Author Archives: Barbara Harper

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About Barbara Harper

https://barbarah.wordpress.com

Blog year in review:

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Each year about this time I’ve looked back at the first blog post from each month, but this year I want to do my favorite from each month as well:

January:
First post:
New Year’s Meditations.

Favorite post:
Hard to choose between three different favorites this month, but I’ll say When children’s beliefs and practices differ from our own.

February:
First post:
Bible study on women.

Favorite post(s):
Choking anxieties and Melli’s ABC Challenge and other things I see in odd places (the post wherein I see Gene Shalit in the wallpaper…)

March:
First post:
The Conversion of Adoniram Judson.

Favorite post(s):
I have a preposition for you and Encouragement for homemakers.

April:
First post:
O Baby!

Favorite post:
Yes, I got dressed in a hurry. Why do you ask?

May:
First post:
Poetry Friday: Ode to Hay Fever.

Favorite post(s):
Graduation dinner and The visible teaches of the invisible.

June:
First post:
Preaching personalities.

Favorite post:
Of lists and marriage.

July:
First post:
A Thousand Words in Idioms: O and P.

Favorite post:
Things I remember from childhood.

August:
First post:
Reasons why prayers aren’t answered (this was actually the second post as the first one was a contest winner announcement.)

Favorite post:
The Wedding.

September:
First post:
Book Review: How Do I Love Thee?

Favorite post:
Another tie between Helpers and Thoughts from the toy store.

October:
First post:
Melli’s September Photo Scavenger Hunt (Hey, Melli — when’s the next one? 😀 )

Favorite post:
Hard to choose this month! Couldn’t decide between God does so much more than “show up” and Fathers and sons and a couple of others.

November:
First post:
All of These.

Favorite post:
What He Is To Me.

December:
First post:
Book Review: The Heirloom.

Favorite post:
On our 30th anniversary: 30 things I love about my husband.

I’ve enjoyed talking a couple of days to skim back over the posts of each month. I wish I had done so before writing our Christmas letter — there were some things I had forgotten about! But I like how these encapsulate the different things I focus on in my blog: meditations on Scriptural truth, family, books, and fun posts.

Odds and ends

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I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas week! Ours was very nice.

I thought I’d share with you just a few tidbits from the past week.

When we came back from our anniversary trip, Jeremy has already offered to make dinner that evening, and Jason and Mittu surprised us with balloons, a cake, some plastic goblets (I didn’t know they made such a thing), and “sparkling” grape juice. We had never really had an anniversary celebration at home before — having a girl in the family adds a new dimension! Not to fault the boys, though. They were used to us just going out to eat that day and only a couple of times over the years going somewhere overnight. But that was a nice surprise.

One of our silly little traditions on our anniversary is to put a card under each others’ pillow and then read them together before we go to bed. Somehow even though I bought family Christmas cards specifically before we left so the store selection wouldn’t be all picked over or all gone by the time we came back, I totally forgot about an anniversary card. I thought I might sneak out Monday morning before we left, but it ended up being so late before I was ready to go, I didn’t want to take the time, and there was no way to do it sneakily. So I thought maybe I’d find something in a little shop along the way. Nope. The places we went to didn’t have any and the places that might have had them weren’t open. So that evening in the hotel I was trying to decide what to do. I hated not having a card at all, though I knew Jim would understand. While he was on the phone with the kids I looked around and found the hotel stationery….so I wrote my little note for our 30th anniversary on that. 😳 At least having the image and name of the hotel on it made it somewhat commemorative. I was especially thankful then that I had posted my 30 things I love about my husband that morning!

Our church always has a Christmas Eve service, understanding that everyone can’t come because some have their family celebrations then. I had had to go to the store that day and then had multitudes of wrapping to do and was chafing just a little about going. But I always enjoy it once I get there. Our music director’s daughter and her husband were in town and they did a sacred concert for us: she plays the cello and he is working on a PhD in something to do with classical piano.  The cello is my all-time favorite instrument. It was lovely: a nice, peaceful time to stop and reflect.

