Weekend in Review

 This was taken from my driveway.  Our home

nestled in the woods.  I love it here!

 Friday evening we burned a bunch of junk.

 It was quite the fire, too.

We kept a couple buckets of water around just in case

it got out of hand. 

Thankfully it didn’t! 🙂

 I got a different angle on the fire.  I love taking photos of fire.

Played with shutter and aperture for these photos.

This was Friday, and on Saturday I worked on cleaning out

the fire pit.  It was a mess, but I wanted to use it to cook!

 On Saturday Eric made the base of a wagon.

We had a metal one, but it gave up the ghost.

Serious holes, rust, and just an old mess.

 Here it is turned over. 

Eric wants to put sides on it soon.

 But Saturday we (well, I was watching and photographing)

wheeled it over to the fire pit area.

Then we enjoyed a wonderful campfire cookout!

It was such a wonderful evening with the family. 🙂

I love our times around the fire.

To finish cleaning out our fire pit area, we have a bunch of trees

we need to burn. Then I’ll push mow it.  Then we’ll move the picnic

table over to this area and give it a good scrubbing. 

The  chickens like to use the picnic table as a perch/poo collector

in the rainy weather.  Ewww.

At least they don’t go by the fire pit area.

Sunday we hung out at home.

I planted a row of potatoes.

And that was about all I did that day.

In the evening we went to this place called

Jordan’s Ice Cream. 

They have the BIGGEST ice cream cones.

It was a good Sunday dinner. 😉

I love Spring and Summer!

Spring, Working Kids, School . . .

 Spring has sprung at our place.  Yay!

I love spring.

Love all the newly growing, green!

*sigh*

 My dogwood tree is getting ready to bloom.

I love the dogwood tree.

 Yesterday I had the kids do some work around the house.

I didn’t take pictures of them washing out the sap buckets.

Ryan informed me that “doing chores is fun!”

That’s the spirit! 🙂

 We had some big branches fall during some windy weather.

The kids worked well together taking those trees to the

fire pit.  They had a good time doing that, too.

The weather wasn’t so bad either, as you can tell!

 Last night I wanted to get some pictures of the moon.

There was some triangle thing with the moon, mars and regulus.

Of course, by the time I decided to get my camera and tripod out

there was cloud cover.  Oh well . . . 🙂

 My sweet daughter brought me a handful of flowers today.

They are the best flowers ever!

Henny had a great day, too.

She liked being carried around by Grace.

School has been going ok the last couple weeks.

I started a wrap-up the other day for last week, but never

did get to finish that post.

End-of-school-itis has set in for me.

I’m thinking the kids are experiencing it, too.

Grace finished her math book this week, so she is done with Beta!

Yay!  She got a 97% on her final test.  She only missed one problem

that she forgot to carry.  She loves Math and I am so glad because

it was never one of my strong subjects!  I think the boys

inherited their “love” of math from me.

This week we’ve been reading through Jesus’ final week.

It has been a really good time reading through God’s Word

with the kids and thinking about what Jesus went through for our sins.

Their Resurrection gardens are growing nicely. 

I’ll post a picture tomorrow, hopefully.

We are going to decorate some egg shells and then

make some Resurrection cookies.

We’ll not be having school on Good Friday.  Who does?

Our family always migrates out to Rogers, Ohio

to the big flea market for the early part of the day.

When I say early, we are leaving at 6am. 

Should be a fun time though!

Eric is home on a long weekend and I love that!

I love him, too!

Spring . . . Almost

Spring doesn’t officially start until next week, but I am enjoying the springlike weather we’ve been having this week!  My crocuses are blooming, I saw some green leaves on a bush today while out for a walk with the kids today.

I love the smells of spring.  

The smell of the earth after an early spring (late winter) rain.  

The smell of sap simmering in the pot.  

The smell of last fall’s leaves warmed by the sun.

The smell of new growth.

The many other smells just floating in the air that scream spring.
  

New plant growth.  I love!

The new growth is a renewal of life after a long, dormant winter.  The trees are budding and getting ready to grow their leaves.  Life is just getting ready to burst out all over the place and I want to soak it all in and enjoy the time with my family.

It has been a dormant time spiritually for me.  I’ve been memorizing Colossians, so that has been keeping me in the Word, but I feel like I need more.  My prayer life also stinks, but I have been praying for many of my friends and bringing them and their requests before God.  My prayer life needs to be more heartfelt and meaningful and I just need to enjoy QUIET time with God. All too often I have the radio rambling in the background or other noise going on all the time. 

This winter was very mild, by far, and if we had many more like this I could handle winter so much better!  🙂  I like those temperatures.  This temperature was last week (early March)! 

Happy Spring!!

Noooo! {365}

 So before it started coming down like this, I had hoped

the white balls I saw in the air were pollen. 

 The “chicken dogs” as I call them.

They were eating snow at this point.

 I popped out the door to see what the birds were doing

and they decided to make a dash for the house.

Of course, I fed them some bread for their efforts.

Yes, this is what our back yard looks like now.

*sigh*

Chickens and Sunset

The chickens are running to

bed. It was getting to be dusk and

they always tuck themselves in each evening.

Here they are getting ready to attempt

the flight up to their perch. Eric

is going to lower it some.

They sounded like they were dive bombing

pretty bad this evening.

