notes of jubilee

I was beginning to think we'd never get any eggs from our now almost fully grown chickens. And then today when I decided to check out where the sixth chicken was hiding, I noticed that she came from behind the coop. There is was a very small space between the coop and the fence, maybe six inches.  She was hiding nesting there instead of the nesting boxes.

I was so excited, that I ran in the house to tell the chickadees.  The only problem was that I couldn't get to it.  I mentioned it to The Calm One - poor thing, I won't him up in all my excitement - and he decided to try and retrieve it.

When he reached in for the egg (after closing off the access the chickens were using) he found two eggs!

Yay!  Finally the chickens are beginning to earn their keep!  Now, if they would just use the nesting boxes to actually nest instead of pooping in them!  Who knows where all we'll find eggs . . .

Counting it all joy,

Hello Dear Reader. Hope your summer is going extremely well. We are soooo incredibly busy here at the Jubilant household.

This week we are having Mega Sports Camp and Kids Crusade at our church. Today was the first morning. I am so thankful for the youth kids and our other church leaders that are making it happen.  Mega Sports Camp was a huge hit.

We had four very quiet kids in Kids Crusade this morning. But toward the end of the session they had opened up. We had twice as many helpers as kids. When does THAT ever happen?! Anyway, we are hoping for more kids tomorrow. And for the kids who were here today to open up even more.

It is lonely jumping, waving my arms, shouting and dancing all by myself! But our director made a good point, sometimes to reach kids, you have to humble yourself and be a little crazy for God.

Rest assured, I've cornered the market on crazy this morning! Ha!

Off to find a little more crazy . . .

And counting it all joy,

So, the garden is finally growing! And actually producing vegetables! Woot! I just wish the chickens would catch up!

Here are the first of the goodies:

I am so excited that I do not have such a large brown thumb after all!  And I am happy that we have fresh veggies (and fruit, in the case of the tomatoes, of course).  Yay!

Well, is my face red or what?  I received the following email the other day.  It read, in part:

 I love reading your blog. I check it out all the time hoping for new posts!

I hope you don’t mind --- I’ve been telling all my friends about your blog.

I printed 100 free business cards with my 10 favorite websites (yours was #1!!) and handed them out at our last Mommy Meet-up.

It made me wonder if you had ever done that for yourself? Do you ever meet anyone at a coffeeshop or a playground and start talking about blogging? Maybe you could print up some cards to hand out. Just an idea!

In return for inspiring me, I wanted to pass on these money saving tips to you:
-- 100 Free business cards at www.RedTagPrintSale.com

I hope you have a great week. I’ll be checking back soon. Bye!

Of course, I recognized the flattery for what it was.  But I clicked on over and thought it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and design a business card for fun.  And it was, at first.  It took some repeated finagling, but I finally got the card to look the way I wanted it to.  And after investing so much time, I decided to go through the checkout process.   I even considered ordering flyers for an upcoming event I am in charge of at my church.


All through the process my total read $0.00.  Until I got to the shipping portion of the process.  It was nearly $11.00 for shipping.  For 100 cards!  Really?  Are you kidding me?!

I emailed them back:

I thought this was a great deal.  So, I spent quite sometime designing my business cards.  Then, at checkout I see I have to pay nearly eleven dollars for shipping.  For only 100 business cards.  I groaned out loud for falling for your false advertising.  Shame on me for believing in an offer that seemed to good to be true.  If the cards were truly free there would be no shipping costs.  At all.  If the shipping had been more reasonable (like less than two dollars), I may have gone ahead with my order anyway.  But I won't be ordering.

It's obvious they were making an attempt to offset their costs by inflating shipping charges so dramatically.  Unbelievable.  I don't often call out a company or a person here on the ol' blog.  But I got to thinking that since I do have a platform, I'm gonna use it when I feel someone is trying to take advantage of customers.  And this is one such case.

The joy is that we have free speech and I can use my blog the way I see fit.  But I'd rather be bragging about a company that made a great offer and stuck to it.  Ah well.

Counting it all joy,

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!

***Special thanks to Pam Mettler of Zondervan for sending me a review copy.***



Andrew is the creator, writer, and illustrator of the Lost Sheep series. Way back in 1989 as a young Bible college student, Andrew was asked to give the dreaded “children’s talk” at a large church. Andrew possessed one talent: he could draw sheep. He bought some overhead projector sheets and drew up the story of Cecil and the Lost Sheep. T he congregation loved it, so Andrew continued to draw stories to use with kids and adults. Other students, pastors, and teachers started borrowing the stories.



