A Picture for Your Fridge

This post has nothing to do with family activities (except that it's fall here and I've been taking lots of pictures), but this thought has really made me happy this last week, and I thought I'd share.

 Mind you, I'm not a scientist or anything, but if I remember correctly, there is a reason for the leaves to die and fall from the trees before winter sets in, especially up north here where we can get a bit of snow and the weight would break the branches.

However, I don't remember why they change into these gorgeous colors before they die and fall. I vaguely remember how (something to do with not needing their chlorophyl, the stuff that makes them green, to photosynthesize in the winter), but I don't think there's a scientific reason for the "why" of it.

I think I know the reason why. God did it for us. The bugs don't need to see the colors for pollination, most of the animals can't even see the colors. He did it just for us. He could have just made them turn from green to brown and fall off the tree, but He didn't. He made them gorgeous!

I think there's two reasons. The first one is for us to see and be in awe of His glory and His creation. In Isaiah 6:3 we read, "And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, [is] the LORD of hosts: the whole earth [is] full of his glory."

I mean, who couldn't be in wonder and awe of this beauty?

And the second reason--simply because He loves us. I think about when my kids draw pictures for me (or used to) to hang on the fridge. They pour their heart and soul out trying to make something beautiful for me, just because they love me.

I think this is God's love letter to us. He makes this gorgeous picture and He says, "Here, I made this for you to enjoy because I love you."

 

Doesn't that just make you smile too? I hope you get a chance this season to get out and see some of God's awesome creation, marvel in it, and marvel in the fact that He loves you and made you this awesome picture to hang on your fridge.  :o)

Till next time...

God's love and blessings!

The rest of our September so far...

I'm sorry if I bored you with the minute by minute replay of Michelle's birthday party. It's just that this blog is kind of a family journal, and I enjoy going back and rereading the things we did in the past and maybe someday my kids will too. So, if I get a chance to blog when the activity is still fresh in my mind, I'm apt to put more details into it. ;o)

Anyway, here's a couple of pictures from some of the other activities we've been up to this month. Mike and I took Michelle miniature golfing one weekend. It was on our "To-Do" list for the summer, and thankfully it was really nice out that weekend.

Michelle got a hole-in-one and was just a little excited. ;o) I got one too, but Mike ended up beating us anyway.

This is the "hole-in-one" stance.

The course we went to is very well taken care of and quite pretty, so while we waited our turn for a hole, Michelle took a couple of pictures of Mike and I with the pretty waterfall in the background.

I thought these pictures were too funny not to share. Angel bought Michelle a soap making kit for her birthday. The soap is like clay and you can sculpt with it, but it also had a VERY strong smell. This is what I found when I came downstairs. She was working diligently on her little soap "cupcake" with one of her scarves wrapped around her nose to keep out the smell. No, she doesn't wear glasses. Those are a pair of reading glasses with the lenses popped out. She wears them ALL the time, apparently they help her focus more. 

Cute soapy cupcake. Love the cherry on top. :o)

A couple other things for this month. We started our home school year, and one afternoon, since we had some errands to run in town, we decided to take our history reading and lunch down to the lake. This little guy was on my windshield when we arrived. (Please take no notice of the extremely dirty windshield.) Not sure how he managed to stay on the whole way, but glad to drop him off in his new home by the lake.

 This is a much nicer view than the four walls of our office.

Michelle also started swim lessons on Saturday mornings, and although I'm not allowed to take photos during the lessons, I did snap this one of the three amigos enjoying lunch together after their first one. I really need to shoot more photos to ensure I get a good one.

And, last but not least, I have to put this one on here simply because I seldom ever get photos of Angel since she's rarely ever home. She was a model this day for one of the girls at school and she was all "dolled up". Only a couple more weeks and she will be graduated from cosmetology school. I'm sure she will be glad not to have to commute back and forth anymore.

 Well, I think that gets me all caught up for this month. Yay! As I mentioned before, it is fun to go back and look at the things we've done. I guess we were busier than I thought.

I'm going to do my best to get back into the Photo-a-Day journal and posting each day. Sometimes it seemed to help me be a little more focused on what we were actually doing each day. Often times I find that as I'm getting older, the time slips by faster. I wake up Sunday morning and wonder what happened to the week before. I wonder if I've made any memories that are worth remembering. God has only blessed me with a limited amount of time here on earth. I hope to make it time well spent. :o)

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

Sprinkled With Love Party (part 2)

If you're interested in the food or decorations from our little one's 9th birthday, check out this post.

