Happy 23rd Birthday Grace!

Grace's 23rd Birthday was Sunday, the 8th of March.
We ate her tasty Chocolate cake and "Dirt cake" with the Ostranders and Fultz' after church.

A toothless Yesenia with the Birthday girl.



Dessert! The "dirt cake" is in a real flower pot with gummy worms. :-)


A happy "little" brother with Birthday girl.

A new compact disc by Rescue!! (featuring some awesome human percussion!)

O.K. is THAT big enough for you now?!

The lovely birthday girl!

I'm so thankful to the Lord for you and the gifts and talents that He has given you. You are such an asset to our family, and a blessing to so many people. I pray that God will give you many more years of joy and service for Him.

Love,

Faith

Post to come....

A lot has happened since the last post, and actually there have been several in the making and in draft that have just never gotten to the publishing stage yet, but I hope to get those out here soon. Birthday pictures and a peek into our crazy-fun, quick and adventurous trip to Texas last weekend are up and coming! Stay tuned!

Bird pictures by Josiah

Josiah took the camera outside the other day and came back with these awesome images of birds!


Click on the above image to see what the chickadee has in it's mouth.


Winter hideout.


A lovely silhouette on the power line.

An Impromptu Tea party

(Baby, dressed for the tea)

Last Saturday Grace, Christianna and Faith were suppose to go to a Young Ladies Tea down south somewhere. (anything further than the Palace is "down south" to us) But God had other plans and sent a snow storm, so they stayed home.
Rather then waste all their hard work on the tea goodies, curled hair and pretty dresses finished just for the occasion, they decided to invite the neighbor ladies down for an afternoon tea.

Christianna gets the food ready . . .


Yummy!

Tasty!



The guests arrive, all dressed in their best. So lovely!


Pretty teacups and crystal goblets.


Are you enjoying your tea, ladies?


We are having a lovely time, thank you!



The infamous "green tea!" :-)


We made delightful little bees wax candles after tea. So fragrant!


A bees wax taper. Pretty flowers. Sweet young lady!


This young lady (the pretty one in the green) was a wiz at candle making! She made many beautiful candles and shared them with special people.


Happy friends after the lovely tea.



A group shot of everyone in their finery.

Valentines, Eggs and Seeds

So sorry for being away for so long! Blogger has been troublesome again and I have been away and busy and honestly haven't had many pictures or things to post about but I know that you all are just dying(*dramatically rolls eyes*) to hear and see what has been going on around here so I did my best to scrounge around some pictures(some of which I was not the photographer) and so here you go, with the lovely title of Valentines, eggs and seeds! ~Enjoy =)

We don't normally make any big deal for holidays, especially ones that are so worldly and self centered but we enjoy a good theme now and again to bring a little difference to our lives so on Valentines day Christianna creatively incorporated hearts into our supper meal!

Heart shaped biscuits served with chicken stew, heart shaped jello and heart shaped candies! We talked about cutting the chicken and carrots into hearts but thought that would be a little extreem!

Big Boy, our handsome rooster strutting around the yard.

"The ladies" are doing well and with the little warmer weather we have had have been paying for their keep in a good collection of eggs!

We haven't yet gotten 100% out of the 15 hens but the other day this collection of 13 came in!

We (especially Faith) have been dreaming and drooling over seed catalogs for a while now and finally got our order out last month only to wait in excited anticipation for the arrival of the precious little gifts that Lord willing with spring up, bloom and produce a aboundance of fruit this year! The other day the package finally arrived and to our surprise (it was a new company we ordered from this time) was filled with nearly 100 colorfully designed and labeled packets!

Vegetables and flowers galor! Next up : a basement and porch filled with trays, dirt, spray bottles and florencent lights! Bring it on!!!

Another Sledding Day

The Blog Mistress is back!!! Phew! Took a while there...Faith was on a role with her gardening and chicken posts and I couldn't get a word in edge wise! =) She has done a great job though, hasn't she?

Well, back to current things....

Here are some pictures from our latest sledding adventure. Yes, we did go back to "Suicide Hill" and lived to tell about it again!
The only injuries to talk about are bruised backsides and maybe a couple sore ribs for Faith who was the only one who really took a serious tumble and got her wind knocked out. =O

Besides that we enjoyed a beautiful day with the hill all to ourselves and the wonderful fellowship with friends.

Enjoy!

Upon arriving at the top and seeing how slick the hill looked no one was to keen on being the first to go down.

The brave one. Go Dewey!!


Mr. Shepherd was very courageous on his little saucer.

Thanks to a party that had been there the night before there were some hot coals left in the fire pit and Mr. Reiche got a nice toasty fire going for us!

Christianna and Nicholette...happy as ever!

Staying clear of the bumpy side of the hill us girls found great enjoyment in running the toboggan down the smoother side. [photo credit to Faith]

Here we come!!!

Yahoo!!! Holding on for dear life, screaming to save our lives and having a blast...here we are flying by Mr. Shepherd with the camera.

There we go!

Dad, Faith and Mr. Reiche plowing down the hill.

I went for a quick walk on the trails again wanting to capture some images of a little stream I noticed last time.

How refreshing and beautiful the whispers of flowing water.

Ride 'em cowgirls! The moms and Nic bringing the toboggan down one last time.