QUOTE

While on his death bed John Owen was reported to have said, "Oh, Brother Payne, the long-looked for day is come at last, in which I shall see the glory in another manner than I have ever yet done or been capable of doing."

From The Pastor in the Sick Room -- Ministering the Gospel to Those on the Brink of Eternity by John D. Wells 1892, Solid Ground Christian Books, Birmingham Alabama

Tollhaven Trials and Tribulations

Yesterday, May 20, 2006 Sassy and I were at the Tollhaven trial run by Gloria Mitchell.

We had a good day. We ran in three events.
Advanced standard - came in second with no "q". It was a good run with a refusal for a bar that I just didn't indicate clearly enough for her. BAD HANDLER!!!! Good lessons learned though! :)

Advanced team - Sassy ran her side clear but her partner....well let's just say both her and her handler had issues that day! No "q" for that! I was VERY pleased with the effort that Sassy put in.

Advanced Jumpers - Sassy got a case of the nerves due to an equipment change (which caused her to have to wait too long to run) and just wanted her treats and to go home.... So she ended up wasting time on course TRYING HARD to convince me that would be the right course of action. I tried to make up some of that lost time and made her rush a bit so...we had a knocked bar and a run by another jump. So...no "q" there either BUT she still managed to come in fourth overall. This course was more challenging than I thought it would be ... only one team out of 18 ran it clear...and that was a jack russel who hadn't trialed in 1.5 years due to some issues that he had. We were VERY happy that he had a VERY successful day. YEAH ERNIE!

Ah well...life goes on.

It was a good day though rather cold in the wind. We had a bit of rain, with a lot of overcast, the sky started clearing by early afternoon. Sassy was a well-behaved girl who was VERY sucky...not quite acting like herself...very clingy and not observant of things other than cookies and where we were positioned. So we did okay in spite of it all.

GLOWING SQUIRRELS

LOOK OUT! ���

Vellenga Views is a radioactive squirrel!!

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From Go-Quiz.com

Mom's Day

Yesterday was Mother's Day.

Now I can't say I'm a huge "make a day for people" type of person. But I did enjoy mother's day yesterday.

My mom-in-law Eva came over for the day. She's a real nice Christian woman for those of you who have never met her.

Justin and his dad-dad even got me a mom's day present. A fun card (yes, I love a well chosen card). This one was fun!

Here's the front. A good card can make my heart just smile.

Justin thought the middle was just so much fun. I should have taken a picture of him with it in the afternoon when I let him give it a good looking over. He was being so careful and so very serious with it. See...it's a pop up! He just thought it was so neat with the bears popping up at him everytime he opened the card! :)

This is the present I received. Isn't it just the coolest photo frame? :) Now I need to find pictures that will fit into these tiny frames. :) Boy...that will be fun (or perhaps frustrating). We may need to print our own I'm wondering....or send them to my mom's since she has a photo capable printer and then size them to what we need. Hmm...fun...a chance to visit my mom!

I've been richly blessed with these two men in my lives.
With an extended family that cares for me and my fellows.
For technology that I can do fun things with.

Ah...God has indeed blessed this household.

THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION

My reading has taken a definite serious turn. From fiction novels to good solid theology. So, I have turned my mind to study the doctrine on which the church hinges, Justification. To do so I decided to re-start reading a book I started to read a while back, but got too busy with other things to complete. Now I try to read a chapter or so a day, and that seems to be working well. The book is The Doctrine of Justification by James Buchanan--subtitled An Outline of its History in the Church and of its Exposition from Scripture

J.I. Packer had this to say about this book, "The doctrine of justification by faith is like Atlas: it bears a world on its shoulders, the entire evangelical knowledge of saving grace. The doctrines of election, of effectual calling, regeneration, and repentance, of adoption, of prayer, of the church, the ministry, and the sacraments, have all to be interpreted and understood in the light of justification by faith. When justification falls, all true knowledge of the grace of God in human life falls with it, and then as Luther said, the church itself falls. The value of Buchanan's book today is that it will help us to understand this message better, and so to preach it in the full and comprehensive way in which the modern world need to hear it. This is still the best textbook on this subject, from the standpoint of the classic covenant theology."

