Organizing the House

Hope Soap 1 John 3:2-3

I’ve been a mad woman trying to piece through the chaos we call home.  This means nearly everything gets taken out of a room in order to clean from top to bottom, in, out, and behind everything.  Ol’ Farm House = mousey & buggy visitors every season when the farmers are in the nearby fields tearing up their nasty little homes.  Yuck!  The best way for me to KNOW the house is clean, is to rearrange everything.  I have to admit some age slipping up on me because I used to do this 3-4 times a year.  A few close friends may even argue that it seemed I did this every month for the first 10 years of our marriage.  Spring and Fall are necessary.  We may have our share of lived-in-clutter, but at least I know the house is “clean” this way.  I’m not a meticulous housekeeper.  Hubby has his own business, out of our home, so I never know when we will have visitors and many of them are greasy, dirty, hardworking men.  I want them to feel comfortable coming in our house and sitting down at our table for a cup of coffee.  I don’t even want them to worry about taking their boots off, muddy or not.  For that reason, we have floors that are fairly easy to sweep and the littlest children in our home know how to use the small mop that is always handy.  I figure if you stop in, you are coming to see the people, not the house.

1^st room this time was upstairs, the children’s rooms.  We moved the oldest out of upstairs, moved the youngest around to a different spot, sorted toys back into daily tubs, and moved the school room up.  The Monday tub is farm toys & Lincoln logs.  Tuesday is games & puzzles. Wednesday is play clothes & stuffed animals.  Thursday is cars & trucks.  Friday is Legos.  Saturday is wooden train set.  Sunday is dinosaurs.  We cleaned out a dresser & each child has a drawer for miscellaneous school stuff.  The top drawer is for extra arts and craft supplies.  We have two desks & a card table set up for school work.

2^nd room was the living room, because that is where all the toys went while I sorted.  We had a path for several days.  I have a few bags & boxes still stashed in our bedroom of miscellaneous toys needing to be sorted.  Videos, baby safe toys, and musical instruments are all in their places.

3^rd room was dining room.  We sorted and moved and rearranged and dusted…  I love knickknacks, china, & tea sets, so there is more work here than many would choose to have, but I get lots of complements and I love spending time in my dining room.  We still do most of our school here.  The chalk boards are still up and my files are still in here, but things look much nicer and are organized.  This is the room we spend most of our time in and where we usually receive guests for coffee, tea, or a meal.  I’ve had men say it looks like a dollhouse, but they seem to enjoy my busy display of our life and family, so I’m happy.

4^th was the bathroom.  I didn’t go overboard here, we just sorted hair-pretties and organized them by colors on a rack on the back of the door.  I have a plan to make an organizer to hang there out of hubbies old front overall pockets.  I’ll post a picture when I get that done.  Hopefully soon.

5^th room will be (hopefully) the kitchen.  It needs a makeover.  I have several ideas and haven’t really made up my mind.  We’ve decided to repaint rather than spend the extra to remodel right now.  I’m passing thoughts by hubby, trying to gauge which ideas he’s most partial to.  It’s hard to read his opinion sometimes, but I know it’s in there somewhere.

Yee-haw and Wahoo!

Lazy blogging…

I have been a VERY lazy blogger lately.  Actually I’ve been lazy about several things lately.  Well, I don’t know if it’s actually laziness…  We’ve had a lot going on the past few weeks.  Anytime there are lots of things to concentrate on, something always suffers.  Here it is my blogging and the laundry. (And dishes, but we won’t talk about them right now.)  Blogging doesn’t bother me too much, because honestly it is not a big priority in my life.  Laundry is a problem when everyone is coming into our bedroom looking for the clean clothes I haven’t folded yet.  I’m very good at making sure the laundry gets washed. Our hamper hardly ever overflows.  Unfortunately I have always let the clean laundry sit in baskets until a once a week folding frenzy hits me.  Yes, the dishes do pile up and the floors get crunchy, and oh wow are those toys all over the place!  How does it happen?  One day at a time, one meal at a time, one mud puddle at a time.  Yes we had more laundry this past week because of the mud puddles.  I’m so grateful though!  After years of drought, we have mud for the children to play in!  Yeah!  So, yes I’ve been lazy lately.  I’ve been sitting back watching our children ride bicycles through mud puddles and making mud pies.  We’ve been having simple meals while I try to revamp our schedule and menu.  The living room is full of toys waiting to be gone through and sorted for reorganization (and redistribution).  The school shelves are cluttered from hasty hands wanting to go back outside and the utility room floor is littered with rubber boots, umbrellas, and plastic dinosaurs (who have been visiting the great beyond of mud puddle land daily as well).  In this season, lazy Mommy equals happy children, studying baby turtles, horned toads, and pretty colored butterflies.  It means I get a handful or two of crushed wildflowers brought to me every day.  I may be behind on a few things around the house, but this season won’t last long so I’m going to enjoy it.  The ironing will wait!  Ecclesiastes 3:1 “To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”

