Tag: song

The Exuberance of Life

“Look Mom!” and what else is Lucas excited about?

October 6, 2018

The Exuberance of Life

Today we had impromptu tennis.  Christina and Becky rode their bikes to the park, Louis, the younger children, and I drove.  It was a lovely day and since the “cooler than 90 degree” weather has them all excited, we have been outside most of the day.

Lucas was shouting songs in the backseat; periodically announcing “Stasia loves this one” or “Stasia said her Mommy has this!” or “this is one I like!” (Since Anastasia is not there to announce such things, Lucas must in her absence!)

We claim an open tennis court (okay, two, but that’s just because not all eight members of our team are great with their aim yet).  Lucas has his own special racket and claims every ball that hits the net – the inaccuracies of learning kept Lucas entertained for over an hour!

At home, we’re now enjoying outside.  Christina is texting the UCC team, Kimberly is running her scooter (kid powered), Jaquline is on her bike, and Jillian has a chicken – no, it’s a guinea pig.  Lucas is driving his “Green car” (a 2nd birthday gift from Grandma Joanne that has seen daily use except for one six-week stint while we waited for the replacement charger).

“Look, Mom, the pig-pig is driving!” Lucas has Custard contentedly chewing on grasses in his lap!  (Custard is one of the 4-week-old Guinea Pigs.)

A few moments later…

“Look, Mom!  The chicken is driving!” And Jillian is sitting next to Lucas with a different chicken (this one is the biggest of the young cockerels we have for sale) sitting on her lap.

A few moments later…

“Look out below!” followed by giggles.  Lucas is driving the car under a rain of pinecones Jillian tossed in the air.  He catches one in the empty passenger seat, laughs, picks it up, and throws in into the little tykes car (human-powered) as he passes it.

A second later…

“Mom!  A train!” And Lucas is pushing his car, in reverse, with the little tykes car centered behind it, rolling along like it is the engine of a two-unit train.

Then he tries to join Kimberly and Jaquline’s soccer game while driving the car!  “Kim!  My car wants to play!”

He jumped out of the car when Jillian and Kimberly started with the foam football… “I love football!”

We should have such energy and exuberance toward everything in life!  Lucas looks at everything as an adventure, challenge, or treat; as a gift.  Life is a gift.  Thank you, Jesus, for this amazing life and all the fun moments we experience in it!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

 

Oceans of Praise

One night of de-stressing by taking the kids to experience the beauty of the moonlit beach!

September 26, 2018

Oceans of Praise

It was a long, tired, stressful day.  It was the kind of day when as I’m driving home, the “Mandisa Fun” Pandora station (Christian Rock with catchy tunes and uplifting lyrics) was blaring out the speakers, windows down, and I’m trying to drum the day out of my head.

It was also nearing the full moon.  There were very few clouds, a refreshing warm-cool wind (I knew this would be “blustery” at the beach), and it was 86 degrees at almost 7:30pm.

I decided we’d go to the beach.

I got home to find Eddie and Louis watching football – only into the first quarter.  They do so little father-and-son stuff because Louis is always busy that I announced, “I’m headed to the beach,” knowing that would be cool for them to have father-and-son time.

“You’re taking the kids to go shark fishing?” Louis laughed.  “It’ll be dark by the time you get there.”

“No, we’re going to walk along the shore and play in the shallows,” I smiled, “don’t worry, they’ll all be back in one piece.  There’s a beautiful moon out and it looks amazing.”

Lucas almost stayed to watch football, but then realized all of the girls, including Anastasia, were going with Mommy, and this meant Mommy would be gone a long time.

We showed up to see this:

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And this:

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And that:

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God had an amazing light show for us!  It was so bright they could see to build a tribal village with walls, huts, and fields.

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Rebeccah took most of the pictures and her selfie:

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She tried to get pictures of us, but really we look like black blobs amid the darkness.

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This one was a little better:

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We raced up and down the shoreline.  The water and wind was warm, so Anastasia lay down in the surf to get covered in water.  Jillian, Jaquline, Kimberly, and Lucas followed her.  Each was completely soaked in the first fifteen minutes.  I think it took Rebeccah a half-hour before she let her hair get wet.  Our long walk ended up being over two and a half miles!  (1.3 miles one way, 1.3 miles back.)  We sang praise songs because the majesty of the night looked like it was praising God.

