I didn't forget!

I really didn't forget to keep posting on here. I was out of town. I wanted to mention it in the last post, but it was a surprise visit to my Sister for her Son's graduation. The girls and I flew out last Tuesday and spent a week with them. It was such a surprise for my Sister. Only her wonderful Hubby and our Dad knew we were coming out. It was quite funny to see the guys trying to figure out how to pick us up at the airport without Pam finding out about it. :o) We all had a great time while we were there. We were able to go on a field trip to the airport with her class at school, do a lot of shopping, bake cakes (of course), help with the graduation preparations, run a 5K (WOW!), and of course, attend my Nephew's graduation.

Here's a picture of Michelle talking with an astronaut from NASA at the air show. She got lots of souvenirs to bring home with her that day.

Here we all are after the 5K. I still can't believe we did it. Even Michelle ran it and finished with a smile on her face. Of course, we walked quite a bit of it, but we kept on going and didn't give up. I'm very proud of both my girls.

Here's one of the 3 cakes I made while at Pam's house. I think I may need to start stockpiling a second set of cake decorating supplies for my visits there. :o) The cupcakes had little caps made from a Reese's cup, a Ghiradelli chocolate, and a piece of licorice for the tassel. It took me 3 tries to get the caramel right for the caramel buttercream, but it was worth it! I also learned a few lessons about baking at higher altitudes.

Here's Pam's family after the graduation. We are so proud of Cody! Well, Pam, one down and two to go. :o)

The girls and I have been back for a few days, and getting back into the swing of things. It has finally warmed up a bit outside, so we've spent a lot of time outside working in the yard. I've got most of the vegetables in the garden and worked quite a bit on the flower beds. Mike built a lattice screen to help hide our gas tank while we were in CO so my flower bed looks much nicer now. It's so fun to see what plants are coming up.

It was supposed to rain all day today so we started this morning working on inside projects. We've been renovating the main bathroom and this was a good time to get some of it done. We got the new doors on the cabinets and the new exhaust fan installed. I can't wait to finish it all up so I can post some before and after pictures. The sun came out this afternoon, so we headed outside and got some work done out there. I worked on two new flower beds while Mike took apart his car. Unfortunately, he hit a deer the night before we left for CO and damaged the front of his car. He's going to do a lot of the body work himself to help save us some money. I'm so glad I have a handyman hubby! I really put him to work today. :o)

Well, I better close for now. I need to make some graduation cards before tomorrow, and my energy level is quickly dwindling. I will try to get out tomorrow and get some pictures of the flower beds with the tulips all blooming.

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

I'm on a roll!

Wow, two days in a row to remember to update this blog! I should get a prize...maybe some ice cream. Oh, that's right, trying to lose a few more pounds. I guess knowing everyone one is up to date on the Henderson household will have to be a prize enough for me.

I'm afraid I will only be able to put October of last year up right now as uploading pictures messes up the computer bandwidth and that doesn't make Mike a very happy man while he's playing his games. And since Friday night is one of the few nights he gets to play, I will just wait till later.

October was pretty quiet around here. We enjoyed the fall colors and nice weather. Worked on getting the gardens and house ready for winter. The girls made me take them out on a photo shoot in the yard. Someday I'm going to learn how to use this expensive camera I have to its fullest potential, but for now, I just point and shoot. Here are a few of the pics I took that month.
Tomorrow is Saturday and there is much to do outside if the weather permits. I have some transplanting and general clean up to do in the yard. If it rains, I have plenty to keep me busy inside as well. I've been working on our master bathroom and hope to get it put somewhat back together tomorrow. Anyway, with all there is to do, I hope to still get some time to sit down and get a few more months updated on here. We've been doing a lot of renovating in the house and I would love to show pics. Putting the before and afters on the blog is motivation for me to complete the whole job in a timely manner rather than leaving bits and pieces of it for later to do. Not that I've ever done anything like that before...(yeah right).

Well, till tomorrow then...
God's love and blessings.

Starting over

So, apparently, blogging is not my thing. Another month and it will be a year since the last time I posted. Oops! Oh well. I guess this is as good a time as any to start up again. For those family and friends out there who are interested, here's a month by month update of our last year.

July:

This turned out to be a very wet year here which, after several dry years, was very welcome, especially by the farmers. We spent most of July outside playing in puddles and working in the garden.

August:

I took a trip to Colorado in August to help my sister through a difficult time as her Mother-in-law passed away. Although I didn't like the reason, I was grateful to be able to go and help her when she needed me. I also managed to talk her into coming home with me for a short visit. I have tons of pictures from these visits, but here are a few of my favorites.