So I knew if I was going to have 6 girls sleeping over, and 3 of them had swim lessons the next morning, I was going to need a way to wear them out so we might get some slumber at this slumber party. :o) Thankfully, we have 25 acres to do just that. I made up clues for various parts of the property and sent the girls off on a treasure hunt. I made sure that each clue was in the opposite direction of the next one so the game would wear them out last longer.

Michelle had to do most of the deciphering of the clues since she knows our property better than the others, but they all took turns being the one to collect the clues and read them.

I used our fire-proof lock box for the treasure and provided the key with one of the clues.

Inside they found some flower hair clips I made for them with sprinkle centers and some craft supplies to play with after dinner.

After the treasure hunt, I sent them all off on a scavenger hunt to find things from around the property. The girls had fun finding the items, but none of them were too worried about finding the bonus ones. I guess searching for a snake skin just didn't sound too exciting to a bunch of girls. (I'm actually surprised that Michelle didn't go looking in the veggie garden where we find them all the time.)

After dinner, it was too cold to go outside, (yes, we are officially in the fall season here), so the girls settled into the office to do some crafts. This was a kit I picked up at Wal-Mart pretty cheap. I liked it because it came with enough for all the girls to do 3 projects and to be creative and design them any way they wanted.

Next came presents and cake time and then, more crafts. I took 4 paper lunch bags, stacked them up and sewed a "binding" down the middle of them to make a mini album for each girl. I laid out lots of paper scraps and a couple of punches and glue and let them get creative. I will print up some of the photos from the party and give them to each of the girls to put in their albums. One thing I forgot was to have plenty of double sided adhesive on hand. Instead the girls used liquid glue and, unfortunately, many of their pages ended up glued together. :o(

After we cleaned up the craft supplies, we moved the tables out of the room and played charades for a while and then set up mattresses and sleeping bags for bed. The girls were surprisingly asleep within 20 minutes or so of me announcing "quiet time".

The next morning, the girls had cinnamon rolls, yogurt and fruit for breakfast and then took off outside to get some time on the zipline before we had to leave to drop everyone off and get to swim lessons. All in all, I think the party was a success. The girls all seemed to have a good time, and we even managed to get some sleep. :o)

Well, tomorrow I will try and post pictures of the rest of our September activities.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

Sprinkled With Love Party (part 1)

My baby turned 9 this month. I know we say it all the time, but I can't believe how the time flies. She asked for a slumber party this year, and if you know me at all, you know the party has to have some kind of theme to it. I showed this party to Michelle and she decided that would be a fun way to decorate, so a sprinkle theme it was. Most of this party was going to be inside, both upstairs and down, so we did a little decorating in both areas.

In the office downstairs where the girls would be doing crafts and sleeping, we just hung some streamers and confetti-filled balloons from the ceiling.

The balloons were easy to fill with confetti before we blew them up. Wish I'd had larger confetti to put in them though.

 We found some polka dot plates and sprinkled confetti on the table. You can't see in the photo, be we hung some more confetti-filled balloons from the light over the table and a Happy Birthday banner from the ceiling beam.

The cake was our centerpiece. Michelle designed it herself and helped me make it.

I traced a simple outline on fondant and let Michelle color in her friends with edible markers. Then I just cut them out and put them on the side of the cake.

She helped me make the tiny little popcorn pieces and made sure everything was put in the right spot on the cake.

We had a lot of fun with sprinkles. We dipped the rim of our glasses in white chocolate and then in sprinkles. These were cute, but a little tricky to drink out of. :o)

We dipped wafer cookies in white chocolate and sprinkles too. These were YUMMY! I may or may not have hoarded the last couple for myself.

Since our slow internet takes forever to load photos, I will stop this post here and post a part 2 tomorrow. I will leave you with the Birthday Girl and her cake.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

Family Grill Off

I cannot believe how fast this month is going. I haven't been super busy, but the time just seems to be slipping by without my realizing it. Has that happened to you too?

