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God’s Perfection in Mathematics

June 3, 2016 by Esther Filbrun · 3 Comments

One evening about a month ago, my six year old brother asked a question that was designed to stump the oldest of us. “What’s fifty times fifty?” He loves starting with the hardest number to multiply that he can fathom, and then multiply that by itself, the new number by itself again, and keep going—until even the calculator groans and returns an E+, ‘Overflow’, or simply starts showing uninterpretable decimals.

But since fifty times fifty isn’t too big, I set it up on the whiteboard for him and gave him the answer. “Two thousand five hundred.”

The Flow of History

June 1, 2016 by Esther Filbrun · Leave a Comment

If there’s one thing I remember doing in my earliest memories, it would be having our family worship time. Although the times of day when we do it has changed over the years, it’s an every day occurrence aside from Sundays. I only remember one time when we’ve actually missed having it, and that was not on purpose, believe me! This is a long standing tradition, one that I’m sure will never stop, even after all of us children eventually leave home.

I really respect my dad for keeping it up all these years. It can’t be easy for him; often he’s had long days at work and he’s physically drained, but he always makes sure that we have our Bible time.Over the years, we’ve done at least two almost cover-to-cover read throughs of the Bible (we’ve skipped some of the genealogies—the younger children have a hard time reading, let alone understanding, all the names!). I can’t remember exactly when we started the last read-through, but it was probably a year or two ago. We got up to 1 Kings 7 by October last year, then Dad decided to switch to Blue Letter Bible’s Chronological reading plan. Reading the Bible this way adds a whole new dimension to the stories and context, which makes it quite interesting! Currently, we’re reading in 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, and Isaiah.

Grape Harvest

May 30, 2016 by Esther Filbrun · Leave a Comment

Well, I wrote this post a couple weeks ago and intended to add more to it later…but time has slipped away and I’ve finally decided to go ahead and publish it, even if it is a bit late. Nothing much has changed since then anyway.

During the school holidays the last week of April, we got a call saying that it was time to begin grape harvest. I first helped with the harvest five years ago, when friends of ours were managing the vineyard, and have every year since then. It hasn’t always been the easiest or most enjoyable work ever, but over the years—and the last two, especially—I think I’ve learned to enjoy it more.

Sweet on You: A New Mystery by One of My Favorite Authors!

May 4, 2016 by Esther Filbrun · 2 Comments

Well, this post was supposed to go up about a week ago. But that didn’t happen, due to the fact that I didn’t even have this written yet, much less scheduled! And due to the fact that I was picking grapes last week (a job that I’m learning to really enjoy!), it simply didn’t get posted. I’ve decided that late is better than never, and since I loved the story I thought I’d share my thoughts of the book with you. But then, if you don’t like women’s fiction, or reading book reviews, go ahead and skip this post. I won’t mind!

Sweet on You by Chautona Havig

Mom has done several advanced reader/launch promotion work for author Chautona Havig over the past year, and a couple weeks ago when Chautona was looking for a new launch group, I decided to sign up. And, surprise, I got to be part of it! I’ve loved her books ever since Mom introduced me to Ready or Not—the tale of a young 20-something who is given guardianship of her 8 nieces and nephews after her sister and brother-in-law die. On second thought, it’s probably not so surprising that I liked the story since I’m the oldest of eight…it was very true to life.

The Mystery Object: Can You Help?

April 20, 2016 by Esther Filbrun · 3 Comments

One evening this week, my ten year old brother was searching through my sixteen year old brother’s things, trying to find a lost wallet. I don’t know if he ended up finding the wallet or not, but he did discover something fascinating—an old metal thing, with the name “Nat” inscribed on the outside, and a tiny picture of a man on the inside. It is about 15 mm in diameter, so pretty tiny!

There is nothing on the outside edge that would have made it possible to put on a necklace (no little loops or anything), and it wasn’t made to snap onto clothing as a button—we tried that out, and it didn’t work.

Hello, Winter! (and Giveaway Winners)

April 15, 2016 by Esther Filbrun · 1 Comment

Hello, winter, what a surprise!
Icicles blooming before our eyes!

Well, not quite like that. But the heavy frost did come as a surprise to me yesterday morning.

We’ve had skirmishes with frost the last couple weeks, little touches announcing that the hard one is on the way, but up until now we haven’t had anything serious. It’s been chilly, yes, but not quite to the point of freezing.