The service itself was at 5 p.m. — kind of an odd time — I guess they were trying as much as possible not to interfere with anyone’s evening plans. But we ended up going out to eat afterward at Fatz Cafe. I wouldn’t mind making that a regular Christmas Eve tradition. 😀

Christmas Day was very nice with Jason, Mittu, and Grandma coming over. The Christmas story, presents, and what has become our traditional breakfast of Sister Shubert sausage wraps, cinnamon rolls, and sliced, cooked apples with cinnamon and sugar, then naps, puttering around with Christmas presents, dinner, naps, a couple of movies on TV, and time with family in between. A very restful day.

No after-Christmas shopping for me on Saturday! I went into one store looking for something I had seen advertised before Christmas in the hopes that they might still have it, but no such luck, and the crowdedness and lines reminded me why I don’t go shopping on that day.

Mittu and Jason had a little get-together Saturday night with us and a family from church they are close to whose daughters worked with them at Castlepoint. One daughter attends college in FL and one teaches in CA, and they were both in town, so it was a nice time of visiting. We played Pit, which was my first time playing. I had always thought, looking on, that it was a noisy, confusing game, but in the midst of it, it’s fun.

Today was a fairly normal Sunday. I have the ladies’ booklet to work on this week — I don’t know quite how that will work with everyone home, but I’ve been praying about it! We’re really looking forward to New Year’s Eve at Jason and Mittu’s. I grew up in a family that had fireworks regularly and I’ve chafed at our city’s restriction of them. But Jason and Mittu live outside the city limits! So we kind of invited ourselves over to do fireworks then. We’re not so much into the ones that just make noise: one of my all time favorite ones we had ages ago were little tanks that would send off little sparkles as they traveled a few inches. I wonder if they still make those…

It’s been understandably quiet around the blogosphere this week, which has been helpful as I am sure we were all otherwise occupied, but I’ve missed getting together with my blog friends. I imagine most people’s posting might be a little iffy this next week, too, but then we’ll get back to “normal.” I have a lot of plans for that first normal week!

Here are a few pictures from Jim’s camera during our anniversary trip. We don’t have many photos of just the two of us together, but he got some using Jeremy’s gorillapod and his time-delay setting on his camera.

In the hotel room:

In front of the hotel:

At a little tea shop where we stopped for lunch one day:

In front of the Heyward-Washington House waiting for the next tour:

Hope you have a good last week of 2009!

Microfiction Monday

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Welcome to Microfiction Monday,
where a picture only paints 140 characters.

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Susan at Stony River has begun a Microfiction Monday wherein participants write a story in 140 characters based on a particular image that Susan has chosen for the day.  Design 215’s Character Counter helps keep track of the number of characters. It’s a fun exercise in creative conciseness…or concise creativity…

The picture for today and my take on it:

Annie was looking for the box of dress-up clothes, but what she found convinced her she wasn’t in that much of a hurry to grow up after all.

Ah, Dearest Jesus

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Ah, dearest Jesus, holy Child,
Make Thee a bed, soft, undefiled
Within my heart, that it may be
A quiet chamber kept for Thee.

My heart for very joy doth leap,
My lips no more can silence keep;
I, too, must sing with joyful tongue
That sweetest ancient cradle song.

Glory to God in highest Heaven,
Who unto man His Son hath given;
While angels sing with tender mirth,
A glad new year to all the earth.

— Martin Luther

Merry Christmas!

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For God, the Lord of Earth and Heaven,
So loved and longed to see forgiven
The world, in sin and pleasure mad,
That He gave the greatest Gift He had,
His only begotten Son, to take our place,
That whosoever – oh, what grace!–
Believeth, placing simple trust
In Him, the righteous and the just,
Should not perish lost in sin
But have everlasting life in Him.

— Author unknown

Wishing you all a wonderful day of fun, family, feasting, and especially remembering the birth of our Savior.

Our anniversary trip

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I’ve mentioned a couple of times that we had “special plans” for this week that had nothing to do with Christmas. As some of you may have guessed (or knew from Facebook), those plans did have to do with our anniversary!