Ten Days of… what?

I’ve been enjoying some great posts by some very inspiring bloggers lately.  The weather has been beautiful, a cool breeze blowing in the window with sweet smells of spring.  I love hearing the noise of the children and animals running around outside playing, and the sewing machine humming a pretty embroidery pattern for my next sewing projects.  In between this and that, I’m sneaking in a bit of blog reading time.  Some mom-bloggers have gotten together to do “Ten Days of… Series” http://www.ihomeschoolnetwork.com/10-days-of-series .  They’ve got some wonderful topics; inspiring, fun, and thought provoking.  Here I am sipping my coffee feeling extremely lazy while I have one child doing dishes, one vacuuming,  one sweeping, one checking animals, and one finishing up school… (The oldest is out with a friend.)  It’s past time for a blog post though, so here I sit trying to think of something special to type.  What’s running through my mind?  Little every-day things like; needing to fold laundry, what we’re having for supper, and whether or not I’ve watered the plants lately.  Bill paying, time management, and meal planning have been topics I’ve been avoiding.  The upstairs is screaming for new paint in the boys’ room and an overhaul of the toy boxes.   The moths have been really bad and I’m worried about my wool messenger bag, so I’ve cut out another one…  Actually I’ve cut out three more.  In typical “Dawnita” fashion, I can’t just cut out or do one project at a time, I decided I might as well make one for each season of the year.  Then I went through the zippers and realize I have several fun colors in that size…  I should make some bright fun bags to try selling in my etsy store…  I don’t have anything listed on my Porch Swing right now… http://www.etsy.com/shop/DawnitasPorchSwing  I need to get busy and get some things on there!   I’m terrible about thinking of someone to GIVE things to, rather than selling the items for money.  Right now the $$ would be a big help and I have lots of supplies cluttering up the house.  This is a picture of the baby blanket I made for a cousin’s new baby.  I had a lot of fun making it.  I love nine patch, it’s so easy and always looks classy.  …So…  If I were to do a “Ten Days of… Series” , what would it be?  I’ve been getting several newsletters on successful blogging; how to make money blogging, how to get more followers, how to make a winning post….  I went through and deleted them today.  I write from the heart and from inspiration.  I can’t sit at this desk and think, “What can I write that will make the most impact or the most money?”  I go blank and even start getting discouraged.  No, I must pound onto this keyboard whatever is going on in my head.  If it’s unprofessional, fine.  If it’s cutsie-wootsie, fine.  If it’s crazy and nutty, even better!  Hopefully someone will be blessed.  If not, at least I unloaded.  Thanks to those of you who are patient enough to drop in on this humble little blog occasionally!  “Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?” Psalm 56:8

Putting the Pieces Together

I’ve started three different blog posts over the past week.  None of them really came together right.  There has been a lot going on around here, yet things have been pretty laid back.  “How can that be?” you say.  Well, only on the Funny Farm, I suppose.  We have a new sound on our farm.  Eeee-Awwww! Eee-Aw, Eee, Awhhh!  It is pretty funny.  The pony is scared to death of Mr. Donkey.  She jumped the fence into the big pasture and ran laps for 10 hours or so.  She’s safely in the round pen now, within peaking distance.  He’s trying to be patient with her, but wants to be friends so bad.  Every time she lets her guard down and relaxes, he bounces over to the fence with his ears poked up in hopefulness.

