Honey From the Rock

Well, hello there! It's been quite a while hasn't it? Life has been VERY bumpy around here. Mike lost a very special co-worker and friend a couple of weeks ago. We rejoice because we know that she is at peace and enjoying the rest of eternity with the Lord, and there's no better place to be than that. :o) We do, however, have quite a hole in our hearts right now as we miss her and her sweet, sweet smile oh so terribly. :o(

In His faithful fashion, the Lord continues to encourage and bless during this rough time. The ladies of my church go to a Ladies' Retreat every spring, and what a retreat it was! The fellowship was so sweet, and the messages were amazing! God never ceases to amaze me in how he gives messages to the teachers that seem to be just what I need, when I need it. More on that later.

First of all, I don't have any pictures of me. I was the official photographer for the retreat and I haven't figured out how to get myself in front of the camera when I'm behind it. I had such a fun time running around getting pictures of each of the activities and classes though. I can't post most of the 900+ photos I took on here, but I will share some of them with you.

There was a serious snowstorm forecast to hit us the morning of our departure, so we ended up leaving a day early. It was a good thing we did because the weatherman was right. We got a foot or so that morning at our house. Our trip was a little rough going at first. We had some frozen, rainy, haily (my new word) kind of weather to drive through for the first couple of hours. This was one of our vehicles when we made a bathroom stop.

 I love these little kids. They always look so joyful, even on cold, dreary, rainy mornings.

 This beautiful flower was inside the main office space. It was so nice to see such bright color again.

OK, so this one looks weird, I know, but I had to take it. Lately I've started noticing natural hearts all over the place. I kind of see them as a "love note" from the Lord. I decided that whenever I can, I'm going to get a picture of it. This happened to be a splatter of mud on a step. I love what my friend said about it. "In this drop of yucky mud can be seen a heart (love). Isn't that how it is with us? We are the yucky mud that others can see the love of God through." 

These were outside in the garden. A simple reminder to us that new life will come, spring is almost here. :o)

Because I was the photographer, and wanted to make sure I got all the classes and activities, I didn't get to sit and listen to any of the regular classes. Thankfully, this year they recorded them, so I will get a chance to listen to them later. :o) I did get to go to the special "Chalk Talk" class that was held the first evening. Our guest speaker is a chalk artist and uses her beautiful drawings to share God's Word. Some of you may have seen something like this before. I hadn't.

This part of the drawing was finished when we arrived in class.

Then she gave us a wonderful message of living by faith and not by sight. She encouraged us to remember that God is always there and working in our lives, even if we don't see Him or understand what's going on. She then began to draw the foreground to this picture.

 Here's the finished drawing. Beautiful, isn't it?

But there was a surprise. As she lowered the lights and turned on a black light we could see what we couldn't see before.

Makes me smile whenever I see it. :o)

Back to those messages God had for me. While I didn't get to hear all of the classes,  I did get to sit in on the general sessions. I guess "sit" probably isn't quite the right word here since I walked around snapping shots of the lovely ladies throughout a lot of it, but I did get to hear the messages. :o) So many gold nuggets of treasure. I can't wait to listen to these again when they're up on our website. One little nugget stood out to me and really blessed me. She read from Psalm 81:16. "He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat: and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee." Honey out of a rock. I've read this verse many times and I've always looked at it as God reminding us that He can do anything, even get honey from a rock, but our speaker brought up something new to me. She said the rock is those hard times in our lives. You know the ones, I'm sure you've had them too. The times when we're down in the valley and not up on the mountain top. The times when we don't know what to do or where to turn. The times when we don't see anything good happening. That's the rock, and our wonderful, amazing God can bring sweetness from that rock. Sweetness we may never know this side of heaven, but sweetness none the less.

So, while we are still going through a bit of a rock right now, I am looking for and praising Him for the honey. One bit of sweetness has been getting to know our friend's children better and developing a wonderful friendship there.

Well, I better close this here. Got a busy weekend ahead.

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

Tea Party

Hello there! How are you this fine, almost spring day? We are still buried under a couple of feet of snow. This picture was taken on the 5th. It's actually gone down a bit since then. We can see the head of the horse-and-carriage Christmas decoration now, but it's completely hidden in this shot.  

