked into systems for washing, which detergent is ideal for us and systems for cloth wipes. After that I was satisfied, until I decided we would try cloth diapering from newborn on (we are going to use a one-size pocket diaper, which doesn't fit until about 10 lbs... I don't plan on having a 10 lb baby). That meant a whole new look at the cloth diapering world and the pros (leakage protection) and cons (cost) of a set of smaller diapers. Most people use disposables until their kids fit into their cloth system.. but I'm feeling up for the challenge after the first week or two (after the 'black tar' has passed). Right now I'm thinking we'll use prefolds and covers (more traditional cloth diapers) but I might get a few newborn pocket diapers too if I can find them used or at a really decent price.

I don't mind that my brain works this way, but it is interesting to analyze it.

I wonder what I'll be obsessing about fixated on this time next year?

My History Lessons

My cousin did this on her blog and I instantly wanted to copy the idea. I didn't do it very instantly, but I'm finally getting around to it. School starts tomorrow and in honor of the last day of summer break I'm going through my elementary school history.

Me playing Jill of Jack and Jill

Kindergarten
School: Yacolt Primary
Teacher: Mrs. Harp
Memories: I loved kindergarten and Mrs Harp was the quintessential kinder teacher. We played with cardboard brick-looking blocks and had a 'house' center that I loved to pretend to cook in. We made tons of fun art projects and on the last day of school, after all the students left and my mom and I were in Mrs. Harp's room (which was special), I lost my first tooth.

First Grade
School: Yacolt Primary
Teacher: Mrs. Miller
Memories: This year I was out in a brown portable. I don't remember much from this year except getting my hair cut with my awesome owl scissors by another student.

Second Grade
School: Yacolt Primary
Teacher: Mrs. Belt
Memories: I remember making peanut butter dough to break into little balls and use in learning my times tables. I just remember that it was so delicious and after we were done using it for math, we got to take it home with us and eat it. I remember eating most of it while waiting for my brother to be done with tae kwon do.

First day of school

Third Grade 
School: Yacolt Primary
Teacher: Mrs. Belt/Mom
Memories: I think this was the year (and maybe last year too) that I was home schooled part time and went to school part time. I also remember making a diorama of the solar system. This year my class was a 2/3 split and I remember I enjoyed helping the second graders with their work. I also remember doing almost anything I could to avoid recess. At home we did all kinds of hands-on learning, specifically during a pioneer unit. Things like making our own butter and washing clothes on a wash-board.

Working hard.

Fourth Grade
School: Homeschool in Wyoming/Yacolt Primary
Teacher: Mom/Mrs. Cushing
Memories: This year we moved to Wyoming for part of the year, and we were homeschooled. In WY we lived in this tiny little town that had a tiny little library. It was always a treat to walk down to the library and get to rent a new movie, most of which were John Wayne movies. When we moved back to Washington I was in Mrs. Cushing's class. We studied the Iditarod race and followed it very closely, I think because she was from Alaska.

Nap time, even in fifth grade.

Fifth Grade 93-94
School: Home/Immanuel Lutheran
Teacher: My mom/Mr. Barenclau & Mrs. B.
Memories: I loved being home schooled. My mom also babysat my best friend's little brother (who's mother was a teacher) and it was the best motivation ever to get my work done early. During this year  I also went to Idaho and finished the last month or so of the school year there. I had two teachers there and don't remember one of their names, just that they both started with a B. I remember feeling like going to the private school didn't matter, since in my mind, I had already done 5th grade at home with my mom. So I wasn't too worried about learning. In turns out that my teachers somehow thought that I was living with my cousins because my parents didn't want me and my poor motivation was because of that! We never did figure out where they got that impression.

Sixth Grade 94-95
School: Longview Christian
Teacher: Mrs. Schmunk
Memories: This was my favorite year of school. I made friends that I still have today and learned several life lessons. I loved my teacher and her love for teaching inspired me. She was the first person that ever insisted on calling me Jillian. I always liked my full name but my family and friends had only ever called me Jill. Mrs. Schmunk liked Jillian too, and I loved that she used it. It was in sixth grade that I realized I liked being the teacher's pet, and I liked being a good student. This year set the stage for the rest of my academic career.

Down Time

The funniest thing about this summer has been how busy I felt. The first part was busy with moving and then unpacking. After that it was busy with getting used to cleaning this big house and training for the big hike. I also started a new job and suddenly we found ourselves up to our eyeballs in weeds (I had no idea how much time we'd spend weeding!).

I don't know where the time went, but I can tell you where the time didn't go... here! I feel like I have barely spent any time at my computer. Not that this is a bad thing, but it's just very different than how I thought my summer would go.

All-in-all, it was a fantastic summer, and I'm so, so, so, SO grateful for the month plus that I had off. I can guarantee that we wouldn't be as unpacked as we are if that hadn't been the case. I also got to spend some great time with our neighbors and really felt like I could stay on top of things around the house. Most importantly, it was also a complete and total blessing to feel like a real wife again.

The down side to staying on top of things around the house and being a real wife was that I felt like I needed to justify and account for every minute of each day. It was an unexpected outcome of not working. I thought I'd nonchalantly get some housework done and then spend the rest of the time getting and staying caught up on my hobbies. Instead, I found that I felt really guilty if I took any time for myself.

When I started working in July, even though it was only 4-5 hours/day at first (turned into closer to full time by the end), I felt like I could justify sitting down for an hour before getting started on the dishes and dinner. I would usually spend this time reading my book study book or getting caught up on photo editing, but felt really guilty if I spent idle time on the computer.

