To Every Thing There is A Season.

Well  May has been the closing of spring and summer is coming faster then I imagined. The temperature is now over 100 here in Texas and the air conditioning is running at full blast.  The last few weeks have been filled with much accomplishment and also some disappointment.  One of my favorite scriptures came to mind while these disappointments occurred. I hadn't read the verse for a while and It just made more sense to me now being a little older.  Here is the verse and then I will share what has happened.

Ecclesiastes 3

 1To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

 2A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

 3A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

 4A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

 5A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

 6A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

 7A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

 8A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

 9What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboreth?

 10I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it.

 11He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.

 12I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life.

 13And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God.

 14I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him.

 15That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past.

 16¶And moreover I saw under the sun the place of judgment, that wickedness was there; and the place of righteousness, that iniquity was there.

 17I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.

 18I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts.

 19For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.

 20All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

 21Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?

 22Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?

 

     After 4 months of preparing a garden and  experiencing new animals we as a family had been filled with much excitement from all the hard work. I was especially thrilled because even though the kids help me here and there and Zach on the weekends. I have been up from sun up to sun down to make this all happen.   It is so neat to see a seed grow into a plant.  I woke one morning to find all my corn rows dug up after sprouting, and my bean seeds dug out of the ground before even sprouting.  I didn't get to discouraged, I went out and planted 4 more rows of corn and beans.  A zucchini plant also just died. No, biggie I thought, that is why I planted so many. 

  

    My 15 chicks that we had were going to be 2 months in a few days. I did not have a chance to take some pictures of how big they were getting before all 15 of them got killed. They did not all get killed at once but randomly through out the last few weeks. I had five chicks from the first batch left and I was keeping them in the coop until they got bigger.  The boys went out to do their usual feeding for the chicks to find all of them dead.  Three chicks remaining in the coop with their heads bit off.  I was pretty horrified.  I guess raccoons like chicken heads and they manged to sqeeze through a tiny hole in the coop that we had temporarily fixed until we could get more wire. The raccoons  figured out how to undo it and well they had a good dinner I'm sure. 

I have been pondering the verse above and it is still one of my favorites. Even though it applies more to my life now then it ever has.

 

Trampoline instead of Baseball.

I have to admit I was super excited to receive our trampoline from the  UPS guy named Jeff.  I never thought I would be chatting it up with the UPS man but we've become good acquaintances over the last few months. I guess a new perk living out in the middle of no where.  I will tell you more about Jeff in another post.

   The kids and I have been home bound for the last 11 months. I get out into civilization to grocery shop(once a month) and we have done occasional birthday parties with friends and family to get the kids out. We are mostly at home  tending to the animals and the yard.  We no longer have two cars and the car we have is an old clunker so we only drive it when we have to (which means Zach drives it to work and back).

 The kids really loved doing baseball last season. Since we are still in transistion from the big move, we bought them a trampoline instead of signing them up to play baseball.  I still have all my baseball gear from when I played so we still practice and play. We hope to do sports next year but if we don't, we have learned to entertain ourselves here at home. 

The trampoline has been a big hit and both Ayden and Thayne are already doing front and back flips. I captured some great video but of course the video's are 4 min. long and won't fit on here. I will try to get some more but here are some pictures in the meantime. 

Ayden mastered a back and front flip within two weeks of getting the trampoline.

Here Ayden is landing a back flip!

My no fear kid!

Ayden doing a front flip!

Thayne has now mastered the flipping within a few months and he loves practicing his hand stands!

Keynan loves to bounce too. I love having the safety net because when I was a kid there was no such thing!