Happy and the Meaning Thereof

     Blessed, blest, blissful, blithe, can't complain, captivated, cheerful, chipper, chirpy, content, contented, convivial, delighted, ecstatic, elated, exultant, flying high, gay, glad, gleeful, gratified, intoxicated, jolly, joyful, joyous, jubilant, laughing, light, lively, looking good, merry, mirthful, on cloud nine, overjoyed, peaceful, peppy, perky, playful, pleasant, pleased, sparkling, sunny, thrilled, tickled, tickled pink, up, upbeat, walking on air.-~thesaurus.com~

Those are all synonyms of the word happy. Apparently there are thousands of words that mean happy because a picture is worth a thousand words all of these pictures mean happy to me. :-)

                                                        A Springtime Table-scape
                                

I’ve been looking at this fabric in a tourist shoppe on Main Street for months and finally a couple of weeks ago I bought it. I made a skirt of it last Friday and Saturday night I wore it on a date with this good looking brother of mine. I had a positively lovely time. Thank you Lance.

                                       

These are two of the most darling children in the world. I've been trying to talk Lisl and Dru into letting me keep “Halla Baby” until I go visit them next winter. They are not easily persuaded I'm afraid!

  I found the train set in the storage room a week or so ago and Jube enjoyed it for a day or two. We're going to take it with to Chicago Club this weekend along with our other, higher quality, set.

 Gabe's are getting here tomorrow and we are all heading over to Chicago Club for the weekend. I'm really, really looking forward to it, as is the rest of the family. And now I must go sew another skirt and pack for the weekend.

 Have a lovely weekend! ~Francis 

This Is Not A List

This is not a list, this is a documentary of important happenings in my life lately. 
                      
Thing One ~ Sunshiny weather and the-return-of-the-horrible-hayfever.

Thing Two ~ Dru's home and lots of happy times playing with babies and talking.

Thing Three ~ We moved NBCC to the Northwoods Church and split into two classes. It went wonderfully, other than one of the girls being sick, coming anyways, and then having to be taken home early.

Thing Four ~ I've been hearing about lots of new dating couples, and it's startling to realize that the people who are dating are my peers, goodness!!!

Thing Five ~ Teaching (still) Enjoying It (still). I had a lovely brainstorm today, I want to take DJ and Gin over to Minong and show them the fire tower and the river and my Dad's machine and take them out for icecream sometime before school lets out. We shall see if it actually happens.
 DJ informed me today that if I taught his class in VBS he'd actually stay for the last day. This after stating emphatically, "I HATE the last day!". He also told me "I'm kinda used of you teaching us now". I'm like, wow, it took you five months!
   Nadina likes to stretch as far up as she can reach and open our classroom door up, peak in at us with a grin, and quickly run away. DJ, Gin and I all get stupid grins on our faces and say in unison "Dina" in a cute little baby voice. Then we look at each other and smirk because we all did the same thing, we all rise to our feet to go shut the door, look at each other and smirk again, and then Gin goes and closes the door.
It happens at least once a day, you'd think we'd learn!
 We were sitting in the class room today and we suddenly heard Nina shouting up the register at us. I listened for a minute and decided that it was unrecognizable jibber-jabber and continued with what I was doing.
Gin however, got a silly grin on her face and said "she's singin' that song". I asked her what song and she said "that, it's your ooown fault, ya went ahead an' did it, song!". I listened for a little longer and discovered that she was right. How many of you have ever tried to teach while listening to "it's your own fault" being yelled full throatedly up the register? DJ found it  utterly unbearable and resorted to hollering back down the register at her. I told him if we ignored her she'd go away and he got an "I'm considering this" look on his face and went back to his desk. I was right by the way.

Thing Six ~ I like being right.

The End ~ (As in, nothing comes after this, and the story is over, and all that other good stuff).