We went to Charleston, SC Monday and came back Wednesday afternoon. We’ve been to Charleston twice before: one weekend with a tour group in our early married life, and years later taking all the boys to Folly Beach for several days, staying in a hotel right on the beach. This time we stayed in the historic district downtown — in a historic hotel, the Mills House Hotel.

Hotel lobby:

I liked this idea of using a half wreath on either side of double doors so it looks like one big one.

This was the first time we stayed in a hotel that didn’t feel like a sterile hotel room. It was lovely.

I was wincing at how much it must cost, but Jim told me that because of the points he accrued through his traveling, we were only paying the parking fee. That was good news! Though we hate his traveling, it was good to get something back out of it, and it made me enjoy the setting that much more.

The only negative about it was that you couldn’t park your own car in the lot: they had valet parking at the hotel or you could park it in one of the downtown public areas. I didn’t like not having access to the car whenever we wanted, but with a little planning ahead we could call down to the desk and have the car brought around so it was waiting when we came down.

Also the fancier hotels seem not to offer complimentary breakfasts.

But there were scores of restaurants within walking distance. The first night we ate at Magnolia’s.

Excellent — the service, the food, the atmosphere, everything. And scores of people were walking around at night, so we felt safe exploring a little afterward. There were a couple of little restaurants close by the hotel where we had breakfast, then lunch at a little tea shop one day, and dinner Tuesday night at Hyman’s Seafood. Didn’t like that quite as well. The potato soup was the best I have ever had, and Jim said the same of his crab cakes. But everything else was just ok, and the atmosphere was really noisy. Plus the only bathrooms were up a flight of wooden stairs. But supposedly, according to a plaque at my table:

We got a package deal through the Charleston Museum to see it plus the Joseph Manigault House and the Heyward-Washington House.

We’re not really museum people per se, but there was a display based on weddings, wedding clothes in particular, that was neat to see.

The Joseph Manigault House was interesting though the tour only took about fifteen minutes.

The Heyward-Washington House was built before the Revolutionary War by Thomas Heyward, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

The first two times we came to Charleston, we did the usual touristy things — the carriage tours (in a horse-drawn carriage while a guide tells about various historical tidbits), the harbor tour, seeing the Yorktown, etc. And I think those were great ways to “do” Charleston at first, and I loved them. But this time was a lot more free-form. The museum we could browse through at our own pace; the houses had tours every half hour, so we could go to them pretty much any time. Otherwise we just drove or walked around and stopped whenever we saw anything interesting we wanted to explore. We drove around the Battery, drove past Rainbow Row, visited a few gift shops, walked out on a pier into the harbor, where we saw a whole roofline of these guys:

Overall it was a fun, relaxing time. We certainly got our exercise: if we walked like that all the time, we’d be in good shape!

It’s good to get away sometimes and just be together. This was our best anniversary yet.

The perfect Christmas letter photo…

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…is elusive.

This one is pretty good except my eyes are closed.

This one is pretty good except Grandma is looking a little fierce. This was the fourth attempt and she was getting tired.

…Not quite centered…

Great! Except for the bunny ears above Mittu’s head.

And more bunny ears!!

We took 13 all together. I ended up going with the first one, even though my eyes are closed. I figured the size the photo would be in our Christmas letter, perhaps no one would notice. I know some of these could have been photoshopped, like the second to last, but I don’t know how to do that (yet! I need to learn) and I didn’t have time to ask Jeremy to work on them.

But even though there wasn’t a “perfect” photo, we had fun (well, maybe except for Grandma)…and all together these represent a pretty accurate “snapshot” of our family life. 🙂

Thank you for all your congratulations on our anniversary! I hope to tell you about our “special plans” in the next day or so.

On our 30th anniversary: 30 things I love about my husband

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1. He loves God.

2. He fulfills well the admonition in Deuteronomy 6:7 to teach children God’s Word in the course of daily life: “And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.” Jeremy has said he gets more out of a conversation with his dad than almost any sermon.