The puppies and kittens are beginning to open their eyes.   The wild turkeys have come to visit.  The weather has been beautiful.  With the windows open, the breeze blows in the wonderful smells of spring and the sounds of birds chirping.  It’s truly lovely.  I so hope all his wonderful moisture means our drought is over.  I’ve even walked barefoot through the creek at my dad’s chasing a steer.  There’s nothing like creek goo between the toes!

I have also been doing a lot of sewing.  I keep getting catalogs (and inspirational links from a dear friend) with the cutest spring clothes.  We’re financially strapped tight right now, but I have a nice stash of fabric and have just been sewing away.  I’ll have to post some pictures.  I’m working on a quilt right now for a family member who recently had a baby boy.  I’m late, but was waiting for the proper inspiration.  I decided to do a quilt similar to my favorite that I did for Baby-boo 6 years ago.  I love simple nine-patch quilts.  There is something so timeless and simple about the pattern.  (Not to mention EASY!)  I ransacked the stash for boyish, yet classy fabrics.  I’ve had a lot of comments through the years about my pick of colors.  I always seem to throw something in there that everyone goes, “Ooo, yuck, why that fabric?”  I always reply, “Because it has to be in there.”  When it’s all done they say, “You were right, that fabric had to be there.”  Just because they don’t match doesn’t mean they don’t coordinate.

I love how God does that with us.  Have you ever noticed how some things (and/or people) match in your life and some things coordinate?  Some things add contrast and some things complement, but somehow all the pieces just seem to fit together.  We have moments when our lives are cut into pieces, times when we have to go back and use the seam-ripper and take things apart.  Some pieces get bent out of shape and have to be discarded and replaced.  Even when things don’t seem to be matching up quite right, once it’s all sewed together and quilted, the imperfections are what give that homey character that makes a person want to curl up in it and enjoy the soft warmth and love.

“How precious is Your steadfast love, O God!  All people may take refuge in the shadow of Your wings.” Psalm 36:7 NRSV

Unmotivated

I’ve been incredibly unmotivated lately, feeling lazy.  The weather has been cool, cloudy, and rainy.  The days have been sleepy and laid back.  On sunny days the windows have been open, bringing in the smell of budding trees and weeds.  Birds are chirping and we have our first batches of puppies and kittens born just this past week.  The peacocks are courting, all bright and fluffy, the females in their greens and the males in royal blue and turquoise. We even have a bottle calf mooing from the East pen.  The retired mother animals seem to feel my blue spirit.  Maybe it’s just baby blues.

Joy has tomatoes growing already.  She has pots of green things all over the place.  The green house needs new plastic really bad, but the inside is getting all organized.  Beauty has been cleaning and fixing fences and pens.  We’re all missing the goats.  We’d be looking forward to twins and triplets about now.  She’s been keeping her eyes open for pygmy goats and new Golden Retrievers to add to her breeding plan.

Spring is time for projects on our little funny farm.  Sneak is trying to be involved in a little bit of everything.  He likes to supervise and make sure everything is running smoothly.  He has questions or advise for everyone.  He and Niney are sanding a little old rocking chair to paint.  We’re going to make a new cushion, fixing it up for Niney’s Eskipoo, Lady.  We have plans to make Lady a castle dog house this year.  Niney wants everything purple because she insists that is Lady’s favorite color.  I’m trying to talk her into a periwinkle blue since purple is everyone else’s least favorite color.  Lady is such an adorable ball of fluff.  I need to try to get pictures of her bouncing through Niney’s hula-hoop.  It’s so cute.

Bundle wants to do garden things with Joy.  He’d like to make some bird houses and yard decorations.  Pretty planters are so expensive, I’m hoping we can get some larger inexpensive pots and either paint them or try some mosaic patterns with ceramic tiles or something fun.  I had plans last year for some picture frame bird feeders; maybe we’ll do it this year.  The big girls are trying to talk me into letting him have rabbits.  He’d like that, but we’ve had bad luck with bunnies in the past.

Baby Boo is enjoying puddles, butterflies, and a baby turtle they found yesterday.  She’s been very emotional lately, oscillating between bossing everyone around and having breakdowns when things aren’t going her way.  She’s very sensitive when we’re watching movies.  Whatever the conflict to the story is, she takes it very hard.  The concept of death seems to be harder for her than it was for the other children.  Living on the farm, death is a natural part of our lives.  The children seldom cry over a death.  Baby Boo grieves much differently.  She’s such a funny little thing.

