Shake Your Baby Booties?

Years ago, I titled the day after Thanksgiving-"Shake Your Baby Booties Day". In my mind, I imagined being able to have a family reunion-type celebration (Before the grand-ladies were admitted to Trump-Pavillion)Dancing through the years and hopefully shaking some of the pounds off.
Year after year, the elders started to leave us and I lost the dream of ever being able to host such an event in our family. My children accomodate me in recent years, in our home, as we celebrate it, more as a holiday than a dream that never materialized
This year, we started in the 1930's with Guy Lombardo. I told them about Honey and Bunny and Uncle Larry and his humor. None of my children remember uncle at all. We whizzed by the fifties and concentrated on the mambo and the dances that my parents would do. Tito Puente delighted them. They had also never heard of him, either. For the sixties, they were very familiar with my preferences, having heard the Jackson 5 stories entirely too much. So, this year I concentrated on the Saturday Night Fever generation and the things that were different for me, in highschool than at home. We danced the Hustle and that led us into the line dance craze. After every song, eight year old Ezra insisted that we must be up to his generation now. We skipped alot of pertinent dances and cultural events from the family and jumped to the Hoedown Showdown, which is still outside of my range of ability. The "Cupid Shuffle" and the "Electric Slide" were more in my ability range. We had a blast, reminiscing. Finally, we were at Ezra's generation. Sonic! Those fellows moved their baby booties, like I hadn't seen them do. It aged me to see the speed of their Sonic dances. Looks like progress is happening, if you look for speed vs. accuracy. We were more than breaking a sweat, by the time we got to the present day, from 1930.--Tempus fugit:)

"And driving down the road, I get a feeling

That I should have been home yesterday!"

A friend of Elyse's invited us to the mountains for Thanksgiving. The mountains trampled my homesickness, for a moment and I met new friends, ate very well and came home with a new respect for my old John Denver albums that introduced me to the mountains before now. He did much to put the unspeakable privilege of discovery of the mountain beauty, from a crass urban perspective, into words. I don't feel that I can say it any better than he. Just to converse with the reality of the beauty of having sight to see such things.
It seemed Heidi and Grandfather, met me in the mountain, in my imagination and they escorted me through my fears into this unknown territory. It seems that the higher elevations take you above the stories of the plains into the stories of the higher love stories. Heidi and Grandfather's was on the top of the heap, in my mind. I saw the beauty of their story from a new perspective, looking from that elevation and I loved them all the more. I saw more mutuality in the story than I had seen earlier. I saw more in Grandfather than an old curmudgeon. I saw the embrace of the mountain and the love that can keep you up there, as though the stars were your Macy's Day parade and the dances that they do to entertain were more spectacular than the Rockettes.
I met real friends there, not just the fictional characters that I had learned to love in the mountains of my imagination and they were all the more precious, for having invited us to break bread and feast sumptuously of food and enjoyments.
As I inferred before, the mountains' feet stomped my homesickness and I felt that I "should have been there yesterday"?
Oh, I was there yesterday, it wasn't just a dream.

I almost always start Thanksgiving Week thinking of my favorite presents that I got yearly from my parents...

As I often tell it: The stork came yearly or so to our house to bring me a new playmate. I loved them very much and I learned to love the stork for bringing them to me. We didn't have a boy, though. This week marks the week that the boy came to live with us. I remember kissing Mike on his little bald head and bidding him farewell and wishing to Heaven that God would give us a boy in Mommy's tummy. Her tummy was already big, as it usually got, when the stork was coming to our house. This was the week that I remember the Christmas that came in November. The bunch of us girls were gathered in the room, looking out of the window and wishing. It is November 24th, God must be sending us a boy, this time. We got 2 boys from God, before it was all over. An amazing providence and the entire school jumped with cheers when they announced it over the loudspeaker at school...
"Peace on Earth, Good will toward Men and the Boddens had a boy." The most unusual occurrence in a decade. And I got to tell about it, to our principal.
What a Happy Thanksgiving that was!

The bunch of us, a little after the boy was born--fourth playmate Amy is on the right corner
Third playmate, Jo
me and my first playmate, Ju!{I was mothering her, even then}
Second playmate, Jackie

Trumpet of the Swan part of Chapter 3 and Chapter 4---enjoy

Trumpet of the Swan chpt 3 by Jaynemomma

Trumpet of the Swan Chpt 4 by Jaynemomma

I just love how the young people rework the hymns for us! This is a real treat!

