He is clearly seen.

Did it get away from you, too?

Here I sit at the very end of the month and I can’t believe that the first week of January is gone.  Finished.  Never to be seen again.

Sometimes I wish my life was like this:

I like the skirts and the brothers there carrying the basket as a team and the ladies visiting.  I imagine that the ladies are on their way home from the market and they are going to be cooking a lovely Sunday dinner where their families will sit and laugh with one another at the dinner table for hours.  And after dinner is finished, mom and her children will clean up the dishes while pa reads to the family by candlelight.  I took this photograph at the civil war museum last weekend.

I took the one below at the museum also. Lulu sat on the train with the stately gentleman.  Each of the characters told their story when you sat down next to them.  Lu is sitting next to a businessman on his way home from a transaction in the south.  A few rows back was a preacher and behind him was a slave on his way North.

Life whirls by in a blur – unlike back in those days.  All of the swirling makes me want stop and savor as much as I can.   So I scrap and blog and journal.  And thank God.  I thank Him for each moment.

These are the fun books I told you about an in earlier post:

January has looked like this for us:

We took our tree down but I replaced it with little evergreen trees with sparkly lights because I just can’t let go of Christmas that easily.  It’s a little forest of trees that Liv is peaking through.

Can you do those magic eye photographs?  The ones you stare at until a picture pops out at you.  I’ve tried a gazillion times and have never, ever seen the picture pop out.  It may be a conspiracy.

You can see the basketball and the volleyball and the guitar….are you wondering why Tim Gunn is in my storyboard?  I captured Liv and Mak watching one of our favorite shows – Project Runway…..and that’s why Tim Gunn appeared in my board.

Livy won her class spelling bee and went on to the regional competition in Milwaukee.  Oh the lesson she learned that day….I’ll save that for later.  It  was quite tramatic.

A little ice skating:

A new haircut for my almost teenager:

Peppysweet Lu:

Now on to February…….and a beach somewhere (thankfully).

This one:

was inspired by this:

Last year my sister gave her children a family funbook for Christmas.  She filled the book up with wonderful adventures for the family to do throughout the coming year.

I stole her idea this Christmas.  Do you think she minds?

For years we have wanted to go to the Apostle Islands in Northern Wisconsin and for years we’ve let the summer go by without making the trip.  So, a trip to the Apostle Islands made it into the book.  Can’t let the time pass this year – it’s in writing.

We also gave each of the children some special things.  And Miss Lulu got riding lessons at a farm near our house.  She was beside herself.  Her first lesson was this past week.  I didn’t take proper photographs…but I did bring my iphone and took a few on it.  Could she be any cuter?

He said this on national television yesterday.

“Tiger Woods will recover as a golfer. Whether he can recover as a person I think is a very open question, and it’s a tragic situation for him. I think he’s lost his family, it’s not clear to me if he’ll be able to have a relationship with his children, but the Tiger Woods that emerges once the news value dies out of this scandal — the extent to which he can recover — seems to me to depend on his faith. He’s said to be a Buddhist; I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So my message to Tiger would be, ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.’”

I have been praying for Tiger for weeks.