It’s National Ice Cream Day!

There are a few hours left in the day, so you still have time to grab a cone or dish of your favorite flavor! We ran into Braum’s this evening and picked up three of this family’s favorites – Rocky Road, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, and Mint Chocolate Chip, as well as a box of waffle cones, and we are enjoying our Sunday night treat!

Blessings,
Nancy

Congratulations to our Graduates!

Well, it’s taken me a little while, but I’m finally getting around to posting about our graduates! We are so proud of these two sons as they have achieved two important milestones in their lives – graduating this spring from college and high school!  Ryan completed his Bachelor of Science in Ministry Leadership from Moody Bible College and Tommy has earned his High School Diploma from our home school.  They have both worked so hard and a special dinner celebration was in order.  We took them out for a nice steak and Mexican dinner and were joined by our family, which made for a lovely evening.

I decorated the long main dining table at the restaurant, as well as a side table with framed pictures of the graduates, and another which held dessert and gifts. On the main table, I used a burlap runner, sprinkled with Hershey’s kisses, and then added candles, green plants, and an assortment of wisdom/advice quotes.

Jeff gave a nice speech with teary eyes and Ryan spoke for a little bit too. We presented Tommy with his high school diploma and took some pictures (all photo credits to our daughter Sarah!). It was a very wonderful and special evening!

We’re so excited to see where the Lord takes these two in the coming years. They are quite a blessing to our family!

Blessings,
Nancy

Summer S’mores

The other night after a nice swim, Jeff built a fire in the fire pit and we brought out the S’mores ingredients.

Pretty soon there were marshmallows roasting over the flames –

I like my marshmallows completely charred.

Final result – at least one happy camper! Yummy!

Make some fun memories with your family today!

Blessings,
Nancy

Happy Mother’s Day!

Happy Mother’s Day everyone! I hope that you will all have a lovely day and find some time to relax and enjoy your day with your families. Motherhood is a blessing from the Lord and a wonderful workshop for the lessons that He has to teach us. I am so thankful for the opportunity to be Mom to my nine sweet babies – from the 30 year old down to the 9 year old! And thankful also for the opportunity to be a mother-in-law now to our sweet Jessica.

I am thankful for my mother-in-law, who raised her son to be the man that I love and am spending my life with. We remember you today and miss you!

I am very thankful for my own dear mother, who has blessed my life with love and care for so many years. She has given me wonderful childhood memories that I cherish and has been there to love and support me throughout my adult life as well. I love you, Mom!

Have a beautiful day!

Blessings,
Nancy

My Family Page is Updated!! (Finally)

I’ve been tweaking and testing things around the blog this week, trying to reaquaint myself with things, and am feeling a bit more comfortable on the whole.  One area that has been so woefully neglected over the past few years is my Family page.  My children have chided me on numerous occasions about how outdated it was and pleaded with me to please do something about it.  “Mommmm!  It still says I’m 14 years old!!!” (spoken by the current 17 year old).  “Mommmm!  You neeeed to add Jessica to the family page soon!!” (spoken by her youngest sister-in-law and flower girl).  “Mommmm!  I gave up ice skating two years ago! (spoken by the soon-to-be high school graduate).

In my own defense, I haven’t written a blog post in a year (until this week), and so I certainly wasn’t thinking about being up to date on everyone’s statuses.  But – I am now proud to announce – that I have finally taken the time, tackled the challenge, and typed in the updated information for all of these sweet little baby chicks in my coop.  You can hop over and take a look, if you’re interested, by clicking on the “My Family” tab at the top of this page.

I’m sure that my children will all sleep easier tonight once they know that they are finally current and all is well with the world.

Blessings,

Nancy

Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day to you all! What a lovely day to share our love with all of the people that God has blessed us with in our lives. And what a wonderful day to remember the greatest love giver of all – our God and Father, who loved us so much that He provided the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ, who gave the ultimate gift – His life – to redeem us from our sin, and to bring us back from darkness into the glorious light of His love.

