Happy Birthday Abby! (Sept. 7)

It is so incredibly hard to believe that Abby is turning 9! It seems like just yesterday she was a hard to handle toddler. There are many times I get teary thinking about just how much of a work God has done in Abby. She has become so caring and loving. She loves to serve others, especially at our church. She has developed a maturity that goes beyond her years. And she is an enormous help around our house. It is fun to watch her push herself in gymnastics, but even more fun to watch her love and care for those around her. We are so very thankful to God for our precious Abby and the, though trying at times, 9 years that have been such a joy. Abby we pray that you will continue to seek God and love Him first above all else! Happy Birthday!!

And yes there will be more pictures to come!!!!

A Time for Tea.

I'm a little behind on blogging.....we started school-I'm a little behind on everything! A few weeks ago Mae took me, Abby, and Isabelle to tea. (Claire is too young- and doesn't eat enough to be worth going yet!) We had a great time trying on ALL the hats, and trying lots of different flavors of tea. I'll let you guess who had the pink tea- need a hint-well, the one dressed most like a princess of course!!

A Fabulous Vacation in Minnesota

What a great trip we had. How do I sum it all up? The weather was perfect. Hard trip to pack for because we had to have sweatshirts,long pants,shorts and swimsuits (and wore them all!). Seeing my family was wonderful. (one of my crazy uncles went water skiing at 68 years old just to prove he could still do it!) And yes, that is my 98 year old grandma standing next to her red sports car that she still drives! Water tubing, water skiing (yes Brian and I both made it up on skis), camp fires, fishing (Brian caught a bigger fish, but still no pictures to replace his previous fish picture!) and mosquitoes as big as your head. I could go on and on. Relaxing? Yes. Restful? No!! Worth it? Definitely. With over 200 pictures, I narrowed it down to a few to share with you. Who knows, we may post more later!!

A dancer has been born...

Isabelle, upon seeing herself in the mirror for the first time in all her dance stuff, exclaimed,"(Gasp) I'm sooo beautiful!" Looks like our next lesson will need to be in humility.

Sisters

Samuel's first swim meet

Samuel had his first swim meet this past Monday. He has worked really hard to get to this point. For his first meet he did well. There were a few bumps along the way but overall he was happy with how he did. One thing we did learn about swim meets is that they are HOT and LONG! But nonetheless it was a lot of fun to watch Samuel compete. His best finish was 3rd in freestyle relay.

For all the cooks out there....

Here are 2 GREAT websites I have recently found that I am super excited about trying new recipes from. One is Tasty Kitchen, and her original blog is called The Pioneer Woman. Here is the link www.thepioneerwoman.com/tasty-kitchen/

And the next one is all about crock pots (or slow cookers as some call them). Seeing as we are always on the go, I am really excited about trying some of these out this week (and NO none of my recipes involve strawberries!!) The blog is called A Year of Slow Cooking

Happy cooking!

It's that time of year again. Strawberry season. We took a trip up to Huber's farm with our Woman's summer play group from church. It was a great time. I handed each of the kids a box and let them go in the field. I definitely underestimated just how many strawberries the five of us picked. So we have had strawberries coming out our ears! So what do you do with that many strawberries? What better way than to show you!! (and yes, if you look at my garbage bowl you will see that I was not meticulous in how I cleaned my strawberries- I am sure my mom and mom-in-law are having a fit about now- but when you have close to 18lbs of strawberries to clean you get a little careless!)

Summer weather means summer hats!

Now,if I could just get her to leave it on.

Abby's turn for pictures...

As I was printing out new pictures of the kids I quickly realized I had not taken any of Abby recently. So here are some of my daughter who is looking too grown up too fast!