Negative/Positive

DJ did it again yesterday. He looked up and said "I'm being good all day today aren't I?". So I assured him that, yes, he was, because, well, he was. And sitting here tonight it occurred to me that what he needed was confirmation. Confirmation that everything was going good, and that I was happy with him.
 People are that way allot I think, when they've messed up it takes a long time to reassure themselves that they can actually achieve and do it right. "It takes hundreds of compliments to build up a persons self esteem, but only one unkind word to take it back down" -Unknown.  I know I'm that way. I'm a "words of affirmation" person, or so I've been told, and I believe it, one affirming word can go a long ways for me. I like to know if I did the job right, I like to know if they're happy with the job. And I like a simple, honest, "thank you". It thrills my soul to hear it.
 But I swing too far the other way, a hint of aggravation at something I did or said can bother me for a long time. And I tend to mull it over, trying to tell myself that it's okay. But in the back of my head there's still a little voice saying "you really messed up that time, you aren't ever gonna live it down, they're gonna remember that forever". How does a person learn to live above that?
 I think for me, the answer is believing their "I forgive you" with just as much trust in the fact that they really do, as the trust I have in them telling the truth when they are thanking or complimenting me.
 Why is it so much easier to believe the negative than it is to believe the positive?

I walked into my classroom yesterday prepared for war. My last day of school had been the worst one in the history of ever.
 I opened the door and was greeted with lovely new trim all the way around the room.
But that wasn't what I saw first. What I saw first was everything in the room in a very large pile in the middle of the room. The schoolbooks were piled in a red crate and the only thing that really registered with me right away was that the desks were still upright... Well DJ and Ginnys desks were, I couldn't find mine. I found out later that one of the carpenters was standing on it and it had collapsed. I felt bad about that. I should have written "not safe to stand on" on my desk top. It would have fit right in with the "I love you" and the face, and the "FRG", and all the other graffiti that happens to decorate the top of my desk.
 I took a quick survey of the room and started stacking cabinets on top of each other and piling Christmas decor into a large cardboard box willy-nilly. I also went inside and found a bucket of hot-soapy-water and a vacuum sweeper. When the girls and I were done re-arranging the room one of the girls informed me that "Kyle's right there". So I poked my head out the door and told him that I'd like him to fix my desk... Which he did, nicely, thank you Kyle.
 And then I started to vacuum. I'd done quite a bit of the room till it finally made sense to me why there was a a great cloud of white floating about with the sweeper. The gray tape at the end of the hose was coming undone. (I LOVE gray tape... my one and only pick with it is that they don't seem to make it in pink camo). Anyways I  had one of the girls find me a role of the stuff and I fixed the sweeper. And it was no longer accompanied by a lovely white ghost floating along as I swept the floor. By the time I was done I liked the room better than I had before the coming-of-the-carpenters. (A large part of my liking it this way is that my chalkboard is now sitting the right direction and its up at the right hight.)
At ten thirty or so I had finally started school. Their new sound for the day was "sh", slightly ironic considering that my classroom isn't exactly the quietest in the world. It used to be fairly quiet... when I first started, before I discovered that I had larger battles to fight than having a silent battlefield.
 The day went very well. At one point DJ looked up at me and smiled "I'm bein' good right now!"... It made my poor soul shake. Maybe I'm a horrid monster of a teacher who aught to be sitting in a dungeon eating bread and water and conversing with the rats. At the end of the day he was hanging on to me around the waist and declaring that he was going to keep me there forever and I had several other children clamoring about how "that one was SHORT, can't you read another one!?"... So I decided that maybe I don't need to worry about  learning rat-speak anytime soon.
 Lily asked me at the beginning of the day if I felt like my life was in an uproar when I went there. I smiled and shook my head. I don't, I like being there, I like teaching, I like children. I like feeling like I'm doing something profitable. And I like challenges that I can be in control of and conquer. I enjoyed cleaning that room up.... I knew I could do it, and I did. I wonder how often life's challenges are not conquered simply because we don't take control of them. We look at them and think, "As soon as somebody will give me directions I'll try but I'm not making any promises". When is it our responsibility to take responsibility?
Quote of the Day:
 "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." -Philippians 4:13

Pictures for Lisl

https://picasaweb.google.com/Frog.graber/Delvins

School

"School is fun!"... Snowballs through the open window... "I know how to write 'God' now!!!"... "lost" pencils... "two plus two is ALWAYS four, you said so!"... paper airplanes aimed at unsuspecting me when they're supposed to be studying... "eighty? ninety? tendy!?, 'you are like so guessing!', yup I am!"... Yeah, I like teaching! :)