Counting between lightning and thunder

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It's true, you can count between lightning and thunder. However, as you can see below it's 5 seconds for every mile - I was counting 1 second per mile.

From the BBC Weather Centre:

"Air around the discharge channel is heated to about 30,000 C (55,000 F). The sound of thunder is made by heated air expanding very rapidly and causing soundwaves. Thunder rumbles because you get soundwaves coming from different parts of the storm. The speed of sound (760 mph, 1224 km/h) is very much less than the speed of light (186,000 mp/s, 300,000 km/s). So you see a lightning flash almost immediately it happens while the sound can take several seconds to reach an observer. If you count the gap between the lightning and the thunder, you can tell how far away the storm is. For every kilometre count 3 seconds, for every mile count 5 seconds. So if you count 15 seconds, the storm is 5 km or 3 m away from where you are."

Thunderstorm

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Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. Isaiah 26:3

My little brown-eyed girl and I sat up, later than is sensible for an eight year old to be awake, reading, 'Just another chapter', of The Island of Adventure. Immediately as we finished reading and I was about to settle her down it thundered. She was frightened. My other tiny girl was fast asleep in the next bedroom oblivious to the noise.

So we sat at the window of her bedroom and watched a spectacular storm. The lightening flashed pink in the sky, the thunder rumbled. We counted down from the lightening flash to the thunder to determine how far away the storm was (is that actually an accurate measure of storm distance?). We had a fun time.

When the storm had passed I snuggled her down in bed. "Mummy I'm scared, will you pray?" So we prayed. I told her how safe she was in God's hand and I quoted Isaiah 26:3. I sat on her bed for a while until she was convinced the storm had passed. Finally, after a big hug, she let me come downstairs.

It's times like this that I love about motherhood. To be there for my children. To love and comfort them; to know that they feel safe in my arms. It's an indescribable feeling that wells up inside - pure joy and love.

It made me think about God. He is our Father, He longs that we reach out to Him for comfort, to receive His love, to know that His all-powerful hand is upon us. He is our Rock and our Refuge. Our Salvation.

Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;

Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Work-Life Balance

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I came across this post: To Stay at Home Wives and Mothers at a blog called Lady in the Making. It really touched me. It makes me realise how blessed I am.

Before I got married I worked a very busy job in our local city. When I got married my husband and I agreed that I'd cut my hours down to part-time hours so that I could concentrate more on everything that needed to be done at home. My boss (a staunch career woman) was so wonderful and understanding.

I stopped working 2 months before my first little girl was born. When she was around 1 1/2 I started working 10 hours a week in a local office and my Mum cared for her whilst I worked. I worked right up to the day before my second little girl was born and then stopped working altogether.

I was a happy stay at home mother and wife until last year (my girls are now 6 and 8) when I took up a job working 20 hours a week in a small office. I was OK when the girls were in school, but when it got to half-term and my Mum was looking after them my heart ached. Lol, every time someone walked past with a child I could have cried.

Now, I reckon some readers may be thinking I'm too soft, perhaps I am, but it was so hard! Goodness knows what I'd be like if I had to work full-time! :)

So, now I work term-time only at my girls' school. I work 2 hours a day, I get to see my girls and ask them how they are whilst they're at school. I am also at home throughout the school holidays. It's wonderful. To be honest, I'd rather not work at all and my husband also would prefer that I didn't work. But needs must at the moment.

Family and home are such a blessing from God.

This is like totally the last time I'll mention comments...probably :)

Blogger seems to have fixed whatever technical problem was causing issues with comments. I've switched comment moderation back on. Thank you for your patience, have a nice day.

I sound like one of those automated voices when you're on hold on the 'phone, "Please hold, your call is important to us. You are number 4586 in the queue, thank you for your patience."

Comments Again

Lol now Joyce's comment reappeared in my comment moderation box then disappeared again. Bookworm, I got your second comment through on email but it refused to publish and disappeared from the moderation box!

I'm turning off moderation now...*sheesh*

Edit: It's an ongoing thing: see Help forum

Comments

I'm not sure what's up with the comments today, if you wonder where your comment is I haven't deleted it - the comment moderation is playing up.

Edit to add: On my previous post on Internet Explorer only Angela's comment is showing. On Firefox only Angela and Joyce's and my comments are showing, Bookworm's has vanished. What can you see on your computer? Is this a common problem on comment moderation?

