With a recent addition, I now have 17 cousins. :-)
My brothers and I were talking the other day, and we realized that if we each had six kids, our children would have 30 cousins. And we talked about how fun it would be for our kids if we lived close to each other, so our kids could play with their cousins. :-)

Yesterday morning I made Dutch Babies for the first time, and they were a big hit. Thank you so much for the recipe, Gracie! :-)
Several people said that it reminded them of French toast, and everyone liked it, including me. We put honey on it, but some of the family ate it plain, as I ate my first piece, and liked it fine that way.
I did wonder, Gracie-- what size pan do you use? I used our 9" x 13" x 2" glass baking dish, and it worked, but the edges came up a lot so I wondered if you used a larger pan.

Cantus Christi, pg. 426
Nunc dimittis
Luke 2:29-32
Thomas Tallis, The Dorian Service, c. 1550

Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace,

according to Thy word.

For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation,

Which Thou has prepared before the face of all people;

To be a light to lighten the Gentiles,

and to be the glory of Thy people Israel.

Glory be to the Father,

and to the Son,

and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning,

is now and ever shall be,

world with-out end.

Amen.

Cyberhymnal didn't have this one, but it did have a short biography of the composer, Thomas Tallis, which is where I got the picture. You may recognize the name Tallis, since on the soundtrack for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, track 6 is Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. That theme is Third Mode Melody, I believe, which has Psalm 63 set to it in the Cantus Christi, number 92:

O Lord, My God, Most Earnestly

O Lord, my God, most earnestly

I seek your holy face

Within Your house again to see

the glories of Your grace.

Apart from You I long and thirst

and naught can satisfy;

I wander in a desert land

where all the streams are dry.

You can listen to Third Mode Melody here on the Cyberhymnal (although they have it with other words.)

Finally, the blustery day turned into a blustery night...

... and the blustery night blew the tarp off the chicken tractor three times. We have just come back in, and are hoping that this time the tarp will hold, especially since a gentle rain has begun! :-)
It actually wasn't a blustery day today, though. But my next brother has been reading the Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day book to the younger four boys, so that line popped into mind.



Tonight I have also been working on a dress that I am making. I haven't ever made a dress before, so Mom is helping me along quite a bit.
Right now we are working on the sleeves and the skirt- we were working on the bodice but realized we needed to get fusible interfacing before continuing.
The pattern is Simplicity, pattern 5041, view C (upper left), but I decided to use the sleeves from view D (lower left). The fabric I'm using is a darkish red, similar to the fabric on the dress to the lower right, and with lighter, almost lavender, grapes and leaves sprinkled across it.
I do not plan on making or wearing the hat, but I do want to make the apron. The bonnet looks interesting as well. :-)
Has anyone else made this pattern? A friend told me that she made it and that she had to make the inset smaller to make the shoulders fit.

Mrs. Friedrich posted the lyrics to "O Let My Name Engraven Stand", following Gracie's post on hymns.
We sing "O Let My Name Engraven Stand" from the Cantus Christi, which only has three verses, which are three, four, and seven in the version posted by Mrs. Friedrich.
The Cantus Christi has a different tune than the one mentioned as well, "Invitation", written by Jacob Kimball in 1784.
It is a beautiful tune. In the second half, the parts come in one by one, Bass, Tenor, Soprano, Alto, at the rate of one per measure, similar to "Russia", written by Daniel Read in 1786, which is the tune to 119x in The Book of Psalms for singing, and Psalm 119 (number 158) in the Cantus Christi. Thus the music, which pauses and rests for a moment before the second half, goes from silence to increasing volume as each part comes in, which is very beautiful and vigorous!

I tried to find the tune online, and found The Joe Beasley Memorial Sacred Harp Album, which has mp3s of each track, including Invitation. The recording, which says that it is a recording of the Old Flatwoods Church, Nauvoo, Alabama's night singing in 1954, is quite a bit faster that what we sing and sounds like it has been "embroidered" some, especially at the end. (We also couldn't figure out what verse they were singing.)

I had better success at Amazon, finding this Amazon sample of the last verse. :-) Enjoy.

Airliner fakes emergency so passengers can watch soccer game

LIMA, Peru (AP) -- A chartered jet carrying 289 Gambian soccer fans pretended it needed to make an emergency landing so they could watch their team compete in the FIFA Under 17 World Championships, officials said Wednesday.
The plane, claiming to be low on fuel, landed Tuesday near the stadium in Peru's northern coast city of Piura.

'BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- Four army commandos on skis dropped by helicopter Tuesday onto an Antarctic glacier to search for two Argentine men who plunged into a deep ice crevasse in a weekend snowmobiling accident.
Lt. Col. Carlos Flesia said the helicopters also airlifted in ropes, ice anchors and other gear the rescuers from an elite Antarctic Commando unit planned to use in the difficult descent into the 180-foot-deep crack.
"The rescue units were dropped off in an area of solid rocks," said Flesia at Argentina's Antarctica command center in Buenos Aires. He said the four-man team would spend the few remaining hours of sunlight Tuesday trying to ski the 1,500 yards to the crevasse and rappel into the depths.
More than 70 hours had elapsed since the accident, and the unit was working in blustery subzero conditions on the last day of the southern hemisphere winter.
Authorities said the missing men were wearing extreme weather gear and were equipped with radios, but had not been heard from since the accident, and hopes were fading of pulling them out alive.'

The Creek

Sadly, it has gotten dryer since I took this photo, but the creek is still a very peaceful spot, and at least once a week I walk down and enjoy it.
The boys go down more often, and enjoy it more actively... as in wet halfway to their knees and ankle deep in mud. ;-)

A room without books is like a body without a soul. ~ G. K. Chesterton
(here via A Cognizant Discourse)
What a wonderful quote! :-) Kitchens need cook books, and living rooms need lots of books, and bedside tables should be laden with books!

I am thankful for...
...for dial-up internet at our house. No more need for wi-fi coffee shops, although I have enjoyed them (most of them, anyway.)
...my cat, even though she is dashing madly through the kitchen behind me, causing me fear for my feet. She likes to attack feet.
...And the lone firefly (the last one of summer?) that I saw as I was finishing a walk before dinner tonight.