Summer days

Ah, the swing

RaeRae's first fish!

"Ally's" first fish

Helping Great Grandma water the grass

Fishing on the dock

Watching Mommy hang out clothes

So sweet

Swinging with Auntie Jen

Peace and quiet when motherhood is stressful

Ah... Peace and quiet! It's a rather odd thing in our house, unless I stay up late or get up extremely early. No, it's not late or early... it's only 8:00pm! Matt decided to set up the tent in the backyard and camp out with the girls tonight. Hope he sleeps well! I know I'm going to enjoy this peace and quiet! I've got my favorite radio station on (abindingradio.com) and my favorite large mug from AtHome America full of Nestle's Rich Chocolate hot cocoa mix with milk. The only things that would make this better are fuzzy slippers, a comfy chair (not the kitchen table chair we currently have at the desk), and pleasant candle burning (I would but the desk is too crowded, but now that I think of it I might have Matt hang a shelf over the desk just for burning candles...).

Ah yes... time to take a breath, to clear my head. It seems things have been so busy and hectic lately. Has it really been or have the kids just been acting up more...? As I logged on to blogger just now and skimmed over the blogs that I follow I came across this encouraging post on At The Well. Motherhood has been rather stressful for me lately. I have a portion of THE MOM SONG by Go Fish as the ringtone on my cell. "If you have a lot of fun, but your work is never done, you're a MOM!" Lately I've been feeling like the work is never done, but I haven't been having much fun. I love my kids dearly; but these last few days I haven't been able to enjoy them. That bothers me. I know that they will not be little for very long. And God gave children to be a blessing, not a curse. I have to say though that the fault does not lie with my children. How can I show true 1 Corinthians 13 love, when I am not meeting regularly with the source of love, Jesus Christ? Obviously when I am trying in my own strength to meet the needs of my family, I am going to fail. It's only when I am leaning on Christ for His strength and letting His love shine through me, that I will have peace and joy and will truly be able to enjoy my kids! It's so easy to let the cares of this world crowd our lives. The cares of home: dishes, laundry, clean toilets, meals. Even the cares of church. Matt and I love being involved in our church. We want our children to grow up learning how and desiring to serve God. Yet even church ministries should not crowd out our children.

Abiding. Abiding in Christ. Drawing from His love, His strength. Being Christ focused. Not world focused, not home focused, not ministry focused. CHRIST focused!

John 15:4-5

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself,
except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.
I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him,
the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

Cherry Pitting

Last weekend Aunt Tammy brought us back some cherries from Door County. Beautiful, bright red, tart cherries. Perfect for fresh cherry pie... except for one thing: the pits. So I called Matt's mom, the cook, to see if she had a cherry pitter. "No," she said. "I found that you fingernail orks just as well, or a pointy end of a spoon." Well, using my fingers sounded very messy (I had tried that with Bing cherries), and I didn't have a spoon with a narrow pointy handle. But as I was digging through my silverware drawer, I found my Pampered Chef orange pealer (I've only gotten orange pealers from Pampered Chef, so others might be the same way, I don't know) which on the opposite end from the orange pealer side had the perfect end for digging out cherry pits. Perfect. It really was quite easy with the right tool. Note: this works well for tart cherries, not with bing cherries which have a larger pit (I tried). Before the kids woke up from their nap I had 8 cups of cherries pitted. Enough for two pies. So I made two, baked one and froze the other. Yummy!

Fun with Friends

Not long ago my friend LeAnna from Written Windows and her family came to visit us for a few days. LeAnna and her husband are on misionaries on deputation to New Zealand, and they needed a place to hang out in between meetings. We always love having them visit! I was glad they came when they did too because that evening, right at supper time, the tornado siren went off! So down to the very messy basement we all went. This was quite an adventure. First the tornado siren is right next to our house... very loud! Then as I said the basement was quite messy, not just because it's a basement, but because we have pretty much ignored it since we moved in 3 months ago. And don't forget that it's supper time! 4 kids, 3 adults, 1 baby in a messy basement at supper time. Well, as you can see we made it work!
Before they left we were able to go to the park.


They all have so much fun playing together!
Check out that hair!

Camping

A couple of weekends ago we went camping to one of our favorite places to be. The Bible camp where I grew up, where My Man and I met, where My Man proposed, and where my Mother-in-law still works as cook.

We had such a great time! The girls loved sleeping in a tent, fishing, hiking, seeing the horses, and their favorite part... picking the raspberries that were next to our camp site. Actually, we picked a great weekend to go because the raspberries were abundant. I was able to bring home about 7 cups to stick in the freezer to use in Mrs. Sedovic's Raspberry Christmas Pie... YUM! Of course there will be some extra to use in... whatever. I love raspberries! And it seems that Ally has inherited that from me. She spent every moment she could picking berries and popping them in her mouth!Here are the girls helping Daddy set up the tent.

Nana with all her kiddos: RaeRae, Eli, Ally, and Baby Bear

A quiet evening fishing and the camp lake... yeah right... the girls are 3 and 2! But it was fun, and I caught the only fish. A bass, but too small to keep.

Baby Bear all snug for the night in the tent. This is one of the fleece sleeper sacks I made before RaeRae was born. Isn't he so cute in it!

We really had a great time. Hopefully we will be able to go camping again, but for longer than just one night.

Rainy Day and Potty Training

I have done it. Well, ok... we're working on it. But I am determined! It is TIME for Ally to completely potty train. We started working with her five months ago but had several set backs. Now however, we WILL do this! We are almost out of pull-ups (just enough left for Sundays and shopping days), and I am NOT buying more. (Can you sense my determination?) Monday was good. We spent a lot of time outside, so I took the little blue potty chair out with us. We only had one accident all day! I think that it helped that she thought it so fun to be able to go potty outside... Tuesday wasn't so good, by the time I caught on to the fact that she wanted to go on the "blue potty" which was outside, it was pouring rain. I should have just gone out in the rain to get it. Oh well... Today was better than yesterday. We still had several accidents, but not as many. And... she stayed dry over nap time! That's a first! She got a popsicle for that (and one to share with RaeRae). I wanted to spend most of our time this week outside. Alas, that has not happened. We woke up this morning to more rain. So, as we like to do occasionally when it's supposed to be rainy all day and we can't go out to play, we had a Rainy Day, Pajama Day! Well, the girls stayed in their PJs. The Charter guys came this afternoon to switch our internet to a wireless conection so I had to get dressed. After breakfast they asked to watch a movie. As they were picking out what they wanted to watch, I had a brillant idea. Why not let them watch a movie in a tent? Then I realized how perfect our front entry is for building a tent. A king sized blanket, a couple of clothes pins, and three dining room chairs, and we were all set!
Of course that was just the tent top... We had to make this really comfy, so the girls got the cushions from the back of the sofa in the office and a pile of blankets to make a comfy cozy bed inside the tent. The cushions fit perfectly under the piano.
They had fun (despite having issues over sharing the pink minky blanket), and I had some quiet, not a bad morning.

Hair Braids

I have come across a couple of new hair blogs recently, and I thought I would give some of the ideas a try. This one came from Kenzie Girl, and was supposed to look something like this.However, Ally's hair was to short; so the braids stuck out like Pippy Longstocking. So I pulled all four braids together into one pony so it looked like this.
I ended up doing RaeRae's the same way.I love braids because generally, with my girls, they can stay in for more than one day, and the girls love the "poofy" hair when you take the braids out! :-)