Abortion vs. cat 'murders'
I love cats as much as anyone, but HOW can anyone not see the huge inconsistency here?

Abortion vs. cat 'murders'

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This Guy IS for Real!

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Concerned Women for America - History of Abortion
It's beyond me, how anyone can see abortion as anything but murder. Or how anyone can see Margaret Sanger as a champion of women. If you believe either to be true, I challenge you to read the history.

Concerned Women for America - History of Abortion

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The Challenge


For 30 days: NO listening to negative people, and NO saying ANYTHING
negative about anyone.

Simple enough, right? Try it sometime and see if you make the same discovery I have in the last few days. Watch the video I posted here a few days ago... "Stop It!" and employ that simple technique every time you find yourself hearing, saying or even thinking anything negative about anyone. What I have discovered is that THE most negative person in my life is ME... and I don't mean talking negative about other people so much as negative SELF talk!!! I knew I was bad, but I never dreamed I was this bad!

Optimism is a crucial choice we make in establishing expectations for ourselves and others as we begin to move forward through adversity. ~Christopher Novak
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I would rather be outside...
I love being outdoors when the only sounds I can hear are the wind, the birds and the neighbours' livestock. It's funny... when all the kids were still at home I spent a lot of time with my headphones on, because my music would drown out all distractions, then slip into the background itself while I focused on my writing or other tasks. But now, with the girls gone and the boys at school all day, I seldom even have my music on, let alone my headphones... even when the boys are home and it gets noisy. I have never ever taken my music with me on a walk or a bike ride.

Both Ian and I are bad at teaching the kids to do something instead of doing it ourselves... except, in my case, where I get desperate and really need them to do something. I think one reason Nathaniel is so close to his big sisters is that they were like little mamas to him, helping a fair bit in caring for him when he was little. Every summer I think I am going to make the boys do their share in weeding the garden... and every summer Ian and I do it all. Perhaps it's because both of us like that solitary time out there. But this year the garden is bigger, and it's past time they did their share. They spend too much time indoors in the summertime anyway. But for right now, I am content to be out there while the boys peel potatoes and make a salad.
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Gardening
Ian and I have to be the most inept gardeners ever... and yet we keep at it year after year.

Dad and Mom Flewelling lived near Consort AB, not far from the Saskatchewan border. In their vast garden and orchard they grew apples, plums, raspberries, red currants, black currants, pincherries, gooseberries, strawberries, rhubarb, mint, and just about every vegetable you can think of and then some. They saved their own seeds from year to year. I wish we could get German fingers (small, skinny, long golden fleshed potatoes that she baked) and a few other delicacies I've never seen anywhere else.

My mom never grew a garden. Her younger sister did, and they have always lived near each other and been close friends. I think my mom lacked the confidence to try.

My first acquaintance with a garden was during the one year I was on staff at Prairie Bible Institute. I roomed with two other young women on staff or faculty, in a little white bungalow not far from campus. They had already planted the garden before I moved in with them after grad and spring semester. That was also my first experience with zucchini... and with slugs.

One would think a jack-of-all-trades like Ian would have picked up enough gardening know-how from his mom that we would be successful gardeners by now. And he certainly knows more than I do. But every year we end up with a garden that's mediocre at best, and sometimes little more than a poorly producing jungle.

I seem to have inherited a liberal dose of my mom's lack of confidence. I would rather let Ian start the plants in the winter and plant the garden in the spring. That way if it doesn't work out well, I can feel sorry for him instead of beating myself up. :-P

And I did feel sorry for him last night. He'd started several flats of plants in April, some of which didn't even germinate, while others grew so long and spindly they had flopped over. Last week I carried them from the spare room window, and put them out on the deck. Ian kept saying we should wait to put them in the garden till there was no more talk of frost... because it's been such a cold spring, and we are not equipped for covering plants if it does freeze. Last night he brought them in from the deck and put them on the living room floor... but he was extremely discouraged because they were looking pretty puny and sickly.

I felt so bad, knowing how much time and effort he has already put into the indoor plants, that I determined to get out there and transplant them myself. Risky... I do not have a green thumb... but they were destined for the compost heap anyway, so why not give it a try?