It’s time for spring cleaning.  I’d like to remodel the kitchen and paint the boy’s room this year.  I don’t know if that’s what we’ll do or not.  I’m feeling a bit old for do-it-yourself projects so big.  I definitely need to wash windows before the weather gets too hot.  Right now, I’m just going to enjoy the breeze, the warmth of the sun, and the peace before the bugs get bad.

escape

Writing escapes me sometimes. It’s not really writer’s block. It’s more like the thin line between what must be said and what is better left unsaid. There are times when silence speaks louder than words. I know, I’m speaking in clichés’ now. Sometimes word pictures are best. The past few weeks I’ve felt like a crumpled up piece of paper tossed in the corner with nothing but scribbles on it. I’ve been found. The wrinkles have been gently, but firmly smoothed out and the scribbling erased and replaced with a fine handwritten poem and a drawing of a beautiful rose in full bloom. Sometimes that’s what it takes to understand what God’s doing in our lives. We tend to want to write our own stories and draw our own pictures, only to find it to be nothing but scribblings without His presence fully in our lives. Once we realize what a mess we are, cast away our will and give it to Him, He lovingly puts pieces back together. I’m probably simplifying too much. There is so much more to it. Our submission to Him and the authorities He puts in our lives is so important. Our willingness to serve Him through serving others is also necessary. We must give up self-serving and prideful attitudes. Sometimes we must humble ourselves and ask for help. I tend to have a very independent nature, so asking for help is hard for me. I have learned it is best to set aside pride and ask for help when it is needed. God always responds. So, last week I rested. This week I sewed a dress each day, Monday through Thursday. I cleaned house and took a nap today. I’m ready to make homemade pizza for supper. This weekend we’ll play cowboys with my dad. We’ll start next week with a costume party with some friends. After that, amid catching up on laundry, maybe I’ll get back into a writing routine again. Maybe I’ll post pictures of the dresses I made… “God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Psalm 73:26

Encouragement you DON’T need


I received an encouraging email yesterday that I did not need. Doesn’t that sound silly? Do you ever get encouragement you don’t need? Think about it a moment. “Stay in bed this morning and get some extra rest.” While this may be great advice for a new mommy who’s been up most of the night with a cranky baby, it may not be the best for someone who has a list of responsibilities needing to be accomplished during the day. In that case, “Five ways to get a better night’s sleep” might be a great headline for proper encouragement:

1. Eat supper earlier, so it has time to digest before bed.

2. Exercise for 15 minutes or so to top of your metabolism for the day.

3. Calm the atmosphere around you with melodious music and maybe some candlelight.

4. Read your Bible and Pray. In HIS word, this is the beginning of your day, not the end.

5. Go to bed earlier, before 10 p.m. is best.

I should be taking this advice. No more cranky babies in this house. The youngest even lost her first tooth last week. I about cried. She just got them in the other day, didn’t she?

Back to my encouraging email... It is writing encouragement. I signed up for a newsletter from www.15minutewriter.com and I have to say she has been very encouraging. This email had some great ideas particularly encouraging creativity. Her point is that sometimes we get so caught up in LIFE that we forget to use the creative side of our brain. It’s a nice article; short, sweet, and to the point. I like that.

So, what is my problem? Nothing, really. It’s just not the kind of encouragement I need. Just like at this point I don’t usually need to be staying in bed late in the morning. Creativity bubbles out of me on a regular basis. As a matter of a fact, if I start getting too technical, like updating the html in my website for a whole day at a time, my creative side will rebel and burst forth with something similar to the Messenger Bag Tutorial I posted right after the update. Usually, keeping my creative side from taking over and declaring mutiny over my analytic side is more of my battle. I was one of those geeks in school who was good at math and English, my teachers had to give me a limit on pages to write and kept telling me to stop working ahead in the textbooks, plus I usually placed well in art competitions. No, I’m not Miss Perfect. I couldn’t do back flips, hated history, and my sense of style was pink denim, dirty cowboy boots, and pigtails all the way through my senior year.

Today, I homeschool our children. This is daily analyzing and creativity. Both sides of my brain get a regular work out. Did you know, you are less likely to get burnout if you are regularly using both sides of your brain? I’m sure there is a great study out there somewhere. Maybe I should look that up… No, I think I’d better stay on target this week. We’re studying minerals and the children are all excited about it. Rocks are always cool.

