Spring has arrived-Time to get busy!

This is a spring edition of our Family Life.  Lots of things put into one blog.  Guess we've been busy since the warm weather has decided to come hang around every now and then. 

Winter was over (the calendar said it was spring), but the cold temps just weren't leaving when we decided to go ahead and purchase some more chicks for laying eggs.  We had them in the basement until, Oh my, the smell was horrible.  So, we moved them to the garage and tried to keep their boxes cleaner until, Oh my, the smell was horrible.  Time for them to go out!!!  We tried to put them in the with our other hens, but they were just too small yet and got beat up pretty bad, so out of the pen they came.  Now what are we going to do because they aren't coming back in my house.  We make a make shift pen for them and Jonathon scrounged around and found the perfect thing to turn into a mini coop for them.  They are still out there, but we found one last night roosted by the regular coop on top of the fence.  Guess we better clip their wings before they move into their new home.  Keeping track of them a little better since we had a visitor the other night.  More on him later.  

 A lovely warm day enjoying the new pen for the chicks.  Saphira just loves them!

 We celebrated Passover with friends and enjoyed wonderful worship and fellowship!

 Saphira enjoys exercising with me.  She sure is cute doing it!

Onto our visitor we had.  The other morning Miranda, Jonathon's sister, came in the house with a rush asking where Jonathon was.  There was a raccoon outside the back door on top of the light.  Was very strange that he chose to hang out there with a dog in the back  yard and it was daylight.  So, all of the males in the house......

 Grabbed their weapons and....  

went hunting.

 Some friends of ours made the choice to put in a pool for summer fun.  The day was picked to work on that project and we headed to their house for a sleepover so we ready the next morning to get to work.  Well, mostly the guys.  :)

 Benaiah loves to help the guys with anything.  But when their is a might machine involved, you can be sure he's there to help.  This Bobcat owner was so kind to let Benaiah take a turn riding it with Jonathon.  And it was the highlight of Benaiah's day.

 His smile says so.

And after the ride, he grabbed a rake and started working again.  Mighty machines just put him in the mood to work hard.  :)

While the guys were working, I had planned on taking the children to a park to take pictures for their invitation for their school program that's coming up.  So, we headed to one of the local parks and grabbed some fun memories and photos.  

This spring has brought super wet ground, especially where we have been wanting to plant blueberry bushes.  One of our dreams is to have a field where people can come pick blueberries.  We'd like them to be organic and enough to be a little business for the children during the summers.  Maybe some day it can be a bigger business that our children and their families can continue running.  Long term goals, but they are fun to think about.  So, as we began planting our 300 blueberry bushes this year, we began to see our dream starting to take shape one bush at a time.  We started the planting off with the children finding a frog.  Well, there goes that help.  No, not really, but it did distract them some.  It was a good distraction though.  Nothing says boy like seeing them chase it across the wet field catch it by it's legs, and then hold it up with the biggest smiles on their faces as they think about how they are going to scare their sisters with it in the coming days.  Boys.

So, there you have it.  The children have also been helping my aunt clean up her yard to earn money for field trips next school year.  They made some flower sales and will be running the Produce Stand this summer too to help with the Field Trip Fund.  Hope you'll come on out and enjoy some of our fresh, organic produce.  One day we'll have blueberries to offer too, but not just yet.  

Veggie Tales Fennel Frontier House Party

 Quite some time back, I signed up with House Party to host parties to promote different products.  I never did anything with it until recently when I noticed they were needing hosts for Veggie Tales parties.  I jumped at the chance and wouldn't you know it, was chosen to be a host.  They sent a box full of free goodies for us to share with our friends.  When the box arrived we excitedly opened it to see what all was inside.  We got Veggie character face masks, stickers, coupons, activity sheets, bracelets, and one of their newest movies Veggie Tales the Fennel Frontier.

Since we love hosting parties, we had a lot of things already on hand that we could use for the party, so we really didn't spend much on decorations or fun activities.  We decided since this was a movie viewing party, we'd have a popcorn bar and cheesecake sounded good, so we had that too along with some other snacky things such as grapes, cashews, and some candy.  We used the coloring pages that we could print from House Party to decorate our popcorn boxes and had extra sheets for the children to color.  The masks were so colorful, they really added a great touch to the food table.  When we were done watching the movie and eating, then we passed them out to the children to use in the photo booth.  So much fun!

We also enjoyed helping the children make a spaceship to take home with the Veggie characters on it.  We reinforced the idea of sharing during the activity by sharing our crayons with each other and helping each other out.  An added fun feature to our party was a black light.  It seemed that since this was a space party there should be a black light for the children to enjoy.  They did enjoy dancing under it and seeing how their clothes lit up.  Let's not forget the photo area.  Tried to get all the children in the picture, but there were a lot of them running around here, so I'm pretty sure we didn't get everybody in our group picture.  We sure tried though.  Some of us ladies even got in on the mask/photo fun.  If I would have thought sooner, I would have liked to have taken pics of the families together with the masks.