Michelle had a friend over after church last week and the two of them spent quite some time outside as it had warmed up enough to make the snow "sticky" and able to be shaped. They started building a snowgirl, but eventually it ended up becoming a winter fairy house instead.

I hope the fairies can stay warm in there.

This is Michelle on Mt. Driveway. It goes through some serious geological changes throughout the winter. That's the remnant of the fairy house on the right that Layla is checking out. Hope the fairies all got out before the collapse.

Unfortunately, it's a bit too chilly on most days to stay outside very long, so we have to find fun things to do inside. Friday I was in the kitchen working on cakes, as usual, when I received an invitation to a tea party. I couldn't pass that up!

 What a beautiful hostess. She had everything all set up for us. :o)

Yummy! Great food, and great conversation. We did decide that next time, we'll leave the play tea set for the dolls to play with and get out the real stuff for us so we don't have to refill our cup after every swallow.

I will close this for now. Time to go get some laundry going and help a little munchkin with her English work.

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

Super Snow Day

Hello there! How are you and yours doing this chilly time of year? I thought I'd share some photos of our recent snow day. This first picture is of the ice "awning" hanging from our roof that morning. We've got to find a way to prevent this from happening next year because this is pretty dangerous. We are so very grateful that it decided to fall late in the evening when no one was outside. 

It started to snow later in the afternoon. I mean it REALLY started to snow! We could barely see the trees across the yard. (Yes, our outside Christmas tree is still up. Don't judge me, I think it's frozen to the ground. It will probably be up till sometime in April--or later.)

This is what we woke up to the next morning. The arrow is pointing to one of our vans. Thankfully it's one we don't use right now so we didn't have to dig it out. :o)

Our car is under there somewhere!

We have an awesome neighbor who stops by and plows our driveway for us. Glad we didn't have to do THAT by hand.

Handsome Hubby was a bit concerned about the amount of snow on the garage roof, so we got up there and did a bit of shoveling. We soon realized that the easiest way to get off the roof was to jump. Yeah, that was fun!

Thumbs up for a soft landing.

Even Michelle got up there and jumped a half dozen times or so.

Two thumbs up! She didn't even need help to get out of the pile this time. :o)

After shoveling a path to the gas tank, we made a path for Michelle to play in and build a fort later. We tried digging a fort under the HUGE snow pile at the end of the drive, but it was too soft and started to collapse. Not safe, so she will have to have an open fort for now. I was going to go for a walk in the woods to take pictures, but as you can tell by this photo, I'd need snow shoes for that, so it didn't happen. :o(

This is our sidewalk leading to the house. I wonder how my flowers are doing under their very large blanket of snow? I'm grateful for the entryway cover my Handsome Hubby built for me several years ago over the laundry room door. If not for that, I'm not sure how we would have gotten out of the house, and, by the looks of the amount of snow on top of it, he built it pretty sturdy!

Well, I've got to help the little one with her school work and then work on a fun cake for church, so I'm going to close this here.

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

Valentine's Party

Our home school group does a fun get-together in February for Valentine's Day. I saw this cute idea to use with my Silhouette and Michelle's Rainbow Loom bracelets, but I put that project off until the night before thinking it would be super simple to print and cut. Uh...no. My program didn't want to cooperate.  I tried and tried for an hour or so, but it just wasn't going to work. It was getting late and I was getting frustrated and sighing and mumbling when Michelle said, "Don't worry, Mom. We can just cut out some cardstock and I'll write Happy Valentine's Day on it." Her positive, it's-going-to-be-fine, there's-nothing-to-stress-about attitude is always there to put me back in the right frame of mind. So, at 10pm, we got busy cutting and stamping paper for her valentines...and we had more fun doing it together. :o)

At the party the kids are invited to give a presentation if they'd like. There's usually quite a variety--poetry, music, skits, verse recitals and puppets. It's always fun to see what the kids come up with. Michelle didn't do one this year, but she's already thinking of ideas for next.

