Happy Birthday

to Ben and Brad!!

5 years ago these boys were born on Good Friday! This is their first Good Friday birthday since that day.

The boys are excited for their birthday campfire tonight, and party tomorrow night! So happy to celebrate them!

The walk

Funny how you turn the calendar and see stuff that you've committed to awhile back and all the sudden it's right there! The March for Babies is in four weeks, we are excited to be a part of that again, representing Team Miracles. There are several little preemie miracles on our team. 2 of them being the cuties sporting the phillies hats here..

Last year was great, we raised our goal, i think. This year we hope to raise more. If you want to view our page, donate, or read more about March of Dimes and what they do, you can try this link..not sure but you may need to put in my email and password (mradam is password)
http://www.marchforbabies.org/personal_page.asp?pp=3564916&ct=4&w=5215676&u=gingrichtwins

Ben and Brad have a birthday on Friday, so it's a nice time to get excited about supporting this organization and what they do for the tiniest ones. As Dr. Suess says "A person's a person, no matter how small." I love that!

lately

This was a busy week! We wrapped up our parenting bible study here this week, it was a great 8 week time to get together with 2 other couples and discuss our book and pray. The kids played so well together too. There were 9 kids represented at our study.

A good friend of ours is getting married at our place in June! We are excited, i hope her day is special and we can help to make it great for her. We will know a large chunk of the guests coming so we are looking forward to this event.

Easter is coming! We are doing the resurrection eggs again this year, really a neat thing for the boys. They seem to enjoy the Easter story more then Christmas story. I think it's because of all the action - soldiers and voilence ("tell me about Peter cutting off the guys ear") Prayerfully, they are catching the eternal meaning here. We made our one windowsill an "Easter area", Adding things as they make them.

Last Friday we went to an antique auction, a nearby farmer cleared out his barns and everything got sold. We walked away with this old outhouse, it fits in nicely in our orchard!?

it's not really leaning, but apparently i was!

The boys started soccer on Thurs. It's a cute little program called "Upwards" for 4 year olds through grade 5. It's held at the church accross from ours, they have scripture to memorize each week, as part of the program. I hope they like it. Adam scored right as soon as the practice game started. The boys are all on the same team, so they are literally half the team!

When you ask Clay "How old are you?" First he says "No!" Then he says "2!" looks like he's teething some 2-year old fun ones. I thought Grandma might like the hair a little better in this one :) or maybe not now that i look at it...I held a perennial swap this morning and now have lots of new fun bulbs and flowers to plant! This week will be getting ready for 3 birthdays! and our Easter dinner. The weather looks great for next week. Not so much today, but the boys have been outside anyway, PTL. Have a good weekend!

Cookies

These lemon cookies are very good. I love anything with lemon!

Glazed Lemon Cookies:

2 cups flour

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 T grated lemon zest, plus 2 T fresh lemon juice

1/2 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla

In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, and lemon zest. In a seperate bowl, using a mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg, vanilla, and lemon juice and beat until combined. With mixer on low, beat in flour mixture.

Drop dough by heaping tablespoons, 1" apart, onto two baking sheets. Bake at 350 until edges are golden, 15-20 minutes. Transfer to wire rack to cool. Spread cookies with Lemon Glaze and let set.

LEMON GLAZE:

2 cups 10x sugar

2T lemon zest

1/3 cup lemon juice

Mix together. (glaze makes enough for 4 batches of cookies! Can refrigerate extra glaze until needed)

Bike riders

Ben and Brad started riding bike without training wheels tonight! i have to laugh about how it all went down. Ben first said he wanted to do it, so he got his winter gloves (?) and helmet and took off. He rode for 15 minutes in and out the lane, and we were ready to go inside for the night. Brad did not let that slide. He HAD to do it too. NOW. So he grabbed Ben's winter gloves (??) and took off as well! A little bit of competitiveness there. They both did great, it was a fun night.

I love this crew!

Choo-choo tractor

Today was a new experience, a local amish man came with a tractor and 'steamed' our garden!

The purpose of this is to kill off all weeds, and weed seeds and allows for (hopefully) months of a weed free garden. It's an old time thing farmers used to do to their tobacco beds. This farmer built his steamer this year, so it's new for him. Rod's dad lined this up for us.

The boys enjoyed watching and helping shovel dirt around the pans to keep steam from escaping. It took approx. 2.5 hours to do our garden. There were 2 pans, that were laid down for 10 minutes to steam, then they moved them to another section.

Adam had the idea to get our candy thermometer and see how hot it got. We stuck it in underneath the pan and it read 170 degrees. I imagine it was hotter then that. We made hard boiled eggs underneath the pans in 10 minutes :)

Such an interesting experience. This post was titled, Choo-choo tractor because that's what Clay called it! (or in his language - "goo goo gracker")

Yearly pics..

These are Ben and Brad's 5 year pictures and Clay's 2 year. Their bdays aren't till next month but it's so nice out - so why not!? If you haven't cracked the twin code yet, Ben is in all green and Brad in stripes. We had fun walking around our property and the neighbors looking for spots to take pictures.