Stay off the roads!

After several frustrating attempts, Angel finally has her driver's permit! The first attempt, we didn't get to the DMV early enough and they wouldn't let her take the test, the second time she failed the test. She was quite frustrated afterward because there were so many questions on the test that they hadn't covered in class. We soon found out they had given her the test for a Commercial Driver's License! Needless to say, the test she took today was much easier, and she passed with flying colors. For most places these mistakes wouldn't be that big a deal, but if you read my posts from a year or so ago when Nick was trying to get his license you would know that there is no local DMV for us, only temporary ones that open once a month. So, if you miss that day (or have to take the test again) you have to go about an hour away to take it. Anyway, she's quite excited. Please pray for us this evening as she drives us into town for our "pay day" shopping trip. :o)

In other news, we've enjoyed the few days of warmer weather and even broke out the bbq earlier this week. Yum! The kids have had fun playing in the creek. The water in it ebbs and flows each day. It will get very low and then it seems like a dam of leaves and sticks farther up the creek breaks through and all of a sudden it's full again.

The girls playing in the cold water. There were a few times where the water was over this bridge!

With the warmer weather I've been planning our garden for this year. Michelle and I planted up some broccoli and parsley in the kitchen already. In a week or so we'll be planting tomatoes and other plants. Hopefully this next week Mike will be able to get the tractor over here so we can break ground soon for the new garden. We will have to level out a part of a hill for it since we don't have a lot of open space on our property. Of course, we should probably wait until the ground is pretty much thawed out before we dig in!

Nick has been busy packing this week. I can't believe it's almost time for him to leave for basic. We will be taking him into the cities on the 29th. He will stay there overnight and fly out on the 30th. He doesn't have to take much with him to basic, but he's setting aside some things for Mike to take to him at graduation. The rest will go into storage for a while so Mike can use the bedroom as an office. I wonder how he will do as an Airman?

Let's see, school work is finished for the week, menu is made out for next, grocery list is made out for tonight--guess I'm ready for the weekend! I pray y'all have a great week and rejoice in the blessings He has bestowed.

Till next time,
God's love and blessings,
Tammy

I think I need knee pads!

It's amazing how one or two people's decisions can affect so many others. This week I have spent much time in prayer and supplication, both for friends who I know are hurting, and for our own family. I won't get into all the details, but suffice it to say, God is still God and He is more than capable of taking care of our concerns. Sometimes we simply need to ask for His perspective on things, and the things that seemed so awful and heart wrenching can come into better focus. I can truly say that I have felt His awesome peace and comfort this week. If not, I would be a bawling mess. The theme for our upcoming Ladies' Luncheon at church is "The God of all Comfort". How appropriate for me this week. My only wish is that it didn't take such horrendous circumstances to make me spend this much time talking with my Lord. Don't get me wrong, I have my devotion times and pray throughout the day, but this week has been different. I found myself praying almost non-stop, and about all different things. I hope that I will continue in this fellowship. It has truly been sweet.

Other life notes for us--the kids and I did a bit of exploring today on the property. The snow has begun to melt, and the creek in front of our house has water in it for the first time since we moved in here. In fact, at one point today it was flowing over our little bridge. It's supposed to continue raining a bit the next few days and be warm enough to melt more snow. I don't know if this is what it does every spring, but it's pretty cool to watch!

This is the "dry" creek next to our house. That's a lot of water!

I guess that's about it for us. Till next time...

God's love and blessings.

Blogging is just not my thing!

I can't believe it's been 6 months since I last updated this blog! Oops! I guess it's better late than never.

First off, I have to say that we've enjoyed our first winter in our home. It's absolutely gorgeous here! Our biggest challenge was figuring out how to keep it heated evenly throughout. This is probably a challenge with all 2-story homes, but since our thermostat is on the upper level, it took a bit more work to figure it out how to get the downstairs to warm up without over-heating the upstairs. Eventually we're probably going to have to replace the siding and insulation to help conserve heat better, but it works well for now.

This is a picture I took one morning when everything was covered in snow and frost.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was nice to be able to have family over. Mike and I both moved around a lot as kids, and we both missed out on the big family holidays. My folks always invited the single Marines over so they wouldn't spend the holiday in the barracks, which was nice, but that wasn't quite the same. We're both hoping that as our kids grow up and move away, they'll always be close enough to come "home" for the holidays.