Me with my Sister's kids.

My nephew, Tyler showing off a frog he found.One night during my Sister's visit, we had a pretty good storm. Here's our little stream the next morning!After the creek died down a bit, Pam and the girls had fun exploring it and looking for buried treasure.

The one thing my Sister needed while she visited was a chance to relax and forget about all the stress of life for a bit. It looks like we were able to provide that for her. :o)

September:

We celebrated Michelle's 7th birthday this month, and some friends of ours came from NC to visit for a few days. Over the last few months, Michelle had started losing teeth, and by this month, she had 5 teeth missing! Even as of this posting (May 2011), she still has two of those teeth that haven't come in yet.

It was pretty much impossible to get a straight face from these three, so we figured we'd just go with the flow on this one.

Well, it's getting late so I will post a few more months tomorrow. This blog was supposed to be a way to keep our friends and family up to date on things going on here, and now with Nick so far away, I really should try and keep it updated.

Anyway, till tomorrow then...
God's love and blessings.

Enjoying Summertime

Yesterday was the official first day of summer, and it has finally hit here. It was warm enough to turn on the AC. I'm sure my veggies are going to grow much faster now with warmer temperatures, but I'm going to miss sleeping with the windows open.

Last month Mike and I went to Texas to see Nick graduate from Air Force Basic Training. Many people have asked if we saw a change in him. His haircut was not a surprise to us because he's shaved his hair off many times over the last several years, but we did notice more confidence. We are so proud of him. He made it through the ups and downs and is now ready to see what the Lord has in store for him. Seeing his neatly made bed and orderly locker was a special treat for me. :o) The hardest part of the weekend was having to say "good-by" again, but now that he's no longer at Basic, he is free to call us and email more. He's currently in Mississippi attending his Tech School. We're still not sure when he'll be done, but we're hoping he'll be able to come home for Christmas. The girls can't wait to see him.


Let's see, things around here have settled down a bit. Mike is still working, but I think it's a little more relaxed atmosphere now that the teacher's and students are on summer vacation. The girls and I are doing a little bit of school work each day, but for the most part, we're enjoying summer break as well. Grandma Carole put up a big pool at her house so the girls have been spending a lot of time over there, which leaves me free to do some crafty stuff. :o) I've even started my Christmas ornaments already so I'm not rushing to finish them in December. Last year I never even finished all of the ones I send to my nieces and nephews so this year I'm going to send them two.

We've been trying to get stuff done around the yard, but there haven't been very many dry days to work outside. I'm not complaining though, we need the rain, and more rain means juicier berries! In fact, Michelle and I picked the first ripe raspberries yesterday. There will be hundreds, if not thousands, more to pick over the next several weeks.

Mike and I are pulling up some sod to make room for some of those flowers growing in our field. I may transplant the phlox that I transplanted out of the woods last year. The bed they are in now is apparently far enough away from the house for the deer to feel safe as they munch away on the plants. The new bed is closer to the house and I'm hoping that will deter them. If it doesn't, I'll be able to get some REALLY close up pictures of them. :o) Speaking of pictures, here's a few I got of the girls in our daisy filled field.

I guess that's about it for now. I hope y'all are enjoying your summer. Till next time...

God's love and blessings.

Ooops, it's been a while!

I just went back and read my last post. I didn't realize it had been that long since I'd updated this. In my last blog entry (back in April!) I mentioned how spring had sprung and the tulips were out. Little did I know then that God planned a little more winter for us--in fact, 3 more inches of it--in May!

Here's my tulips after a surprise winter storm. We even had enough snow to make a snowman and Michelle and I enjoyed a snowball fight before everything melted.

Isn't he cute?

By the end of May though, we were back to enjoying our beautiful spring time weather. We got the vegetable garden in and we're currently working on removing sod to put in another flower bed. Our lawn mower wasn't working for a few weeks and while it was down, the front "yard", which is more of a meadow started sprouting flowers all over the place. I'm hoping to transplant a bunch of the daisies, lily-of-the-valleys, daylilies, and peonies into a bed where they won't get mowed down. We're still debating on how long we're going to let the meadow grow, but for now I'm totally enjoying all the flowers.

The flowers are enjoying all the extra rain we've been getting this year. We've had so much rain that our creek has had running water in it twice since the snow melt. We didn't have water in the creek at all last year. All this rain will mean big juicy raspberries and blackberries! YUM!


This is 3 of several hundred blackberry canes on the property, and as you can see, they are going to have a LOT of berries. Looks like I better stock up on some jars and make sure I got my canning gear ready. :o) Blackberry syrup...raspberry jam...YUMMY!

