"Camping" at Cottage in the Woods

Well, I have to be honest...our accomodations were a little too posh to be considered 'camping'!!! The Townsends have built a beautiful lakeside retreat spot for fellow Christian brothers and sisters, and our little tribe returned this morning from a weekend in Cabin #2. We got there Friday night, and I'm so disappointed that I didn't take any pictures or videos to capture the boys' immense delight and wonder as they explored their new surroundings and all of the games, puzzles and books waiting for them there! This picture from Saturday captures similar expressions:

(That's Josiah and Benjamin playing with the washing room door, and Logan's bum in the background.:)

I also didn't take any pictures of our Friday dinner with the Townsends and Papa and Great Nana, or of our Trivial Pursuit game (from 1981) in which we were trounced by Pam, who obviously has the largest brain on the planet. But I did bring the camera out at breakfast Saturday morning (after the boys let us sleep in until 7:30!): Josiah wanted me to take his picture while we prayed, and he was peeking to make sure I did it.

Cutie Ben smiling, and "praying":

After breakfast, we hiked the Doyle Preserve, right at the beginning of Castaway Cove Road in Damariscotta (a beautiful walk, just up the road from Cottage in the Woods). This picture shows the boys with their walking sticks, but Benji was actually carried by Logan and me 98% of our hike.

After lunch and a long nap, the boys ventured out to the playground and down to the lake a bit, and then the Luttermans came to visit us for dinner and s'mores. Benji and Josiah both crawled around the floor with Tanner:

Saturday was Cole's 5th birthday!!! I can't believe how quick all these boys are growing up! Josiah was thrilled to have his buddy come see him in the woods. :)

Sunday morning, the boys played outside a bit while Logan and I packed up, then we headed home in time to shower (I forgot our bathroom bag, so we went without for two days...needless to say, we needed those showers!).

Thank you, Townsend family, for your warm hospitality and generous service to others, in building this beautiful ministry! We look forward to staying a whole week next summer, when it's warm enough for swimming and grilling and all the other good things to do at the Cottage in the Woods! I can't believe we didn't do this sooner. It was WONDERFUL!!!

Bonhoeffer's "The Cost of Discipleship"

Our Bible Study has been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book, "The Cost of Discipleship". We've been working on it for nearly three months now, and all along I've been meaning to post some reflections on the blog for my own benefit as I mull over the book and process all that I am learning. The book examines Christ's expectations of us as genuine followers. The first sentence of the book says, "Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace." Unlike cheap grace that "justifies the sin without justifying the sinner," and is "the surest road to damnation," costly grace "bids a man come and die." Die to self, to the world, to anything that hinders you from follwing Christ. If you have something in your life that is contrary to Christ's will, you are not following Christ. Sandwiched in the middle of the book, Bonhoeffer works through his interpretation of Christ's "Sermon on the Mount", thoroughly describing the cost he demanded from his disciples, to surrender their entire lives and only look to him and to his will.

Obviously, this is a heavy, sobering and convicting read! I cannot even begin to summarize the book and do it justice. To know Bonhoeffer is to further appreciate the book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer. I highly recommend that you read this book again and again and again!

Here are a couple quotes from our study last night. The first describes the "narrow way" that Christ has called his disciples to walk, and the second describes the "false prophets" that find their way into our churches, stirring up confusion and driving many away from the right way. This reminds me of my post on well-intentioned dragons, http://perrysnutthouse.blogspot.com/2009/04/well-intentioned-dragons.html.

