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.

Winter project

This winter i worked on making a soup cookbook. It took a couple months of cooking the soups, picture taking, and designing the pages. I like shutterfly's new photo book format for this. But they didn't offer spiral binding. So i did that seperately at Copy max. That adds a nice touch.

It's a 5x7... I took these shots at night, they are a little dark.

Here's are a few favorites. I think there are 19 different soups in all:
i thought maybe you'd be able to see the recipe itself if you wanted to try one. sorry if it's not big or clear enough.

Summer-like day!

(These were taken today, not last July!)

The boys have been asking for the sprinkler for 3 days now and today i let them. They seemed to get used to it, after gasping for air for the first little while.

Clay had no problems getting used to it. We also got some mushroom mulch today for the garden. We've heard good things about this stuff. I'm ready for my peppers to be bigger then a clemetine!

Not excatly sure what all is in mushroom mulch, but we certainly took baths after they coated themselves in it :)

A fabulous day spent outside! i do need to work up my endurance though for full time outdoor work and playtime.

These two...

The boys just love playing w/ our neighbor. She's been coming over now for around 4 years and has developed good relationships with the boys, especially Adam. They play so well together and have a bond. it's nice for Adam to have someone older then him around. He says he going to marry her :) They can get to fighting too. Recently after one of their tifs, Adam says to me- "Mom, i don't like having a sister!" Um, Adam, you don't have sister. It just feels that way sometimes! She comes over quite often, and we include her in our everyday life. If it's time to do some chores, she does them too. If we feel like hopping in the car and going somewhere, she'll come along. She raids the fridge and asks what's for dinner just like everyone else. I have her soccer games on my calendar, and Rod fixes her bike. It's been good all around for many different reasons. We're thankful for this time with her. We know it won't be long until she's out of the house, they grow up so fast. I do sound like she's ours, don't I??

Ben

Back in the summer, Ben was diagnosed with Lyme Disease. He had a suspicious looking bite along w/ terrible flu like symptoms. After 10 days of antibiotics he was fine and we were told that meant the lyme was gone.

This winter i got us all tested for Lyme, since i know deer ticks are on the loose around here. I didn't want it to be in anyone's system w/out us knowing (which is typical for Lyme disease), so i needed peace of mind that none of the other kids had it. We all got tested (except Clay) and here Ben's came back "very positive". That threw us for a loop, as we thought we'd taken care of that over the summer. Now we are treating it again and he'll need to get tested again in a couple months.

We are learning a lot about this disease and the way the doctors handle it. Ben needs to be treated for months now because it's been in his system so long, but he'll likely be able to get rid of it. I have a good friend who's had Lyme for 20 years and she's been coaching me through this. Doctors are NOT allowed to treat Lyme as a long term disease which is why Ben wasn't given longer treatment back in the summer, even though he needed longer treatment to get rid of it. We are now going to a Lyme Literate Doctor, who treats Lyme the way it should be. They don't take insurance, so they have the freedom to do more for this disease and not get in trouble for it!

I'm just so grateful that God prompted me to get this bloodwork done. It's not characteristic of me to do this, we don't go to the Dr. much and we let most things take care of themselves. So the fact that i was proactive in getting this test, tells me that God was looking out for our Benny boy. We are believing Ben will be healed.

Please don't be afraid to come to our house now! And if you are, just hold off coming in June and July, the worst tick months.

I see a unique family tradition in our future. Once a year getting pricked for bloodwork, then hitting the McDonalds across the street to make it all better :)

Must watch

I just got done watching a video. I just might never think about myself ever again....Take the time to watch this, (without your young children), it's 29 minutes long, raising awareness for Invisible Children.
Here is the link

I'll be following this story.

Science project: "naked egg"

as usual, i found this idea online and thought it looked interesting enough to try....

Place an egg in a glass and cover with apple cider vinegar...(it's ok if a floats to the top and a little of the egg is exposed).

Let it set there for 18-24 hours. The shell may already have started to come off, or at this point you could run it under water and basically carefully rub off the shell. you are left with this!

how strange!