Getting Ready

A busy and happy evening getting ready for Thanksgiving tomorrow.  Mary helped me make an apple crumb pie and she also helped me arrange some flowers for the table.  She is loving it and I am so enjoying showing her things. I also put together a pumpkin pie.  I am so thankful for a husband and in-laws who love to cook too.  Rich made some fantastic pork ribs to take to a work potluck today and Mary and I had them for lunch.  He also got the turkey ready to roast tomorrow and will be make the stuffing.  It is so great to have Mary help with cooking.  It is truly a family affair!

 

Amish Cousins

We had a visit from my Amish cousins who live in Kansas.  They took a train trip out to California.  They visited with my dad and then they came up North to visit us.  Mary was fascinated by them and they are such sweet, sweet people.  We just felt comfortable with them right away.  Rich and I got to share our love of making bread, cheese, sausage and hams.  They like talking about that a lot.  My one cousin, Harry Wayne loves to make sausage and hams too.  We wished we could get some of the wonderful fresh milk that their cows produce to make cheese with.  We had such a great visit, just telling family stories and laughing and talking.  They are all retired now and their kids are all grown.  They all have big families and love kids, so they got such a kick out of Mary.  

 

For breakfast we went to my sister and brother-in-law's house.  Rich made homemade biscuits and my brother-in-law made gravy and eggs.  I made some sourdough cinnamon rolls.  Rich looked up the verse in Matthew 13:33 in the German Bible that the Amish use and printed it out.  He had told Harry Wayne about our sourdough bread and how in the old Wycliff Bible it said, sourdough instead of leaven in Matthew 13:33.  They thought that was pretty neat.  So he gave Harry Wayne the verse in German and asked if he would like to read it and he did. 

 

They are OK with taking pictures.  Dad had told me that they can have pictures of family members and they can take them too.  Some of them borrowed their kids phones (who are not Amish) for the trip and were able to take some pictures of family.  So I took one of Mary with 2 of my cousins and a video of Harry Wayne reading the Matthew 13:33 scripture.  Mary also drew a picture of them today.  We sure had fun and wished they lived closer so we could see them more often. 

Halloween

We had a fun Halloween. This is the first year we all dressed up. We went to a friend's house and did some Trick or Treating in their neighborhood and had a blast. So many sweet and friendly people. I did a couple slide shows. The last one is Mary and I playing some fun music on the piano.

 

 

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Mary's Birthday

I posted this on Facebook yesterday on Mary's birthday. 

Mary turned 9 today! I feel so happy to be her mom and see her grow. She is truly a gift from God. She has grown so much height wise and being her own person. Mary you are such a help to your folks, clearing the table, making your bed, running and getting things for us, working out in the garden, and learning how to make things. It is so fun doing crafts with you and most of all playing the piano together, making music in our hearts. You are already a great little song writer. Your teacher was so pleased with your Cricket Song and she is teaching you chords to help you write more music. Most of all I love to see you blossom with your walk with the Lord and how excited you were to get your first Bible and I look forward to reading it with you each night. What a precious girl you are to both of us and you make us so very happy!

 

We had a great day of celebrating.  She picked Roadhouse Grill for her birthday dinner.  It was so cute they brought her a coffee filter hat and a ice cream Sunday for dessert and sang Happy Birthday to her.  She got such a kick out of it.  She got some really nice phone calls and lots of lovely cards and gifts in the mail.  So hard to believe at times that our little girl is 9 years old now.

School Work

This is the Fall bulletin board we put together for the school room.

 

We studied George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  We had fun with a flag painting day.  She also made a construction paper head of Washington.  We studies about the founding of our country and the Revolutionary War.

 

We also studied about Johnny Apple Seed.  We learned about who he really was and got poems, stories and songs about him.  Mary wrote a story about him.  Lots of fun!

We also baked an apple pie in his honor.  Mary helped with most of it.

Another snack learning event was making Abraham Lincoln's cabin out of gram crackers, pretzels and wheat thins.  We used peanut butter to cement it all together.

Mary made a construction paper head of Lincoln and learned that is hat served as a brief case for his important papers.  She learned about the Civil War and about Lincoln's life.

This came out wrong and I can't turn the next 2 but they are illustrations Mary did for her 2 stories she wrote about Huck Finn and Johnny Appleseed.  The expression she used in them cracked me up.

The last 2 weeks we have been doing some writing prompts on pumpkins and we have done several craft projects involving pumpkins.  She has been reading some Fall poems.

We made some origami pumpkins and they were enjoyed by all!

Here is poem that Mary wrote about a pumpkin.  I thought it was really good for her age.

Back Yard Camping

A few weeks back we decided to do some back yard camping. Rich wanted to get Mary and our little dog used to camping out in a tent and he figured it would be easiest and most reasonable to do it in our back yard. We are having glorious weather here. We always have Indian summers here with cool nights and warm days. This weekend weather was true to form! After we had made the plans, I noticed it would be one week before the Feast of Tabernacles would be celebrated and we decided that we would do a family devotion teaching Mary about the Feast and what it symbolizes. No, we do not keep the Feasts of Israel or any Jewish Holidays. We just love the symbolism and wanted to share it with Mary and bring out some wonderful scriptures in the Old and New Testament. I have included some still shots and a slide show that gives more explanation of the Feast. It is a fun holiday where people live outside in booths or tents and remember the wandering of the Israelites in the wilderness before coming into the Promise Land. The Feast is very Messianic and it was when the Jews of Christ day had the highest hopes of the Messiah coming to physically rule and reign on the Earth from Jerusalem. One of the practices of the Feast is to wave palm branches and say, Hosana! Also you decorated your tent with the fruit harvested from your land and light your area with beautiful lights. Also on the last day of the Feast water was fetched from the Pool of Siloam and brought to the temple and poured out. This was a symbol of the rain to come but more importantly the out pouring of the Holy Spirit. So we had all of these elements in our camp out and had a time in the evening where had Mary poured water out into a bowl, wave branches and sing, light candles and talk about how living in a tent is like our earthly bodies that will fail and one day we will have a new body and be with the Lord. Also sleeping in a tent makes you more appreciative of your house and all the luxuries we have become so used to.

Flowers and herbs all from our garden

Produce from our garden and some from the store

 

 

This free slideshow created with Smilebox   Here are some scripture references we read during the different activities: The Feast of Tabernacles established: Lev. 23:39-44 The Water being poured out: John 7: 37-38, John 4:13-14 and Isaiah 55 God is our Shelter: Luke 12:22-34 and Isaiah 25:4 Jesus is the Light: John 8:12 and John 1:1-9 Waving the Palm branches: Lev.23:40 and Psalm 27