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.
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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.

He's got a job!!

God has been so good. Sometimes it's hard to wait for His timing, but He always knows what's best. We've been here almost a year and Mike's biggest priority was finding a job that would support us. The part time position was fine, but the hours have been steadily declining the last few weeks as business in the shop is slow, and it's really hard to budget when you don't know how much you're going to be making from week to week.

A friend at church gave us notice when the IT position became available in his school district, and Mike immediately applied. We were so excited to find out Wednesday that he got the job. It's not quite a full time position, but it's guaranteed 30 hours a week with dental and other benefits. They would also like to use him to substitute there which would be additional hours. We are all so excited. I think the kids and I have felt like this was home for a while, but for Mike, working only a couple days a week seemed more like he was still on vacation than anything.

In other news, Angel just returned today from a week at church camp. She was just beyond the age of being a camper, so she went as kitchen help along with another girl from the church. She said she had a wonderful time, and she got a LOT of pictures. I will try and get the memory card from her tomorrow and post some on our Picasa site. I saw some really funny ones of her with shaving cream in her hair!

Well, I hear movement above my head which tells me that the movie Mike and Michelle were watching must be over and it will soon be time to say prayers and get a little one into bed.

Till next week...

God's love and blessings.

I've got pictures!

I tried to blog last night, but the pictures I took of the house didn't come out very well, so I had to wait until today when the sun was out to get some pictures. I took some after shots of the kitchen and living room. You can see them here. Here's a few shots of the shelves Mike designed and made for me.
He just cut one more for me to go over the doorway between the breakfast nook and living room. He did such a great job on these and all the other "honey-do" items I've had for him since we bought this place. I think we still have a dozen or so projects to work on as we can afford them, and that doesn't even count the projects for outside! Oh well, there's no hurry, we have the rest of our lives to work on them--or until the Lord returns, whichever comes first.

Well, I've got a shelf to go stain so I will close here. Y'all have a great week and I will chat again next week. Till then, God's love and blessings.

We are officially moved in!

Actually, we've been moved in for a few weeks, but this is the first chance I've had to sit down and do some updating.

We are having so much fun here in our new house. It seems like every time we go out in the "yard", we find new treasures. So far we've found, raspberries (LOTS of them!), rhubarb, grapes, strawberries, peonies, wild roses, and my favorite flower--daisies. :o) Poor Nick never gets to finish mowing the yard because I keep finding things I want to transplant to a better location. We have a family of chipmunks living in the yard along with some squirrels and a bazillion birds. We like listening to the wood peckers and the owls. We've seen a few deer wandering through the property and even a few snakes. We're probably going to get a visit from a bear sooner or later, especially once the raspberries start to ripen. We've already seen a few while out driving. Most of the house is surrounded by trees, but there's a large open field in the front, and the last few weeks we've enjoyed watching the fireflies all around it.

We are pretty much settled in. I still have about 2 dozen boxes to sort through, but the furniture is all in and it looks like home again. Mike just finished a few decorative shelves in the kitchen for me to display my teacup collection. I think one more over the doorway should do it--until I add to the collection that is. ;o) The ones he finished came out great. I will take some pictures as soon as the kitchen is all finished. The other rooms are all finished except the stairway. I want to hang Mike's plaques and momentos from the different bases we've been to, but I need a bigger ladder to reach. Someday I'd like to paint the two bathrooms, but I think those projects may wait a little while.

Mike is still working at the computer store, but, Lord willing, he'll have an interview this week or next for an IT position at the nearby school district. It would be REALLY nice to have a full time job--especially since we had to by a more reliable vehicle. I'm hoping to get my Stampin' Up! business going again soon. My office is almost all organized, but I think it's organized enough to work with. Nick is looking for a job right now, and the girls and I are finishing up their school work a little at a time.

I think that just about does it for us. Since this blog is for my friends and family, I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to leave a comment or email me. We don't have long distance on our phone yet, so we haven't done a lot of calling. We can use our cell phones, but they don't always have great reception.