At our house, we are decorating Valentine boxes and bags, making Valentines to exchange, and decorating hearts to put up around the house with ways that God has shown His love to each of us. Dinner tonight will be Spaghetti and Meatballs with Salads and special Valentine Moon-Pie cookies that we will decorate this afternoon. After dinner, we will exchange Valentines with each other, as well as some small treats.

I hope you will have a wonderful day today with your loved ones!

Blessings,
Nancy

A Day With the Dinosaurs

A week or so ago we spent the afternoon at the nearby nature museum. They were hosting an exhibit of animatronic dinosaurs, which were placed around the park on one of the nature trails. It was a beautiful afternoon to be outside and we enjoyed the outing. Besides moving, the dinosaurs also made noises and were fun to look at. Here are a few of the pictures that I took ~

This cabin is one of my favorite things on the trail. We used to be able to go inside, but it is in bad need of repair now, so the park had it nailed shut. I hope its renovation is on their spring to-do list!

Thankfully there were some dinosaurs that were specially made to be climbed on by the kids, since they could really only just look at the robotic ones ~

The T-Rex was huge as was to be expected. There was water dripping from his mouth for some unknown reason, which made him all the creepier!

A fairly new and growing part of the museum is their collection of live animals. Some of the ones we saw outside were this raccoon and deer ~

The indoor portion of the museum has many hands on activities for the kids, as well as exhibits about nature items of local interest. Something new this time was live animals, some of them on temporary vacation from the outdoor area for the winter. We enjoyed watching the lemurs ~

There was an entire room devoted to snakes – UGH! But it was a good lesson for all of us on what the poisonous snakes in the area look like, so we can avoid them, like this rattlesnake for instance ~

This guy was fun to look at, although I never saw him move at all!

No matter how many times we’ve been to visit the nature museum, it is always interesting each time. We’ll be going back this Spring, when everything starts to come back to life and enjoy the flowers and plant life that was mostly dormant on this trip.

Have a nice day!

Blessings,
Nancy

Rainy Weather

It started raining here yesterday afternoon, and the temperatures started to drop. Around dinnertime, following a close-by lightning stike, the power went out. I had just put the finishing touches on the taco dinner we were having, thankfully, so we did get to eat dinner. Out came the candles and flashlights. Anna was teary – she gets nervous when the power goes out, but we assured her that it would be back on soon. Jeff, Laura, and Tommy left to go to a minor league hockey game that they had tickets to, and the rest of us settled in to a cozy, but dark evening at home. I was supposed to take them all to Michael’s basketball practice, but I decided against it, due to the storm going on outside.

We lit up the living room with candles, and brought out a couple of games. First we played Disney Apples to Apples – one of our favorites, followed by about an hour’s worth of Nintendo Monopoly ~

We got tired of having to squint to read the Monopoly board, so we called that quits. 9pm, the time the power company had estimated that they would have the power back on by, came and went, but no power. We got in pajamas and read some stories, then got out blankets and tucked in on the couches. David had just fallen asleep when the rest of the family arrived home. They had seen the power company out close to our home working, so that raised our hopes a bit. Inside I think we were all wondering if this would end up being another 3 day outage like we had last year!

One by one, everyone dropped off to sleep nestled in comforters and blankets all around the living room. I dozed awhile myself, and then got up to go lie down in my bed. About 1 am, just as I was about to fall asleep again, the lights came on. Hurray! I got up, checked on the meat in the freezer, turned out the bright lights that had just come on, turned on the nightlights, and went back to bed, thankful that we would now have heat and that the next day would be back to normal.

This morning I awoke to thunder and heavy rains outside. My first thoughts were of Jack, out in his doghouse in his pen. I wondered how wet it was out there, and when I went out on the porch to check, I saw this ~

The pond was about as full as I’ve ever seen it, and I was afraid that it would soon spill over, right down into Jack’s pen at the foot of the pond hill. I woke up Laura to go and get him, which she did. He is now resting, warmly and comfortably in his crate in the house.