Psalm 18:46 The LORD liveth; and blessed be my rock; and let the God of my salvation be exalted.

Messenger Bag Tutorial #1!




I made my first tutorial! Yeah! I’m so excited! (I’m sure you can’t tell…) I didn’t even realize I had a slide-show option on my wordpress blog. I hope it works for everyone.  Just check out my new buttons above.  Hover over the Craft Tutorial button until you see the Messenger Bag Tutorial #1 shows up, then scroll down and click it.  (or click here)  Please let me know if you have any problems viewing it. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Have a productive week everyone!

Those Melancholy Moments

There I sat in the Dr.’s office, arguing with him, “I can’t be depressed!  I have 5 beautiful children and a wonderful husband.  How can I be depressed?”  He went on to patiently explain that depression isn’t always just sad feelings.  I knew chemical imbalances could cause depression, but didn’t that just happen to drug users?

Clinical depression can be triggered by a number of things, mine has been hormones.  The predisposition in our family wasn’t caused by the drug and alcohol addictions, like I had always thought.  Another dear friend and recovering addict lovingly informed me that my family members were probably self-medicating and not realizing it.   It clicked with me.  Looking back through the years I could see where family members were silently crying out and grabbing whatever they could get a hold of to try to stay afloat on a sea of clinical depression.

That initial visit to the Dr. was a year after the whooping cough, which was by far the most stress I had ever gone through in my life.  One infant had died from the epidemic that year and we felt so blessed to have made it through with our whole family still breathing.  Complicating matters was the fact that I had been very sick with it myself.  With no family close enough or involved enough to help us, we were forced to hire Home Health Care.  Through the year after, we did our best to nourish our family, building immune systems and making up for 8 weeks of weight loss.   To top it off, six months later and right after his first birthday, the baby had almost died in my arms from a very sudden attack of RSV and was in and out of the hospital for a week.  By the time I finally made the appointment I was exhausted and unable to function any more .  I just knew I had a thyroid problem or something.  The depression diagnosis shocked me but after the appointment, it all seemed to make sense.  Within less than two weeks, I was catching up on housework and enjoying my family.  I only needed to be on the 5htp for a year and a half and I was handling things fine.

Well, here I am again.  It’s different this time.  Since the hysterectomy, I’ve been tweaking the hormones with relative success.  I feel like I finally have things working pretty well.  I’m healthy and happy, but…  You know those times, when you have a word or a name on the tip of your tongue but you just can’t quite grasp it, then you wake in the middle of the night with it?  I’m a severe hypoglycemic, so that does happen to me a lot.  My diet has become pretty strict to keep me thinking properly.  With the clinical depression though, I talk slower and every other word seems to escape me.  I’m fine as long as I’m taking the 5htp and other supplements and watching my blood sugar.  It’s frustrating.  Unfortunately the frustration leaks over onto my poor family and they tend to take it personally before I even realize what’s happening.   Once I do realize, I get more consistent with my supplements and maybe even double the 5htp for a few days and all is back on track.  I’m so glad I’m not experiencing the exhaustion, as a matter of a fact; I’m sleeping really well lately.

The sad thing is, most women don’t realize what’s happening.  Hubby notices a change and thinks Wife is unhappy with him and/or his provisions.  Wife takes his insecurity as inconsideration or un-appreciation.  Then he feels unappreciated… and you have a vicious circle that spirals downhill fast.  I dare say many divorces could be avoided with proper diet and rest.

I throw rest in here because people don’t really KNOW how important it is.  Most women are working two or more jobs.  Unless you are a single woman with a housekeeper, you have at least two jobs.  If you have a family, you have MANY jobs.  Please forgive me for taking a bit of a tangent here, but I do believe this is important.  If your expenses are so much that you feel you MUST work outside the home, I beg you to reevaluate your expenses.  There are so many things most women THINK they need, that stay at home moms happily do without.  Working from home has its own issues, but if you juggle your priorities properly, it is a very viable option.   Don’t use your job or career as a reason to let your family fall apart.  You are tired, maybe even exhausted.  Don’t just expect your husband to understand, take up the slack, and accept being neglected.  He’s a man and if he’s the man you thought you married, he won’t stand for it.  Do you really want him to?