Well, now that we're settled in, I'm trying to get back into a routine so I will be posting again this Thursday, and will make a great effort to update each Thursday. Till then--God's love & blessings to you.

So much to do and so little time!

I can't believe it's been over a month since I've updated this blog! We've been quite busy. We closed on the house and started working right away. Mondays and Wednesdays I was taking Nick to school so on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, we would pack our lunches and head over to the house. Mike has been getting more hours at work (Yay!) but when he does get some time off he comes out with us. So far we've ripped up all the carpet and padding, and done quite a bit of plumbing and patching work. The pipes weren't winterized properly, but thankfully, there was only one busted pipe, and it was easy to get to. Mike finished repairing the wall from that, got the downstairs bathroom up and running, and cut down 3 dead trees that were too close to the house. I just finished the last of the painting that needs to be done and all the appliances are now in--including the HUGE refrigerator that had to go upstairs! Now we're just waiting for the carpet to be laid upstairs.

Since the carpet has been laid downstairs, we've started moving some of the kid's things into their rooms. Angel's room is almost finished. She got a remnant piece of carpet, which was installed right away so we picked up her bedroom set. It's an antique that she bought off of Craigslist. She's just waiting for Mike and I to get a new mattress set as she is getting the ones we're using right now. Michelle's bed is in, but we still need to move in her dresser and the things that are here at Grandma's. She was so funny when we opened some of the boxes of toys that have been packed for 10 months now. It's like she's meeting old friends again. :o)

A few weekends ago I also had cakes to do for church. One was for our Ladies Salad Supper. I made 100 cupcakes with flowers on them and a small cake that had a watering can pouring water on the flowers. Our theme was from Proverbs 31 and referred to an excellent wife being more precious than rubies. One of the ladies from church designed these cute invitations where she put tiny rubies in the center of each of the flowers, so we kind of ran with that idea for the decorations. Each of my cupcake flowers had a red m&m in the center to represent the ruby. That one was a lot of fun to do, but not as much fun as the one I did the next weekend. I've been wanting to try my hand at making fondant flowers for a while, so I decided that May's birthday/anniversary cake for church would be a good time to play. It took a few days to make the flowers, but it was so much fun. The exciting part for me was the fact that the image in my head actually came out on the cake! That doesn't usually happen. :o) Here's pictures of both cakes. You can see close ups of the flowers on our picasa website


My children blessed me on Mother's day each with handmade cards and $33. I thought it was an odd amount until I remembered joking with Nick that I would love to have $100 to pick out some flowers and herbs. I haven't been able to garden in 6 years, and now that it is warming up, I am itching to be out digging in the dirt. Anyway, the kids cards were wonderfully sweet, and Mike's card had the extra $1 to make it an even $100. I told them this is one idea I would love to become a tradition. It was so much fun to go out shopping for herbs and pots and not feel guilty about it. I even had enough to buy a small burgundy cherry tree that reminded Angel of the cherry trees in Japan, and two rose bushes. I already planted the herbs and am hoping to get a small plot dug out tomorrow so I can get the tree and bushes in the ground.

Speaking of the ground and our property, as things are starting to green up here, and we've done a little exploring around the place, it seems like we've inherited several acres worth of raspberry canes. I am so excited because I LOVE raspberries! I'm not 100% positive, but I'm pretty sure that's what they are, so it looks like I'm going to have to do some experimenting with raspberry recipes and learn to do some canning. I told Mike a few months back that I thought it would be neat if we could think of a name for our place and now I think we might have to call it Raspberry Acres, or something like that. :o)

I've saved the best news for last. On May 3rd, I got an early Mother's Day gift, and the best one ever. Michelle came to me and said she wanted to say that "special prayer". I got the awesome privilege of leading her to the Throne of Grace where she asked Christ to be her Lord and Savior. For me to know that all of my babies are now His children is the best gift of all!

On that note, I must go get ready for bed and another day of house prepping. Till next week (I hope), God's love and blessings.