four years

Four years ago, our little Rose entered the world–three months early.  It seems like a looooooooong time ago that our God, our family,  and our friends surrounded us and supported us and carried us through one of the most challenging and scary times of our lives.  In some ways the memories are incredibly fresh and in other ways it seems like it happened to someone else.  We are unable to fully express our gratitude for this little angel.

She’s spunky, feisty, smart as a tack, adventurous, daring, funny, inquisitive, and (as the months go on) as sweet as a summer sunset.  We are incredibly grateful for each of our three girls, and each one has their own miracle story as to how they entered our family, but yesterday we celebrated God’s goodness to us in the miracle of Rose.

Happy 4th birthday, precious Rose.  You are truly our miracle girl.

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summer gold

As our official summer is quickly winding down, I decided to try to preserve a little summer gold to enjoy for the next few months.  There’s a cute little farm stand around the corner, and I’ve been meaning to try some of their corn.  I bought a dozen ears on Friday, and found out it wasn’t that difficult to blanche and freeze it, so I went back the next day and purchased these.

That’s 60 ears of corn, people!  I may have gone a little overboard.

It didn’t take too long to husk it.

Then I blanched it and cut it off the cobb.  By this step I was a  little bit weary, but the girls were playing beautifully together and G was busy on a home improvement project with our bathroom, so I kept going.

Whew!  I don’t think I’ll attempt this much on my own for a while, but I’m glad I did it.  It will be so worth it in a few months when we can pull out a bag of corn from the freezer and taste a little bit of summer.

So, if you need me, I’ll probably be in the basement staring at my 29 bags of yellow gold.

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one month ago . . .

 . . . we were on vacation at Lake Michigan, taking turns being sick.  It’s taken me a month to get updated on the pictures.  Here’s a few from our fun at the splash pad.

It’s been a reeeeeally busy month, and now that we are getting close to our fall schedule I hope to be able to keep up with this blog a little better.

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huh?

This morning, while suffering from some major bed-head, Rose said,

“I can’t hear when my hair is in my eyes.”

“Huh?  Did you say you can’t hear?”

“Oh.  I mean I can’t see when my hair is in my eyes.”

Well, for a minute there I thought she had really misunderstood all of my mini-lessons on the five senses.   Aren’t my little ones lucky that they have a former  teacher for a mommy?

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ooo-la-la! it’s party time!

Today we had a Fancy Nancy party for the little ladies.  We had planned to have it at a local park, but the weather was against us, so we got super cozy in our home and had an incredibly loud fun time!  Here’s a sneak peek.

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missing in action

So this little blog has been incredibly lacking lately.  It’s certainly not for lack of things to report.  One of the reasons is that we’ve been doing a lot of traveling.  I mean a WHOLE lot.  In fact, over the last 10 days we have been on the road for 23 hours!  I can hardly believe it.  We’ve made lots of fun memories, and this coming week will be just as busy at home so I probably won’t post a real post for several more days.  We’re finally home for good, but for now I’m tired and I have lots of laundry to put away.   See you in a few more days with some pics from our last few weeks.

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blue beauties

It’s been about 3 summers since we’ve had the chance to pick blueberries.  We have always included it as part of our vacation on Lake Michigan since that side of the lake is full of blueberry farms.  We weren’t able to pick them for the past two summers, so we made sure to make it part of this year’s plan.

We planned to pick blueberries on Friday morning, and of course there was a HUGE thunderstorm that moved through the area during Thursday night drenching the entire area.  It wasn’t raining in the morning so we decided to give it a go.  I’m glad we did, but we were all reeeeeally wet after the fun.

G is a master blueberry picker.  Must be in his blood since his dad spent several summers picking cherries while he was growing up.  My man can fill up a bucket of blueberries in the time it takes the rest of us to fill up another one.

The little ones got bored after about 30 minutes, and they decided to fight play with the wagon instead.

Pendo is not as big of a fan of actually picking the blueberries.  It’s much more fun to eat them straight from the bush.

This sweet little lady was the one running the show the morning we were there.  I had to bite my tongue to keep from offering to do it for her.  She just looked so sweet and frail.

It took us about an hour to collect our two big bags of blueberries.

Oh. . . do I have plans for these guys!  We kept talking about all the delightful treats we would make with them.

Blueberry pancakes, muffins, smoothies, blueberry crisp, coffee cake, waffles, and other yummies are in our very near future.

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catching up

I haven’t felt like blogging for awhile.  LOTS has been happening over here in our corner of Michigan, but for some reason I just wanted to take a break from blogging.  Probably the only one who noticed is my mom who likely checks this blog at least twice a day.  🙂  Gotta love a mama.  I’ll do the same thing with whatever technology my girls are using in the next few years.  Anyway . . . we’re still here.   We did take our annual family trip to Lake Michigan last week.  We look forward to it alllllllll year, especially in the deep, dark, middle of winter.  Each summer we stay in the same town and plan out all the things we will do there, and this year something unexpected happened.   Aunt Mel and the five of us arrived on Sunday afternoon, and by Monday at 7:30 am G was covered with vomit.  Yep, Rose had the pukes.  This didn’t bode well for our 5 days of vacation.  Sure enough, it moved through each and every one of us.  What a bummer!  At least it was a 24 hour thing, but we didn’t all have it in the same 24 hour period.  It was really hard to keep a good attitude and not feel sorry for myself, but I tried.  We did have fun and were able to do pretty much all we had planned, but G, Mel, and I took turns staying home with whatever girl was sick at that moment.  I’ll post some pictures of our beach fun soon, but for now . . . something different.

Have you heard of these bikes?

They are balance bikes.

They don’t have pedals, and the thought behind them is that the hardest part of learning to ride a bike is learning to balance.  The pedaling part is actually easy once you learn to balance, so this kind of bike helps you learn to balance at a much younger age.  You can go right to a bike without needing training wheels.  G first told me about these a couple of months ago.  We researched it a lot, went to a bike store and had the girls try them out, searched online for a good deal with free shipping, and took the  plunge.  Both little ladies got one for their birthday, and they LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE them!

They have both made big strides and are balancing on them for short periods of time.  I bet Rose will have it down pat by the time the cold weather arrives.  We are really glad we got them for the girls and would recommend them to most kids.  A bit of bravery is a necessity, so it might not work for all little ones, but we are big fans.

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