Hello, Mexico

Yes, please.

I will have some of that.

 

Making This “Ours”

Alright, everybody, today it is time to update you all on what we’re doing to make Niverville “ours”.

1) The boxes are being conquered, one by one, and the dishwasher is installed! (Ben has actually done many wonderful things to make our home feel more settled, but this is the only picture I took…)

2) The backyard has been tramped through.

There are killdeer birds everywhere around here, and Anika desperately wants to see one pretending to be injured, to lure us away from it’s nest. So she tried to chase them in our yard, and Kaylia ran around, talking about “killrobins”, and thought the whole thing was great.

Now what other kinds of adventures can we think up??

3) We are socializing! Anytime we see people we know, we practically beg them to please come visit! I’m realizing how much we grew accustomed to people dropping in at any time of the day when we lived at camp.

So if you live in Niverville, and need friends, please let us know! We are so up for friends right now! 🙂 And we are so very thankful for everyone who has taken the time to visit, or have helped us clean and unpack. We love you all!

4) All three play structures have been explored. It has been officially decided that there is no one favorite, but rather, we will be enjoying the variety of all three locations.

5) The sky saves me every day.

I used to look out at the trees each day, but now I look at the sky. I didn’t see it much at camp – the trees blocked the view. But now, it is beautiful and glorious, and I can sit on our couch and watch the sunset.

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And then last night, we went for a walk, and suddenly I felt like we would be okay. Maybe it was the water, or maybe it was stopping to watch the ducks swim by, or maybe it was just enjoying an evening together as a family.

Somehow, it felt like a little, old, familiar piece of what we used to have, tucked away among all that is new.

Whatever it was, it was a good feeling.

We’ll make this “ours”, a little bit at a time!

Waterski Weekend

We enjoyed this beautiful weekend as much as we possibly could! Now I feel so filled up with sunshine and summer, that I think it will be okay when fall comes.

 

After all the time we spent doing water activities this weekend, I was not completely surprised to hear Kaylia talking to her toast crusts yesterday morning as she dipped them into her bowl of cereal, “That’s too deep! Come back, come back. You can’t go in so deep.”

Hope you had a great weekend, too!

Been Thinking About Fishing

I used to love going fishing with my dad.

That may surprise some people who know me, because I don’t think I really come across as a “roughing it out in the wild” kind of a girl.

But that’s exactly what we’d do. We would go to these remote lakes, and camp out in the middle of nowhere. We’d canoe, and we’d fish. And I loved it.

I loved the lake, the trees, and floating around all day in the peace and quiet. I loved talking with my dad about anything and everything.

And then sometimes, all of this peace and quiet would be put on hold for a little while, as we faced the excitement of catching a fish.

I love that rush that comes when your fishing line starts yanking like crazy and everybody gets all worked up, and the adrenaline starts flowing, and it’s this big moment.

(I do not like anything that happens after the fish comes out of the water. You could not pay me to touch a fish. Enjoyment stops after the thrill of the chase.)

Anyway. After all the excitement of catching the fish, my sisters and I would name the fish – starting with “A” and working our way through the alphabet. Amelia, Betsy, Caroline, etc.

And then we would go back to the peace and quiet of floating. Enjoying the day and the nature and the quiet.

You could almost say that I loved the act of fishing more than actually catching anything…

Sometimes we think that fishing is about catching fish. But you can go out for a day of fishing, and enjoy fishing, even if you go home without catching any fish. Obviously, you’d like to catch fish, and that’s kind of the point, but it is completely possible to spend an enjoyable day of fishing without catching any fish. It kind of depends on your attitude.

I once read that praying is like fishing.

Sometimes we think praying is about getting answers to our prayers. But you can spend time talking to God, and enjoy praying, even if you don’t end up getting an answer right away. Obviously, you’d like to get answers to your prayers, but it is completely possible to spend an enjoyable time talking to God without getting an actual and immediate answer to your prayers. It kind of depends on your attitude…

I read that prayer is actually all about waiting – learning to wait on God, and learning to just enjoy being in His presence, learning to enjoy the act of praying.

This waiting thing is a hard one for me sometimes. I am capable of focusing on something so intensely that the impatience builds and builds until it feels like I’ll explode because I can’t stand waiting for one more second.

Obviously, my focus is not in the right place when that happens.

And I’m noticing a pattern in my life – I’m noticing that the act of waiting for things, and waiting for answers to my prayers, is happening a lot.

When I was single, but wanting to get married and have kids, I had to wait awhile. After Ben and I got married, there were many other kinds of things to wait for. We had to wait for God to work out the details for a ministry opportunity that we really wanted. We had to wait 9 months for Anika to be born. We had to wait for God to provide in a number of different ways. And then we dealt with infertility, and had to wait for 4 years for Kaylia to come along. And I thought that I wouldn’t survive. I thought that if God would ask me to wait one day longer for a baby, I would go completely crazy.

There are times in my life when I have just plain hated waiting.

But I’ve also read that life is about waiting. We are always waiting for something.

So if life is about waiting, and prayer is about waiting, it would seem as though I need to learn to enjoy…WAITING.

If I can enjoy floating, water, sky and trees, the peace and quiet, the getting-away-from-it-all, can I learn to surrender, soaking in God’s presence, a sense of His Spirit, a trust that while there is more to come, that right now, there is something for me to enjoy, just in waiting?

(picture taken by Chelsea Rempel)

Things She’s Into

1) Pork.

The other day, I was cleaning out the fridge, and Kaylia started playing with containers and stuff while I was working. I let her keep playing, until I suddenly noticed that she was sitting there with an apple in one hand, and a hunk of pork in the other, and was chewing away at it. The pork was supposed to be Ben’s supper, so I had to take it away.

2) Water.

Kaylia loves water. In the tub, in the sink, in Grandma and Grandpa’s fountain, or…in a glass of water.

The other morning, Anika and I were busy with school stuff, and Kaylia was very quiet. When I checked to see what she was doing, I found that she had lifted a glass of water off the table and set it on the floor without spilling it, and was happily splashing her little hand inside. She splashed it all over herself and was extremely entertained.

3) Walking.

She can do it all by herself, but she still likes it best if she can hang onto our fingers. She loves walking along this little wall in Ben’s parents’ backyard:

4) Jewelry.

She loves putting on necklaces. Fortunately for her, Anika loves making necklaces, so we’ve got a bunch around the house for Kaylia to wear:

5) Watermelon.

This is by far her most favorite food right now. And we have watermelon at every meal at the lodge, so she’s in luck! She doesn’t really eat it – she kind of inhales it. She starts shoving in a large piece, and never takes it away from her mouth – she just keeps mushing it in until she gets to the rind. If we don’t take it away, she eats the green part, too.