After the presentations, the kid's exchange Valentines and have snacks. Michelle and I did make the Strawberries and Cream Puppy Chow which was quite yummy. We also made some heart shaped cake pops.

Going through her valentines to find all the "goodies".

After snacks the kids move off to various activities. The older kids go down to the game room while most of the rest head outside to the sledding hill. These aren't the greatest shots since I took them from quite a distance. I wasn't dressed to trudge through the snow, so I stayed up on the porch.

I didn't get any pictures of Valentine's Day except this one of Michelle enjoying her breakfast in bed. I need to learn to use my camera phone more so I would have thought to get a picture of my handsome hubby and I out on our date. I guess he'll have to take me out again so I can get a picture. ;o)

Hope you had a super week this week. Remember, even if you are not married, or have a special someone in your life, you will always have a Valentine who loves you more than you can imagine.
"For God so loved the world (that means you!) that He gave His only Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life." John 3:16

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

I have no title for this post. :o)

Hello there! How are you? Us? We're fine. A bit on the chilly side still, and busy, as usual, but fine. I wanted to pop in earlier last week, but I realized that other than cakes and crafts, which I have other blogs for, I didn't get my camera out much and didn't have any fun photos to share. Not that I can't share without photos, but it's not nearly as fun. So, with that in mind, I tried to be more intentional about getting the camera out and taking photos of our every day. I didn't do a very good job. :o( I always forgot to do it when the boys got home, but I did get a few of Michelle.

I think there are many moms out there who can relate to this photo.

These seem to be everywhere, especially right now with it being too cold to do anything outside. Thankfully, she's doing a pretty good job of keeping the rubber bands up off the floor, (or maybe Layla just eats them before I find them. ;o) I don't particularly like the ones made as necklaces as I have nightmares of trying to untangle them from her hair, but so far they've been fine. Most of these she's watched videos online to learn how to make, but the orange/purple/green/yellow one closest to her fingers is her own design. I like it, I just wish they made these bands in brown, gold and silver so she could make some for me. 

I also had to get some photos of the newest members of our family. Freddie the beta died last week, so we got these little guys. This is Rose, Neon, Ocean and Kim. I know the photo isn't super sharp, but I love that they seemed to be posing for the picture.

This week will be a busy one for me. I'm doing a Parent/child Valentine Cake Class on Tuesday and then making tiramisu for 100 for our church's Friendship Banquet this weekend. I did a trial run last night---YUM! Homemade mascarpone cheese is delicious and oh so easy to make. I've never tried it before, but I see some awesome recipes coming up in the near future. Our home school group has a Valentine's get-together this week as well, so we need to make some goodies for that too. I think we're going to make Strawberries and Cream Puppy Chow. It looks yummy and simple. Even with the busy schedule, I'm still going to do my best to get my camera out and document more of our days so maybe I'll have some fun things to share next time. Not to mention, having a photo really helps this old memory of mine. :o)

Well, I need to get into the kitchen and start baking little heart shaped cakes.

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

January Randomness

Hello there!

Yes, this is going to be a very random post, but then, this is a blog about our life, and life is pretty random. :o)

It's been very cold here. Of course, it's winter, so you kind of expect that, but I didn't expect this. That's COLD!!

Our youngest has been very into Minecraft lately and thoroughly enjoys playing along with her friend who lives in Maine. They set up their Ipads to Facetime each other while they play the game together. Ah, the wonders of technology. I seriously think I need to set up a scrap-booking/crafting Facetime with my friend who lives in Maine. :o) Anyway, our eldest also likes playing Minecraft, (actually, he's been playing it for a LONG time) and often I can hear the two of them calling out to each other from different rooms about things they've made or found. Not wanting to be left out, My Handsome Hubby decided he wanted to learn. I couldn't resist catching a few pictures of Michelle teaching her Daddy to play. I have to say, though, I have a hard time looking at this photo and not seeing all the "stuff" on my daughter's desk. Wow, just wow, but then I guess it helps you know who the window above belongs to too. :o)

Speaking of scrap-booking (I know that was a couple of sentences ago, but remember, this is random), I did get a little scrappin' done. Only a couple of pages, but it's more than I've done in a couple of months, and as you can tell by the photo above of our youngest and the photo of her below, I'm just a wee bit behind. (Yes, she's the one eating ice cream;o) I do have a monthly date now with one of my more local friends to get together and scrapbook, so hopefully that will give me some drive and I will make some progress in the books.