We started the month off with a trip out of town. Mike, Michelle and I took a quick trip over to Michigan to see some of Mike's family. It was so much more fun than I imagined it would be. A couple of years ago, they started an annual Grill Off competition, and now that we've reconnected through the internet, we were invited to attend. We didn't compete, just watched and talked and got to know his cousins better. So much fun. Lots of chatting and joking. There are some fierce competitors in that family!

Everyone brought their own grill to make their main dish. There were appetizer, side, and dessert categories as well. Needless to say, we ate VERY well that day. :o)

Here are the judges trying to make their decisions. The dishes were all numbered and the judges weren't supposed to know who made what. I'm so glad I didn't have to be a judge. I would have had a hard time choosing a winner.

While the dishes were being prepared, Michelle and I went exploring in the basement and found this exercise trampoline. This kept here busy for a while. She had so much fun on it, Uncle Bob sent it home with us.

They also brought out a karaoke machine and Michelle had fun singing some Disney songs. She won Entertainer of the Year. I think that made her day.

Here's Mike with his Aunts and Uncle. It was so nice to meet them along with his cousins.

As we were leaving town, Mike noticed the "Hot Now" sign was lit at the Krispy Kreme, so we had to stop in and get our free sample. We don't have a Krispy Kreme near us, and Michelle was really little the last time we were, so this was like her first time. She LOVED them. I think she'll be on the lookout for a Krispy Kreme the next time we go into the cities.

On our way home, we decided to take a quick detour over to Lake Michigan. We ended up on a dead end, dirt road, but we got to see it. Maybe next time we'll get to spend another day or so and get to do more sight seeing.

It happened to be Michelle's 9th birthday the day we left for this trip and I wanted to make it special for her. I picked up 8 little gifts, (by little, I mean inexpensive) and a big gift for her to unwrap as we traveled. I wrapped them each up and numbered them. Every hour or so along our trip she got to pick a number and open that gift. I tried to find things she could do in the car--a coloring book, magnetic doll, magna-doodle, etc. We brought along a large cookie sheet for her to use as a desk in her lap. It worked out pretty well. Her "big" gift was a lego set and she was able to put it together on the cookie sheet. I think there was only a couple of turns Mike made where a couple of legos fell off the edge. Not only did it make her day feel special, it was a great way to pass the 10 hours of traveling. I wanted to take pictures, but unfortunately left my battery charging at home and couldn't take any until we found a camera store and picked up a spare battery. I did get a couple of shots on the tablet, but I have no idea how to get those pictures onto this computer.

Well, we just finished the Birthday Slumber Party so I need to go sort through the pictures for another post, after I take a nap. :o) 

August catch-up

Well, hello there. Did you miss me? I'm sure you have been on pins and needles wondering what's been going on over here at the Henderson household. :o) You'll be happy to know that nothing dire has happened, just busy, busy, enjoy the summer, make lots of cakes kind of busy. Since I haven't kept up with my Photo-A-Day project, I will simply give you an overview of life around here, and since I'm WAY behind, I'll break it up into a couple of posts. Today's post--August.

Well, our little caterpillar emerged from her chrysalis, and she was quite beautiful. Unfortunately, I assumed she would be like the monarch we had a couple of years ago, and hang around quite a while drying her wings and gaining strength. Wrong. I took her outside to get better pictures in the sunlight (and not show off how messy our office space is), and she immediately flew off. This was all I was able to get. :o( Take my word for it, she was gorgeous! God's creation never ceases to amaze me.

Michelle and I play games together at lunch time. After lunch (while I worked on cakes), she found another use for our Quirkle tiles.

Apparently we have a raccoon (or two) living in our pole shed. Whenever we go over, we find a new hole dug under the big door. It might also explain what happened to all the apples on the tree this year. There were 40 or 50 of them growing early this spring, and when we went to go pick, there was one left. Not a sign of the others anywhere.

 Princess Layla trying to wake the sleeping princess. I think you're supposed to kiss her cheek, Layla, not her hand.

 This is what happens when you have to spend an entire week in the kitchen working on cakes and don't get out to the garden. Looks like it's time to do some canning and freezing.

 Some of the trees were starting to turn already. Unfortunately now, many of them are simply turning brown due to the lack of moisture this summer.

 Our church has an annual picnic near the end of summer. This year turned out to be warm enough for the kids to enjoy the lake a bit. She's getting braver in the water. 

Well, I'm going to close here. Hopefully I will get a chance to sit down tomorrow and get you caught up on September's activities.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings.