Grandson by the Lake

We had a fun time on Memorial Day watching our grandson while his parents had a day out and about. After lunch we took a walk down to the lake where people go to have picnics and swim in the roped off beach area. It was a popular place on that day, many families were out enjoying the holiday weekend.

We got M. out of the stroller and sat him in the sand to play. He would not keep his sun hat on! He liked the feel of letting the sand stream out of his hand. He wanted to crawl right out onto the muddy wet sand and into the water but we nixed that. Another thing he liked was to find fallen twig branches from the Cottonwood trees and strip all the leaves off one by one, oh and pulling fistfuls of grass was fun too.

Such a cute age of exploration.

Lou

Did you see the solar eclipse on Sunday?

The highest point near us is where the giant water tower with its red and white checkered top sits up on a ridge north of the city.  We went there about 7:00 pm Sunday May 20, 2012 to get a perfect clear view of the western sky to “watch” the partial annular solar eclipse. We had our cameras and our card stock paper with pinholes in it. For part of the 40 minutes or so that we “watched” there were cloud formations covering the sun but we did get to “see” the chunk missing out of the sun for a time. We didn’t actually look directly at the sun of course but used the camera and our pinpoint holes to see it indirectly. My photos only captured the moody looking clouds but Steve got several interesting ones that show the crescent shape of the sun. During the partial eclipse you hardly can tell it is happening unless you know in advance. The lighting only shifts slightly dimmer to our eyes. 

  

When we were on our road trip in January we stopped at one of The National Solar Observatory sites in New Mexico and took a self-guided tour of the facility there that has several solar telescopes and also living quarters for the scientists who come to the mountain to work there. http://www.nso.edu/ Click on the link to the NSO website and see current images. Other facilities are in Arizona and Hawaii. They monitor the corona and sunspot activity and a bunch of other stuff. 

The next solar eclipse will be a total eclipse where the moon completely covers the sphere of the sun for a few minutes causing darkness. That occurs when the moon is slightly nearer the earth in its elliptical orbit so covers more of the sun. It will occur across the US and the totality will pass through Nebraska and Wyoming. The date is August 21, 2017!! See this link. http://en.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_August_21,_2017 

Don’t miss it! Our grandchildren will be old enough then to get a little astronomy and science lesson.

One of the coolest images is where the sun’s light shining through the pin holes of light in the foliage of a tree during the eclipse casts a multitude of crescent images in the shadow it makes on the ground. So make sure you take the kiddos to a park with trees. Go to this link to see what I am talking about. http://www.petapixel.com/2012/05/21/crescent-shaped-projections-through-tree-leaves-during-the-solar-eclipse/

Lou

Two orchid blooms so far

Two orchid blooms opened just in time for our 35 anniversary on Monday. By the looks of it we will be having blooms for quite some time. There are six unopened buds on the first stalk and that many at least on the second stalk that started growing a few weeks after the first. We will enjoy them all. I think it looks just like it came from a professional grower. Photos below.

Lou

Good reminder at the Mother Child Tea

On Saturday I attended a Mother Child Tea. I hadn’t planned to attend as I had spent the previous weekend with all my children and grandchildren attending E #2’s graduation from grad school. None of them  live in town so I had volunteered to do nursery duty for any mom’s who attended the tea with babies. Only one three month old baby was there and he did great as there were plenty of arms to hold him. So I attended the tea. I was blessed by the four speakers.

 A grade school age girl and a teenager both gave glowing tributes to their moms. A twenty something young mom pregnant with her second baby described motherhood as being pierced by love so strong that one hardly knows how to deal with it. She has been on a journey of faith this past year since her first was stillborn. She says God has taught her so much and has sustained her and she looks forward in hope. The final speaker probably a grandmother had some words to say about a mother needing to give grace to her children. She emphasized other qualities as well, teaching and disciplining but mostly the giving of grace.

As an illustration of how God had guided her message preparation she said she typed out several drafts of her words. She mistyped GRACE and it came out GRADE in the first draft. It hit her that as a mom when she fails to give grace to her children when prompted by their behavior or words then it is as though she is giving them a grade for their performance. That is the opposite of grace which is unmerited favor or not getting what we actually deserve.

It is easy to fall into a trap of grading our children. Using negative words or withholding affection when they displease us. So much of our world is performance based, making the grade, out competing others, earning our worth. God’s world is the opposite of that. We are children of God because we love his Son. He accepts us on that basis alone. We have done nothing to earn his love, yet He considers us worthy of dying for. That is grace.

As a mother and grandmother I desire to be one who dispenses grace not grades. I thank the speaker for the good reminder.

Lou