They're looking pretty bedraggled. But by sundown tonight it looked like some of the small plants are going to make it... and possibly five of the six squash or cucumber plants. And the transplanted rose branches are still standing tall and straight, and the leaves are not the least bit wilted.
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Nuggets from Michael Dlouhy
A brand new day... a brand new week... a brand new month. The perfect day to get my teeth into these and never let them go... except of course to savour, swallow and digest.

"How many people are going through life trying to be someone they're not, to please someone else?"

"Love yourself first. Achieve your goal because YOU want it."

"Don't allow the negative self-talk. Old habits are not reality. Protect yourself from those who would suck you dry or spit in your eye."

"The only way to own your life is to grow into the person God intended you to be. Slow down the chatter in your mind so you can find out who you are."

And the real gold nugget for me, as I keep in mind that what GOD thinks is even more important...

"It is none of my business what other people think of me. The only thing that's my business is what I think of myself."
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Sleeping Sickness Strikes
This morning I woke up with a headache and a heavy headed feeling that would not go away. I went to church anyway, and the fellowship dinner afterward. We got back home at 3:00. Right away I lay down on the couch, and didn't get up till 8:30!!

As it turns out, I wasn't the only one. Timothy slept for an hour, Andrew slept for several hours and is now sleeping on the couch because he is sick, and James is sleeping more than usual because of his work schedule.

Now I have to stay up for two more hours to take the bread out of the bread maker. I wish I could just go to bed. Oh well... Ian forgot to buy bread the other day, and I didn't know it, and we have to have bread for lunches...

Nasty headache. I wish it would go away.

Tomorrow I'll finish digging up the flower garden. And, since we got a bit of rain tonight, the garden will likely need to be weeded. Gotta keep these lazy muscles working if I'm ever going to lose the excess weight I've regained over the last year or two... and keep it off.
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Driving
The day I can go for my road test is approaching fast, so I asked Ian if I could drive us ALL the way to a church in the southwest Edmonton, to attend a piano recital. I was driving the van, so didn't have to worry about shifting gears... and though I drove on busy highways and through construction, I didn't have to drive in the city itself. I almost made it all the way there too. Missed by a couple of minutes because Ian forgot where to tell me to turn. The construction threw him off, plus the fact that we were coming from a different direction. He had me pull over and he drove the last two miles.

After the recital, Raewyn and Vicki asked if we could all go to West Edmonton Mall, taking a friend with us. We spent several hours mall walking and standing around.

Yesterday's garden work was an insult to my injury the day before from bike riding, and today the stiffness and soreness progressed with the hours of the day. I am so grateful for a husband who is quick to lend me his arm when I need it.

I drove the van most of the way to Westlock, where we dropped the girls off and picked James up. He drove the van home from there, and I drove the car. One of these days we'll get ourselves coordinated so that Ian can take James out practising in the car enough that we won't have to keep switching vehicles.
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Flower Bed
I rode to cemetery and back yesterday. Only ten miles, but it was about four miles too far. My tailbone throbs every time I move, and my knees, hips and lower back are all giving me pepper. Still, I'm tackling the flower bed in front of the house.

I don't know if I'll ever get my rosebushes I've been asking for every year. I have one left out of the original four. A second one makes a valiant attempt every summer, only to be chewed to the ground every time by the neighbours' goats. I don't know why they like that one and not the other. It's disheartening and perhaps an unwise use of our money to buy more, but I want flowers there... preferably perennials. Not peonies, much as I like them, because we already have an ant problem.

Ian also says all the dirt along the front of the house is sinking, most likely due to the lack of eavestroughing resulting in a steady fall of water all along the roof. I'm not sure how soon we'll be able to do something about that, but in the meantime there's no point in letting the dandelions and crab grass take over the flower bed. So that's my project for today.
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How You Take It...
"Life is ten percent what you make it and ninety percent how you take it." ~Ben Franklin
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Stop It!

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Western Tanager
We are totally inundated with birds now that spring is here at last. For the past six weeks we've had flock after flock of birds staying a week or so at a time as they rest before migrating further north. Last week we were delighted to see four pairs of western tanagers. This is only the second time Ian and I have seen them... and the other time was twenty years ago! And a friend who has lived in this area all her life, saw her FIRST tanager ever, last Saturday.
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Accepting Compliments
“An inability to accept a compliment only feeds your fear of accepting yourself for who you really are, and criticizes someone else's option at the same time. You both lose the opportunity to connect and to be seen for the gifts that you are.”