Speaking of growing up and moving away, Nick will be leaving for Air Force Basic Training on March 30. I have very mixed emotions on this and I'm not going to blog much on it as I don't want all the negative ones to come out right now. There's not a lot of job opportunities here and, Lord willing, this will help him get out on his own, get an education, and figure out what he would like to do. He's hoping that it might help him to get stationed in Japan again. :o) Whatever the future brings for him, I pray that he would walk close to the Lord and honor Him in all that he does.

We have a new member of our family now. Mike's mom, Carole, surprised me with a Yorkie puppy for Christmas. We've named him CoCo in honor of when we got him (what's winter time without hot cocoa?) and the brown coloring on him that reminds us all of our favorite curry restaurant in Japan, CoCo's. He's the cutest thing, but boy is he a stinker! At the present time, he's not allowed upstairs except to go in his kennel at bedtime. He seems to think the upstairs is a great place to use the bathroom whether we're up there or not. We're trying to figure out what to do once the ground thaws. I'd like for him to come outside with us and be able to run, but he also doesn't like to "come". We've been working on it, but, unless the leash is on, his ears don't seem to work very well. :o( I'm worried about him running into the street. We're trying to weigh the pros and cons of a fence vs electric fence. Any opinions?

This picture was taken when we first got him. That's the look he gives me when he's in trouble!

This is the Prince and Princess of the house!

Let's see, what else is going on around here? Angel is taking Driver's Ed right now, and I've been teaching a few classes. I just finished teaching a basic cake course through a community education program. I'm trying to get my Stampin' Up! business up and running again and am going to teach some cake decorating classes here at home. I've also started teaching the Preschool/Kindergarten Sunday School class at church. I love it! The kids and I have so much fun, and I love to see when they've really grasped a lesson-especially when they've applied it to their own life (i.e. "God wants me to "love one another". Hitting my brother would make Him sad, so I won't do it.") It's such a fun age to teach.

Well, I have a cake in the oven, so I will close this post here with no promises as to when I will post again, but hopefully, soon.

Till next time, God's love and blessings,
Tammy

My baby is 6 now :o)

Yep, I can't believe how quickly time goes by. Michelle turned 6 on the 7th of this month and as I mentioned in the last post, the last few weeks we were busy planning a fun party. We decided since Angel didn't really get a party for her birthday back in April, we would celebrate her 1/2 birthday at the same time, so we did a Mother/Daughter tea party.

Now, mind you, our living area is not very big, and after inviting friends for both girls, we were looking at almost 30 girls and moms coming. So, since the weather here is awesome this time of year, we had an outdoor party. It would have been really cool if we had some sort of gazebo or tent to set up, but we don't, but we do have a really large garage, and with a little ingenuity and a lot of sheets, we were able to spiff the place up a bit. As usual, I had a lot of fun making invitations and decorations for the party. Angel put her jewelry making talent to work and made little goodies for everyone. I'll post more pictures and details about the craft projects over on my craft website. Here's a couple of pictures of the party.


This first one shows me reading parts of Proverbs 31 to the girls and talking about manners. I didn't want to post this one, but it was the best one to show the garage and how we decorated it.

Here are some of the guests working on their fans and picture frames. (Which reminds me I've got to get the pictures printed and get those back to the girls! YIKES!)

Here's a picture of the food table. Several of Angel's friends stayed over the night before and helped decorate and make the food. They were a TREMENDOUS help! I definitely couldn't have done all this without them. :o)

This, of course, is the cake. Yes, everything is edible--including the teapot, cup, saucer, and spoon. I've really been having fun with fondant lately. I wish the painting on them would have come out better, but I don't have petal dust and had to use food coloring which doesn't blend very well. You can see a close up of these on my craft blog.



And finally, here's some of the Birthday girls. Angel turned 15 in April and can't wait to get her driver's permit soon. She's wearing the dress she made for herself last month. Didn't she do a good job?


And, Birthday Girl #2. We put her hair up in rag rolls the night before. We can't do that in the winter time as the static gets too bad and her hair ends up in a million little knots. Anyway, as you can see, she's lost tooth #2 recently so now she has a big gap on the bottom.