Dear David Cameron

My eldest has just passed me this letter, which she wants to send to David Cameron as soon as possible. It is reproduced exactly as written

Dear David Cameron,
Please can you make schools (not high schools) more scure so that teenagers can't get in.
What is it like being Primeminister?
Is it very very very busy?
Have you ever been to Denmark?
How many letters do you get?
Can you make smoking be Illegal because it is not good for peoples health all their teeth go rotten and their lungs go black. I wish you could come over one day even though it might be along way maybe about 4 or 5 hours long.

from

B___ Age: 8 School: S____ Primary School

Happy Monday

Good morning.

Enough with my rants now! :) It's good to get something off one's chest isn't it? Despite my complaints about social responsibility and bully-children, I do love the area I live in (just not our street, ahem). We have the most beautiful countryside on our doorstep and the weather has (for round here) been gorgeous recently. It's also good to reassess where we are in our lives - count our blessings (to coin a bit of a cliché). What happened to my eldest, and then receiving your lovely comments has given me so much food for thought; to reassess where we are as a family. My two play together so nicely, and that is a real blessing. I do know some lovely families from school and church, so play-dates will be easy to set up.

Home should be a place of security and that's something beautiful to aim for. But the biggest blessing of all is our faith in Jesus Christ and I so want my girls to continue in their faith. In God's Kingdom there is no pain, no crying, just total beauty, love and peace.

You see, there may have been a little blip, but there's so much more to look forward to. Hope in Christ is the ultimate joy.

The pain of motherhood

Being a mother is a learning curve - always. You start off in marriage with so many ideas, then you have a baby and throw all the ideas out of the window. Then you have a toddler and all the ideas you formed about toddlerhood you throw out of the window...and so on.

My two girls are 8 (nearly 9) and 6. Compared to many children today my two are were allowed to play out. They have boundaries, but they were allowed to walk to their friends' houses on the street as long as they told me where they were, etc. They know the rules about not going into even their friends' houses without permission and to never get into anyone's car, or talk to strangers. They are allowed to climb on play equipment, to run and bounce and jump and explore.

I want them to have the freedom that I had as a child. Life now, despite the news, isn't any-more dangerous for children than it was in our day - except for on the roads there are more cars; roads are more dangerous. The media reports more on it, but according to research I read there is no more 'stranger danger' than there was in my day (1970s-80s). But I think that life has changed in different ways. The children who are allowed to play out freely round us tend to come from 'difficult' backgrounds, and then children who come from secure homes generally aren't allowed to play out freely. I realise that this isn't always the case, I'm just speaking from personal experience. Let me explain...

I wanted my children to not be snobs and to play with other children from different backgrounds.

But our ideals don't always work out do they?

We live on a street of both privately owned and social housing. We've had trouble with kids on the street drinking. So if the teenagers were about my girls had to come in- and they were very good about it, if the teenagers appeared they came in. One of the lads is from a family who have 5 children, his parents did absolutely nothing but watched from the garden as the police cautioned him. My two used to play with these children.

Then my eldest comes to me and asks me about a little girl called Samara who is evil and comes out of the television and lives down a well. She's scared about it. Then I find out that one of their friends is allowed by his parents to watch horror films (he is 8) - Samara is a character from The Ring a horror film.

Then I find out that one of the kids that they play with has been teaching them 'rude' things that little ones ought not really know.

Now my eldest has been bullied. Two of the children on the street locked her in their house, threatened to throw her out of a window. The one of them kicked her in the stomach so hard it winded her and made a red mark. The girl that did this then appeared at the bottom of our path taunting my eldest. I have spoken to her mother. But to no apparent avail, this girl has no fear or shame, but in front of me was calling my daughter names.

You see. My ideals have been shot to nothing. I feel I have failed to protect my children, not from 'stranger danger' but from other children!

I know that I can't wrap my children up in cotton wool and protect them from real life. But honestly. I feel like the only parent on this street who knows what their children are doing and cares what they get up to.

And now, I am so sad to say that the freedom I so want for my children - like those long summers I remember as a child playing with my friends on the street - are unlikely to happen for my two. Ideals are there to be shattered eh?

But I don't want to be like other parents when every second of their lives is scheduled and controlled - yes I believe in supervising and taking responsibility - but I think children's lives these days are too scheduled and 'busy busy'.

So there's the background to my question, how much freedom do your children have to play out, do you schedule lots of 'play-dates', do you go out often, do you keep them in your own garden, do you let them play only with Christian friends? Just wondered.

Thanks in advance.