A taste of life with the Lunds on a UP homestead

All can be said of my life in just a few pictures:

Standing in Lake Superior

(Some ) of the Lunds: Mary, Theresa, Annie, Michael, Stephen, and Lizzy

An 8-9 mile bike ride in the UP countryside

I milked a cow!!! ( The poor thing I was probably doing it all wrong anyway)

And this is Johnny!!! (I couldn't resist :)


Wading through a (to me, not them) very cold creek.
An old, abandoned, one room school house

And that is life... (though I probably should have posted a picture of the homemade chocolate mint cookies and fresh raw milk we had for breakfast and dinner, but I didn't want you to feel too jealous of me.)

I am one travellin' girl

So it seems like I really enjoy traveling a lot, I am going on another trip this time it is long but only a month. I will be going to four states, Oklahoma, Texas, Florida and Michigan.
I will not be doing my regular Saturday Sketches, but hopefully I will be posting about my adventures in Oklahoma and Michigan. In Oklahoma I will be going to the traditional Clear Creek Monastery and meeting some old friends of my dad. Then I will be spending most of the time with some friends in Michigan (hey Mary and Annie), where they live on a farm/homestead, and will be teaching me some AMAZING skills, and modeling to me a family living an agrarian (like what I was talking about before) lifestyle. So hopefully I'll get out a few pictures or posts here and there, and then I will start back on the regular Saturday Sketches when I return in July. Hope to see you and I will keep all you, my blog readers, in my prayers. Have a wonderful end of spring and beginning of Summer, (wow is it that already, time has flown bye.)

The Saturday Sketch

This is for all you Mother's out there (especially mine :) you are amazing!

Motherhood "How could not the station of Motherhood, the very utterance of the word, evoke such wonder, such awe, such honor, as to render every human in its hearing speechless! For my very ability to hear the word, to ponder its meaning, exists only because I was given birth...by a mother...brought into the world through a series of miracles not even science can explain. "Mothers shape the world one family at a time. Family life is the foundation of human existence and mother is the cornerstone upon which the family is built."
Mary Carlisle Beasley

Have a wonderful Mother's day!
*I know this is a day early, but I will be gone on the actual day.

The Saturday Sketch

First of all, I am so sorry this is so late in the day, I wasn't able to get to the computer 'till now.

I wanted to use this picture, because it in a way epitomizes the beauty of this spring. This particular drawing has two meanings, first, is that we can offer all this beauty and every wildflower or rose to Christ with joy and wonder, much like a child would; and second, it signifies that Christ has given it all to us in a perfect, beautiful, innocent and loving sacrifice and act of love. I can just picture every time I see a flower, Jesus' perfect hand that put it there. It almost gives a profound meaning to every flower, or at least we can view it as such, as God creating them for us to offer back to Him. Here is a little quote to state it more poetically:

"God waits to win back his own flowers as gifts from man's hands. " ~Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, 1916

The Saturday Sketch

(I feel a little bit conceited to put a picture of myself up here, but it is a self portrait I did a couple years ago and I thought that as I am striving to become a better person everyday, that it would be excusable. :)
Recently I have really been pondering the meaning of life. Everyday I realize how much I really do encounter so many different people in different walks of life. Yesterday I played the whole day with a 2 year old, and as I was leaving I looked at his hands and pictured them 10-20 years later. His precious little hands would no longer be holding my fingers on the playground, but would be much bigger and before long he would be all grown up. Then I examined my life and realized that my little two year old hands of the past, would never have expected to be sitting here typing this today, and these same hands today, are not expecting what will happen when I am an old lady with most of my life behind me. I am sort of in the "think, realize, and scold myself" mode right now, my brain will go off on these long tangents about the future and imagining what will happen someday, but then I realize and remember that I should be living in the present, then I mentally scold myself, and jerk back to the present. It is like a constant battle for me to keep time in perspective, time has always been a rather daunting and confusing prospect to me. To think that I am me and I live now and not in some other time, and that someday I will no longer be on this earth, and all those other befuddling concepts. When I was 9 and 10 I used to just lay in bed and cry, I wasn't exactly sad but I just couldn't comprehend time, it didn't make sense to me.
So basically I think what I am getting at here is, (if you haven't lost me on the strange path my brain takes me on,) is that I must make the best of this confusing time that I have been given and make sense out of it, become better because of it, and always strive to look for the good in it, and in the meantime be grateful for it, and not try and rush the future.