We actually had two parties that day. Our church was having their annual Progressive Dinner and we were the first stop on the route. Since the garage was already cleared out and set up with tables and chairs, it worked out perfectly. After the girl's party, Angel helped me clean up and get the appetizers in the oven for the church party. We even had an hour or so to rest in the afternoon. The Progressive Dinner was a lot of fun. It was neat to see other people's houses and visit with everyone in a relaxed atmosphere.

I guess I should close this here. I have a few other projects we're working on, but I will save those for next week's post. Till then...

God's love and blessings!

Getting ready for School!

I didn't get this updated this Thursday because I couldn't get to my computer! I was knee deep in school books and boxes. I finally got tired of going out to the garage and moving boxes around to find specific books and decided to bring them all into the house, re-organize and catalog them to make it easier to find what I need. It took almost 4 days to get it done, but it finally is, and Angel and I just finished taking the boxes back out to the garage that we are not going to need this year and getting the school room all ready for Monday, our official first day of school. Well, Michelle's first day anyway. Grandma asked if Angel could come help her at the Meals on Wheels site Monday so she's getting a slight reprieve. :o) I think it will be good for Michelle and I to start the first day together anyway since this will be pretty new stuff for her.

We are grateful for the rain this last week. We would need a lot more to fill the ponds and creeks, but at least the plants are getting a good drink. A few weeks ago we noticed a lot of tree's leaves turning orange and yellow already because of lack of moisture. The rain did help the berries a bit, but I think it's a little too late for most of them. It doesn't seem like we'll get much more of a harvest of blackberries this year but that's OK. I think I have enough in the freezer to make one more batch of syrup, and maybe some jam. YUM!

Speaking of syrup, Angel and I took some with us last night to a fun sleepover at church with most of the other girls and their moms. We had a lot of fun playing games, doing hair, getting to know each other, and of course, getting very little sleep. The syrup was yummy on the Swedish pancakes one of the moms made for us for breakfast this morning. That's a recipe I'm going to have to learn.

The guys managed to get Nick's Tracker running last week. I think they've mentioned an oil leak they need to fix, but it should be up and usable for him pretty soon. My van is next on the Dr.'s list once the Tracker is in remission. I pray that it doesn't take long to fix and doesn't cost too much.
_________________

Update: I meant to post this last Saturday but wasn't able to and then simply forgot in the midst of a busy school week. We did start school on Monday, and things are going well. I'm sure we'll be tweaking the schedule a bit here and there until we find what works best for us this year, but so far, so good. Angel's attitude has been wonderful. In fact, she's been up, dressed and ready to start before I am each day. She was even patient with my grumpiness this afternoon during math. I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to help Darlene with the paper route much longer. Five hours of sleep does not make for a very happy teacher, or a very focused one.

Here's a of pictures of Mike and the kids working on my garden fence and the finished project. He needed the kids to hold the log still while he cut a notch in the end. You can't see much of the garden because there weren't any flowers in bloom when we took this picture and the greenery just kind of blends into the overgrown lawn around it. :o) Oh well, all of the plants in the garden, except for the two rose bushes on the end, were transplanted from elsewhere on the property. There are daisies, strawberries and black-eyed Susans. There are even some chives in there that our Pastor gave to me and I didn't have any other place ready for them at the time so they were put in here. I guess you could call this a "holding" garden as I've put most of these in here to hold them until I can find a better place for them and to keep them from being mowed down by the lawn mower.

Anyway, I don't have a lot of time. I realized yesterday that Michelle's Birthday is coming up very quickly and I am hosting part of a church progressive supper the weekend after that. So, this next week I will be busy with a few craft projects and trying to finish up a few projects around the house here along with making sure the girls and I don't get behind in their school work. So, with that in mind, I should head off to bed and get some much needed rest.

Till next week, God's love and blessings!

I'm a Grandma-again

I first became a Grandma when Angel adopted her cat Princess, now my youngest has become the mother to a beautiful monarch butterfly. Length: 2 inches, width: 4 inches, black fuzzy body, orange, black and yellow wings, sex: I have no idea! Isn't it beautiful?