~ Rhonda Britten
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Glasses
Andrew and Timothy got their eyes checked this afternoon, for the first time in a while. Andrew's vision is fine, but Timothy needs glasses.
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Sunnies and barbies and mozzies... oh my!
At church today we met the most delightful couple from Australia. They have a children's ministry with music, Bible stories and memory verses, a puppet show, etc. They have worked among the orphans and the destitute in Cambodia, Thailand and other countries, and among the aboriginal children in their own country. They've been in North America for a couple of months, and are currently spending time with her sister who was in need of help. Her sister attends our sister church in Morinville, 25 miles away.

Our family got to spend some more informal time with them when we are all invited out for supper at the home of another church family... where we were educated on "proper" English by being introduced to such things as sunnies, barbies, mozzies and tellies.
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Quick Trip
I was not going to go to the city with Ian and the girls today. But I'm glad I did. I thought we would only have time for a quick hello/goodbye with Cheryl before and after Raewyn's appointment. But the client who was to follow Raewyn cancelled at the last minute, so the four of us went out for coffee with Cheryl.

The girls wanted to go to West Edmonton Mall, where we had supper, and went to HMV and Chapters. We went up to what used to be called Silver City, to see what movies were playing. By this time it was 9:00pm, and there was nothing worth staying in the city a couple more hours for. But we were just in time for the fire-breathing dragon!

Even without the movie, it was late when we got home. Not such a quick trip after all...
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Just Plain Funny
Library Thing
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Say what?
One young man's summation of his brother:

"You are a perfect combination of sarcasm, satiricalism and annoyance. It's as if you found the precise spot where the three meet, and you're balancing on that point with one foot, with your arms and your other leg hanging over."

Woah. Life does get interesting around here at times. We've never allowed our kids to get physical with one another, but they sure know how to fight using brain power!
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Too Quiet
The boys are in school... Ian has returned to work after almost a week off... and the cats are at the clinic. I am all alone.

Definitely too quiet.
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From Shaggy Dog to Poodle
I got my hair cut and permed today, thus morphing from a shaggy dog to a poodle!!! Or... Kurly Kate. I don't much like it yet, but am sure I will once the curls relax a little.
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Christmas and Caterpillars
"You want to go to town to buy what??" asked Ian.

"Shorts!" I replied as we both looked out the window at the swirling white flakes. "Shorts and jeans."

I need something comfortable, i.e. that isn't a knit, and that fits, for riding my bike.

Merry Christmas!! :D I know a few people who wish they could pull the blinds and not look outside! But then they still have to drive home from work or school.....

Gotta love Alberta weather. This reminds of a weather pattern some years back. Three years out of five, in the late 80s/early 90s, we had a heavy snowfall in mid-May. Two of those years it was May 14... the other it was May 19. It was during the big forest tent caterpillar infestation that lasted several years. One of those years... '87... spring came early, and the trees were in full foliage by May 12. That was the day I discovered the caterpillars. We were living on an acreage between Onoway and Alberta Beach, in a new subdivision where most of the acreages were undeveloped. It was a lovely day, so I took the kids... Irene (4), James (2) and Raewyn (5 months) for a walk down the road and turned into one of the undeveloped acreages. We sat down on a fallen tree trunk, Raewyn in her stroller, to eat our lunch. It was quiet enough that I became aware of a soft sound as of light rain falling on dry leaves. But the sky was clear. Puzzled, I stood up and focused on the sound... and eventually discovered the trees were alive with teeny tiny black caterpillars munching on the tender new leaves.

We were living in the woods... but two weeks later there was not a leaf to be seen anywhere. They had totally stripped their favourite quaking aspen, and gone on to anything else available. Even the rose bushes were bare. The highway was slippery with them. Our gravel road and driveway were dense with them... a dozen per square foot. In their quest for food, they had begun moving across up our lane and across our front yard... up the front and end walls of the house... down the back wall. They were even on the clothesline! I had to snap the diapers as I took them off the line... and check my pantlegs before I entered the house. The first thing I ever saw five-month-old Raewyn try to put in her mouth was... you guessed it... a caterpillar that found its way into our house. The outside walls of our home were stucco... and I kid you not, there were at least 10,000 of them crawling all over our house at the end of May that year. Ian dug trenches under the living room and bedroom windows to collect the horrid things when they fell off... because there was a pile of them several inches thick all along the front of the house. This way we could bury them, along with the stench that had become all too familiar.

When the heavy snow came that year we welcomed it, thinking it would kill off the caterpillars. But no. Do you know what they did? They congregated, huddling for warmth on twigs, branches and blades of grass, and went in a state of semi-hibernation. When the temperature warmed up again, they were very much alive and as active as ever.

Another fascinating learning experience, only possible when you have close, intimate contact with zillions of something.
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Aptly Spoken
"Welcome to Alberta, the Land of Miracles! Where else will you see the weather change so radically several times per hour?!!" ~ Sandi H.

Aptly spoken this morning, when we watched incredulously as the weather slid from sunshine to rain to sunshine to sleet to snow to sunshine to rain and back to sunshine again, all in the space of an hour!
- posted by Willena @ 11:52 PM (0) comments links to this post

 
Pepper
This coming Thursday we take our three cats in to be spayed. Poor little missies don't know what dreadful passage is ahead for them before they can enjoy the freedom of going outside instead of being cooped up indoors and watching the world go by from the screened windows. But I'll be glad when it's over, because they're driving me nuts right now. Especially Tomoko. That cat is Miss Personality, I tell you. She is the least pretty of the three, but she makes up for it in other ways.

Imagine a cat who leaps up on your back while you are working at the kitchen counter... and you hardly feel her claws, she's so light and agile. Or who digs the little vial of oil of peppermint you have in a box on your desk... grabs it with her paw and starts licking it!! I told James one time I was going to rename her Peppermint... Pepper for short, because she's full of pepper.

This same cat loves to play with the smallest Lego pieces, playing "hockey" with them on the lino floor... and then depositing it inside someone's shoe.

One day last week Ian and I watched Tomoko playing with a small Lego block under a chair by the kitchen wall. It got away from her and shot across the kitchen. She raced after it, picked it up in her teeth and ran back under the chair to play with it again. As we watched, she did this half a dozen times. We could only conclude that the whole procedure was a game she had made up herself, and she was thoroughly enjoying it.

But this same cat is The Worst when she goes into heat. The other two have only been in heat once or twice so far, but not Tomoko. Easily ten times in the past few months. It's Time, if you know what I mean. And tiny as they all are, they are turning a year old right about now.
- posted by Willena @ 10:51 PM (0) comments links to this post

 
New Toy
James went off to the city one day with Vicki. A couple of hours later a call showed up on the ICD... an unfamiliar "No Name" number starting with 349. Hmmmmm... Who would be calling from Westlock with a number I don't recognize?

It was James, calling from Walmart in St. Albert. "Hi Mom! I'm just calling to let you know I got a cell phone!"

It's black, and has it's own QWERTY keyboard! Of course the question begs to be asked... How is he going to type anything on that miniscule keyboard with his big fingertips....
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Just this one more... I promise!

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More from Zoei

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The Lord's Prayer - sung by Zoei Toh, age 2

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Happy Birthday, Mom!!!


It isn't only my birthday and Mother's Day that run together at times... it's also Mother's Day and my Mother's birthday!!!

Happy 77th, Mom!!
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Apology
I am more naive than I thought I was. What I thought was just another fun quiz with a meaningless but fun result, turns out to be numerology. NOT something I believe in or want to identify with in any way. So I have deleted it.

My apologies for posting it, and especially anyone whom I offended. Thank you, Tom, for pointing that out to me.
- posted by Willena @ 10:44 PM (1) comments links to this post

 
Wow
The calendar tells me I have reached the ripe old age of 56... but the consensus, regardless of who you ask, seems to be that I look like I am 45!! I honestly think Nathaniel is part of what keeps us young. I don't know how we'll feel in four years when Ian turns 65 and Nathaniel is still only 13...

I like teasing Ian because he has been asked a number of times if he is Timothy's and Nathaniel's grandpa.... but I have never been asked if I am their grandma!! Funny thing is, Ian doesn't look his age either.