3. He is a wonderful father.

4. He leads gently, not tyrannically or despotically.

5. He has kind eyes.

6. He kills bugs for me.

7. If he drives my car and notices the gas is low, he fills the car up for me.

8. He knows how to fix a multitude of things.

9. He is smart.

10. He can usually handle problems and issues with people firmly but not angrily.

11. He is calm in a crisis and knows what to do or can figure it out in short order.

12. He has a sharp sense of humor.

13. He is very patient with my foibles.

14. He is a great griller!

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15. After Thanksgiving dinner he gets the rest of the meat off the turkey and then cleans out the roasting pan.

16. Sometimes he will clean the bathrooms unasked and unexpectedly.

17. He has a strong work ethic. He not only works hard and long to support us, he likes to do his best at any job.

18. He takes good care of his mother.

19. He is generous.

20. He has a lot of financial savvy.

21. He has a lot of sanctified common sense.

22. He is discerning.

23. He is generally more relaxed than I am. I appreciate the counter balance to my tenseness.

24. He can handle most of the technological stuff.

25. He is thoughtful.

26. He is more outgoing than I am.

27. Though he probably would say he doesn’t feel at ease in social situations, he handles them with apparent ease.

28. He is generally more upbeat and cheerful than I am. If he does get into a bad mood of some kind, it doesn’t usually last long.

29. He is still a gentleman.

30. He made this video for me last year to one of my favorite songs:

Thanks for a wonderful 30 years, Hon.

Here’s to the next 30!

Fall Into Reading Wrap-Up

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With the first day of winter comes…the end of Callapidder Days‘ Fall Into Reading Challenge! Those who participated can write about how they did with the goals they set way back at the beginning of fall. Katrina has a Mr. Linky set up where we can check in with each other.

I completed these books on my original list:

A Surrendered Heart by Tracy Peterson and Judith Miller, third in the Broadmoor Legacy series, briefly reviewed here.

The Missing, second in the Seasons of Grace series by Beverly Lewis, briefly reviewed here.

American Haven by Elisabeth Yates, reviewed just briefly here.

Plain Perfect by Beth Wiseman, reviewed here.

The Heirloom by Colleen L. Reece and Julie Reece-DeMarco, given to me by my friend, Carol, reviewed here.

My Heart Remembers by Kim Vogel Sawyer.

Becoming God’s True Woman edited by Nancy Leigh DeMoss, reviewed here.

Dr. Frau: A Woman Doctor Among the Amish by Grace H. Kaiser, briefly reviewed here.

I did not read:

The Hidden Flame by Janette Oke and Davis Bunn. It just came out this month – I just got it last week and was already into a couple of other books. It’s one of the next ones in the queue!

How To Read Slowly by James W. Sire. I’ve had this one my list multiple times and just keep not getting to it. This type of non-fiction is not my forte, but I am hoping it will help improve what I retain from reading non-fiction. I need to just make time to make myself start it.

My Heart Restored, a Bible study by June Kimmel. I came across another devotional book I wanted to do at this time of year, which leads me to:

I read these books which were not on my original list:

Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus, a compilation of 22 Christmas related essays from authors varying from Augustine and Luther to Piper. I had gotten it at the end of last year after seeing it mentioned on several blogs and just rediscovered it when organizing my bookshelves. I read it in place of the Bible study mentioned above. I haven’t reviewed it yet, but I highly recommend it.

A Vote of Confidence by Robin Lee Hatcher, reviewed here.

Home to Harmony by Phillip Gulley.

Farraday Road by Ace Collins, reviewed here.

My favorite books from the challenge were Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus and Becoming God’s True Woman. My least favorite was Farraday Road.

Usually I try to incorporate a classic novel in my reading, but I didn’t have a particular one in mind, and I wanted to get my TBR shelf cleared off a little, so I went through a lot of the Christian fiction instead, which goes a little faster.

I enjoy this challenge because: it is non-pressurized; it usually causes me to incorporate some things into my reading that I’ve been wanting to read but don’t usually pick up when I am scrounging around for the next book; and I enjoy seeing what others have been reading, though it does cause my TBR list to grow exponentially.