Our Garden

Here you can see the orchard,

the smaller melon/berry garden (L shaped) and

closest, part of the big garden

The rest of the big garden

The last part of the big garden,

our chicken coop, barn, and back of the house

Dad ducking for the sprinkler :)

Green things growing!!!

We planted a garden this Spring. Not just a little, bitty garden either. A BIG garden! I'm so thankful for my parents and their gardening experience. There's no way we would have pulled any of this off without them. The main garden is quite large and we've planted corn, peas (2 varieties), beans, onions, scallions, radishes, carrots, lettuce (2 varieties), peppers, and tomatoes. There might be more, but I can't remember :) In the second garden, we have lots of strawberries! We've already gotten to taste them and they are SO good - definitely make the store bought taste like nothing! The third section of garden has melons, pumpkins, potatoes, and cucumbers. I can't remember if mom was able to fit the zucchini and squash. :) We also have 8 fruit trees planted - apples and peaches. We planted blueberry bushes (two of the four look very sad and I'm not sure if they will make it!) And for beauty, we've planted a pink dogwood tree in the front yard and two lilac bushes out back. We are hoping to do lots and lots of freezing and canning to help supplement during the coming winter. :)

The gate has to stay latched to keep Rocky from digging monster holes in the garden :)

The kids enjoy climbing over it!

Dad and Mom working

Great Grandma came for a month long visit.

She got to enjoy the sunshine and watch the grandkids play.

We loved having her here.

Livy labeling the row markers.

Can you tell who was hard at "work" here?

Dad did a lot of rototilling and

working on the rototiller this Spring!

The girls found quite a bit of broken pottery and bits in the garden -

rather like their own archeology dig!

They had fun examining the pieces and

trying to figure out where they came from.

Daniel works hard emptying our buckets

as we fill them with weeds!

Mom weeding with the girls

lovely Livia

Dad mowing the perimeter so Abby could mow the inside :)

Daniel trying to feed a worm to the chickens

Abby - working hard weeding

working together

Dad talking with Daniel over the gate

Mom and Liv working together

some rows of greenery coming up! sans weeds!

Mother's Day Photo Shoot

So while writing my post yesterday, I realized I don't have any photos of myself with all the kids. Apparently, I'm usually behind the camera instead of in front of it! So I asked Garr to take some pictures of us for Mother's Day. The kids were happy to do it - well, except Danny, who wasn't in the mood for pictures as you can see from his face :( I did manage to get him to stand near us by bribing him with a sucker... hey, you do what you gotta do! :)

The most wonderful father to my kids!

My oldest, who now is as tall as me.

And soon will be taller I'm sure.

All 4 kids, and of course,

Rocky had to get in the photo also.

Abby and I

almost 12 weeks pregnant with #5

Happy Mother's Day!

In honor of Mother's Day, I thought I'd share some special news. I'm going to be a mother of 5 soon. Our baby is due November 21! We are so excited to have the blessing of watching another little one grow. If I do say so myself, we've got some of the best kids in the world. They are sweet, hard-working, caring little munchkins. (Although one in particular is not so little anymore!) It was so nice last night to watch all 4 of them playing out in the backyard, having races - one little boy being cheered on by big sisters and finally carried on someone's back in the race. Yes, they have their fighting moments between them as all siblings do, but overall they are quick to stop fighting and quick to put another sibling over herself. (Daniel's not quite to the selfless part yet lol) At any rate, I'm proud to by their mother. And quite blessed, in the process.

Easter, Baptism, and Birthdays

We had a busy, fun Easter weekend this year. Abby's 10th birthday was the day before Easter and her party Easter afternoon. Olivia was baptized on Easter morning. We got to meet Nathan and Peter, the Logue's newly adopted boys, on Easter morning. Easter afternoon and evening we spent as a family working in the garden. Easter day was finished off with dinner to Ihop. Super nice day indeed!

