My Garden!

Just a few things out of my garden this year!
Dwayne has built me this most awesome fenced in garden with
a cute little gate. I am learning a few things this year,
like next year I will not plant pumpkins, because they have
taken over my garden. Plus, I really need to get in and keep it weeded. I am really enjoying my tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and the occasional green bean. I should have enough today to make a small batch of salsa, with even my own home grown cilantro.
I am so grateful to Dwayne for building me the garden,
so that no rabbits could invade it.

Marching Band!

Band Season!
I have 3 kiddos in band this year and they are doing great!
I love being involved with the band and helping out. I have many years ahead of me in band. I am not a musically talented person, but I love watching my family perform. We are still waiting to see what Tobi is going to do, but I am thinking she may go into guard, which would be a new world for me. This year Sari is the Drum Major, which has to be a proud moment for Dwayne, because he was a Drum Major as well. Brighton is playing Baritone and is doing well with it. Dora is doing well in her first year of marching band playing Trumpet. She is the shortest one out there, but she keeps up well with everyone.

A Great Weekend!

I have begun on my sewing projects. After taking lunch to my band kiddos, I started working on new re-enacting clothes for Tobi, I got a new bodice and skirt cut out for her. I also did some cleaning on my sewing desk to make it easier to work on projects that are up coming. Brighton definitely needs a new wool coat and a new work shirt. After dinner with Brighton and Dora, Dwayne and I went over to our friend's house to hang out and I took along my sewing basket. It is so easy to sit and chat while I take out stitches, so I took out stitches on two items for Tobi since she as grown so much this year. It was so nice to sit out on our friend's back porch, enjoy conversation, and the wonderful view at their house. We hung out for a couple of hours, traded humorous stories, and shared our views on different subjects concerning God. I love talking about God, I love thinking outside the normal box that people try so hard to put God in, being with people who want to serve and grow in Christ, and who just need to relax on a beautiful night that God has given us to enjoy.

Sunday morning brought church and it is my Sunday to run our visual part of church. I went in early to finish up some of my slide presentations. I love working in the audio visual department of our church. This is just awesome to me! This past week, I also did the visual and the audio for Vacation Bible School, which was a stretch for me, since I don't normally do the audio side. I love learning the new stuff. At church today, we actually had a power outage half way through the first service, but it happened during the offering and the open worship time. So, although Satan could have been messing with our worship service and try to mess with us, God redeemed it during the perfect time that it did not mess too much up for the church service. We were able to quickly bring everything back up to what was needed to push the service out online. In case anyone is ever looking for a church service online, check out www.farmlandfriends.org on Sundays. I work the visual slide shows every first and third Sundays of the month. I really love working this area. I would work it more often, but I need to give other people a chance to serve as well. Today was also important to me, since Dwayne was talking about his trip to Kenya. It was a wonderul service about traveling to different countries for missions. I know my kiddos all want to travel to different countries to serve God and I am excited for that. Even though I have not felt the call to go to another country on a mission trip yet, today I really wanted to go to another country to adopt a child. Some day I see our family adopting children from other cultures and loving them, but not sure when it will come to true. I am grateful for the good weekend. Dwayne got more work done on his woodworking workshop out in the garage, I got some work done on my sewing and listening to Mars Hill church sermons, the kiddos worked on band stuff and got to relax, and to finish the weekend off we will be heading over to my grandparent Wright's house to celebrate their 75th Birthdays. I can't wait to see what we get done this next week!

Time To Sew...

Kids grow, we all know this, but this year I am really noticing it. I make all of our re-enacting clothes and Tobi is showing me that it looks like it is time for some new clothes.

Things are just looking short on her this year. I might be able to get away with some short skirts and chemises, but I am thinking at least one outfit that is longer is going to be wise at this point. Just wait until Dora gets home from band and tries on her clothes, that will be another new outfit probably. And what are the chances that any of Brighton's clothes fit from last year?? Not very good...lol. Yep, I really have some sewing to do and I am excited about it!

My Christmas gift

I really had planned to slow down on my reading and to get busy with other things in my house, but then my wonderful hubby got me a Kindle for Christmas. I didn't even know I wanted one and now I am trying to remember how I lived without one...lol. To have a book always at my fingertips, never having to wait til I go to town to buy one, to be able to increase the text size so that I can read while I am doing other things, this thing is just amazing! My hubby really does spoil me.

Reading!

