Saturday

Today we celebrated Jacobs birthday with our family, my Dad and Mom and Pauls Dad. His birthday is actually tomorrow, but we won't be home in the evening so we decided to do it tonight. My son is turning ten, and he also stepped on the scale and was so proud to announce he hit the big 100. He thinks that is the coolest thing! I can't believe I have a 100lb son! Wow. Can I make him stop growing? Please? He has defined muscles in his arms and he can pick me up. He moves over 200lbs of firewood from our field to our woodshed every day...yes, everyday. He baked his own birthday cake. He can shoot clay pigeons out of the air almost as well as his daddy. This morning he hooked a fish, his only fish, soon before they left the lake. He handed his pole to his little brother because he felt bad that Danny hadn't caught a fish and let Danny reel in HIS fish then praised him on what a nice fish he caught! He takes his baby sister on walks in the yard, cradling her in his arms when she is fussy. He sits with a 3 yr old on one side and a 5 yr old on the other while he reads them books in the afternoon. He is an awesome big brother with a big heart and we humbly come before the Lord and thank him for choosing us to raise this child. What a privilege.


Jacobs custom made birthday dinner. English muffin pizza, blueberry mini-muffins, BBQ garlic shrimp, a large pot of mandarin oranges and a Kerns apricot nectar juice. It was all very yummy.

He made a cherry-chip cake with cherry frosting.

Cool tool

One happy young man. G-pa gave him a compound bow complete set-up and we bought a bale of straw for target shooting and also checked into archery classes in Nov. He can not wait to practice tomorrow!

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O.k., really, this irritates me. I never knew this happened. My daughter rigged this all up, got my camera and took these pictures. This really happened tonight and had I known...

Emma is fully clothed, long flannel dress, socks, the whole works. There was sand all through my house tonight, even on our dinner plates! I couldn't figure out HOW it happened, until Jessie told me to look at the pictures she had taken earlier. Then it all became so clear.

Notice Em's long HAIR is even buried. I now hear Micah was buried next. Nice. Real nice, that is the reason for the "What is in your hair?!" "How did all THAT get in your underwear?" Quick, throw him in the bathtub before we have Jacob blow out the candles! Some days, I tell ya.

Races, dead fish and burrbelts...

The scorekeeper.

The scorebook.

The cheerleader and the racers & the finish line. This had been going on for sometime before I came home this afternoon and I still watched about 15 *races*.

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Daddy took the oldest three fishing again this morning. They together caught 5 fish, not as great as last time, but not skunked nonetheless. I was so proud. Before Daddy even told the boys they were ripping out their picket knives and cutting the heads off the fish and gutting them! They did a mighty fine job I must say.





Daniel is intrigued by touching/feeling examining things, that is how he learns best. He MUST touch, take apart, put together, take apart, put together, take apart...an experiment type of kid. Remember he is the one who was found electrocuting flies on the window with two bare wires? He is also the son I will find half inside the dishwasher spinning, turning, rolling every moving part to see how it works. Really, give him an old toaster and a screwdriver and he will be happy for hours. After the fish were gutted and in the fridge he came in the house and asked if he could *play* with a fish. "Play?" I asked, "Yes, mamma, i want to hold it and play with it." "Sure, go wash your hands." he did and I plopped a slimy fish in his hands. He flexed every fin, looked closely and ran his fingers all over the fish, scrapped the scales off ect. I think we have to go to the library now.

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Jacob just came up stairs with an all new design in fashion. He calls it his "burrbelt". A chic new style of belt marketed to them country types. Made of 100% burrs found in yer backyard and assembled around yer belly. When yer done and yous want some entertainment, put them on yer cats tail.

Tomatoes, frogs and Nanas

This first picture is for you Dawn! A ripe tomato...my FIRST! I have five gihugerous bushes with tons of maters on them, but they refuse to ripen. I had one today, and I selfishly ate it before my three year old saw it. He will get the next one. So Dawn, this will end all those phone calls to see whether you or I have ripe tomatoes yet. I doubt much more will come on before Fall hits strong. It's just been a bad year. It sure was tasty though ;-)

On to the dahlia garden. I have 5-6 vases of fresh dahlias I keep at all times around the house. I was out clipping off beauties when I came across a friend patiently waiting for a winged pollinator to be his next meal. I wouldn't say he has the best camouflage, lol, but he is patient.


My lil darling "Little Beeswings" my pride and joy of the garden.


Today is bitter sweet. Jacob had to cancel his party because of the rain, not a tear nor a sigh, he took it like a man. We rescheduled for next week. How reassuring is to know the Lord controls even the rain that came on Jacobs birthday and that it we can trust the Lord to always do what is best for us, even when we have to cancel a party. The sweet part of it is Nana, Paul's dear mother, is going to come spend the afternoon with the children. How could they NOT be happy!

Separation of Blog and State?

Not.

Click Here for primary governor election updates for those of you who care. Obsessed? Nah, just excited. Go Dino,go!

