courageous

banner

Sunday, October 7, 2012

New "members" of our family...

Here is the "ahem" father of the boy dancing with my daughter, that was the reply when I asked Gideon who he was supposed to be.  The kids were dancing waltzes and other dances while Jordan played piano.
Now he told me he is the son who was dancing with my daughter.  Quite a handsome catch!!! :)  He has always loved to dress up, he used to sleep in his cowboy boots at the age of 3 and now he tends to dress up more dressy :)
Sierra Mist is a Beagle who is probably our newest dog. (We can take her back as of right now) I'm not a dog-happy person but circumstances have led to needing a watch dog of some sort.  I know Sierra won't inspire wobbly knees if she set to barking but we are told she will bark mightily at everything that comes around.  She just had a litter of puppies and isn't too fond of us yet.  I'm afraid she won't get a chance to bark at anything as we've let her in the house already and how are we going to kick her out when the weather is starting to turn.  The kids couldn't be happier with her.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Sweet...


We've been spending our days canning, cleaning gardens, school and the other number of things that fill our days.  We got to spend this last weekend on our final camping trip of the year, the annual Cutler hayride.  We got a picture of Lena with Ole, but it's on Kevin's phone so I can't upload it.  We were at the Cutler hayride when Lena was only 6 weeks old and we heard of an Ole who was just a few months old but this was the first we had met him.  Pretty cute!  He goes by his middle name though, Jesse. 

We are so happy with the bounty of apples this year. After a few dozen jars of applesauce though you start to lose heart but I want to keep it going just in case there aren't so many apples next year.  

Please pray for Kevin's mom who is in the hospital for an undetermined period of time.  She got another infection and it's wiped her out so she can't come home until her strength is built up.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Beautiful Bounty...

 This is part of my garage right now.  We picked from a friend's garden who is out of town and this is part of the bounty; tomatoes, leeks, celery, crab apples, and apples!!!!  We got strawberries and ground cherries too.  I made jam out of the ground cherries.  Looks pretty in the jars. 
 This turned out sideways but here is a wagon of cabbage.  I'm making a couple buckets of sauerkraut this week!  Below the cabbage are the largest onions I've ever seen grown in a home garden.  Jordan stayed the week with a family who grew these monsters.  I love cutting up one onion and getting almost 4 cups.  It's so handy.  I usually cut 12-15 of my small ones for the same amount. 
 My laundry room is always full of the leftover picking from market but here we picked because of possible frost warning in our area.  We have enough tomatillos to make a few gallons of salsa verde I think. 
We made some spaghetti sauce and canned four lonely jars of green beans today.  We kept the rest for eating.  We've been covering some bushes hoping for a couple more pickings before the season is completely done.

 It seems we worked quite a long time and only got 5 quarts of applesauce and a small bowl for eating.  Applesauce tends to be a lot of work!
 Finally, we made stuffed peppers!  We like to have them at least once in the season and tonight was the night.   Thanks for the recipe Jan, all those years ago. We sure enjoyed them!  Rice, hamburger, onions, tomatoes and cheese.
 Love those garden meals!  Supper tonight was stuffed peppers, green beans, fried okra, and home made kombucha.
Rebekah, enjoying her home grown meal.  I'm going to miss eating this stuff all fresh picked.  Winter is upon us :(  
  We picked up a sickness somewhere and it had a couple kids down for awhile.  Isaac is still recovering from it.  Gideon is better, just tired and Kevin thinks he has a touch of it but it hasn't laid him low.  Isaac is much improved over yesterday when he couldn't eat anything.  He's slowly working his way up to some real food.  For now it's jello, broth, yogurt and roast chicken and electrolyte.  Sure praying it doesn't go "around" the rest of us!  Because of it we didn't have the babies we watch and it was kind of quiet.  I took a nap even but had a real hard time waking up.  My body protested and wanted more!  This gardening season is much busier than ever and each week I spend a little less time sleeping and it's getting a little more challenging each day.  Three more market days left!!!!!  I keep telling the kids October will be more "normal"  I hope to be canning some more applesauce then but we won't have bread baking or market picking.  Looking forward to that!  Anyone have jars they want to get rid of? or know of someone who is done canning?  I need a few more to finish off the season:) 

Friday, September 14, 2012

Thank You Grandma!!

 Lena was so excited to get yet another present.  We made her wait until all the chores were done and everyone could watch her.
 Opening the card!




 She's waving, "hi" to Grandma.  She loved it all. 

I love new jammies!  Lena sure needed some.  Thank you Grandma Reta and Grandpa Sam!

Monday, September 10, 2012

Horse crazy...

 We went to Jorgenson Ranch Days this weekend and the kids couldn't have been happier riding horse all over the place pretty much whenever they wanted.  The horses there are so well-trained and easy-going.  The kids didn't want to leave.
 Moriah Clara!
 Hayride with friends!
 The hayride took us out to a huge campfire by a lake where the kids roasted marshmallows.
 The fire was a little hot even with the long sticks!
Rebekah!
 Caleb!
 Isaac!
 Church on Sunday!  It was good music, good preaching and we even got to get up and share our testimony of Isaac's healing!  Praise the Lord for giving us something to say! 
 The girls sang, "I Have Been Blessed."
 Jordan acquired a new follower, Clay!  Jordan is staying this week with his family.
 There were some covered wagons for those who didn't ride horse on one of the trail rides yesterday!
 Isaac riding behind our covered wagon. He loved riding horse!!!
 Emily's horse!  These horses could ride around the yard with all kinds of people around and they were always well-behaved.  It was wonderful.
Gideon took Lena for a ride on this little horse.  We would like to take this one home but she's not for sale :(

We had a great time with new friends and old, eating too much, all the games, church was encouraging and uplifting, horses, cows, chickens, turkeys, goats and more.  We slept in a cabin they had there and my boys were up before 7 a.m. to help with all the chores. 

Saturday, September 8, 2012

The Ball...

 Em, Caleb, Rebekah and Isaac getting ready to go to the ball.

 The Ball theme this year was the 1940's.  Although my girls' dresses don't quite look like it we did order from a company that said vintage styles and they did look like a lot of dresses we looked up on line.  I think they all look so nice!
 Emily and Mary!
 Caleb and Emily dancing!
 Isaac bowing to his partner.
 Love all this hair!  The girls did a great job on doing it up!
 Isaac!
 The end of the grand march dance!
 Stephen and his accordian shared some music through the intermissions.
 The winners of "who looked the most like the 1940's".
 Jordan and Isaac and there is Rebekah to the left doing the patty-cake polka.
 Rebekah and Caleb!
The very last dance.  Isaac gave the idea to throw their hats at the last moment and they did!