Olivia had to have a "chat" with Grandad re. baptism. Dad does this with all his baptism candidates to make sure they understand what they are doing. So Olivia says to Grandad at the dinner table "Da-dad, I want to be baptized." He says "ok," and she seems to think the deal is done. I mention to her that she still has to talk with Grandad about the baptism. She gives me this look like "Are you kidding me? I just told him - what more is there to talk about?" SO Olivia! lol

So Dad sits down at the table with Olivia after dinner. He begins to talk to her about baptism and what it means and she interrupts him and says, "It's like when you go under the water, you are dying with Christ, and when you come up, you are a new person." Ummm, yeah, exactly.Dad and I just look at each other and smile. I asked Olivia how she knew that. She gave us the "duh" look and said Grandad just taught on that in Sparks (AWANA) a few weeks ago. Well! I guess she was listening! After that she said, "Is that it? I thought we had to talk for awhile?" Grandad shrugs and says, "Well, there's nothing to talk about - you already understand." Livy just beamed us a smile and ran off to play. Too cute!

Olivia, with 2 of her bffs, the Logue girls, who were also baptized

The birthday girl!

Emelyn

Waiting for the homemade ice cream cake!

Silly cousins - Justin and Livia

Jen Logue with Nathan

One of the oldest Logue sisters with Peter

Easter morning

Daniel all decked out in Easter finery

Just waking up on Easter morning

The girls - Easter morning

They've got the boys!!

Many of you know we've been supporting our friends through the adoption of their 2 little boys from Eastern Europe. Well, Greg picked them up TODAY from their orphanages!! Yay! I couldn't be more happy for them! I can't wait to love on those boys! Check out their blog for photos and funny stories of the boys' first day with their dad! :)

A difference to this one

Homeschool Room

When we moved, we decided it would be a good chance to start homeschooling. I had felt drawn to it since the kids were babies and with Garr's schedule, it seemed like it would be a better fit for our family.

In our house, there is a room -- the realtor called it a family room -- it is connected in an L shape to the room that leads to the bedrooms and near to the mudroom. It could have been closed in to make another bedroom, I suppose, although it would close off one of the two routes to the bedrooms. When I saw it, I knew it would make a great homeschool room.

The first year we were here, we were so busy trying to make the house livable that we didn't have much time for decorating. We painted the ceiling and walls, washed everything down, tore out the nasty green carpet, and installed a vinyl floor that looks like hardwood. We bought a folding table and painted a chalkboard on the wall and that was it. Oh and we installed a wood stove for heat :)

Here's the school room before we did anything - Sorry - can't get it to work - will keep trying

(I had some after photos from the same perspective as the before photo. However, after fighting with this for over an hour I can't get them to load...SO you can just look at the following after photos instead)

This past year though, when I was sure we would continue homeschooling, and I had a better idea of what did/didn't work for us, I decided to do some decorating. When you spend many hours of a day in one room, you want it to be cheerful and welcoming!

One thing I knew was that sharing a table was not working. No one seemed to have enough space "of their own!" There was arguing over cleaning up the table ... "that's not mine!" Anyone with kids knows what I mean, I'm sure! lol Also I was having to get their books/notebooks off the bookshelf between each subject. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but often if I wasn't available to get it (working with a sibling,) that child couldn't find their books themselves and so would sit and wait, wasting time. It seemed to me that I was doing a whole lot of hand-holding when my kids didn't really need it. We searched around and found a local school that was downsizing. We were able to get 3 student desks from them! I was thrilled and so were the kids! (I should have grabbed 4 b/c Daniel is going to be schooling with us before we know it!) The desks have worked out wonderfully. Each child can keep track of their own notebooks and supplies. Each child is responsible to keep their own desk clean. Ahhhh. Sweet, sweet, sweet! :) During the week, we keep the desks out in the center of the room. On the weekends, the desks get cleaned off and we push them up against the wall under the chalkboard. That way the room can get used for other things also.

I love our chalkboard. We used chalkboard paint and painted it on the wall. Then this past summer, Garr trimmed it out and added a chalk tray too.

I liked these letters. They are by Eeboo. I strung twine between two nails and used some mini clips to hang them from the twine. They are really beautiful little paintings. The pictures just don't do them justice.

The girls are always moving their desks around :)

You can see our computer table in the far corner. I keep our household filing cabinet and calendar there.

This hall leads into our homeschool room. On this side is our timeline and map.

This side holds our books and games.

Here you can see where the timeline/library hall is off the school room.

In the opposite corner, you can see where I keep our school filing boxes. I will try to do a post about that sometime - how I organize our schooling.

These are the curtains I made for the room. I thought the fabric was fun. We chose the blue for the walls from the blue in the fabric. This was my first time sewing lined curtains and I was really pleased with how they turned out!

Just a little addition to tie them off with :)