Gardening

6 Reasons I Am Thankful

Published: 20 November 2017
Written by Lil Dino Mommy
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Categories: Marriage, Marriage, Pregnancy and Parenthood, Parenthood, Pregnancy

Thanksgiving is Quickly Approaching

I began this evening writing out a different post. I paused to put my son to bed. (He had been playing hard and giggling lots with his Daddy.) As he nursed quietly in the dark, I felt him relax and I knew he was asleep. That relaxing has become so familiar to me now, but it wasn’t always.

Before reading tonight’s Bible passages, I opened up the Prime Photo App on my phone. Every day, the app will feature all the pictures from prior years. This has become something my husband and I do daily, and then we chat about it. “Hey, did you see this picture from 2009?”

Hard Times

I browsed through the pictures quickly, really noting the ones from this day last year. It was a really difficult time for our new, little family.

My son was not gaining weight, but growing in length, and was looking….well, he looked like a starving baby. He didn’t have the precious, chunky baby fat that most full-term babies have. He was very thin. These pictures are so hard to look back at, but still I scrolled through them. This day last year is definitely the worst my son ever looked…

At the time, I didn’t recognize by looking at him that he wasn’t well. He was just my beautiful baby boy whom I love so, so, so much.

Come Before His Presence with Thanksgiving

After looking over these pictures, I opened up the Bible app on my phone and saw the featured verse:

“Oh come, let us sing to the LORD! Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. For the LORD is the great God, And the great King above all gods.”
Psalm 95: 1-2

That’s when I decided my post for this evening needed to be different.

I am so thankful for my son. I’m thankful for his health. Today, I watched him eat porridge and blueberries for breakfast, eggs with cheese, and apple for lunch, and squash and peas for dinner, not to mention he still breastfeeds throughout the day and night like a champ. I’m so thankful that we don’t have to watch him struggle to eat…struggle to live. I’m thankful for his smile and his laugh and for the awesome privilege of watching him learn something new almost every single day.

After I finished my Bible reading for the night, I set my phone down, and lifted my sleeping son onto my shoulder and hugged him as I do every night. I’ll admit, I hugged him a little closer and a little longer than I do most nights. I’m just so glad he’s in my life. I’m so thankful I have the privilege of being his Mommy, and getting to share this journey of life at the side of my husband.

6 Reasons I Am Thankful

We all have many things to be grateful for, but it can be easy to lose sight of our blessings, when we lose perspective on what our hope is. Our hope is in the Lord.

Although, it is not exhaustive, here is a list of 6 reasons I am thankful.

  1. I am thankful for my husband. This man is incredible. He was incredible before I could call him “mine”. He’s extremely intelligent and loves to dig for the truth in God’s Word. He loves the Lord. He is a wonderful father. It is such a joy to see him guide our son, even at such a young stage of life. He is an amazing husband, a true leader in our home, and the love of my life. He is an encourager. He is a visionary, who makes our dreams into plans so they can become a reality. I am thankful for his love.
  2. I am thankful for my son. I know I already wrote this, but truly, this child is so precious to me. He brings me such joy, and forces me to be a better person just in the very fact that I have to be a good example for him in everything I do and say because he is watching and learning. He is smart. He is healthy. He is strong. He is willful. He is cuddly and learning to be affectionate. I can already see signs of empathy in him as he is sensitive to how other babies feel. I am so thankful I get to watch him grow up!
  3. I am thankful for our health. Although, I don’t always do what I need to do to take care of my body as God would have me to, I have been blessed with good health. My husband and son have too. I am doing what I can to learn about keeping our bodies strong and healthy, so that we can honor God with what he has given us. Our bodies are a gift and we need to take care of them, rather than abuse them.
  4. I am thankful for our home. This one can be difficult for me sometimes because I have to catch myself when I begin to complain about it. Since moving to the apartment this past summer, I have really missed our house. I have missed the giant sink that actually held all my dirty dishes. I have missed our backyard, and the space, and our neighbors. But I am thankful for this home. It is more than sufficient as a safe, comfortable roof over our head. We have a lot more in this apartment than many other people, and we need to be thankful for it, even when it lacks what our larger home did. This apartment has encouraged us to do so much we needed to do, to include purging STUFF. We have so much stuff we do NOT need, and living in a smaller space has helped us let go of a lot of extra, unneeded, and truly unwanted stuff. It has forced us to be creative in our gardening. We wasted a lot of good soil in our yard and working with a small space has helped us appreciate what we will do when we have more land again. Most importantly, it pushes us to work towards our goals – the very reason we moved here in the first place: to save more money than we could have in our house.
  5. I am thankful for time with my family. Living closer to my husband’s work cut my husband’s commute by over an hour. This helps us save money on gas and car maintenance, but most importantly, it has enabled us to spend more time together. Not only is my husband home longer in the mornings before he leaves for work, but he also is home much earlier. AND as a bonus, a couple times a week, he comes home for lunch, which is such a sweet treat for both my son and me.
  6. I am thankful for God’s gift of salvation and His Word. God has blessed me with all of the above, and so much more than I can mention. Even if I had none of the aforementioned blessings, I would still be abundantly blessed in the Lord. To know God and be covered by His grace is a gift more incredible than anything. God loves me. Wow! Jesus sacrificed His very life so that I may live forever with Him one day in His kingdom. All my wrongdoings have been forgiven. In Christ, I find my joy, and the “peace that passes all understanding” – a peace that cannot be found apart from him. This is what I am most thankful for. It is a privilege to be able to study the scriptures with my husband, and pass this knowledge on to my son as we guide him through life. This is what I consider our greatest responsibility.