From Chapter 19, "The Great Divide"
--The Narrow Way
"The path of discipleship is narrow, and it is fatally easy to miss one's way and stray from the path, even after years of discipleship. And it is hard to find. On either side of the narrow path deep chasms yawn. To be called to a life of extraordinary quality, to live up to it, and yet to be unconscious of it is indeed a narrow way. To confess and testify to the truth as it is in Jesus, and at the same time to love the enemies of that truth, his enemies and ours, and to love them with the infinite love of Jesus Christ, is indeed a narrow way. To believe the promise of Jesus that his followers shall possess the earth, and preferring to incur injustice rather than to do wrong ourselves, is indeed a narrow way. To see the weakness and wrong in others, and at the same time refrain from judging them; to deliver the gospel message without casting pearls before swine, is indeed a narrow way. The way is unutterably hard, and at every moment we are in danger of straying from it. If we regard this way as one we follow in obedience to an external command, if we are afraid of ourselves all the time, it is indeed an impossible way. But if we behold Jesus Christ going on before step by step, we shall not go astray. But if we worry about the dangers that beset us, if we gaze at the road instead of at him who goes before, we are already straying from the path. For he is himself the way, the narrow way and the strait gate. He, and he alone, is our journey's end. When we know that, we are able to proceed along the narrow way through the strait gate of the cross, and on to eternal life, and the very narrowness of the road will increase our certainty. The way which the Son of God trod on earth, and the way which we too must tread as citizens of two worlds on the razor edge between this world and the kingdom of heaven, could hardly be a braod way. The narrow way is bound to be right."

--False Prophets
"...The disciples of Jesus must not fondly imagine that they can simply run away from the world and huddle together in a little band. False prophets will rise up among them, and amid the ensuing confusion they will feel more isolated than ever. There is someone standing by my side, who looks just like a member of the Church. He is a prophet and a preacher. He looks like a Christian, he talks and acts like one. But dark powers are mysteriously at work; it was these who sent him into our midst. Inwardly he is a ravening wolf: his words are lies and his works are full of deceit. He knows only too well how to keep his secret dark and go ahead with his work. It is not faith in Jesus Christ which made him one of us, but the devil. Maybe he hopes his intellectual ability or his success as a prophet will bring him power and influence, money and fame. His ambitions are set on the world, not on Jesus Christ. Knowing that Christians are credulous people, he conceals his dark purpose beneath the cloak of Christian piety, hoping that his innocuous disguise will avert detection. He knows that Christians are forbidden to judge, and he will remind them of it at the appropriate time. After all, other men's hearts are always a closed book. Thus he succeeds in seducing many from the right way. He may even be unconscious himself of what he is doing. The devil can give him every encouragement and at the same time keep him in the dark about his own motives."

A Week in Pictures

Dressed for fall weather

Mom working her magic at the coffee shop

Papa working his magic too!

The boys laughing at their Papa's antics:

Josiah working on his letters:

Taking Molly for a walk:

Enjoying Children's Day at the Railway Village; riding the Barrell Train:

Holding hands with Mathias, who perhaps spends as much time at the RV as the Perrys:

Cashel and Mathias:

Mom and Dad's beautiful tree that fell down on Sunday:

September Birthdays

When I went to NH a few weeks ago, I left my camera battery charger behind (the same item I left in NC in August!), so I went for a couple weeks without my camera. So here are a few more pictures from Dad's birthday, Sept. 9th, that I couldn't post because my battery was dead, and a couple pictures from my birthday, Sept. 15th, that Sharon Beck took for me. She also took these cute pictures at the Cottage in the Woods on Labor Day, the first one with Josiah after he pulled his fingers out of Dad's birthday cake and had a, "I hope no one is seeing me right now..." look on his face: And a nice picture of Mom that Sharon took that day:And here's a couple shots from Dad's actual birthday. It was Bible Study night, but I let the boys stay up to have cake with Papa. Josiah gets overwhelmed with excitement on the nights he's awake for Bible Study! It is so cute. He gets his Children's Bible out and sits down next to Papa and munches on popcorn for a few minutes before he can't sit still any longer, and then he zips into the living room to play with trains. When he gets to be disruptively noisy, I have to put him to bed, which inevitably erupts into a weeping and wailing fest. That's why I don't let them nap on Wednesdays, so they'll be asleep before everyone comes. But sometimes, it just doesn't go according to plan, and then Josiah gets to experience the thrill of Bible Study. One night, he was going to bed but came out to use the potty and saw Daddy setting up the chairs. "Why don't you want me to go to church?!!!", he asked. :)

And this is my birthday, which I share with Kristin from the coffee shop. Mom had a party for the birthday girls at the shop, which was a lot of fun, but afterwards, Josiah told me that next time, he wanted me to have my party at The Cottage in the Woods! We'll be going there this weekend to 'camp' in their very nice cabins, so Josiah will be thrilled. :)

Counter

I've tried a few times before, and finally succeeded today in putting a counter on my site! This demonstrates how illiterate I am in the ways of modern technology, but today, I WON! Ha ha. :) I set it so that my visits don't show up. My family get email versions of my blog updates, and I know that many of my friends see my blog updates when they are fed to my Facebook account, so I'm not expecting many hits here on my actual site, but it will be fun to see anyway. I just wanted to make a note on here so that I would remember how long I've been counting my visitors. This month marks the three year anniversary of this blog! Crazy. Hard to believe how quickly three years have gone by.

