Valentines Day

This year we were serving at the Pastor's College Sweetheart Banquet on Valentines Day, so we celebrated it the day before. The boys in the family cooked dinner for all the girls in the family! It was really very sweet... they had roses on the table, everyone helped prepare the food, and there was candles and music. We ladies were blessed... and impressed!!

Jacob arranged the flowers

Ryan helped prepare and plate this wonderful appetizer. It really looks like something out of a magazine.

This was the meal the guys served. Beautiful, and delicious too! Apparently even Matt got in on the action - notice how fancy the carrots are cut? He actually did that!! There is hope for you yet Matt as a gourmet cook!!

Another really impressive thing by Ryan - he actually had seen someone on Food Network make chocolate leaves and he imitated what he had seen and made these beautiful leaves for the top of the chocolate cake!

These weren't made by the boys. This is what Hannah and I did while the boys made dinner. We needed a garnish for the dinner we were serving the next day at church, so Hannah and I marched upstairs to my bedroom, put on North and South (a favorite BBC movie) and we sat on the bed with cutting boards and knives and cut all these radish roses. They garnished Danny's filet very nicely!

Thought for the Week

Thought for the Week -

Delight in Your Children: The Key to Their Hearts
Homeschooling is all about relationships. It's about math and reading and sentence diagramming and geography and all those things too, but all these things amount to nothing in God's eyes if we don't raise children of character ready to tackle big enterprises for the Lord.

If you sometimes feel like homeschooling or parenting is drudgery, you can bet your kids feel the same way. It's such a temptation to stress out over things like teaching predicate nominatives or the steps of division that we forget to delight in our children and make time to enjoy being with them.

(from HEAV - not my own original thought - but it was such a timely reminder for me as we sit at the table struggling over math and reading and science...)

At last - some humor about this snow!!!

Blizzard Number One Part Two

Yep - this is no typo. We are just cleaning up from blizzard number one, and today we are getting "The Sequel"!! We are supposed to get hit with another 10-20 inches today and tomorrow! Luckily, this picture is NOT one of our vehicles...

The other day we were getting a bit stir crazy, so we drove out to our favorite 7-11...

For Danny's addiction!

The kids look more like they are swimming in the snow than actually walking in it.

Danny's car yesterday morning... what a daunting task to clear it out.

We did lose a huge cypress tree in the storm. So far...

Poor Ginger. She can hardly walk in the snow. She made herself this little path to get to the back of the yard and she just follows the path, does her thing, and then comes straight back on the same path!

Blizzard 2010 Part 1

We were hit with more than two feet of snow last night, with 5-8 more inches on the way today. We lost power for some hours during the night (thankfully Danny put a generator on our house so we had partial power for some heat! Thank you honey for such great forethought!) Danny went out this morning to try and snowblow the driveway... to me this picture shows such hopelessness!! haha

Looking out an upstairs window...

Doesn't seem we will ever get the vehicles dug out. (love this shot Hannah!)

Somewhere under there is our pool and deck furniture!!

More to come later...

Snow...again...

We have had more snow this winter than any in a long time. As a matter of fact our snowfall total has exceeded that of my parents. Which, of course, sounds like nothing, until you realize that they live in MINNESOTA!! We woke up to six inches this morning, are expecting another 19-22 inches this weekend, and then more next Tuesday! I do love snow, but I really am sort of feeling like I have had my fill of it.

Our sap is freezing as it drips out. This tube came out of the spicket of course, but still, this just shows how cold it has been here.

I think we would enjoy the snow more if it actually kept Danny home from work (which of course it doesn't) or if it gave us a "snow day" from school, which of course it doesn't. One of the few disadvantages of homeschooling. So... we are looking forward to spring!

Everyday Happenings

During lunch break today Ryan and Jacob snuck out to have a quick airsoft battle. Hannah, my oh-so-talented and sneaky photographer manages to get the best shots of the boys without them ever knowing.

Now this IS a daily happening! Every time you turn around there's Hannah holding one of her three bunnies...

And this is ALSO a DAILY happening. This is a picture of Jacob "doing his math" while I was outside. Hannah snuck out and took a picture through the window of Jacob actually lying down on the bench at the kitchen table... AVOIDING his math rather than doing it!

That time of year again to tap the maple trees for sap! Not a drop so far...

More bunny love

And we can't forget the daily happening of old Ginger, lying around in the yard, looking oh so sweet. Hannah says she looks depressed, but can dogs get depressed?? Who knows.