Andrea was excited to earn a third place ribbon for her “Strawberries” picture at The Elkhart County Parks Photo Contest! Her photography is really improving.
Bragging on Andrea
Category: Photography
Inauguration 2017
Today we watched the inauguration of President Trump. We turned on the news early and are still listening and watching everything that is going on. I have enjoyed listening to the children’s discussions on everything leading up to the swearing in and then President Trump’s speech.
Jump in Puddle Day?
Today is “national jump in puddle day and splash your friends day.” Enjoy it if you can find unfrozen puddles!
Ready for Hiking
I am ready for a good back packing trip. Since Mark was a newborn, we have often taken the kids out for challenging vacations. As the kids grow older, Allan keeps looking for new places to take us. When Mark was seven, Andrea almost five, Audrey just three and we were waiting for Adrian, we went to Glacier National Park for a week of back country hiking.
The older two had to walk all of the way and Audrey did a fair amount of hiking herself. We slept in a tent and ate dehydrated food all week. We played in ice cold mountain rivers and explored bear country.
(It is cold outside, and I am daydreaming of a good hike with the family. I wonder where we should go?)
Candy Cane Seeds
For Christmas this year, the family was surprised with an envelope from Santa on Christmas day. In the envelope was a candy cane seed kit!
It was a pretty neat kit. There were six seeds, but only five came up. There was also white and red fertilizer and soil. The seed packet said that the seeds were very rare and only grew in perfect conditions, so I am glad that Santa shared some with us this year.
We supplied our own bowl and used the bag the soil came in to cover the seeds like the directions said. If we receive candy cane seeds again, we would use a deeper bowl since the full grown candy cane plants all fell over so we do not know how tall they would have grown if they had the chance. We were hoping the canes would flower and grow new seeds, but once they fell over, we were afraid they would not be so nice.
The kids thought the candy canes were really good. They decided that candy cane seeds must be related to bamboo since they grew so quickly. Megan said North Pole candy canes tasted more pepperminty and they thought they had a cleaner, fresher taste.
Bubble Weather
It has been very cold out, but we have been enjoying going out and playing with bubbles. Yesterday we were out for hours, experimenting as the day warmed up slightly. We also used different bubble solutions and different ways to blow bubbles. It was a fun science experiment!
We even had fun destroying the frozen bubbles.
If you click on a thumbnail, you can see a larger sized slideshow of the pictures.
Perfect Posing
This is why I often let the kids pose themselves for pictures. After spending most of the weekend playing light saber games, these are the perfect pictures to remember the weekend playing with friends.
New Year’s Weekend
When we came back from Swaziland trying to earn support to return, we started in a new Sunday School class and needed to find friends. We mentioned something along the lines of we would love to visit with people. We only had a few people take us up on that offer.
Dave and Kristi have been our friends ever since. Our children became friends as they came along also. On New Year’s Eve, we spent the evening at church, playing laser tag, watching a magician and being thankful that we could all be together. Megan was so exhausted she fell asleep early and slept most of the evening.
The rest of the weekend was spent talking, playing games, and just discussing how God has been working in our lives. It was a great weekend!
And I learned one very important lesson. Since we did not really know what was happening New Year’s Eve, I left my camera at home and ended up using Allan’s phone camera. The pictures are not great, but the memories are.
Christmas Play
My kids were all part of a Christmas play this year. Audrey and Adrian were both wise men. Megan got to be a scribe. Mark worked on lights and sound and Andrea helped where needed.
It was a lot of work but they did well memorizing their parts. They enjoyed getting to know the children at church better during the rehearsals. All of them enjoyed performing the play and did a great job!
Merry Christmas!
Enjoy celebrating Jesus’ birthday!
“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” Luke 2: 11-14