We fixed a beef brisket, the first one since sometime last summer, I think. Nathan fixed it on an outside homemade grill, and I made some roasted potatoes in the oven and fixed a salad. I also made a punch with ginger ale, orange juice, and frozen strawberries and pineapple chunks. Everything was so good!
Only Jaden sat to listen to the lesson of the day. We sat outside. I discussed Pentecost, and as I usually do on each annual feast holy day, I went through all seven feasts and reviewed how they taught the true plan of salvation. When discussing Pentecost, I used the punch we had as an illustration, the punch being the Spirit of God, and the cups in which the punch is poured are us.
*May 24: Don't know. :-)
*May 25: All I know is that this is the day we ended our week-long abstinence of wheat and all gluten. I already talked about that in my previous post. As to what else happened, I don't remember, nor did I record it.
*May 26: This was Trusten's 3rd birthday, as figured on the Roman calendar. My sister came to stay the night. We ate lunch together and then went to Wild Wilderness Drive-Through Safari in Gentry, AR. I took pictures and posted them on our Shutterfly website. Anyone reading this who does not have access to that and wishes to have should contact me for the site and password. We all had a lot of fun. I laughed so much that I was just about drunk on endorphins. I'm not kidding. We did the petting section first, and then we did the driving part. When I got out of the truck to go around and get back in the driver's side (b/c Nathan took his own truck so he could run a service call afterward) I was quite light-headed. We got to pet kangaroos, donkeys, ponies, goats, monkeys, and tigers...and I may be leaving out something. There were parrots and peacocks. We saw things like spotted deer, longhorn cattle, tigers, and lions on the driving part. Oh, they even had an alligator. Anyway, Nathan turned around to lean over the seat and unbuckle Trusten so that he could get up in his seat to see out the window. Without permission (and Na really should have locked the doors), Trusten opened the door. I think he must have misunderstood. I'm not sure. Anyway, he fell out of the truck and landed in a big pile of animal feces. I think it was cow's, thankfully. He did have a small wound on the back of his head. It's GOOD, actually, that he feel in poop, because the back of his head landed on the ground, and if the poop hadn't been there... We had some wipes and a blanket in the truck, so Nathan cleaned him up the best he could. I washed him in the shower when we got home. He happened to fall right outside some of the cats' cages, and they paced quickly back and forth, staring at them with killer eyes. Trusten loves poop, though. Jaden actually told him at some point during the drive, "Well, Trusten, you've been saying you want to eat poop. I guess you got your wish." (No, he didn't really get any in his mouth.) He didn't seem to be too upset, though. He kept laughing and saying it was his birthday poop. Crazy...
*May 27: During our walk we saw mysterious growths on the leaves of a tree, different than the previous growths I recently mentioned, an on a different type of tree. They were little pink things that stuck straight up like tiny fingers. I took pictures of these, but I'm missing a few pictures. My iPhoto is not doing me right, I don't guess. What had been in my "Last Import" never moved to my "Last 12 Months," and so basically one import just totally replaced another import. Thankfully, most of those pictures were not totally lost, since I had uploaded them to Shutterfly and Facebook before I uploaded the last pictures. However, there were some pictures that I did not upload to either of those, so they are just GONE, it seems. I'll be sure to upload my latest "last import" to Shutterfly before I upload more pics from my camera into iPhoto, in case the same thing happens again. I just don't understand what the deal is.
Anyway, there is this plant that I've wondered about for awhile now. I have no idea what it is, and I've never seen it before, anywhere else, in my life, of which I'm aware. So, then I was really startled to discover the strange insects on it this day. Actually, Jaden saw them first and summoned me to the plant. Now, at the time I write this, I realize I saw one fly around our front porch around this time last year, but at the time I saw these on the plant, I didn't remember that. I do not know what they are, and I cannot get a good picture of them. They have purple "fluff" on them. Both they and the plant look like they belong more in the Amazon than in the Ozarks.
Jade was carrying one of Trusten's wooden pop guns that he got for his birthday (from their Aunt Meg), and he was "shooting" the cork over and over along the walk. When we emerged from the forest-surrounding stretch, we heard an echo bouncing from the mountains back across the pasture. They were delighted and asked me about it, so I explained about how sound waves travel and can echo, just like many other things bounce back or ricochet when it meets a barrier. I then shouted so they could hear my voice echo. I told them my favorite place to play with echoes, as a child, was down at the river, just a short walk from my parents' house. I'd call from the one bank and I would hear the echo bounce back from the other side. I hope I can remember to take them down there to shout the next time we go visit.
Jade copies a paragraph from a book or something else nearly every day. Here's a picture of sitting on the couch to write, and he's using a feather pen that his daddy made for him about a year ago, from a feather Jaden found, though I usually make him use a pencil:
*March 28: Jade and I both had optometrist appointments. My last year's visit and this year's visit found my left eye (my master eye, even though I'm right-handed) getting worse, though both my eyes remained stable for several years, since my teens. My right eye has recently started bothering me again, as it had before my last year's visit. What is happening is my right eye is overcompensating for my left eye, and so it is becoming strained. Both of my eyes had also shared the same prescription for as long as I can remember, until last year. My contacts are now a -7.50 and a -8.50. I did not get a new glasses prescription. It slipped my mind. The current one, which I got last year, is a -9.25 for both eyes. The reason for that is that is my eyes last year for contacts could have both been -7.75, except when your eyes are afflicted with such high degree myopia as mine as that, they do not make in-between numbers like that. Two years ago, my optometrist wanted to move my left eye to a -8.00, but I did not agree to it until last year, because I tried the -8.00 for a week, and it was too much. I'd really needed a -7.75, except they don't make it. So, I was able to stay with the same prescription for both eyes. My ears make up for eyes, though, I believe. I have exceptional hearing, and I wonder sometimes whether that is why others have a hard time hearing me. Many say I speak too softly, but I hear myself loudly and clearly. I think I just have better ears than most. I hope I never go blind. I'm thankful for modern medical technology so that I can wear contacts. I am totally useless without these aids. I would love to cure my eyesight (naturally, rather than surgery, of which I've decided against for now), and I believe it is possible, but it requires that I go without my lenses for most of the time, which is impossible at this season in my life. I tried it a few years ago, when I only had William, but it was hard enough then. I had to wear glasses to cook and do other tasks.
As for Jaden, he is still far-sighted (normal from birth), and he has an astigmatism in one eye, whereas from birth both eyes have it. So, she said they should be grown out of at a certain rate, and she's afraid he may develop a lazy eye in one of his eyes (forget which), if he doesn't have lenses. He's not particularly thrilled, and I don't blame him.
I took a picture of this moth in our kitchen, at night:
We have plenty of these, but I'm not sure what kind of moth it is. We like the look of them, though.
*May 29: The sabbath day. A much-needed rest. I did a sabbath school lesson with the boys, about the parable Jesus told about the workers in the vineyard and how they all were paid the same amount for different lengths of time of working and how the ones who had worked all day complained, even though they had agreed to the wage which they were paid. I also worked on the seventh commandment in God's Law of Love: The Perfect Law of Liberty.
Until next time...
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