Friday's Gathering

Last Friday we held a get together with some friends amounting to about 40 people present among only 4 families! We all had a blast, sharing a meal, playing games and ending with singing praises to our Lord as the sun set.


Our newly finished deck was the perfect place and size to hold all of us!


There still was plenty of room to put up more tables and walk around!


All the little people loved to explore our huge play scape!



Sweet little sisters!


The first activity we did was with the parachute. That thing sure has been everywhere! We have used it for years in gym classes and field days!


Game spectators


Sweet little friends!


Next up was our favorite game, water balloon volleyball! Family teams...I guess we had an advantage with all older children but we still missed a balloon and all the other families did a great job playing for their first time!


What a splash! Thanks for taking these last two pictures Emily! Great shot!


The Hayse family.


The Roehrer family.


Christianna and John Hayse


Then we did boys against girls.

and mothers against fathers.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Next up were the field games! Wheel barrel, sack, three leg races!











Ready, set, Go!


Sack racing!


Team work!


Visionary!


Thankfully no one was injured throughout all the races! Three legged race can be pretty dangerous at times! I know from experience! =)


After the official races were done these three decided to try the 4 legged race! Surprisingly they did very well!


Then out came the water balloons!


I don't know if any of the children came out of the "battle" without getting at least a little wet!


After the last water balloon was tossed we all gathered in a circle up on the deck and tried to sing some hymns by memory as we did not have enough song books for everyone. Daniel Bryson played the accordion to accompany us.


What a blessing to fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ!


After the last song was sung and a closing prayer given, out broke the so called "traveling music" and our deck turned into an impromptu dance floor as away they polka-ed! It was a site to see, and not a straight face was to be seen in the whole place!

A hearty thank you to all who came and brought delicious food and we hope you all had as enjoyable a time as we did and thank the Lord for such a wonderful evening of friendship and fellowship with His saints!



~Grace

Fellowship of the Saints

Coming soon....Our weekend gathering with friends!

Flowers

Here are some images of the different flowers that are blooming around our place!

Lily Springs is thriving by the grace of God!

A Daisy/Lily bouquet I made.

Mom's mothers day rose

Sweet peas!! This is the first year we have ever tired to grow sweet peas and really like how the turned out growing up our fence! This really isn't the best picture of them, they are much fuller now and sport about 9 different colors!

Our Hostas along the side of the deck are blooming nicely.

We are never going to buy greenhouse grown Alyssum again! Home grown get so much bigger and fuller and simply smell gorgeous! Faith also started these cute little pansies from seed too.

Sweet honey smelling Alyssum

Growing only from a small base, they spread into bushes of white and purple flowers!

To add to all of our orange lilies that gave us our name, some friends gave us some of these special yellow variety to add to our landscape.

And of course I couldn't live without my daisies so here they are, brought from the other house, in the corner bed of our property.

Birthday Celebrations during the Storm

Wednesday was the day late celebration of Mom and Aunt Carmen's birthday.

The cake was a joint effort. Christianna made it, I (Grace) whipped up the icing and Christianna and Josiah decorated it.

In blew Carmen and Tim and G&G on the wings of the storm that was billowing over us, poring down gallons of rain and a pelting of hail.

The wind was pretty strong too and this is what the back end of the garden looked like after it stopped raining! Check out the corn row on the far side! =O

Josiah, always finding some sort of aquatic creature to befriend.

We were going to have a cookout dinner on our big deck but because of the storm our large garage worked nicely!

Inside we were nice and dry, grilling up delicious chicken kabobs, while outside the storm raged on, thankfully blowing from the north so we could have the garage doors open the whole time!

Birthday girls!

Sorry Tia, I just had to put this one on!

We got Aunt Carmen and Uncle Tim to try our "favorite" sunglasses on!

This is one of mom's gifts. A levitating globe!

Pretty amazing! Magnetically suspended, it is sure to attract a "world" of comments! =)

Happy birthday Mom and Aunt Carmen! May God bless you with many more!

More Pictures

Tuesday evening we enjoyed the blessed fellowship with friends from Church and their son and his family who are starting a Church down in Georgia. Sorry I didn't take that many pictures and unfortunately I accidentally deleted one of their little girl. Anyways...we had a wonderful and uplifting time together and thank the Lord for these brothers and sisters in Christ!


Little Josiah in the sand box


The sports boys! Cade and Josh throwing a ball around.


Noah and Lincoln playing dress up. =)


The two Josiahs!

Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible,

to God who alone is wise,

be honor and glory forever and ever.

Amen.

I Timothy 1:17