I have been reading. I have been reading way too much. I have put off important things that need to be done, just to lose myself in a book. I really love to read, I can read the longest books in just a day or two. My husband has been very understanding, and I really appreciate that. I think I am finally coming to the end of my constant reading, and I actually want to do something that produces results that everyone can see. There was a time in my marriage that my husband actually had to strongly recommend that I not read, it was way back when my 2 oldest were much younger. I would not even look at books, I had to train myself to not even wonder what wonderful stories were out there that I might be missing. Then as the kids got older, I started reading some of the books they were reading, like Harry Potter and Twilight. I proved I was capable of doing both, reading and taking care of my family. Yet, lately, I have retreated into my constant reading stage, you would think I know better. So, I am going to work on other stuff today and try not to read much. One good thing from my love of reading, is that I have always highly encouraged my kiddos to read, and they are all big readers. I hear parents complain about their kiddos not reading and I don't say anything, this has never nor will it ever be a problem for me.

Life got messed up...

So, we had a great time in Goshen. It was a little frustrating setting our stuff up in the rain, but we pulled together and with some help form our re-enacting buddies we got it all set up and we all slept in the main tent that first night. It was chilly and rainyish on Friday, so the school kids came a little later. There were no battles, because not enough indians showed up across the way for us to fight against. That was fine, the guys showed the students the guns and how they shot, explained pirate life and I even showed them how to keep a fire going with my cool blow tube. I got my picture in the Elkhart newspaper even...so cool! We even got to do a tiny bit of shopping and met a new guy that sold the coolest pewter buttons. We invited him to come visit our camp and he enjoyed biscuits and gravy with us Saturday morning. By the end of the weekend we had bought $30 worth of buttons, but they were so cool. Saturday was still chilly and had bits of rain, but we got some visitors which was really nice. Sunday was just a positively beautiful day!! The sun was out and it was warming up. This was great because it made packing up so much easier. I will try and post some pictures from the weekend soon.

Then Monday happened! Like so many Mondays after a re-enactment, we were all tired, so I let the kiddos sleep in until 7am instead of getting them up at 6:30am and just planned to take them to school. Sari left in her car to head off to school while I got the kiddos ready to take. Dwayne had some extra work that needed to be done, so he was staying home as well. Then came the phone call, the call you really never want to get, a police officer telling you that your child has just been in an accident and you need to come and be with her. We all loaded up into the van, not knowing what to expect, it was not pretty, the whole front of the car was totalled and my darling daughter was covered in blood, but she was walking. She had done some serious damage to her mouth, she knew it was her fault, she was upset and sorry, but from what we could tell no one was seriously hurt, no one left the scene with the ambulance. After chatting with the EMT, we decided to take Sari to the dentist to have her mouth looked at. Getting home we decided her nose needed to be looked at as well, we went off to to a walk-in clinic and discovered that yes, she did have a broken nose and a nice gash in her chin that needed stitched up and then went off to the dentist. One look at her and he sent us off to the emergency room because he said the jaw was definitely broken and there was nothing he could do. One cat scan later proved that her jaw was broken in 3 areas which sent us off to Indy to another doctor because there was no one at Ball hospital that could help us. We got lost trying to find the hospital we were suppose to be at, we finally got there and you could tell they were waiting very excitedly for Sari, they were IUPUI students and they were ready to tackle this broken jaw. The 2 students we got, quickly put Sari to ease, the female doctor was foreign, we are thinking German, was Sari's absolute favorite, but the male doctor was very nice trying to explain things to me. I laugh, because each time we go in, they still call me mom instead of by my name. They tried to close her jaw that day in the office, but it could not be done without causing too much pain, so we went back on Wednesday for her to be put under and have it closed. She has now had her jaw wired shut for just over 2 weeks and has 4 more weeks to go. We go back to the office each week to have her looked at, where she gets to see her favorite doctor. The liquid diet she is on is hard, but she is keeping up good spirits through it all and I am very proud of her. Dwayne has joined her on her diet, which is very good of him, but very hard on him. I am struggling with even wanting to cook, so I am looking into more soup like recipes. I am sure my family will be tired of soup, but oh well, we are all trying to show the best support that we can.

So, this has kind of set us back some. We have some serious bills to be paying off, but such is the way of life. We are just glad that Sari is healthy and alive. Life is finally settling back down into a regular routine for us. It has been nice to see God's hand in all this, a very good reminder to us, since sometimes you can forget that God has His hand in your life at all times.