Let us Love and Sing and Wonder

Amazing Grace on Veteran's Day-11/11/11

Mahalia! There is nothing else to say!

Speaking of Bedtime Stories---...400 weeks ago today,

After a short, nine month pregnancy, I met a little girl who changed my whole life. She was pink and grey with a few black spots in various places. My dalmatian baby grew into her color rather quickly and became a dear, dear daughter. We grew in knowledge of the Lord's comfort together and nightly for a long while we sang this hymn before bed. She would snuggle and daddy and mommy and Elyse sat under the comforting care of the Lord, in the most special way. We hid in the Lord and now, 25 years later we are still comforted and aware of the presence of God in our life, in difficulty and in blessings. I am ever grateful for a ministering daughter who is, now a dear, dear friend.


Hiding in Thee
O safe to the Rock that is higher than I,
My soul in its conflicts and sorrows would fly;
So sinful, so weary, Thine, Thine would I be;
Thou blest "Rock of Ages," I'm hiding in Thee.

Refrain:
Hiding in Thee, Hiding in Thee,
Thou blest "Rock of Ages,"
I'm hiding in Thee.

In the calm of the noontide, in sorrow's lone hour,
In times when temptation casts o'er me its pow'r;
In the tempests of life, on its wide, heaving sea,
Thou blest "Rock of Ages," I'm hiding in Thee.

How oft in the conflict, when pressed by the foe,
I have fled to my Refuge and breathed out my woe;
How often, when trials like seabillows roll,
Have I hidden in Thee, O Thou Rock of my soul.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trumpet of the Swan, Chpt.1-{originally for the Bowlan children}I miss you guys. I finally figured out how to read a bedtime story...

and put it on my blog for you.
please enjoy it...:)
Trumpet1 by Jaynemomma

A Song of Creation, between God and Adam- by Wintley Phipps and Larnelle Harris-{Stupendous!}

Halleluia! What a Savior!---Jesus, I my Cross Have Taken---

Crazed Mother goes to bring lunch and sundries to disheveled preteen

I have been in a weakened physical state. I have had to limit my social exposure and my physical exertion, for pain's sake. My precious daughter volunteered to take me to rescue the son of my womb, in his dilemma in Math and Spanish and Lunch. I love his middle-school attitude. He is truly, more my son, than any of the other. He has no maternal help. His mother and father have more to do than to be able to help him in his work. He doesn't want that help, these days, even when it is offered. But, on the day of delivery, he needs a bailout package. We printed the final documents, with the help of our dearest neighbors and barrelled down the road to deliver them.
The wrinkled and motley genius met me in the office. That boy looks just like me, I giggled. More inside the brain than outside the brain. Color coordinated? Not! Concerned about his work and inventions? Always. No question about his lunch. Here is your lunch and your papers and your contribution to the party. No thanks, really. I kissed his disheveled forehead. I saw my mind delivered there into middle school. I saw my mind walking around in that little fellow's body. We are a strange and motley family. We are curious and learners, not masters, but intellects, just the same. God loves us, in spite of ourselves. Usually, the joke between the Ethy boy and me is-- we look into eachother's eyes and shake our heads and say "Only a mother could love". We do love eachother.

He Brought Me Out!

RC Sproul was preaching it today. He illucidated the components of the faith that we accept and that is the full working of God in our souls. Sometimes the devil uses reasoning to lasso your soul to call truths into question for the justifying of some sin of unbelief. The real truth is not afraid of being broken down into components. We are not saved in a vacuum. We are the fruit of generations of believers, who have set down studies that can be profitable for the growth of our souls. We often are held accountable in our unbelief for not making use of the studies of the generations before us. I believe that the more technology enables us, we will see this coming to bear upon us. If we neglect the histories that are ours, through grace and faith, we often live to repeat the same pitfalls of the former generations. We have these lessons to grow us and to shape us into conformity to Christ as His Bride the Church. I was rejoicing that it seemed a little thing for RC Sproul to break down some of the very heady elements of doctrine into bitesized pieces.