There were two things that I found fascinating in the introduction. Remember that this book was originally published in 1867. Buchanan states, "looking at the character of our current literature, may it not be said that, to a large class of minds in the present age, nothing could well be more new than the old Theology of the Reformation?"

What caught my eye here is how true that was not just then, but still is today. The doctrines of the Reformation seem to have been lost even in many Reformed denominations.

Second, what caught my eye is his guiding principle, "that the only effective refutation of error is the establishment of truth. Truth is one, error is multiform; and truth, once firmly established, overthrows all the errors that either have been, or may yet be, opposed to it. He who exposes and expels an error, does well; but it will only return in another form, unless the truth has been so lodged in the heart as to shut it out for ever."

This serves as a good reminder that as a pastor my task is not merely to reveal and correct error, but much more importantly to proclaim the truth in such a way that believers are filled with it and error is cast out.

So far this book has been fascinating. I am looking forward to the rest of it.

WHAT A NEAT EATER

I thought that since Annette was putting up pictures of Justin, I thought I would add one of my favorite recent pictures of him. Here he is as he works his way through strawberry jam on bread. As you can see, he keeps himself very clean while eating ;)

LOVE OF GOD

I just finished reading this wonderful little book by D.A. Carson. Although it neither claims to nor does deal with this topic exhaustively, it certainly does give a good overview of why the doctrine of the love of God is not as easy for us to either understand or proclaim today. I would highly recommend it as a very good starting point for the study of this important doctrine.

Our boy Justin

So our son, our boyo is a little over 10 months old.

He has been finding life hard this week.

Being told no, Being put into playpens so mom-mom can work, Being bitten by his favourite fish when he sticks his hands in the water, thistles hurt when you step on them, and why can't I just have fruit for breakfast????? Getting pointy teeth is a bit painful. Napping is hard! Having a long cold is miserable. Life is hard being 10 months old.

Mind you...life is also exciting sometimes. Tulips are fun! Even if mom-mom says...Gentle. Dirt is fun! To roll around on, to eat, to examine ever so carefully. Collie is becoming more important to him (stuffed collie dog that he found at the hospital rummage sale). Walks are good. Crawling under dad-dad's legs is just a hoot! Roast beef is new, fun to eat. Swimming is interesting and the little babies should be STARED at.

The cat still won't let Justin catch him. Riley has learned that tails do get pulled with little boys around so moving away is good. Sassy occasionally offers kisses and doesn't growl at him anymore! YEAH FOR THAT!!!

His favourite toys right now are his big stuffed dog, "collie", chairs that he can push around, pots and pans that make noise and a squirty toy in the bathtub.

He is into everything and LOVES to help his mom-mom clean out the fridge, boy how much fun that can be! BUT helping mom-mom do the sprinkler...that's he's not so fond of, especially if the sprinkler catches us! :)

Anyways, that's an update on the youngest member of our family.

The following picture is when he was a little younger.

Where Am I From?

I've come across these poems? blogs? I don't know what to call them and I think they are a neat way of saying things about a person.

I got the basic template from here which also links to a variety of "froms" that other people have done. I think they are interesting to read. :) I thought I would give it a shot, and found it harder than I thought it would be. :)


WHERE I AM FROM

I am from farmyard, from chickens, rabbits, guinea pigs, geese and cattle. I am from farm dogs (collies of sorts) and dogs of my own.

I am from the the purple bedroom, the off-limits family room, big gardens, long lanes and the bush!

I am from the peonies, lilac bushes, picking marsh marigolds and irises to bring home to mom, the bush with the fish pond that we would swim and fish in.

I am from "would rather be in the barn" and "hard work never killed anyone", from siblings, Dutch roots and large families.

I am from the twice yearly large family gathering at Christmas and in summer, sledding, pot luck meals, and baseball.

