Harvest Festival Heroes

Our children will be attending the Harvest Festival as Mr. Ninja and his sidekick, Princess Leia. Suffice to say, the throwing stars and atomic blaster gun will not be attending the event!

Introducing A Joyful Army of Six

My good friend Cara (who we visited in Oregon) just started a blog! She has written a great post about what God is teaching her through her homebuilding project. I was so encouraged! She also posted a poem that echos my thoughts as a mother of small children. You can view her blog at A Joyful Army of Six.

Introducing Skyler

After 65 hours 50 minutes of loving labor, Skyler was born! His parents had hoped to have him born at home, but after 40 hours of labor at home, pitocin drip at the hospital, and 4 hours of pushing he got stuck. He ended up being delivered C- section. They are just happy that he is here safely. It was a long weekend!

Happenings At Our House

This past month has been very busy for us and yet I've been in a writing slump. Sorry! I actually wrote a post about Evan's Cub Scout camp with pictures and everything, but when I hit publish, it got deleted and was lost in blogland forever. Oh well. Just to give you a taste of what's been going on, here's the latest.

Sean is testing for a promotion this month. (This has definitely been the biggest reason why I have not had time to blog lately.) He did very well on the written test, and has an interview with 3 higher ups from out of the area on Wednesday morning. We should know then if he got the promotion. In the mean time, it has been and intense month of studying, politicking, and praying.

While Sean was studying for the written test, the kids and I had a great trip visiting my parents. One of the advantages of homeschooling for us has been the flexibility of travel. We just packed up a basket of books and had school at Grandma and Papa's house. My dad even volunteered to watch the kids so my mom and I could go shopping for some new clothes for me. He totally surprised me with a gift certificate to Macy's. What a blessing!

Then the next weekend, Evan had Cub Scout camp. The whole family went and had a great time boating, shooting, crafting, and eating. There are a great bunch of boys and dads in his den.
Emily took her first steps this week! She won't walk to me, but toddles on command to Evan and Amy. It really is hard sometimes to get school done, when they stop to clap every time she does something new!

Tomorrow I'm hoping to post the name and gender of our newest cousin. Sean's brother Pat and his wife Tammi were at the hospital last we heard. The kids are soooo excited about their second baby cousin!

Amy's Fall Flower Arrangement

While shopping at Michael's the other day, Amy decided to spend her own money to buy some Fall silk flowers. Here is the arrangement that she did (with just a little help from mom).
It reminded me of the story "The Gardener" by Sarah Stewart. After finishing her special garden she writes to her mother and grandmother to say, "I've tried to remember everything you ever taught me about beauty." I hope Amy will have fond memories of the time we've spent creating beautiful things together.

My Little Helper In the Kitchen

I've Moved!

I am now blogging on Wordpress. You can go to my new site here!

Changing Things Around

Lavender in our garden in full bloom.

When I changed the name and played around with changing the look of the blog I accidentally changed the posts too. I just realized that everything that I've written has been smooshed together with no paragraph breaks! Sorry! I know that can be tiresome to read. I'll try to get that fixed soon.

I'm actually in the process of switching this blog over to Wordpress. You can see the start of it here. Until I figure it all out, including how to transfer everything over, I'll keep blogging at this site. I'll let you know when the new site is up and running.

Farmers Market Dinners

Right now our Farmers Market is full of wonderful produce. Something I love to do with the kids is have a "Farmers Market Dinner". This is especially great with preschoolers who are just learning about what they do and don't like, and who like to "help" as much as possible. Why not get them helping with dinner and loving vegetables! Because there are no recipes to follow and most vegetables cook quickly this is an easy dinner, plus the kids get excited about "their vegetable" and are more prone to try others. My kids have brought home broccoli flowers, brussel sprouts, beets, as well as the usual carrots (to be eaten with the greens attached!), corn and peas.


We all go to the market and I let the kids taste whatever is being offered. They get to pick out one vegetable each. I pick out one I like and we get one dad likes too. Then we pick up a chicken on the way home, or grill fish or hamburger patties (something easy and simple). The kids help shuck the corn. Someone always picks corn. They can help snap the ends off green beans and wash the different vegetables. Then we either steam or boil what needs to be cooked. The rest gets set on the table after washing. When they are this fresh a little salt and an herb or two (think basil sniped or torn by a 3 year old over sliced tomato) is all that is needed for really delicious food. I've had company over who swore they didn't like a certain vegetable actually enjoy it when it was freshly picked that morning!


Of course, berries with ice cream for dessert makes everyone happy and is a great way to end a Farmers Market Dinner.