The boys are playing "Easter" in the kitchen right now with all of the plastic eggs, grass and baskets I had in my pantry. They play very well with each other because Josiah thinks up fun games and then Benjamin mimics everything his big brother does, so he actually plays along despite having no idea what exactly they are doing. Benji learned how to say "I........Love.........You!" this week, plus he's been saying "fly!" when an airplane goes by overhead, "Hello" when he's on the phone, and he just said "Grandma" for the first time on the phone to Logan's Mama today. Josiah's vocabulary is outstanding, he has no difficulty expressing his feelings, and no inhibitions in doing so either! He's very dramatic. Lately he's been telling Logan and I not to "talk back" to him when we're telling him to do something and he says no, and then we tell him to do it again. If we inflict any punishments on him for bad behavior, he weeps and declares that we are "hurting [his] feelings". He's been in a puzzle craze lately, which is wonderful. I've never seen him sit so quietly for so long before. No, I take that back. He always plays that intensely when he's outside with his tractors. Josiah has begun to pay me compliments, which I love. When I got dressed for church this morning, he said, "Mommy, you look like a princess!" I had to record that one for posterity. :)

I guess it's time to make dinner. Enough fooling around with the blog! Thanks for stopping by and reading my musings about our everyday life.

Weekend Memories

This past Labor Day weekend was chock full of memory making! With summer beach weather winding to a close here in New England, I wanted to get the boys out to Squirrel Island one last time. I thought Friday would be a good day to tire them out before our drive to New Hampshire that afternoon, as well as giving us some more time with Daddy before we left him behind for two days. The boys always love the Squirrel beaches...and usually have them all to themselves!

After lunch with Daddy, we got back on the boat to the Harbor, and after a quick ice cream pit stop at the coffee shop, and then another quick stop to get my van registered, we were off to NH for a reunion with three dear college friends, Beth, Katie, and the hostess with the mostest, Charis. Charis and Mark are getting ready to leave for Spain for a year of language and culture study in preparation for their career there as missionaries at a missionary boarding school. It was wonderful to see these sweet ladies again, and Josiah and Benjamin had a blast playing with Caleb and Miles and all of their fascinating toys. We had "two sleepovers" there, coming back to ME Sunday afternoon. While we were away, Logan was slaving away getting the boys' room back together. It has been without baseboards since our flood in November 2007, and no closet door, etc. Logan also painted the walls again and washes all of the bedding, etc.

Charis, Beth, Katie

Logan with the boys' pristine bedroom.....hopefully we can keep it this way for awhile! :)

Entertaining each other in the car on the way home from NH.

Of course we had to visit Papa and Grandma at the coffee shop immediately upon our return! Josiah got to stay for a sleep over with Papa, and posed here with an antique carousel horse that is for Papa's gallery.

On Monday, the Townsend's invited us and many others over for a Labor Day potluck! Benji and Josiah loved canoeing with Daddy, and Benji was especially brave about swimming in the cold water. He even went under twice, without any fear. Tomorrow is Dad's birthday, and Josiah loves parties, so I brought a cake and told Josiah it was Papa's birthday party. Josiah kept singing "Happy Birthday to you", trying to coax things along prematurely. :) He also inspired everyone to sing some "church songs" at the end, and told us he wanted everyone to "praise the Lord." :)

Some of the nicest people in the world, "Mater", "Sandy" and "Pamelot"! Thank you for your hospitality and friendship!

The Last Remnants of August

Here are a few pictures from the last few days of August.

Josiah got a hold of my mascara. Hmmm.

Papa took the boys out boating around the harbor. They were thrilled!

And I took the boys for a hike around Saunder's Park. Josiah hiked the trail all by himself, but Benji demanded being carried. They were very impressed with the brook and pond, and with the little frog they found.