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We had to leave when Becca texted saying she was almost done with work.  Anastasia was giddy at the prospect of “beating Mommy home” so we trouped back to the van, cleaned up at Aunt Becca’s, and spent a few minutes after Becca got home chatting before my crew made our way home.  (Sister time for us Mommies!)

Thank you, Jesus, for a wonderful, exhilarating night.

And yes, my devious plan worked… all of them got back on their good sleep schedule.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

 

Life & Love, Unscripted

Life doesn’t have a template, neither does love. It’s all unscripted until it happens.

August 13, 2018

Life & Love, Unscripted

I love our church.  Landmark Family Church has been my home for almost 11 years!  I love that we do life, unscripted, instead of follow a template and expect everything God does to fit in tiny boxes.

Like Sunday morning.  The past two lessons have been right on what I’m studying, feeling, and hearing from God.  Wow.  Blows me away.

But this Sunday past seemed to blow away two people near me as well.  This is because God knows exactly what we all need to hear and somehow he manages to put just the right stuff into the speaker’s mouth so it affects everyone just as God wants it to.

God’s Word smashed in and messed up some apple carts yesterday and I love it when that happens!  (It’s like what you need to hear because you sometimes try to reason your way out of what you feel, so when someone else says it, you’re like “maybe I ought to listen.”  God does that a lot to me.)

We have this corporate thing about squirrels (you’ll see them everywhere) so the girls and I designed “The Landmark Tribe” squirrel stories as a way to give back.  (Everything we make from those books goes to our church!)

Rebeccah has been carrying a passion for helping at church in a specific way for over a year, but never said anything because we couldn’t always be at church on Saturday nights (they had been doing Saturday night services), but now, they are restarting regular Sunday morning service!  Rebeccah was ecstatic.  She spent all week preparing her “presentation booklet” to have all her ideas organized.  She was so scared she would be told no, and so thrilled when she was told yes!  (She spent all of today making notes look neater and printing up other ideas.  She kept saying “I can’t wait for Sunday!”)

Life is real.  Love is real.  I love that our church is real.  We are real people doing life together and coming together with the expectation of hearing God’s Word in a real way.  That’s how God uses us; you may sit down and a song speaks to your heart, or is seems the speaker is talking just to you.  That’s real.  That’s God’s love.  He does speak just to you.  He leaves the ninety-nine and makes a special trip to heal your heart.  That’s real Love.

Thank you, God, for Your love!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

DuoLingo

June 3, 2018

DuoLingo

I like tools that make education fun.

This little application is fun, comprehensive, and easy to use.  Louis found it, as he’s the language nut in our household.  (Seriously, seven languages plus ASL?)  I thought I was good with fluency in two and working knowledge in three others.

We’d been trying to get the girls interested in learning a second language.  They’ve been around French and Spanish because of family, but never had a desire to really learn any specific second language.  They can all count, identify colors, and speak simple phrases in both. (I mean, they know “hello” in several languages because of a song!)

We’ve tried several programs from CDs to Rosetta Stone (I love that one) to books and interactive games.  Nothing was helping to get a second language to stick with any of them.

This DuoLingo application gave them speaking, writing, and reading exercises with lessons as short as 5 minutes a day (My level is “insane” which is only 20 minutes.) incorporating a bit of healthy competition as they can “follow” each other and try to have more points than the other!  (Kimberly and Rebeccah keep passing each other!)

I like that it tracks your progress and has a “teacher/classroom” section where the “teacher” can access detailed reports for those in her “classroom” and assign lessons, set goals, etc.  This makes homeschool record-keeping easy!

So, if you are looking for a fun, user-friendly language application, try DuoLingo!  You can always email me and I’ll send you a link!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

Amazing Live Music: Evan D Music

(photo from Evan D Music’s Facebook page)

May 29, 2018

Amazing Live Music: Evan D Music

Our weeks are pretty full of stuff.  Between our crossing driver shifts, taxiing children to and from college classes and groups, and just general life – it is awesome to have a mostly-weekly couple getaway afternoon on Mondays.  (THANK YOU! Shout to my amazing sister, Becca, who is brave and possibly just as crazy as me to sometimes text, “Pick them up by 8am tomorrow.”)

That is what we had this week.

The adventure of just Louis and me began with dropping off 7 children at 4pm (Anastasia had “sleptover” Sunday and Christina’s Monday class was canceled because the college was closed) to 6:30am the next day.  Only one cab ride to take someone home before the night was ours.

