Homemade raspberry jam

Our house smells very homestead tonight. I made raspberry jam, bread, and banana bread. Plus, there’s wood smoke from the wildfires.
It’s also rather hot. The smoke from the wildfires is very bad, reducing visibility to less than 1 mile at times. We couldn’t open the windows because of the smoke. The world’s largest fire fighting [...]

Revelation comments

This morning I finished reading the final book in the New Testament, Revelation. My dad always made me promise never to read Revelation at night. He was afraid it would give me nightmares. So, I’ve never read it at all until today.
Revelation is different from other books of the Bible. They don’t tell a history. [...]

A great quote

I went to church with my friends on the way back from Kodiak. Her husband is one of the ministers. He had a great quote I just have to share. It’s by Charles Spurgeon. Unfortunately, I don’t know the specifics of where it comes from.
“We fear not God because of any compulsion; our faith is [...]

Getting ready

It’s decided. We will begin our school year on Monday, August 10. This is a week before the public schools begin in Fairbanks. Tonight I announced our start date to my family. They took it well, but there’s still a lot to get done to be ready.
First there’s the house. Karen will be doing kindergarten [...]

Fitness update 2009 #13

My weight is stuck again. It’s gone up a couple pounds this month to 155. I know there is a smaller me in there. I just need to unpack the insulation to get to her. Not just physical insulation but emotional and spiritual as well. These things that are keeping me cheating on healthy eating. [...]

Superstition

There are many different forms of superstitions. They may be called old wives tales or urban legends. Some are child’s games. Others are more sinister. They a belief that certain events may influence other unrelated events or actions. It is not a cause and effect. Superstitions usually involve supernatural, mystical powers. The dictionary defines superstition [...]

Our Un-vacation

I’m back. Well, our vacation was almost nothing but problems. I drove to Homer with the kids then took the ferry to Kodiak as planned while my husband flew down the next day. We had arranged with the airline to ship our new small outboard engine as checked baggage for a fee. Unfortunately, after [...]

Trading training wheels

A few days ago, I bought a small used bike for Karen and helmets for both kids. It doesn’t have training wheels. Richard is ready to have a 2 wheeler. We are very busy. Well this evening, our maintenance worker was at our house monitoring a pump. Not much for him to do really, just [...]

Under smoky skies

The sun came out this weekend. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the drier days have brought large forest fires. While Fairbanks isn’t threatened by fire, we are inundated with smoke. Visibility is down to just a few miles, sometimes less. The wind was light this afternoon which helped keep it from [...]