Jodilightful!

Last year I took a picture of the two big girls with the firstfruits of Trevor’s harvest.  Now I remember why I did it during nap time last year.   Rascal.

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As we were driving home from the craft store today, Pippa heard the words “When my heart’s broken…” in one of our Sovereign Grace Kids songs, and she asked me to turn the music down.  She had something to say.

Pippa: I want to say something, but I need to think for a minute, but leave the music down…

(And then:)

When my heart breaks in two,

And I don’t know what to do,

My Savior will make me a new heart all the way through.

(The last line was tweaked slightly when we wrote it down later, her revisions, not mine.)

Is that a good one, Mommy?

Me: (just about crying) Yep, that’s a good one.

…and the silliness that was making them giggle:

Thank you to the Saladas for sharing their backyard, and to the Swartzes for sharing their home (with six of us!) last weekend.  A marvelous time was had by all!

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Sam and June.

I had the pleasure last weekend of visiting with a long lost friend.  We grew up across the street from each other, but only became good friends in high school as each of us began to grow in our love for the Lord.

After our family moved back to the States we had one all-too-brief get-together with Amber and her husband, Greg.  They introduced us to Take 5 bars (yum!) and The Settlers of Catan, and then they moved to Texas.  Isn’t that always the way?

When we last saw them we had two girls, and they had no children yet.  Last weekend our four girls got to meet her two boys, and we mommies had a couple of hours to catch up on the last three and a half years.

Among the many things that impressed me about how my dear friend has grown into a wonderful wife and mother was the care she took over choosing her boys’ names.  I don’t mean in choosing names that I think are fabulous names (although they are that, too).  I mean that she really put thought into how she would name all of her children when she set out to name her first child.

Her boys are Samuel Courage and Lucas Wisdom.  Pure loveliness.

Each of her boys has a biblical virtue name for a middle name, *and* each of them has a corresponding Bible verse, which she recites to them at naptimes and bedtimes.  All I could think when I discovered this was, ‘why did I not think of that?!’

Now, our girls are into their names (I know.  You’re shocked, right?).  My mother-in-law has always taken great care to find the girls name-themed gifts and the whole family has now gotten on board with the girls’ name ‘symbols’.  Pippa (Greek, “Lover of horses”) often receives gifts with horses and violets (her middle name) on them.  Romilly has always been showered with either sunshine themed clothes and accessories (her initials spell RAY) or Alice in Wonderland items to go along with her middle name.  Beatrix gets the obvious Beatrix Potter references or the even-more obvious bumblebee motif.  June is a little trickier, but we’ve mainly been working the Junebug = ladybug (which it doesn’t, but who’s counting?) angle, keeping a vague Narnia link up our sleeves via her middle name, Lucy.

But Bible verses for each one?  It was ingenious!  I had to have them!

And so the quest began.  Would it be possible to find a verse for each of my girls’ names that wasn’t either ridiculously obscure or so tenuously connected to the the name that I’d have to spend more time explaining how it’s related than teaching the verse itself?

I think I’ve more or less done it.  What do you think?

Pippa’s verse: Psalm 20:7 (ESV)

Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.

Romilly’s verse: Isaiah 50:10b (New Living Translation)

If you are walking in darkness, without a ray of light, trust in the LORD and rely on your God.

Beatrix’s verse (Beatrix means “sojourner”, not super useful for clothing and toy shopping, but fabulous here!): Psalm 119:19 (ESV)

I am a sojourner on the earth; hide not your commandments from me!

Juniper’s verse: Isaiah 41:19b-20a (Good News)

Forests will grow in barren land, forests of pine and juniper and cypress.  People will see this and know that I, the Lord, have done it.

It would have been nice if they’d all been the same translation, but I’m still pretty excited about using them to teach my girls some amazing truths about our great God.

I may have to find ones for myself and Trevor.  Jodi means, “See Judith” (or so I thought for years, having looked it up in a name book in elementary school), but once you get past all that, the going theory is that it means, “God is gracious”.  That’s certainly workable.  Or I could utilize the fact that my initials are JLY, Jesus Loves You!  So many possibilities…

Many thanks  to Amber for giving me this brilliant idea, though she likely has no idea I’ve stolen it. May she have many more fabulously named children.  (And if you’d like to suggest middle names for them in the comments, she’s accepting suggestions!)

Well, I’m not quite sure when it happened (on her birthday, I expect she’d tell you), but our sweet, feisty Beatrix is now three.  Three!

We marked her special day with a gift and cards at breakfast on  her special day (7/7) during our camping trip.  She had seen a Peter Rabbit “guysie” in England back at Easter time, and, feeling a natural kinship with all things Beatrix Potter,  immediately commissioned me to make her one.  For months she reminded me faithfully that she wanted Peter Rabbit for her birthday, and thankfully I managed to deliver the goods.

We enjoyed a typical camping day filled with lots of fun in the lake and a lovely hike, and dinner was a simple favorite: spaghetti cooked on the camp stove.  We sang Happy Birthday over three chocolate mini donuts, and the birthday girl was delighted with her no-frills festivities.  (There will be a proper party at some point.)

This girl has an adventurous spirit and an infectious smile.  She thinks she’s bigger than she is, yet still wants to be the baby.  She is fearless and outspoken, but soft and cuddly when the occasion calls for it.  She has the face of a baby and the language and thought processes of a six-year-old.  She cracks us up, daily.  She has a brutish affection for her sisters, which is sometimes received with joy and giggles, but other times… not.   She is a true blessing to our family, and I am honored to be her mother.