So, what about you?

Have you been taking the blessings of life for granted? What are you most thankful for?

“Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.”
1 Chronicles 16:34

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Patio Gardening: A Farmer in the Making

Published: 6 October 2017
Written by Lil Dino Mommy
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Categories: Marriage, Pregnancy and Parenthood, Parenthood

Moss Sphere Salad Planter

For a few months now I have wanted to do the moss ball salad greens thing. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s all the rage. Check out this video!

A Visit to the Nursery

A couple weeks ago we went to our local nursery to see if they had the moss spheres in stock. What we discovered was even better.

As we walked around looking at all the plants, I noticed an event flyer and gave it a once over. Lo and behold they were going to have a class on edible gardens the following week! My husband and I got really excited and decided we would attend the class.

So a week went by and we went to the class. We learned so much! The gardening expert talked about fertilizing and watering, and all sorts of tips and tricks to aid us in our gardening adventure. After the lesson, we got started. We picked out our plants, and followed along as the leader walked us through what to do.

Hanging Basket Edible Garden

Between the two of us, we ended up making three hanging baskets. Here in South Texas we have two growing seasons, so one of our baskets we filled with Strawberry plants that we will harvest in the Springtime. The other two we filled with salad greens and common herbs we use in the kitchen. Once they fill out, we can just snip off the bit of salad we need, and set it on the dinner table. Pretty cool, huh? I really want to cut down on our groceries in this respect, not to mention waste. Oftentimes, I will buy a bag of salad greens and won’t be able to get through it before it spoils (usually because I am the only one eating them). When we lived in our house, we were able to plant some different greens and lots of herbs, but we had to say goodbye to many of the things we planted when we moved into our apartment.

Headed Home – Never a Dull Moment

So we finished our baskets, paid for them, then headed home to set them up on our patio. My husband and I were chatting about this and that, very excited to get to garden again.

Then I heard a gagging sound and turned in horror to see my son vomit up a mixture of milk and…you guessed it! Dirt. Once I ascertained that he was ok and we didn’t need to pull the car over, I had to laugh. He was still reaching out to grab at the planter we had set next to him on the seat. He still had a fist-full of dirt and was trying to shovel it into his mouth. He had completely uprooted a strawberry plant, so while turned awkwardly in my seat, I replanted it as best as I could, then played referee between my son and the planter, as he kept finding gaps to grab at the dirt.

Gardening on the Patio

Naturally when we got home, we had a certain amount of cleaning up to do, but our joy was not quashed by my son’s little mishap. We were all three in good spirits and still very much looking forward to replanting some of the plants we had salvaged from our home and care for our new edible garden.

My Son’s First Gardening Adventure

We stuck a pair of sweatpants on my son, so that his knees wouldn’t get scraped up on the concrete from the patio, then let him loose. He had a blast! Forgive the juvenile adage, but…it was the best day ever! We had several pots that just had dirt with nothing planted in them. We decided to dump all this soil into our largest pot and start with fresh soil and replant a few of the edibles we’d had for a while.

As we did this, my son stood over a pot and proceeded to take dirt by the handful and simply throw it on the ground. Every now and again he would pause to “taste” something he had found. At one point I had to fish around in his mouth, where I recovered two small rocks he was storing in his little cheeks like a chipmunk! He was a crack up!

A Farmer in the Making

He even grabbed a spade we had left near him and dug around in the dirt with it. I wish I could relate the joy both my husband and I experienced watching our son enjoying the outdoors and quite literally playing in the dirt! He even chased a little spider around for a while.

For us, it was a glimpse of what’s to come. We are really working towards the goal of owning some property and having a small farm one day. We really want that for our son, as we both experienced our grandparents’ farms as children. It truly was such an awesome day!

But for now, my husband and I make plans (read our story here on my husband’s blog), while my son and I go out every morning after breakfast and care for our little patio garden and do the watering. He absolutely loves it and it’s such a pleasant time to spend together.

Our Hanging Baskets

I know, I know, they aren’t hanging. Turns out the arch of our apartment patio is concrete, so we are still brainstorming how to make these hang. In the meantime, they are still lovely to look at on plant stands.

Also keep in mind they will fill in A LOT, so look for a future post about how they turn out!

This planter contains two types of lettuce, as well as two types of Basil. We are especially excited about the Cinnamon Basil, which we intend to test out in drinks, such as tea and maybe even as a flavoring in water.
The Basil will die off this winter, so we’ll harvest what we can and dry the leaves and store.

 

 

This basket contains Kale and what I like to call, savory herbs, such as Oregano, Parsley, Sage, and Thyme. Hmm…seems like we’re missing one… Don’t worry, the Rosemary is in it’s own pot. It’s a little too aggressive to plant in with the others.

 

 

 

I can’t wait to harvest these strawberries in the spring and can our all-fruit jam! Did you know that the strawberry leaves can be used to help with stomach ache? 

Genesis 1:12

“And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.”

What about you?

What hobbies do you enjoy? What experiences do you really want your children to have? We really want to know!

 

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