From "you are so much like your grandmother" and "do you have to tie everything up?"

I am from conservative, calvinistic beliefs, a family that believed that God was God and worthy of our consideration and all that we do is for HIM!

I'm from Bill and Wilma, small town Ontario, "stumpot", crusts from the bread that Dad insisted we eat, three good meals a day and lots of love.

From fishing on vacation with my Dad while others went elsewhere, tying a brother up on the picnic table with brothers and sisters helping, the barn wall falling in on the calves when blowing up the old silo, and the brucellosis hitting the herd hard and having to start over.

I am from family albums filled with pictures from days gone past.

Success Granted

Near where we live there is a really nice trail for walking. It used to just be a foot path, not used often, really nice to just let the dogs run. The town council thought it would be a good idea to make it more user-friendly so added a crushed gravel path, some boardwalk, and extended the trail. That made it a really easy path to walk. It is used frequently by all sorts of people.

Even though it is used more often than I like (I prefer solitude when walking the pups), I still often use it.

Last year I picked some plants to see if I could get them started at home.

Bloodroot From Wikepedia "Bloodroot is also known as Bloodwort, Red Puccoon Root, and sometimes Pauson......The plant was used as a dye and for an herbal remedy by the native population. A break in the surface of the plant, especially the roots, reveals a reddish sap."




I picked three Trillium. Two white and one red. From Wikepedia "While trillium flowers are very attractive, some believe they should never be picked, since the three leaves below the flower are the plant's only food source and a picked trillium may die or take many years to recover. For this reason in many areas, e.g. British Columbia, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Washington, it is illegal to pick trilliums. While popular belief exists that it is illegal to pick trilliums in Ontario, no such law actually exists......A white trillium serves as the emblem and official flower of the Canadian province of Ontario. It features prominently on the Franco-Ontarian flag." Only one of the white ones survived.


I also picked some DogTooth Violets. Boy..were they ever hard to dig up! The roots go way down. The bulbs are buried quite deep. I was very pleased to discover that one of the five that I dug up actually made it through! From Thompson and Morgan: "Dog Tooth Violets may not be well-known, but they're definitely worth including in your spring garden. The bulbous perennials form clumps of glossy foliage, with attractive bronze mottling for extra appeal. It's marvellous for naturalising in thin grass. Tooth-shaped bulbs"

These plants, as near as I can tell are native to Ontario. It's really nice having them come up in our backyard. I planted them under our tree in the backyard.

Yesterday I visited

Yesterday Jim, Justin and I headed up to visit my parents. Jim had a sore throat so didn't talk much. Justin had a good nap in the afternoon, he slept there and back. This morning he is such a happy boy. :) Has a bad cough, but looking good.

Anyways, back to my parents.

When we arrived, just before lunch, Roel and Annie were there for a visit. They stayed for lunch.

Mom and Dad were looking pretty good. Mom's been struggling a bit with caring for Dad and trying to get the gardens in order for the season. I helped mom with some weeding of her flower beds and getting the potatoes into the ground. They had LOTS of potatoes. We wanted to get rid of them so we planted LOTS of potatoes in one whole where normally we would only put in one. :) The rest of them we put out to compost.

Big job done. Dad's heart more at ease because the potatoes are out, Mom's heart more at ease because her hubby is more at ease. We also had a nice visit. Justin played and helped them both to smile.

How is Dad? He still struggles a lot with bad muscle spasms. I asked what type of exercises they did, sounds like a good mix between strengthening and stretching. It's hard some days for Dad to do them because it hurts. His blood remains at a good level which is one less concern. And he is off the antibiotics which a blessing as well. The pain levels make it hard for Dad to get a proper sleep which in turn creates it's own problems.

According to Dr. Hupel the hip surgery was a complete success, now we just need to wait for his muscles to catch up to his activity level. It's a struggle.

Your continued prayers are appreciated.

Today I gardened....