Must be the grey hair... his is all grey now, whereas mine is still very dark.
- posted by Willena @ 11:34 PM (0) comments links to this post

 
Celebrating God's Gift of Life
It's not often my birthday falls right on Mother's Day... but it did the day I was born, and it has this year. It was also on this day in 1998 that our four oldest children were baptised. So all in all it is a special day of reflecting on the gifts and blessings God has given to me.

First thing this morning Nathaniel gave me the Mother's Day card he'd made at school. This is no ordinary card... it has a purple flower on the front, and when you open it up, it's a pop-up garden! He had also written a very nice letter saying what is special about his mom.

I went to church wearing two necklaces that go nicely together... from two of my daughters... and earrings from one daughter. At the end of the worship service Pastor Lyle said, "If your mother is here today, go back and get a flower from Bill, and give it to your mother." I looked down the row at my sons and daughters and wondered, Does that mean I get six flowers? LOL! Both Nathaniel and Timothy stood up... but Timothy let Nathaniel do the honours. He brought me a lovely pink carnation. After all the mothers had received their flowers, Timothy asked Bill if he could have another, since it was also my birthday... and a moment later he brought me a red one! Red and pink... two colours I normally wouldn't put together, but both have a touch of blue in them, so they look quite nice together.

I needed some quiet time alone this afternoon, so I went for a bike ride. It was my first time out since Apr.30, the day my tire blew. First I called my mom... and then I left home at 3:00, leaving instructions for Ian or James to come and pick me up with the van if I wasn't back home by 5:00. This time I was determined to ride all the way to the river, a mile north of my friend Linda's place. The road was busy... if you can imagine being passed by eight vehicles in an hour...!! One of them was a huge tractor with a big roller attached, which passed me just short of Linda's place, which is six miles from home. The driver waved to me as he slowly drove by. As I topped the hill in front of Linda's, two pickup trucks came toward me. The driver of the first one was Linda herself, who stopped to talk to me. That was a treat, because we don't see one another often. She put my bike in the back of the truck and drove me the rest of the way to the river. We had a good visit before she dropped me off.

I didn't go right down to the river, because apparently wildlife is being driven from their usual habitat into our area... and a cougar has been sighted numerous times down by the river. But I still had that much needed quiet time on the bank high above the river, before Ian came along to pick me up.

We already celebrated my birthday and Mother's Day three weeks ago, in combination with our anniversary and Ian's birthday. We don't normally celebrate special days on Sundays, but today we did have taco salad, cake and ice cream for supper. None of the girls could join us, but it was a special time nonetheless. It's amazing how small the family looks when we're missing a few people... even with the four boys present.

One of my favourite family birthday traditions is when we join hands to ask God's blessing on the meal, and everyone in the family prays for the birthday person... starting from the youngest and on up in order age. And when I hear my older children pray, it makes me think of the verse in Proverbs 31, where it says her children will rise up and call her blessed. I am humbled by their (and Ian's!!) graciousness in seeing the good in me and overlooking the bad.

We had a fairly quiet evening, but very nice. Ian and I spent the last hour or so reading in the living room.
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Tooth Rings
Have you ever heard of them? Neither had I, until today. Nathaniel got a couple of plastic straws from the cupboard and stuffed one inside the other... don't remember what imaginative purpose he had for that... and came and showed it to me proudly. And then, opening his mouth wide, he asked me if I liked his tooth ring.

"Your tooth ring??" I was mystified. And then I saw it. He'd cut a very short length off the end of the straw and fit it around one of his bottom centre teeth!!

Whoever said kids who spend a lot of time on computer games or watching DVDs lack imagination... has never met Nathaniel.
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Premonitions
I don't believe in premonitions, but the way things happen, I sometimes wonder!

Yesterday I thought I heard the cranes again... rushed outside... nothing. But an hour later I was treated to the most wondrous display by flock after flock of cranes swarming and swirling high overhead. If, as Ian said, there were a couple of hundred of them flying low overhead the other day, then there were easily a thousand of them yesterday! The sky resounded with their honking, from every direction.

Last night I went to bed at 12:42am. As I was preparing for bed, Ian woke up and said, "I think this clock must have stopped." For a moment I wondered what he meant, and then we both laughed. That's an hour, or even two hours early for me. Well, the clock hadn't stopped. But this morning..... the power went blip... computers shut down... clocks flashed 12:00...?!!
- posted by Willena @ 10:55 PM (0) comments links to this post