Happy birthday, Beatrix Joanna.  We love you so very much!

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Ah, the Rabid Goats’ Annual 4th of July Party.  I don’t think I could top my post from two years ago if I tried, so I won’t.  This year’s festivities were much the same, except that there were eight girls under 7 instead of six girls under 5 and we stayed in a bigger house (Thank you Joy and Steve!).

Trevor vs. Root Beer

The smashing was bigger and better.

Jodi vs. Pineapple: Before

Jodi vs. Pineapple: After

The property we stayed at was *amazing* with two ponds complete with a paddle boat and two kayaks, eleven acres to roam, and the most perfectly decorated home I have ever had the privilege of being in.  (Did I take pictures of it?  Of course not.)

The company was excellent as usual.  For kids and grown-ups alike.

Guitar Hero was so 2008.  This year we played Rock Band, which meant I got to *sing*.  Granted, I only knew about six of the hundreds of available songs, and of those, I wasn’t willing to sing the lyrics of two or three, but I did do a pretty mean Gwen Stefani, if I do say so myself.  If only they would come out with Worship Band for Playstation.  ”God of Wonders”: me on Vocals, Trevor on drums… that would be something.

Pippa Young: Budding Rock Star

Ahem.

But anyway… it was a fantastic weekend.  We got away a little later than expected due to a flat tire which Steve graciously went with Trevor to get repaired while I stayed at the house with the kids, buying me a bit of extra time to hang out with Corrie and her girls.  Bonus!

We arrived at our campsite at Prince Gallitzin State Park (near Altoona, PA) at about 10:30 in pitch darkness.  Immediately three lovely gentlemen (an older man and two teenaged boys) swooped in to help Trevor pitch the tent.  We didn’t see them the next day, and wondered to ourselves if we had been entertaining angels unaware, but found out from one of the boys the next day that the older man and his son had left early that day.  That doesn’t necessarily mean they weren’t angels, does it?

Our first morning in our new tent (by the way, our seven-man tent was positively palatial compared to the four-man we’d been camping in before now!) I awoke to something wriggling under the floor of the tent about two feet from where I had just been laying my head.  It was a decent size.  A frog, I wondered?  A… snake??  I didn’t want to let my mind consider the possibility it was a bug, because it would have been a much bigger bug than I could allow myself to believe exists in Pennsylvania.  I tried to block its path to the sleeping bags with some duffel bags and then forget about it while I got dressed.

Once I was up a while and tidying up after breakfast, I felt brave enough to investigate while Trevor had the girls down checking out the lake.  I thought I’d just give the tent a little wiggle near where I saw our little visitor and see if anything emerged.  I didn’t have to.  As soon as I got near the tent, a little vole poked his head out, his hair all wet and flattened from his time cooling himself under our tent.  After evading my attempts to take his picture, he went back under on the other side, and I resigned myself to a week of chasing rodents out from under our tent each night.

In fact, after that first day, we didn’t see him again, nor any of his furry friends, and I was surprisingly un-freaked-out by the whole affair and still able to sleep.  Trevor on the other hand… well, perhaps he wouldn’t like me to tell you.

God was incredibly gracious in other ways, too.  Though it was in the 90′s during the days, we kept cool in the lake for much of the hottest part of the day and the temperature dipped into the 60′s overnight where we were up in the Allegheny Mountains.  Perfect sleeping weather!

The girls made best friends, as little girls do, with another family of two little girls and a baby sister.  On our last morning we all held our breath to see if they would make it back from their morning shopping trip in time to say goodbye before we left the campsite.  Pippa was beside herself with worry that we would leave without saying goodbye, without getting their address, without making arrangements to keep in touch.  She prayed that they would get back in time.

As we were packing the very last items in our van, their car drove past, and our girls followed it sprinting to their campsite to say goodbye.  I thank God for His faithfulness in answering these seemingly small requests of my girls, because I know how it strengthens their faith.

Katie, Bea, Pippa Rylei, Ro - BFFs!

It was a perfect ending to a perfect week away.

You know how when you have a million things to do, and you don’t know where to begin, you just grab for the quickest, easiest thing on your to-do list?  Like, when you have twenty people arriving at your house in two hours for a birthday party and you haven’t made the cake or wrapped the presents yet and your house is totally a mess, so you think… ‘I guess I should just start by checking my email one more time because maybe that one person who may or may not be coming to the party has written in the last three minutes to say if they’re coming or not?’  (No?  Just me?  Really?)

Anyway, that’s how I’m feeling about my blog situation right now.  We’re just back from a week away visiting friends and camping, we’ve celebrated Bea’s third birthday this week and went to a wedding today.   (Oh, and we finally got our van back, and June’s tooth is fine.)  I have so much to blog about, I don’t know where to begin.

And so, in this deer-in-the-headlights moment, I’m going to point you in the direction of something far less interesting than any of those things would be.

Over the last two weekends (in two installments, because I couldn’t be concise to save my life) the stories of our girls’ names have been published over at Appellation Mountain, one of my favorite baby name blogs.  The first post tells the stories of how Pippa and Ro were named, and the second, Bea and June.

I feel just a little bit famous!

…After chipping her front tooth yesterday.  Mommy, not so much.  Off we go to the dentist to assess the damage.

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