Ah..here we have it.. a lovely warm day...started off with a bit of a chill though.. but the day heated up as it went along. As did I.

We had some dirt (topsoil) delivered to us yesterday and today I thought I'd top up the three raised beds that were feeling a deficet of dirt in them. Worked hard...got them done. Justin slept through most of it (took about an hour), but the last garden he was awake and talking to me as I shoveled dirt. I let him out for a bit to see what he would do and of course he made a beeline for the dirt and grabbed a handful of it. Would have eaten it too! (but I thought i'd rather not let him do that).

Anyways, when I got that done I did a couple loads of laundry, had lunch, let the boy have a nap, chatted with Jim for a bit, worked on the flower garden then walked the dogs and the boy again. When we got back I worked on the flower garden again - it was hard going. This garden has obviously not had the benefit of nice dirt in it. It was like digging in dried out clay! Tough sloughing...and I didn't get it done! I'm unimpressed..but gives me something to do tomorrow when the boy naps in the morning.

I have to admit... I"m feeling a bit jealous today, my neighbours peas are up, mine aren't AND they were planted on the same day! ARGH!!!... I want peas I do! I keep telling myself, they'll come up, It's all in God's timing...BUT I WANT PEAS!!!

Okay, I'm okay..done whining now. Need to bring in that last load of laundry off the line and feed the dogs and let in the piggies so enough typing for today.

I am So Proud

So....Jim and I took Sassy for the weekend. Jim's mom Eva took care of our son Justin for the weekend, and also our other dog Riley.

Jim and I stayed at Phyl and Barry's overnight and then headed off to the agility trial put on by K9 Sports. Sassy was entered into four events at this trial.
1. Advanced Gamblers
2. Starters Standard
3. Steeplechase
4. Starters Snooker

We had fun. :) The day started late and ended late. I was rather very unimpressed with that... but that all aside.... We were all bushed by the time the day was finished. Boy oh boy did we get tired. But things went fairly well.

Gamblers....well...we had fun. Sassy and I did well in the opening, and somehow managed to blow the final gamble. Not sure why but she decided the far end on the tunnel was what she should take, but that's what she did... So ah well...we learned lots, she did the mini gamble really well (Yeah Sassy!). Did her contacts wonderfully! She was a good dog with a good heart.

Standard...ah...we did it!!!! My Sassy dog nailed this course! We came in second!!! We "q'd" (as in we ran fast we ran clear we made NO mistakes!) My Sassy dog rocks!!!!!!! woohoo hoo hoo hoo!!!! (can you tell I"m proud of my girlie?)

on another rather cool note..... Sassy decided that she actually liked her x-pen. This the dog who hates being confined. LIKES her x-pen, even wanted to go into it. HA! Cool dog.

Steeplechase...fast, furious, man...we tried hard... but not today. She popped a weave, I wasn't sure if she had...took a chance...and well...ah well...for a first attempt at a fast and furious master's level course... we done good. Sassy worked hard, paid really good attention...but just couldn't hold those weaves. AND>>> we didn't get lost on a twisty course either! So there! :) What can you do eh?

Snooker....ah...the nemesis of my life. And that is what it continues to be. 5 tries at it...still no success. We (as in me, myself and I) planned it well.. and it all went fine until Sassy decided to take the wrong end a tunnel (hmm... do I sense a recurring theme?) :) but she tried so hard and worked her heart out for me... I honestly think that today would have gone better if the day hadn't been so long, and we hadn't gotten so tired. It was exhausting being around people and barking dogs all day long. NEXT TIME...I will take Sassy dog out for a good long walk in nature and just give us both a good break from it all. Even if all we do is go lay down and read in the sunshine. And now we are home and she is relaxing (even enjoyed some beef for supper - lucky girl)

Oh... before I forget. In getting that Standard "q" Sassy has achieved her agility dog of canada title (ADC). We now have the dubious pleasure of running advanced standard courses now (NO MORE REFUSALS ALLOWED!!!). Fun fun! My dog has her VERY FIRST TITLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

it's time for bed.. talk more another day... :)

Easter

The Hope of Easter Remembered.