All in all everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.  The movie was a big hit.  It seemed to be geared for both boys and girls this time, which struck it nicely in the boys who thought this was a baby movie.  I don't think anybody left thinking they just attended a baby party.  :)

Looking forward to hosting another party.  It was so much fun to do this one for the children.  I think an adult party is in order.  I've applied for 2 more, so we'll see if I get accepted to do those.  Check out House Party.  There just might be a party you'd like to host.  It's fun, free, and so worth the time of answering survey questions and taking pics to post for others to see how much fun you had.  

Wisconsin Weekend!

With my brother having a new baby and the fact that we hadn't been to their place in Wisconsin yet, (except for Jonathon when he surprised them with a quick stop on a business trip) we decided that it was time to go visit and enjoy some family time.  Their temporary place is quite small, so we found a nice little hotel in Hillsboro to sleep and swim of course, and then spent the rest of the time at their house or exploring the surrounding areas where they are thinking of buying, where the children go to school, and fun things in the woods the children have built.  I would have loved to have taken more pictures of what all we did because if was a packed full weekend of endless fun, but I couldn't do that.  I did capture a couple from a distance, so you'll just have to enjoy those.  :)

We met my parents at a gas station where we handed over the boys.  They got to travel with them on the way there.  The girls got their turn on the way back home.  Our first potty stop was quite a ways into the trip which was nice.  We dealt with Saphira getting car sick.  I guess it isn't a real road trip without one of our children getting sick.  So, when we stopped, I cleaned out the bucket, we all went to the bathroom, the guys got some snacks, and I made our passengers sandwiches for lunch.  The other van load already ate their sandwiches.  

 The boys all ready to hit the road again and eating our extra sandwiches.  Those boys are beginning to have endless bellies.

 The men figuring out the best route despite what the GPS says.  

 Warm sunshine on the faces, full bellies, and grandma make for happy girls.

 We had a dance session in our van.  Saphira was cracking us up!...and Diella too.  :)

We checked into the hotel since they are an hour earlier there.  We were hoping to pick up pizzas and ice cream for supper, so we didn't want to get our food too soon or the ice cream would melt.  So, we checked all the areas out at the hotel, rested a little, then off to the grocery store.

We had a birthday supper for Geneva with pizza, cake, and ice cream.  Not a single piece leftover from 8 pizzas, I think is what they bought.  :)  Many mouths makes much eating!  Since that was evening, we didn't get too much visiting time in.  We cleaned up to prepare for supper, ate, visited, met all the littlest little ones over again since Saphira and Konrad were both little babies the last time we saw them, and sang.  That ended Friday night.  We headed back to the hotel, so the children could get a swim in and a water fight with Grandpa before bedtime.  I tried to get Saphira asleep while they were all at the pool, but my plan didn't work out, so I missed out on the big water fight.

The next morning Dad and Mom left for breakfast (continental) while the rest of us slept.  I took the ready-to-get-going children down for breakfast before Dad and Mom left, so we visited with them a bit before they headed on over to my brother's.  Once we were all around and ready to go, Jonathon drove us over to where the land is they want to buy, then we went to their house. Mom and I made all the meals ahead of time, so we weren't spending time cooking and doing dishes the whole weekend.  I sent my rice and challah along with them so the rice could be thawed out, ready to be heated.  Before lunch everybody except Ellen and I and the smaller children, went over to the land they want to buy, see the school, and visit with Jesse Lambright who also lives up there, who happened to be outside at his house when they drove by. I'm sure that was a surprise visit for him.

 The children had so much fun riding.  

 Benaiah's squinty face.

 Our day on Saturday was filled with singing, crafts, exploring, buggy rides for the children (driven by the children), meals, poem reciting, and chats about our growing children.  Full, full day!  We left after a hilarious game of Hunter and Deer and some singing.  Back to the hotel for some swimming, but the pool was packed so we opted out and just spent time together in the room before going to bed.

Sunday morning while Jonathon and I slept, Dad and Mom took the 3 oldest children swimming.  I had a nice quiet shower before they all returned to get ready for breakfast and to leave.  We spent only a couple hours at Joshua's on Sunday morning before heading home.  Dad did a nice devotional, we sang, and then said our good byes.  

We had a quiet van of Josiah, Benaiah, and Saphira most of the way home.  We detoured and went a looked at a van for us to buy while the other van headed to some shops in Michigan City.  We met back up at Dad and Mom's house and then continued on home.  Good trip.  Good memories.

This is what happens when you fall asleep with your hand in your bowl of cheerios. :)

And we all slept peacefully in our beds at home!