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.