Different casing?

This place mandarin design tells you how you can do different things to add variety to your blog. I have to admit, I don't understand exactly what all of them do...but this one seemed pretty straigt-forward. I'm guessing that with time I can learn to change the colours to this thing as well. :) Right now I just think it's a kinda cool way to add some variety to a rather basic blog. What do you think?

My Niece

Heard from my sister Joan. She lives out west with her family. Apparently her daughter, my niece, Nicole made the front page of the Chilliwack Progress. You can check out her story here. Look under the "golden imaginations" storyline. I think it's rather cool! I have a talented niece. Not that I didn't know that already. :)

Gardening and Justin

So yesterday I was out working in the yard. Justin spent most of the day outdoors with me.

First he decided that sleeping in the house was NOT going to happen. He was so tired and yet so determined to be busy so I threw him into the stroller and took him with me to walk the dogs. 1/2 an hour later, he was in dream land. So I walked home, parked the stroller in the backyard and set to work. I thought he'd be awake in about 1/2 hour. WRONG!!! 2.5 hours he slept in total! I got a lot of work done!

I worked on digging out the stump and roots of the lilac tree. I'm so fed up with that thing. Last year my dad was kind and cut it down for me. A nice man from church hauled it off to the dump for me. (lovely people I have intersecting my life). :) I had hoped to get it dug up last fall but that just didn't happen. Funny how life is.

So...I didn't get it all done but I did get most of the roots out of my flower garden, and... I got a good ring around the stump! I am so looking forward to getting it out!....wonder if I can do it...wonder if my brother Bill will ever get the time off work to come help before clean up.... ah... the wondering. :)

I also got the veggie gardens turned over and the compost mixed as well.

I even had time to put the piggies outside for a couple of hours and get them all cleaned out. If spring continues the way it has the piggies will be outdoors all the time in a couple of weeks. Won't that be nice? I won't have to clean them as frequently, they'll put on grass weight and keep the weeds eaten (from the gardens) (making it much cheaper to feed them)... ah...will be nice to hear wheeks outdoors again. :)

Justin came out with me in the afternoon for a bit. It was fun to walk him around the gardens. I showed him our anemones which were starting to flower, and the crocuses and other spring bulbs. He touched them ever so gently. I showed him what bad plants are....creeping charlie and grass in the flower beds! ARGH!!! Told him we'd have to fight this battle together! He just said "ah" and looked. Not sure he was really all that impressed.

When I walked around back with him he wanted down so I put him to stand next to my small greenhouse...courtesy of my darling husband...and Justin went from standing to crawling RAPIDLY toward our small pond! He thought it was fascinating and almost fell in. This of course caused me to react quickly! I let him splash for a bit then brought him in for a clothes change and good washing. Needless to say, when he went down for a nap, I gave our rather dirty pond a good cleaning. We'll have to watch him this summer that he doesn't fall in if we're not around.

As you can tell, he already has this fascination with fish. :) This is Midas. He is a nasty fish he needs his own aquarium. If you put him with other fish he'll attack them until they die. Apparently in the wild they are a rather peaceful fish, but in captivity they really like having their own space. He is a type of cichlid...from south america I think. I'm sure Jim will correct me if I'm wrong. :)

PICTURE OF ANNETTE AND JUSTIN

I was doing some re-organization of my digital pictures when I saw this one of Annette and Justin. It isn't too apparent in the picture, but Annette is carrying Justin in a basket full of laundry (clean I think), and he loved it. This picture was taken back in January, so he has moved on to think other things are fun, but it is a great picture of my wife and boy.

MAC trial

So Jim and I just got back (well okay...we've been back for about 1.5 hours) :) We were at a trial in London this weekend.

A trial you say? Whatever did you do wrong this time Annette?!?!?!?!

