Happy Third Birthday, Cohen

This is Cohen on his first day here with us. 

 Here Aunt Anna is all smiles and hugs for Cohen as we all celebrate his first birthday.

Big sister, Sophia, is taking many pictures of Cohen on this exciting day. 

 Daddy is taking a lot of pictures too.

 

A whole year has flown by and we are all celebrating Cohen's second birthday. Oh, my goodness, Cohen is so excited.  He loves his Thomas the Train cake.

Cohen has made a wish is blows out his two candles.  Good job, Cohen 

 Ah, it isn't the cake that was so breath taking but the trains that were on top.

Another year of growing and learning has flown by.
Cohen has reached another milestone.  He is three years old and ready for more of what this world has to offer, especially if that is a Big 3 made of cup cakes with Thomas the Train running on his tracks across an English pastoral countryside of iceing.    

 

 Daddy gets to put together a few tracks for yet another Thomas and make sure the Steam Works is in tip top shape. 

 

 

 The gift of the day from Mommy and Daddy receives one more push from Aunt Moo Moo before it is bedtime..

 

 

Monkey Feet

Margaret has started making wheat free meals.  You wouldn't believe

how much wheat is in food you would never suspect of having gluten or wheat in it.

This picture is almond baked chicken breast on a fresh green salad.  It was a great meal. 

 

  After Cohen's daddy cut a few holes in a box and

   covered it in tinfoil Cohen and Sophia can't play in it enough.   This is Cohen showing me how he is a robot.  I had to pretend I had a remote control and push buttons as I made a clicking sound so I could control him. 

 

 

Daisy Mae is  on  her bed there  on the right of Robot Cohen.  She has to come be in whatever room I am in.  I carry her little bed into each room as we go about the house.   

 

Cohen will change his  shoes a couple times a day while we play.  These are some slippers I bought Sophia several years ago and now he is in them. 

A Look Back to Summer

I found some interesting information on the thistle while looking it up to identify.  First, I didn't know there were as many different types of thistle.  Some, such as the Canada thistle are listed on the USDA's National Invasive Species  List, yet other types such as the milk thistle are used for the treatment of liver disease, some cancers, and insulin production.

I believe this specimen is the Canada thistle.

 

Cone flower 

Gladiolas  

 

More from Margaret's Garden 

 Hydrangia and gladiola

 Black-eyed Susan

 

 Cone flower and hydrangia

Queen Ann's Lace and Black-eyed Susan 

A Prayer to say for your children

Dearest Holy Father, Abba,  hold my children, ( names) and all those they love in your protective light, grace and mercy. Send your angels to guard and protect them always from the snares of the evil ones. Wrap them in your truth and strength. Arm them with the glory of your Word and instill within their hearts a desire to know your Son and through Him find everlasting peace.     Amen

What Pig?

Out of all of the universes in infinite space ours may be the only one that experienced  a fall, THE FALL.  We may be the only part of God's creation that used the gift of free will as we did. By partaking of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil man did receive that knowledge. ( It seems the first man suffered from a desire for more even when he had it all. Sound familiar? We'll think about this later. )   
 








 

So, in essence, he traded his, and all of his descendants existence of bliss for a pig in a poke.  The really bad part of this is the pig turned out to be no pig at all, but Time itself.

 

  Man was cast from his eternal bliss onto a dark path to watch all he loved, needed, and desired wither and die before him as he also suffered the ravages of time. 


 He no longer felt free for he was bound on every side by time.  There would never again be a free lunch.

Cohen decided to pick a coordinating outfit out to wear after nap time.  He 
 chose blue shorts with an orange stripe down the sides and a pair of his sisters red shoes.  When I saw him I had to run for the camera.  He was slightly embarrassed and a little unsure of himself but gained confidence as the photo shoot went on. 


He is just beginning to perceive there may be an invisible line that boys must know about beauty and color, a line not to be crossed if you want to be 'manly' .  You are to know beauty, but also know when to admit you know it, and if you ever wear it, make sure it is black, navy or brown.  And,
maybe, never ever wear your sisters red shoes. That is, unless you have on your unmatched Thomas the Tank Engine socks.

Of course, I did not tell him that.  Grandma' knows he is beautiful no matter what he wears and tells him so.  A fine young man is a fine young man. 

 In a few minutes he decided he wanted to play with is trains and cars so rushed to change into more appropriate attire for these adventures. 

  

 

 

 

This boy makes my heart sing....

 

 

I had a very special guest yesterday.

Leonard Cohen Anthem video

http://teresaevangeline.blogspot.com/2013/01/thats-how-light-gets-in.html

Teresa Evangeline introduced me to Leonard Cohen through her blog some time ago and I have enjoyed his music and song ever since.  I saw this video on her site today and had to ' borrow ' it from  her to share with you also.  Please take the time to visit her blog.  I hope you enjoy her posts as much as I do.

Time

 

Do you think about time?  I think about it.  Not in the sense of time passing or in anticipation of future events, I am not a time keeper.  I think about time and how it is relative, and therefore different, to every individual.  I think about time as it must be in relation to eternity and in relation to, well, itself,  the here and now.   For the present is all we have and eternity has no time.  Huh?

   Man has attempted to give flesh and bone to a concept .  This , of course was done in the name of profit,  as we all know time is money.  The trains must run on time.  We abide in a culture, a world, that has become slave to an illusive and fearsome master.  No longer all in God's time,  we are now in man's time, false time,  Greenwich Time,  the time of clocks and calendars.  Time marches on.  Time and tide wait for no man.

 

The very act of keeping time enslaves us to it.    

 

We no longer look to the sun, the seasons, the moon or the tides to guide us in living ordered lives at a manageable pace. We ignore the sunrise, the sun's path across the sky, and the setting sun.  We gaze not to the stars journey across the night sky for rest and sleep.  We follow neither the rhythm of our body nor the urgings of our soul.  We adorn our bodies with time pieces of gold while ignoring our biological clock .  And we run for the train.

 

We live shackled within the constraints of the clock's second hand .  We rise to the clock's alarm and work to the hours it dictates.  We proudly mark our town squares with towering, chiming clocks.   We take pride in being on time and run to greet times fleeting embrace,  all the while proclaiming time does us no favors. 

We reward our fellow man's labor not for its quality but by the clock.    We are told  to do double time  and not to waste time.  Our employer gives us overtime and we take vacation time from our employer.  We watch as time binds us to our grief,  crawls in our anticipation and flies out the window with our joy.  We wait for time to heal all wounds.  

 We lament times having gotten away from us,  that somehow it just slipped by.  

            Time is ever present, pressing upon us, yet there is never enough of it.  

TO BE CONTINUED.... UNTIL NEXT TIME ........

An evening with Funyun

I spent yesterday evening at Anna's with Anna, Marian and Funyun.   Of course, Funyun had to be right in the middle of things with us.  Being the sharp fellow that he is he likes to be close so he doesn't miss anything.  

 

Right here between Mommy and Grandma' looks like the perfect spot.

 

Grandma'!  Pay attention to ME.  Oh, Funyun.  You know I love you.