We had worked in the morning (all 3 cab calls) and ferried Christina to Marine Street for her Civil Air Patrol volunteer time, then spent almost 4 hours playing yard and board games with the girls (I even got to conquer an Age of Empires map with Rebeccah!) so when our time started it was like, “okay, what now?”

I wanted to walk on the beach and surf… wrong tide, and I don’t do baiting-shark surfing (aka night surfing).

Louis said, “I remember hearing some really good music downtown two weeks ago at the Tavern.” (He means the new Taberna del Caballo.)  Oh my! You should go there on Mondays from 4pm to 8pm – trust me, your ears are in for a very special treat!

So down we went.

And there, I was transported backwards to the very skillful, amazing raw guitar sounds that I heard my minstrel-of-the-dawn Daddy playing when I was a child and the awesome worship jams with Louis and his team and I first met.  Clean music, inspiring riffs (…you know, the things where a string musician picks the strings with his fingers so fast the fingers blur all together and you sit in awe with your mouth open…) and timeless songs.

We were listening to the sounds of Evan D Music.  (This guy is about to release a record too… yep, I’m not that old, but projects are records of time and passion, even if they are downloaded on a smart device in snippets.)  He plays around town almost every night but at the Taberna del Caballo Mondays from 4pm to 8pm.

One lady at another table had the best stadium whistle I’d ever heard (right through her fingers, no device!)  I’m sure people at the Oasis on the beach heard it.  You should have seen the two adorable kids dancing along with most of the patrons when one particularly moving song was performed.  (Louis doesn’t dance, so I’m not going to dance without him… but had the girls been there, we would have been dancing around too.)

I love live passionate music.  You can tell when an artist puts their heart and soul into their work – and Evan surely does.  I grew up listening to my Daddy play “story” songs from Phil Collins to Gordon Lightfoot to Jackson Browne, Moody Blues, Beach Boys, and all in between.  (We sat down to hear Evan playing “Kokomo” which was way cooler live with a riff-master on guitar – and he can sing the higher harmonies – I hadn’t heard that since my little brothers’ voices changed!)  My Daddy’s eyes would light up like he had stars in them when he strummed the tunes.  For years, I thought Lightfoot’s “Minstrel of the Dawn” was the story of my Daddy.  I loved just listening to the guys play when Louis and I first met; they’d be crammed in Grandpa’s attic room and wailing away and I’d hide on the stairs or they’d be practicing in the empty auditorium and I would slide off to the dark side entryway and dance.  I still love it when Louis (who claims he’s really rusty) plays guitar or Christina or Becca play piano.

Real music is the love of my heart.  It lifts my soul, engages my mind, heart, memories, and emotions, and spins a relaxing web of tranquility through the air.  This is what I felt listening to the talented Evan D Music; and this wonderful little place on St. George Street will be a regular haunt for us from 4pm to 8pm as long as we have Mondays off and Evan is playing there!

Check Evan D Music out on Facebook and YouTube and come be in his audience before he makes it to the Amphitheatre!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

Power of Music

This is what music does…

October 15, 2017

Power of Music

Sometimes music is just the perfect thing to lift you up.  Today, I needed an energetic soundtrack for work.

I love how God seems to know exactly what to play and in what order.  It never matters what station: it’s always the right playlist!

So, my radio started with “That’s How You Change The World” by Newsboys.  (Absolutely perfect!   Skyrocket volume up, windows down!  I’m sure anyone outside on my road wondered if I was deaf.  My Daddy taught me to enjoy music by feeling it like a bass drum is your heartbeat.  Oh, I love that song too! Beckah Shae does it… But it wasn’t in the mix today.)

Just as that one is finished, I crawled to a halt at a red light and “The River” by Jordan Feliz started.   (Now in the middle of traffic, my hands stay on the wheel but my head is bobbing like a doggy on a dashboard so I’m pretty sure people think I’m crazy – but that’s perfectly fine for them to see me as I really am.)

This wonderful selection was finished with Britt Nicole’s “Amazing Life” (This one caused the volume to increase another notch) and “I Feel So Alive” by Capital Kings.  (Halfway through I had to turn this down to a manageable super-sensitive-ears-person-enjoying-music volume so I wouldn’t blow away my passenger.)

The power of music is to energize and refresh.  I love worship songs – I love songs I can make motions and signs to because that feels like dancing.  I imagine the music entering my body, refilling me with some kind of electron fuel, and exiting as a broad grin and my attempt at singing along. (At least, that’s what happens in a car… when my feet are free to dance?  “Shackles” by Mandisa; let the song do the talking!)

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

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