Well, since it's been a while, I have a lot more to write, especially about our trip to Texas to see Nick, but I will wait until later to write. I need to get some more work done around here.

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

Spring has sprung!

The weather has been beautiful here this past week. We slept with the windows open last night and listened to the rain outside. I love it. The tulips I planted last fall are starting to come up, and I'm finding that we have thousands (and I am not exaggerating) of day lily plants coming up. There are huge swatches of them alongside the creek and throughout the woods. I did not realize we had so many since last year most of them did not actually flower. I think they've been in the ground for quite a while and need to be dug and divided. That will be quite a chore!

We have been a bit busy the last two weeks with things here around the house. Mike finished packing most of Nick's things up and moved his computer into that room. It will now be his den and our guest room. I was busy last week with 3 cakes. I made a small one for Mike's Mom for her birthday and had a bridal shower and a 25th anniversary cake to do. My kitchen was full of cake layers and flowers for several days. :o)


We've also been working on the vegetable garden. We're putting in raised beds, but first we have to level off part of the hill and then fence around it to try and keep the deer out. I'm hoping to finish up most of it this weekend and get my seedlings in the ground soon. After that I'll start pruning out a lot of the raspberry patches that were the most productive last year to make it easier to get in there this year.

Mike has been going through the property with the tractor pulling out the various remains of the previous tenants. So far I think he's found a washer, dryer, fridge, field seeder, car (couldn't get that one moved), trailer frame, and miles of metal fencing. There's still a lot more. There's one pile we'll probably never be able to move unless we cut down the two trees that have literally grown through the metal and bring a huge bulldozer in to take it out. I understand those that use part of their property as a dump rather than pay to dump it, but ours is spread around the whole 25 acres and now a lot of it is half buried. At least the price for scrap metal has gone up. Maybe we can make a bit from all this work.

Our exciting news is that we were able to get a phone call form Nick on Tuesday. We've been praying to hear from him so we would know how he is doing. We did not know that they do not get writing privileges until they are there for 3 weeks. That doesn't stop God though! Nick's "flight" (that's what they call their class of recruits) did so well on their drill that they were each given a 15 minute phone call. God is so faithful! :o) It was wonderful to hear his voice and to know that he is doing fine. He's adjusting to the heat there (I'm so glad he went in spring and not summer!) and is learning to drink more water. He's learning to get up very early and eat really fast. That's about all we learned in the short phone call. We are continuing to shower him with letters, which he says he loves to get, and upholding him in prayer each day. Mike and I are making plans for the two of us to go down at the end of May for his graduation.

I guess that's about it for this week. Time to get the little one into bed and head there soon after myself. Till next week...

God's love and blessings!

What an emotional week!

My children tease me that I have "leaky faucets". I admit it-I cry. I cry when I'm happy, sad, proud, angry. Pretty much any emotion can make me cry, so, needless to say, I did a lot of crying this week. Our church held a wonderful service in Nick's honor Sunday evening as a way of encouraging, challenging, and simply loving him. It was wonderful! I cried through most of it. :o)

Monday was the big day. We spent most of the morning and afternoon getting Nick and his room all packed up. We left in the late afternoon and went out for a nice dinner at Olive Garden. After that, it was time to drop him off at the hotel where he spent the night. Thanks to my families' silly sense of humor, it was easier than we expected. :o) I hope we left Nick with happy memories and not feeling incredibly sad. Our biggest reminder to him was to remember that he is never alone. NEVER! God is always there and a much better friend than we could ever be.

He had to be up at 4:30 am to do a weigh in and last minute paperwork stuff. We heard from him twice on Tuesday, once when he arrived at the airport in MN and again after safely arriving in Texas. Now we're just waiting for a phone call to give us his address. The recruiter said the call will be short, just enough time to give us the address and let us know he's OK. I will be sure and post his address on my Facebook page for anyone who would like to write to him. Although I am sad and miss him, I know that this step will be good for him. If nothing else, maybe he'll learn how to keep his room clean! :o)

Today is another special day for us. We are celebrating Angel's 16th birthday. Actually, we did most of the celebrating before Nick left, but today is the official day. Mike is taking the girls out for dinner tonight while I stay at home waiting for that phone call and enjoying some quiet time. I can't believe she's 16 already. Why is it that the older we get the faster time seems to go by? Although we've had some rough spots here and there, I am truly blessed to have her as my daughter. I am learning to step back and watch her grow into a beautiful young woman. Of course, that beautiful part worries me tremendously!

That's about it for this week. If I go much more into detail about the week I'll probably start crying, so I should close here. Here are a couple of the pictures we took Monday night.


Till next time,
God's love and blessings.