Janet's Blog

Last Saturday morning, I went birding with my friend, Vonnie, who is extremely knowledgeable and passionate about all kinds of birds. I've always been excited to watch birds as they flit about from one branch to another, or quibble over a few seeds at a backyard bird feeder, but I can't say that I've ever before gone birding. In the springtime, Vonnie and her parents and kids have been accustomed to taking car trips along Highway 2, between Alliance and Hyannis, just to watch the water birds that frequent the 26 lakes (or ponds, really) that line the road. I wouldn't know how many lakes there are, but Vonnie and her family have counted them. Vonnie's parents aren't healthy enough for birding this year, and her children are grown and scattered across the US and Canada, so she asked if I would like to go with her. Vonnie brought binoculars, and a notebook for recording each type of bird she saw. I brought a telephoto lens for my phone. Vonnie and I had plenty to t

Victoria was four years old when God brought her into our family. She turned five just one week after she came to live with us permanently. For our youngest daughter, I was Mom #4.   Four-year-old Victoria There is so much I could share about little Victoria. She had a wonderful smile. As far as she was concerned, everyone she met was instantly her friend. She blended into our family extremely well from the very beginning. She loved to sing and dance, and dress up like a princess. She adored her big sisters and their friends, basking in the attention they gave her. She loved our dog, Kirby, and our cat, Libby, and any other animal she ever met. She worked very hard to learn to speak in complete sentences and overcome her developmental delays. Victoria didn't hesitate to call me Mom right away. She was used to bestowing that title on a series of caregivers. Her birth mother, step mother, and most recent foster mom came before me; her new mother-in-law is Mom #5. Her early years had

One of the best things about the Internet is the ease of researching anything that comes to mind. The days of pawing through a library's card catalog in search of books and magazines that might pertain to the subject--those days are over. We no longer need to summarize the relevant content and record it on numerous notecards with all of the bibliography information we will need. No longer do we have to spend tedious hours at the library, painstakingly leafing through stacks of written material in search of pertinent quotes. I, for one, am grateful that the Internet has made research simple. These last two weeks have marked the one- and two-year anniversaries of my parents' deaths. I have been told that their last hours were peaceful, because they had entrusted their lives to Jesus. But as I've been mulling over the memories, I've realized that I have no idea what Mom's or Dad's last words were, since I wasn't with them right then, when they took their final