It was an interesting lesson about myself. Someday I'll stay home with kids and this summer has made me realize that I'll have to be very purposeful in carving out some time for myself. Otherwise, between my own guilt and the needs of kids.. I'll shift my workaholic tendencies and never take a moment for my sanity.

So.. How did I do on my summer goals? Here's my summer progress report:

1. Learn Spanish - Super fail. This required too much sitting in front of the computer. Oh well!
2. Read Through the Bible in 90 Days - Almost met! I was scheduled to finish on August 31, but currently I'm a bit behind.
3. Organize - Met! I feel like I had time, and took the time, to get us settled and organized.
4. Training - Met!
5. Be a Better Wife - sounds conceited but: Met!
6. Daily Photography Challenge - Met! See the photos here and here
7. Knitting - Continue, little progress made.
8. Wake Up - {Mostly} Met!
9. Blog! - {Mostly} Met! Even though it doesn't feel like it, when I look back there are several posts about summer. I'd hoped to do more creative or thoughtful blogging, rather than just the life updates though.
10. TBD - Met! This turned out to be: Enjoy!

And enjoy I did! What a great summer.

July Photo Challenge Part 2

Sorry for the cliche, but can you believe how fast July went! Here are the rest of the pictures for the July photo challenge. I'm happy to say I made it through the month, even if I sometimes got behind on posting pictures. Since this post is mostly pictures, and many of them, I'm putting in a jump, click below to see the rest of the photo challenge pictures.

Garden Update

The garden is thriving! Even in spite of the massive earwig infestation we've been enduring. I discovered a non-toxic way to kill them on-contact, I'll share it at the end. I took these pictures a few days ago and already things have changed.

We've been harvesting more summer squash and zucchini than we can consume, but our neighbors are taking some off our hands now and then. Yesterday Blake and I ate four squash between lunch and dinner, fresh off the grill both times. Tonight, we made stuffed zucchini out of that big one you see in the picture below. It was delicious.

Right now the pile on the counter is a little smaller, but we pull off more each day.

We ate those two tomatoes above, these, and some of their friends with dinner tonight

Our one little pea, the plant is only about 8" tall so we're pleasantly surprised
that it could produce anything yet. Today we found two more!? 

This little cucumber got a little bigger, and we ate it with those
tomatoes in a little Greek salad. 

Clockwise starting with the cabbage, onions, celery, okra, eggplant and Thai chilies. 

More eggplant, cucumber, strange bean plant with red flowers, tiny peas and pole beans.
These were all late planters or replants thanks to the rabbits.

Three varieties of peppers and our mess of tomatoes.

Our goofy cauliflower and broccoli, out of five plants only one looks normal, beets, carrots and artichoke. 

Butternut squash!! This plant is HUGE and there are tiny to medium little squash all over it. 

Acorn squash!! Same situation as the butternut, we are going to be up to our eyeballs.

The massive bramble of squash plants and the corn.. oh man.

Yams and potatoes! Not 100% sure what to do with these but hopefully we'll find something in that dirt later.

We also have some adorable little watermelons and cantaloupe developing overnight. Yesterday we found a melon the size of an eyeball (the rest are about marble size) and today it was the size of a chicken egg!! I didn't get pictures of it, but man they are cute :). I think we'll have an easier time sharing the plethora of melon than we will with the squash.

We are mostly flying by the seat of our pants with this garden, but we're learning a lot about what to do next year. We're also getting some nice sun burns tans and have discovered that weeding is a compulsion more than a chore or passion.

: :

Non-toxic Earwig Spray: 1 Tablespoon of non-toxic dish soap - I use Method brand - and 50 oz of water. I put it in a hand held pump sprayer just for that purpose. Blake and I go out at night with our head lamps and catch the little devils in the act. They are on everything! We just spray them and within 6-10 seconds they stop moving. After several nights in a row of spraying them while they're out and about, we've noticed a significant reduction in their numbers. They did some serious damage to a row of our corn, but the other plants seem to be bouncing back. So far, the soap doesn't seem to hurt any of the plants. While I was testing out the ratio of soap to water, we had a few pretty sudsy batches, and we rinsed those plants down with water just in case.

Old School Wine Tasting

What a crazy experience this was! It took everything I thought I knew about wine (granted, that isn't too much) and turned it upside down! 

Blackwood Canyon Winery does what they call, Old School Tasting (by appointment only). They make Burgundian style wine, which is different than our traditional American or 'New World' wines. These wines are processed and fermented in a totally different way and for SO much longer. We tasted 19 year old wine from a barrel that would still need to sit in there for another ten years! The other notable 'old world' difference in this style of wine was that it could, and should, be left open for months on end. In (what I now know as) American wine, you can't leave a bottle open for more than a few days. Burgundian wine is what you see in decanters, sitting on someone's table in an old movie. It not only lasts months but gets better the longer its open. 

I have to say that I enjoyed some late harvest syrah and some of the other red wines we tasted, but I can't say that I enjoyed many of the Burgundian style of white wines. We started tasting whites and at first I wasn't sure these people knew what they were doing.. except who was I to say! 

Once we got into the reds, I could see the wine behind the acid and started to really enjoy the wine when it came to tasting the ports and what would become ports. 

It was truly the most unique wine tasting tour we've ever taken, and hands down the most extensive tasting we've ever done. We got a nice tasting at the counter with food pairings and then we toured and tasted wine out of the barrels that were sitting outside (!!) among the grape vines.

Truly an experience that felt like stepping back in time and far from the usual pretentious wine tasting trip!