OK, off my soap box…  Suffice it to say, rest, rest, rest…  If you have to cut down on the children’s activities (or your own activities) do it.  Make sure you are getting the rest you need.  Eat healthy, nourishing foods.  Take the supplements your body needs at this stage in your life and be ready to change as your body changes.  Sit down and play with your children.  Rather than signing up for ball this year, maybe you should spend those practice evenings playing ball in the back yard and spend those weekend game days with the grandparents or aunts & uncles you keep promising to visit.  What’s really more important?  (Oops, another soap box, sorry!)

Well, before I find yet another podium to pound on, I’ll let this post go.  Needless to say, this is the kind of thing that spills from my mind in Those Melancholy Moments during downhill spells of clinical depression.  The nice thing to remember as a good friend often says, “This too shall pass…”  “And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”  II Peter 1:19

Does everything REALLY happen in 3’s?

If you’ve read my ABOUT page, you know our family is simply… Amazing.  Well, one of the most Amazing things happened to me recently.  My dad was unable to make it for Beauty’s 19th birthday.  Her favorite cake is Angle Food.  I have this Amazing “Battle of the Angel Food Cake” every year.  Angel Food just happens to be one of his favorites as well and he got the saddest little pouty face when we reminded him what he’d be missing that Beauty, aka Critter Girl, promised to save him a piece.  So, a few days after the birthday we bagged some cake and headed out to the farm (the other farm).  We greeted Nana (my newest Mom, who we love to pieces!), played with the dogs, and visited the horses.  Grandpa showed up, delighted with visitors and a piece of very flat Angel Food cake.  (Did I mention it actually rose 2.5 inches this year?  YEAH!)  We discussed some goings on here and there and he decided he had a dog cage we really needed to take home with us.  This is a big, hick built cage with 4 different kinds of wire on it that wouldn’t blow away in the meanest of tornados.  I looked at the cage and then at our little worn out half-ton pickup with the short bed, wondering to myself, “Now I wonder how this is going to work?”  He picked up the cage with the hay forks of his big truck and proceeded to back it up to the poor, defenseless little 1/2ton…  Well it didn’t fit in one way, so we tried setting it on the toolbox and setting it in.  Can you see what is happening here?  All the while Nana and Beauty are standing on the porch a safe distance away making bets.  They won.  Sure enough, everything was going great and then I heard this little, almost indistinct “pop”.  He stopped, “We didn’t break the window did we?” He must have seen the look on my face, because he couldn’t possibly have heard the pop.  I looked inside the poor little pickup and … yep.  The back window was shattered.  Well, we were too far to stop now.  The cage did fit, sort of.  We tied it down and he grabbed the shopvac and duct tape, Nana produced a box for me to open up and lay across the hole.  After every nook and cranny was vacuumed and taped up I said, “Ok, you’re gona call and break this to Hubby while I’m on my way, right?”  He “reckoned” he’d do that, with a guilty grin on his face.  Whooo…  The window was repaired in a few days. (By the way, it did rain a little while it was broken!  We covered it with trash bags & welcomed the moisture with open arms!)

That was one…  My mom came home the other day with a big break in the back of her little plastic car.  Someone had parked close behind her in a precarious spot and, “crunch”.  Again, we’re out there with the Duct tape.  (Such great stuff!)  Then she drops the bomb, “You know these things always happen in 3’s!)

We’re saved!  We remembered, a few weeks ago as Hubby was headed home right about dark…  He was scouring the road for those poor, defenseless white tailed deer who have the habit of witlessly running out in front of vehicles on a regular basis.  He thought all was clear as he hurried home to his family when all of the sudden he glimpsed something out of the corner of his eye.  “SLAM!”  No, he didn’t hit a deer.  It hit him!  Right on the driver door, no less!  Big dent, very big dent.  Not really a Duct tape scenario that time, just another door that only opens from one side…

So, all is well on the Fogleman Funny Farm.  Hubby and I have a trip to the city to make and since things only happen in 3’s, we are confident of our assured safety and success in this mission.  The suburban will, I say, WILL come back home with no more dents than what it left with and all will be well.

May you be given more and more of God’s kindness, peace, and love.  Jude 1:2 (TLB)  …again – 3!