It is raining hard outside. To keep things simple, our children only get parties with friends on big birthdays...1, 5, 10, 13, 16. Jacob turns 10 on Sunday & has quite a party planned tomorrow with 9 friends from church. Since over half of them are traveling a ways to get to our house I invited all the families to stay and play. I love having a big old yard full of kids and that's what I hope to have.

I do not like to plan parties. I have this friend, however, that is *the bomb* when it comes to partys/activities/making kids feel great. She inspires me often. She is the mamma of the blog Baker's Dozen, a link on my sidebar. I like to think I am busy and planning a party isn't in my schedule, but against her, I can not begin to whine.

If it rains the party is cancelled, please help me pray for sun from 1-3:30 tomorrow? I reeeeeeally hope we can pull it off.

Go Dino, Go Dino!!!

Ah man, the suspense is killing me! Dino HAS to get in.

Boy the Lord was gracious to Paul and I tonight. Don't read this Luanne, you will be ashamed ;)
We lost our ballets in our mail heap. Then tonight, for whatever reason I asked Paul if he'd seen the ballots. "No, we need to find those though" "Yeah" I said. 10 minutes later I stumbled upon them(after casually looking for them for a week), totally ignorant of the fact it IS primary election day. Then Paul picked his up and saw, oh crud, this IS election day...they must be postmarked today....hmm...that won't work it's 6:30pm. Quick! Google ballot drop-off locations!.... The Library, o.k., open until 8pm. We sat down and voted, we knew all the names so voting was easy. AND thanks for our Eagle Forum letter whose advice we take very seriously. Every Christian family should sign up to receive Eagle Forum's election letters. So we voted and Paul jumped in his truck and ran them into the Library. BIG sigh of relief, I can't believe we almost let Dino down....

November elections can't come fast enough....

Recipe Hunt

I plan all my dinners for one month, then shop all at one time. I write my menu out for the month and post it on the fridge so the children(and Daddy) can look forward to ??? tonight. Tuesdays are always breakfast night, Fridays are usually bbq hamburger night with Saturday being Garbage Soup night, never knowing what left-overs are going to eat from the freezer!




BUT I need new recipes. I LOVE church cookbooks, so if you happen to have one/some you do not use pleeeeease consider donating them to....um....me. I have noticed there are quite few of you people out there reading my blog. Hmmmm who are you all? I'm curious. At our family reunion I found two more people who said they read my blog regularly that caught me off guard.



That said, I want your favorite recipe idea. I am looking for energy efficient(cooking at 350 for 1 hr or less) with common household ingredients/meats. Can you just leave 1 recipe in the comment box? My family will thank you. 80% of our meals consist of casserole, veggies & bread. Casseroles are cheap and yummy so I don't mind casseroles. I also love my crockpot...So there. Throw me a new one!



Off to teach the kids how to prune raspberries.

International Space Station

I meant to write this a couple weeks ago. My boys LOVE K'Nex, not only do they keep older boys completely entertained for hours like no other toy will, they are very educational. We have the complete space set which has the ISS or International Space Station. With the set comes a fact book that is just great. That was all they needed, it set the boys off on an infatuation with the ISS.

So, that leads me to my story. The first week of August all the kiddo's were tucked nicely in bed, presumed to be sleeping when Jacob knocks at our bedroom door. "Yes?" Paul says. "Daddy I just saw the ISS it has three lights and one is blinking and it is going really fast!" or something to that affect all in one quick and excited run-on sentence. We know he sleeps by a window, but didn't know he counts satellites, and watches the stars. We patted him on the head and said, "Sure it was. Now get in bed sweetheart. " You know, like he reeeeally knows what it looks like anyway, right?

He insists it was the ISS, knowing Dad and Mom aren't convinced. I look at the clock and tell Jacob it is 9:31pm on Aug ?, we will go online, see if we can find a tracker tomorrow and confirm your suspicions. That made him somewhat happy and he went back to bed.

In the morning he rises and quickly reminds me to check on that. We Google "ISS tracker" and come up with this http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/cities/skywatch.cgi?country=United+States Obviously you have guessed he was correct because I am blogging about it! Sure enough, for 4 minutes on that night from 9:29- 9:33pm the ISS was visible from Bellingham , Wa. He was one beaming young man.

Cooler weather means the baking bug...

What is easier than picking 5 C of blackberries for a fresh pie? Having your CHILDREN pick 5 C of blackberries in your backyard while YOU make the pie crust. What a concept. Not that it is a feat or anything, I just never thought to ask them to do it. They pick amazingly fast when you tell them it is for a pie that they will taste after dinner. I don't think 10min passed and I had 6 C placed on my counter. The blackberries are coming on strong, & we looove them.

I rarely make pies, so please, no critiquing.

In the blink of an eye Gracie was taste testing flour....ewe.

Ta-da! Yummmm.

Then for lunch we made a double batch of donut holes. I didn't have veg oil, only olive, so they may have cost us an arm and a leg, but boy were they yummy! Lunch was donut holes and watermelon, a far cry from our usual healthy lunch.

I took this last night, the picture turned dark, but still pretty.

There were five different layers of purple mountains.