Another bit of randomness is this photo I took of my little seamstress. She decided to fix a tear in one of her dress-up dresses. I love the look of concentration, just wish I was better at taking the picture. I need to check the settings on my camera. For some reason I've noticed that whenever I put it on manual, the photo is super grainy. I think it's the ISO setting, but unfortunately, camera lingo never seems to process in my brain properly. Also I have a hard time telling what the photo looks like on the camera screen. I have to wait till I get it loaded on the computer, and by then the moment is gone. 

One last thing, I thought I'd give you an update on my non-resolution for this year. If you remember this post, I mentioned that I didn't make any specific resolutions, but I have decided that I want to get to know my Lord better and that I was going to make a concentrated effort to spend time in His Word each day trying to really listen and learn from Him rather than just checking another thing off my to-do list. I thought I might share with you what I'm doing, in case it might help someone else. I'm not following any type of Bible study or reading plan. I decided to start in Philippians because it's one of my favorite books, and I've just been reading it a bit at a time. I do use the Blue Letter Bible site for references and commentaries. I am keeping a journal of notes of things that stand out to me since I don't have near enough room in the margins of my Bible to write it all in. When I'm done, I ask myself 3 questions:

*What does this mean?
*Where do I see Jesus/God (for example, what attribute do I see)?
*What do I need to do/change?

I just finished Philippians and it has been amazing. I felt like a treasure hunter finding little gold nuggets that I didn't know were there before. For instance, Philippians 4:5 says "Let your moderation be known to all men. The Lord is at hand." This is from one of the commentaries I read:

a. Let your gentleness be known: Paul used an interesting ancient Greek word (epieikeia) that is translated gentleness here. Other translations of the Bible translate epieikeia as patience, softness, the patient mind, modesty, forbearance, the forbearing spirit, or magnanimity.

iii. This word describes the heart of a person who will let the Lord fight his battles. They know that vengeance is Mine, says the Lord (Romans 12:19). It describes a person who is really free to let go of His anxieties and all the things that cause him stress, because he knows that the Lord will take up his cause.  (Blue Letter Bible)

Wow! I knew the verse taught me to be gentle, but I never understood the reason why. That's the kind of moderate, gentle person I'd like to be--free to let go of my anxieties. Not because there's no stress in my life, but because I am confident in my Lord and knowing that He will take care of them. I promise to share more golden nuggets with you in future posts.

I guess this is probably long and random enough. I should close here. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings!

Engagement Photo Shoot

Last week I finished getting the inside Christmas decorations down and re-decorated the living/dining room. I say inside decorations because the ones outside aren't coming down till the spring thaw. :o) Anyway, as I was re-arranging the decor I realized I wanted some more photo frames around and that I don't have any framed photos of our new son-in-law or our future daughter-in-law. I remembered doing a little photo shoot with Angel and her man a while back so I dug through the photo archives and found these cuties.

Think I'll have to frame both of them.

Now I needed some photos of our son and his fiance. I am in no way, shape or form a photographer, but I do know that with the trees that surround our house, the best lighting for photos is outside, not inside. Did I mention it's winter here? It probably will be for several more months too. Have I also mentioned that I'm not a very patient lady? So, out in the snow we went. It did make for some "cool" photos though. :o)

This was a neat idea, but we almost needed a chisel to get them out when we finished. 

I actually got a picture of him smiling!!!! :o)

 Just before heading into the house, the little one asked her big brother to throw her in the snow.

 He did.

 Plop!

Silly kids. :o)

I need to get some of these printed up and into frames now. How was your week? If it is still cold and chilly in your neck of the woods, I hope it was filled with snuggles on the couch and lots of hot cocoa. I suppose you could enjoy those even if it wasn't cold and chilly. :o)

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