Fun on the Trampoline

Notice how Matthew is "floating"

Food For Thought

Watch the trailer:

http://www.demographicwinter.com/

It's always encouraging to witness when society testifies to the fact that God's Word does speak the truth - in this case that children really are a blessing!

Shower Saturday

One of our dear friends is getting married in March. We are so involved with the wedding that I almost feel like it is one of my own children. Amy and Katie are bridesmaids, with Amy being the maid of honor. Molly and Emily are the flower girls, Scott is the violinist, my mom is the wedding director and Katie is doing the slide show. We hosted a shower on Saturday for the bride to be and had a lovely time of fellowship. There were 27 in attendance and all went very smoothly.

The guest of honor

Long time friends. With the birth of this baby, we will have
had 27 children between the three of us.

After the shower, we switched gears and my family came over to celebrate Amy and Peter's birthday. A long, but very wonderful day!

Field Trip

Friday some of our homeschool group went downtown to the Alexander Graham Bell Museum. Then we headed over to The Varsity for some naked dogs, PC's, and bags of rags - Varsity lingo for plain hot dogs, chocolate milk (served over ice) and french fries. Of course we also had chili dogs, onion rings, fried pies and Frosted Oranges! There are plenty of people who don't appreciate the Varsity, but we love it.

Happy Birthday Peter!

We're on a birthday roll here. Peter turned 11 today. Incidentally, Peter was the second most difficult child which I attribute solely to the fact that he was born too close to Amy's birthday! (see yesterday's post).

Peter has become our resident chicken farmer. He went into this duty rather unenthusiastically, but has grown to handle it very well and he evens enjoys the chickens (but most definitely not the guineas). I recently spoke to a real farmer about our chickens and their lack of eggs. She explained to me their cycles of laying and molting and told me that we should get rid of them as they were out of their prime laying season and we just wasting money feeding them. I think she realized in the course of our conversation that she was talking to someone who was most assuredly not a real farmer, as I think she thought it rather odd that we actually were keeping and feeding chickens that had ceased to lay. Eric and I then began discussing the best option to get rid of the chickens. Peter upon hearing this was most emphatic that we could not get rid of the chickens as they were his friends (he is apparently not headed down the road to being a real farmer either!). Miraculously a few days after this, the chickens started laying again! I have decided that either Peter has been down there coaxing them and has succeeded (which may mean he is destined to be a real farmer) or he has found someone to supply him with farm fresh eggs and he is planting them down there. But since we are getting eggs again, Peter gets his wish for now. We did tease him for his birthday that his gift was going to be some more chickens and he was actually ok with that.

Happy Birthday Amy!

There was a little girl,
and she had a little curl,
right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
she was very, very good;
but when she was bad,
she was horrid.

Whenever I hear this poem, I think of Amy! I like to give Amy a hard time now, because as a small child she was BY FAR the most difficult of all the children. She was the most stubborn, defiant, and strong-willed child and I was in tears and prayer over how she would turn out. God was gracious and Amy has turned into a very responsible, mature, lovely young woman. She is a great help in the house and her strong-willed personality as a child has grown into a determined personality as a young lady. She is the person who will get things done and can handle most things thrown her way. We are thankful to the Lord for Amy and her 17 years with us.

Amy shares a birthday with Eric's dad - Happy Birthday Grandpa!

The Circus

Saturday, Papa took Matthew and Dawson to the circus. Amy went along for support! We are thankful for special times with extended family.