The Saturday Sketch

I am sure as many of you know, Pope Benedict the XVI is in the United States right now, so I thought this would be a good picture to use. I also thought I would post a little part of his homily, because I found it very beautiful and inspiring. It is really what I have been trying to talk about and promote here on this blog, so here it is:
"In this morning’s second reading, Saint Paul reminds us that spiritual unity – the unity which reconciles and enriches diversity – has its origin and supreme model in the life of the triune God. As a communion of pure love and infinite freedom, the Blessed Trinity constantly brings forth new life in the work of creation and redemption. The Church, as “a people made one by the unity of the Father, the Son and the Spirit” (cf. Lumen Gentium, 4), is called to proclaim the gift of life, to serve life, and to promote a culture of life...The proclamation of life, life in abundance, must be the heart of the new evangelization. For true life – our salvation – can only be found in the reconciliation, freedom and love which are God’s gracious gift. This is the message of hope we are called to proclaim and embody in a world where self-centeredness, greed, violence, and cynicism so often seem to choke the fragile growth of grace in people’s hearts. Saint Irenaeus, with great insight, understood that the command which Moses enjoined upon the people of Israel: “Choose life!” (Dt 30:19) was the ultimate reason for our obedience to all God’s commandments (cf. Adv. Haer. IV, 16, 2-5). Perhaps we have lost sight of this: in a society where the Church seems legalistic and “institutional” to many people, our most urgent challenge is to communicate the joy born of faith and the experience of God’s love. "

The Saturday Sketch

“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle.
But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air but to walk on Earth.
Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes.
All is a miracle.”

This is kind of a run off from my last Saturday Sketch, about our gathering wisdom from un-seemingly wise things like little children or flowers. In a way it is regaining our sense of wonder. Like the I hope you dance song: "I hope never lose your sense of wonder."
Or as my sister always says, "Finding beauty in the unexpected," (thank you Heather :)
Our culture is such that there is no longer time to just stop and be amazed or to have wonder in something beautiful. Look at cars, you zoom past everything so fast you don't have time to look or savor anything. The other day, I decided to walk the same road that we usually drive, and for the first time I noticed how beautiful a certain thing was, or how many lovely things had been there, but that I had never seemed to notice because we were always zooming past them. It reminded me how really important it is to stop and look at things in wonder.
I think I will leave you with this poem written by a girl who has cancer, she wanted to share with the world the importance of savoring every moment:

SLOW DANCE
Have you ever
Watched kids
On a merry-go-round?

Or listened to
The rain
Slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a
Butterfly's' erratic flight?

Or gazed at the sun into the fading
Night?

You better slow down.
Don't dance so
Fast.

Time is short.
The music won't
Last.

Do you run through each day
On the
Fly?
When you ask How are you?
Do you hear the
Reply?

When the day is done
Do you lie in your
Bed
With the next hundred chores
Running through
Your head?

You'd better slow down

Don't dance so
Fast.
Time is short.
The music won't
Last.

Ever told your child,
We'll do it
Tomorrow?
And in your haste,
Not see
His
Sorrow?

Ever lost touch,
Let a good
Friendship die
Cause you never had time
To call
And say,'Hi'

You'd better slow down.

Don't dance
So fast.

Time is short.
The music won't
Last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere
You
Miss half the fun of getting there.

When you worry and hurry
Through your day,
It is like an unopened
Gift..
Thrown away.

Life is not a
Race..
Do take it slower
Hear the
Music
Before the song is over.