Mostly bombing to the floor of the coop.

Poor things.

I felt bad for them.

I turned around and saw this beautiful site.

The hill was just breathtaking.

The picture below is even better.

I took it from the top of my driveway.

Now that most leaves are gone

I can see a good distance.

Then I turned around and this was what

was happening after the sunlight was off the other hill.

It was just beauty on all sides.

Fall is so beautiful!

Fall Pictures

She is a harmless Orb Weaver.

I mentioned her a couple posts ago, I do believe.

She’s still living in a jar in our kitchen, but she doesn’t move much.

This isn’t really a fall picture, but I think it’s cool! 🙂

This hornet was stuck in the window of the chicken coop.

I was painting in the chicken coop and didn’t want to share

that space with this one.

Hornets are mean and do bite (keep that in mind Ang). 😉

So I finally got this one and there isn’t much life left in him at this point.

But it did make a cool picture.

Our neighbor’s farmland.

And powerlines that run through it.

I don’t have a fancy program that will erase them.

A little blurry because I was driving (slowly)

and snapping a picture out my window.

I was checking the mail yesterday and I just

loved how this part of the road looked.

Fall is a beautiful time of year!

Beautiful Fall Day!

We have been in such a cold, rainy, nasty weather snap . . . until today! While I haven’t been outside all day, I have enjoyed going outside numerous times and just standing in the sun for a bit. I’ll be doing some coop work this weekend and probably some winter yard preparations. Should be a wonderful weekend! Yay!

The kids are visiting their cousin and have been there since about 1:30 0r so today. Sooo, that means I’ve been home and feeling like doing something fun for me . .. baking! YUM! I love apple pie and snickerdoodles!

I also bought Subway for dinner and it was good. No dinner cooking. Yay! 🙂

The only thing puzzling me is the chickens. They’ve been fighting and fighting. Don’t know if one of the hens is trying to establish that she’s the lead hen or what the deal is with them.

Things I love about the summer . . .

1. The sounds of my children laughing and playing with their cousin.

2. The smell of the farmer’s field behind us, after he’s mowed the hay! Such a sweet smell!

3. Hearing the birds chirp and fight, especially the hummingbirds.

4. The noise of the farmer’s tractor as he rolls the hay into bails.

5. Quiet-time outside by myself. Sweet time with the Lord!

6. The warmth of the sun on me when it’s chilly (the 70’s is chilly to me).

7. Having my husband home for a 3 day weekend! Woo Hoo!

8. Going shopping at yard sales with the family.

9. The neighbors shooting off fireworks at 10:30 at night – after the kids are in bed.

10. The coming warmer weather! yay for almost 90’s!

11. My sorry garden is starting to grow now. Keep praying! I am!

Christmas Season Traditions

We always buy mixed nuts in their shells and eat them during the Christmas season.

We always buy a box of cheap chocolates and put them under the couch.

They are cheap in price, but they are pretty good! 🙂

The Turtles! Eric and I have done this each Christmas season since 1999. 🙂

I am looking at Eric put the chocolate in the turtle molds.

Here is the caramel I was making. I think it cooked too long though. It’s like a rock now.

Eric putting chocolates into the mold. What a guy! 🙂

I thought that today I would post some pictures and some comments on things we like to do around the Christmas season. This year we’ve been reading different stories related to Jesus’ Birth. Right now, I’m reading the kids “God Came Near” by Max Lucado. I know they don’t grasp everything from the book, but I explain things where possible and like to talk about things related to Jesus’ birth and life.

On Christmas Eve we go to the Christmas Eve Service at church. After the service we go to Eric’s older brother’s house with the rest of the family and eat some finger foods and yummy snacks and have a nice time of fellowship.

We love the family time. It’s a special time of year. Remembering Jesus’ birth and the reason He became human. I do secretly hope for Christmas snow!

Raining Leaves and just an update

Today is chilly and cloudy, but it’s also beautiful. It is raining leaves and it looks so pretty!

The other day I spent 2 hours mowing/mulching the yard and it looked good! Now you can’t tell I mulched the leaves all gone, but that’s ok! The beauty of the falling leaves is definitely fine by me. Spring will come again and I’m sure I’ll be mulching all the ones that have fallen today.

I haven’t been blogging much lately. School has been rather time consuming and I’m working on some other projects and just taking care of my home in general. We’ve cleaned out the kid’s bedrooms and have pitched 5 bags of old toys and garbage between them. We still have the hallway closet, our bedroom and closet, the entryway closet all to de-clutter. It’s amazing how much junk you can accumulate through the years. We won’t even talk about the basement. I really need some shelving units down there so I can organize everything.

A blessing is that Eric has been working overtime! We love when that happens and are very thankful God provides for us. Another exciting thing is that Eric has gotten in touch with a long lost friend of his! He has wondered about his boyhood best friend for years and they actually got to talk on the phone the other evening. Eric was on the phone for almost 45 minutes and that is some kind of record for him! 🙂 While facebook can be annoying, it also is a blessing to find people you wondered about for so long!

School has been going pretty good lately. We are finishing up the first quarter (45 days, woo hoo)! Grace loves kindergarten still and is doing very well! The boys are doing pretty good. Nathan has been doing very well in his math this year! Ryan still struggles, but he is learning and I’m thankful for that! 🙂

Duty is calling, so I must get going.