Product Details:

List Price: $4.99
Reading level: Ages 4-8
Paperback: 32 pages
Publisher: Zondervan (January 15, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 031071947X
ISBN-13: 978-0310719472

Press the browse button to view the first chapter:



My Take:

I could hardly wait to read this book to my kids.  I had gotten Saturday's mail just before leaving for church and we all were looking forward to reading it.  The kids in my Sunday School class loved it.  They were already familiar with the story of Jesus telling the disciples to let the children come unto him but Mr. McDonough and his illustrations made it more appealing than what I was  expecting.  He drew the disciples in modern clothes and even had a kid on a skateboard approaching Jesus.

The illustrations were silly, colorful and fun.  I think we've read the book 20 or 30 times in just the couple of weeks that we've had it.  That is considered quite the hit in the Jubilant household.  I am eager to find out what other stories Andrew McDonough has in store for us.

Over fourth of July weekend the kids and I fell in love with my sister in law's new puppy, "Sweet Pea." It was the runt of the litter and is not expected to get very big. Four or five pounds. I was so taken by this little pup that I couldn't help but want one of my own.

Call it what you will, I do believe I am going through some kind of phase because I want to hold and cuddle babies and can't help myself around them.  Evidently this extends to small canines as well.  I do not, repeat, do not want another child.  God already allowed me to have one more than I can handle.

-- Enter here the admonition, Be careful what you wish for. I'm just sayin'.

I know, I know what you are thinking. Well, at least I know what my mom was thinking when I told her I wanted one of the puppies from the same litter. Because she told me.  Loudly and mournfully and in no uncertain terms that I was ruining her life by adding another animal to the already chaotic Jubilant household. With each new addition, it's been getting more and more difficult to go and visit my parents who live nearly two hours away. I guess I could have reminded her that the road goes both ways, but being the good daughter that I am (a-hem) I refrained.

So, I may have been a good daughter and refrained from sassy-ness, but I also did what any other self respecting child of an over-reacting mother would do.  I got a pup anyway. 

Her name is Leeli.  And I just love her to pieces.  So do the kids.  The Affectionate One has decided that Leeli actually belongs to her though.  Ugh!  Daughters!

At any rate, she is a chihuahua and hound mix.  I have no idea what kind of hound and it doesn't really matter, she's too adorable to make me want to care.


When we came home from our weekend and found that Explorer had died, I was a little more determined to adopt Leeli.  She brings our animal total to 2 dogs, one cat and six chickens.

So, it's a happy day here at the Jubilant household.  Yay for puppies!

Counting it all joy,

Counting it all joy,

It's a sad day here at the Jubilant household.  Our beloved Explorer Kissy Lips (the gray tabby) died over the weekend while we were away.  Explorer was The Affectionate One's cat, but it was Whirling Dervish who took the news the hardest.

His cat, Patches May, disappeared several weeks ago and has never returned or been found.  We thought perhaps in her wanderings around the neighborhood she had found a family that let her be an inside cat.  Whirling Dervish latched onto this possibility.  He was upbeat and hopeful for about three days and then he declared that Patches had "broken his heart."

With Explorer's death, he just couldn't keep a brave face and cried quite a bit.  The kids wanted to see him since they knew I had found him nearby.  The Calm One and I debated for sometime wondering if we should comply with their request.  We finally decided that since Explorer looked like he was sleeping and their were no wounds, we'd let the kids have this final step of closure.

The Affectionate One was grossed out and refused to stand with us until The Calm One had completely buried the cat.  Whirling Dervish watched every move and cried the whole time.  It was heartbreaking.  It's a tough life lesson for an almost six year old to learn.

He wanted to pray for Explorer and of course, we let him and then I said a prayer too.   Even his prayer revealed how deep his grief went:

Wow.  What a fun weekend.  The Calm One and I took the chickadees to the country.  We had a bunch of family get together down at my in-laws.  There was more food than we could possibly eat, more laughter than you can shake a stick at and more kids than we knew what to do with.  Luckily, someone had the foresight to bring a pool so the kids could get cooled off.  The heat was almost unbearable.  Thank goodness for air conditioning!

Hope your weekend was great too.  And God Bless our troops now and forever.

Counting it joy,