The rain stopped around lunchtime, and the pond hasn’t overflowed yet, but we are supposed to get more rain later today, so we’ll see what happens. It will be Omelets for dinner tonight, certain to be another cozy night indoors – I think I’ll keep the candles handy, just in case.

Hope you’re staying warm and dry!

Blessings,
Nancy

Simple Pleasures . . .

I’ve been thinking about how much joy can come from the simple things in life. Things that pertain to family, nature, and just life in general. They usually aren’t expensive, but are worth so very, very much. I like to think of these as – and I solidly believe that they are – blessings from a loving Father, sent to delight us and, many times, to teach us about Himself.

Here are a few of the simple pleasures that I am enjoying in my life ~

~ Bedtime stories every night with my littles.

~ The changing of the seasons.

~ An afternoon on the front porch with a cool drink and my notebooks, drinking in the beauty of tall green trees, pretty flowers, and watching my little ones play.

~ Baking goodies for my family.

~ Conversations with my teenagers.

~ Beautiful pictures in magazines – cutting them out and decorating my journal with them.

~ Lighting a seasonal candle while I’m cooking or relaxing at night.

~ Hearing a sweet “I love you” from one of my kids.

~ Harvesting anything from the garden.

~ Stroking a kitty’s soft fur.

~ Sewing on a quilt and enjoying the beautiful fabrics.

~ Small town friendliness.

~ Fresh clean laundry.

~ Stopping by the Sno-cone stand on a hot summer day.

~ Seeing my husband pulling into the driveway.

~ A good book.

~ Popcorn with a late night movie.

~ Occasionally taking the slow, windey, country road rather than the highway.

~ Watching my children grow and learn.

~ Seeing the Lord working in my heart, growing me.

I begin to think that I could probably go on and on. Thank you, Lord, for all of your special gifts to us!

What simple pleasures are you enjoying?

Blessings,
Nancy

Nature Day

Our second Summer Theme Day this month was Nature Day, originally scheduled for last week, but moved to earlier this week. We started the special activities with a picnic lunch in the yard. While we ate, I read a couple of chapters from “The Story Book of Science” by Jean Henri Fabre, a wonderful storytelling book that celebrates the wonders of God’s creation.

When we finished lunch, it was time for a nature scavenger hunt. The kids took their lists and paper sacks all over the yard looking for rocks, leaves, seeds, insects and flowers, to name a few of the items. We were able to find everything on our lists except for a feather, and clover (which seems to have only been around in the spring).

It was a very hot day, but there was a strong breeze and nice shady trees overhead that made it bearable to be outside. Eventually, though, we were ready to head back into the air conditioning to cool off.

My next plan didn’t turn out so well. We piled into the van and drove about a half an hour to visit a natural science museum. We were looking forward to exploring the indoor exhibits and to walking on the nature trails. Unfortunately, when we arrived, the only discovery we made was that the museum was closed for the day. Oh well, next time I’ll remember to check the schedule before I burn up my gas! We got back in the car and started for home again – with a stop by Sonic for slushes to make the trip not a total waste!

The extra time when we got home turned out to be a good thing, because we had more time to work on our nature craft. Everyone sketched something on a small sheet of paper that they had seen in the yard that day. Then we painted wooden picture frames to put our sketches in.

We enjoyed a trail mix snack while we worked on our craft –

A few of their sketches, which they decided needed paint as well –

No, we did not see a volcano in the yard! That last one isn’t a volcano, but rather a picture of an Autumn tree – and no, we did not see an Autumn tree in the yard on this Summer day! We did see the tree, however, and this particular child decided that she preferred to paint it in Fall colors. 🙂

A few more colorful frames –

Jeff grilled out some Teriyaki chicken tenders for dinner, which we ate with brown rice and grilled zucchini and onions from the garden. For dessert, I made these yummy “Dirt Cups” to go with our nature theme. They were a huge success!

Nature day turned out to be a great day, although I was dissappointed that we had to miss the nature museum. We will make plans to go another day – when we know it will be open! – sometime soon. I’ll post the recipe for the dirt cups as soon as I can – super simple and fun!

Have a wonderful day!

Blessings,
Nancy