Actually it was an agility trial. It was put on by MAC. If you want to know who MAC is go here. It was held as part of Agility Association of Canada. You can view their website at this location. It was a well-run trial. They have had a few trials at the Western Fairgrounds but this was our first opportunity to trial with them.

It was rather neat. As Jim and I were sitting awaiting Sassy's turn to run, I noticed some people sitting behind us laughing at some of the antics of the dogs, and how the handlers were doing things. It was fairly obvious that they were having fun AND that they knew nothing about what was going on. They were just enjoying watching the dogs. I took the opportunity to talk with them a bit about my current favourite dog sport. A couple of ladies I ended up introducing to the lady who helped train Sassy and I into the sport. One had a malamute the other a border collie. They were quite intrigued about the possiblity of doing this with their dogs. It was fun to talk with them a bit. :)

Sassy was in two events today. Starters Standard and Advanced Gamblers. She came in second in the Standard and well...a somewhat distant fifth in Gamblers. I went not expecting to do very well so was quite pleased with how we did. It was our first trial of the season, we hadn't trained a whole lot, my handling was awful...I knew this! And well... we just wanted a good warmup before a more serious trial in a couple of weeks. Okay...it's not really a more serious trial... just that I entered more events and would have a somewhat higher expectation of doing better after having one trial under our belts after one year off.

We missed out on a qualifying round in standard by four inches when Sassy got a gleam in her eye and leapt off the a-frame! BAD DOG! Bad handler...needs to reinforce proper dismount from aframe!!!! But it was a fun run! :) Sassy was FAST! If she hadn't have missed that four inches into the yellow we would have come in first!

Advanced gamblers was a higher level of competition than what we ever done before so....not getting eliminated was like...wow!!!! She didn't get the gambles but....a lot of that was handler error...boy I learned lots! And some of it was just... she didn't understand, she tried hard but just didn't get it. (just means more training on my part). Once again....stuff we learned! :) This too was a good run...if only for the lady I met who when I was walking the course said...hey...relax... have fun. Try this, it might help. So that was way cool. So nice how people help others out.

Anyways, I have a boy who is not too happy with life and should probably go check on him to see what is up. Keep well all!

I went visiting

So my boyo Justin and I went to visit his Opa and Oma this past week. We were there from Tuesday to Thursday. It was good to see Justin reconnect with my parents.

My mom had SO much fun with him! She kept giving him little kisses! Justin even learned something new....listening to Oma's no was just as important as listening to mom-mom's no! AH!!! Hard lessons for little boys to learn!

Justin had a blast exploring a new house. He was just simply delighted with mom's duck planter that my sister Judy gave to Dad?(I think) a while back.

Dad sat outside with us one afternoon. I was raking the lawn up a bit and Justin was in his stroller. Their dog Heidi is somewhat untrustworthy so Dad made sure that grandson Justin would be safe. It was nice to see them together.

Dad is currently in a whole heap of pain. He is just plain sore..if not from muscle spasms, just from being sore. Sometimes you could just see that he didn't know what to do with himself. He takes a muscle relaxant at night which helps him to sleep.

He's had a bit of a problem with his bowels which isn't so nice. This makes it hard for him to eat well. And sometimes it seems like he just doesn't quite know what's going on...but after three months in the hospital I don't know how aware I would be either! Just sad to see him a bit confused yet.

BUT they both know that God is in control of it all. And they both really rely on God which for me is just so wonderful to see. I just marvel at them sometimes! They are still my greatest heros.

My mom is tired. Taking care of Dad 24/7 is taking it's toll on her. I'm not sure what to do to help...except be a caring daughter with a laughing son who can help ease the load just a tad. God holds us all close.

Our plan is to go up again in a couple of weeks for a day. Just to visit and to hopefully give mom some of her own space again. :) Who knows... maybe I'll make a nice meal again for them.

I surprised Jim by coming home early. He was both delighted and saddened by this. He had hoped to give the house a good cleaning for me and my early return sort of spoiled that for him. :) I thanked him for his thoughts and he was happy I was home so it all worked out well.