In work related news, Mike really likes his new job. I like that he gets home pretty early and we still have the afternoons to spend together. Nick was just hired at the Subway here in town. It's not much, but it will help towards his college. And, I'm hoping to get a card class going in a couple of weeks--maybe that will help me get my Stampin' Up! business up and running again.

I've been having so much fun outside these last few weeks. The weather here is great and there's so many new things to discover on our property. The girls and I went out picking berries again today and harvested some of the herbs in the garden. Here's a picture of today's harvest.

It's not much for berries. Last week I pretty much filled this basket with raspberries each day. The raspberries are slowing down and the black berries are just starting to ripen. I also think the birds have finally found my brambles and are beating me to them. By next week this basket should be filled with blackberries every other day or so if I can beat the birds. Unfortunately, the blackberries are a lot harder to get to than the raspberries and they are a LOT more thorny. The white flowers in the basket are chamomile that I dry and make tea with. The leaves are oregano, basil, and chocolate mint. I'm drying those right now in my dehydrator along with the chamomile. Yes, my kitchen smells a bit different right now, especially since Angel and I just processed a bunch of the berries to make syrup with later.

We're supposed to get rain for the next few days, so I'm going to find lots of indoor things to do. I need to go through our school books and get next year's curriculum out and get the bookshelves organized. After that, I think I'm going to work on Birthday cards and some scrapbook pages. Mike and Nick are working on Nick's car to see if they can get it working pretty soon. I would appreciate any prayers lifted up in their behalf. I can't seem to keep enough band-aids in the house for them when they're working on cars! :o)

Well, I'm off to get dinner started. Till next week...
God's love and blessings to you!

Fun, fun, fun times!

So much going on the last few weeks. For one thing, we have one very excited 5 year old. Can you tell why?

She has been bouncing off the walls for several days since the tooth loosened. Everyone that has come within 5 feet of her knows that she has a loose tooth, and this morning I had the honors of pulling the wiggly little bugger out. Now she skips around the house with that silly grin on her face. :o)

In other news, my friend, Sonja came out to visit a few weekends ago. We had a lot of fun together. Michelle was so excited to play with Helen again. I think they only had one disagreement the whole weekend--that is a truly amazing thing for best friends. We went to the park, and of course, we had to visit the Mall of America. That was a fun day. The shopping was fun, but just being with my friend and talking was the best part. I so wish they lived closer to us and Sunday morning good-by's were really hard. :o(

I've mentioned before that I believed we had raspberry canes on the property. Well, I was right, not only do we have raspberries, but black caps and blackberries as well. The raspberries and black caps started to ripen just about the time Sonja and the kids arrived, and I've been picking ever since. The first few days of picking I only got about a cup or so, but now I get about 3 cups every other day. The raspberries are tapering off a little bit, and now the blackberries are starting to ripen. Many of the berries are pretty small, but considering how little rain we've had this year, it's pretty amazing that there's any berries there at all. I think I'm going to make a sign to put by the mail box naming our property Berried Treasure. It's so neat each time I go out and find new berry brambles in different areas. They're sometimes hard to distinguish from the rest of the underbrush until the berries start to ripen, but now that they are, I keep finding them all over the place. They're like a surprise gift God has left just for us to enjoy. So fun!

We've been finding other treasures as well. We have day lilies, daisies (my favorite flower :o), black-eyed Susans, peonies, butternut trees, a chestnut tree, grapes, rhubarb, and all kinds of wild flowers. A friend of ours pointed out that we even have a few illegal plants up on the hill that I'll be clearing out this week. (Yikes!-You know we've always wondered what the previous owners of this house were doing with a garage that has double barred windows and doors.)

On one of our berry picking adventures, Michelle pointed out a beautiful monarch caterpillar so we now have a science project going. We've watched him (or her?) eat up milkweed leaves, leave droppings (eew!), make himself a "ladder" of webbing to climb to the top of our jar and then loose his skin and turn into a chrysalis. It's a cool green color with a black and gold stripe and tiny gold dots on it. The gold looks like actual gold. You can even see his wings through the chrysalis. Pretty cool.

Well, I'm going to close this here so I will still have time to get some of the other pictures we've taken this week onto Picasa. Hopefully by next week I'll have some great butterfly pictures to post. :o)

Till then, God's love and blessings.