Our Newly Born Granddaughter

On February 19, our 2nd granddaughter, Kaylee Marie, was born. She weighed 7 lb 1oz and was 20 inches long.
Mom and baby are doing great.
This is the 5th grandchild for Tim and I, but not the last. Our oldest daughter is expecting her 2nd child in July. And I'm sure that one won't be the last one either.

There's always such excitement and anticipation for us as we wait for a new grandchild to be born.
I hope that sentiment never goes away.
And for me, there is always the remembering back to when I was having babies. I think back to the circumstances we were in when each one was born and how I felt, physically and emotionally.
I want to be sensitive to my children's (and their spouses) needs and wishes as they have their children.

Kaylee's 3 siblings, Allen, Natasha, and Titus stayed with us for a couple of days while she was in the process of making her appearance.
The day after she was born we took them to see their new sister. Of course they were excited and after coming back home to Grandma's for one more day and night, all 4 year old Natasha could think about was getting back to her house to be with her new sister.

Raised Bed Gardening

This year we are making some raised beds for our garden. Jordon is building them with what he would consider the second best design. He would like to build them to set up off the ground on posts. But I talked him into setting them on the ground so that we don't have to haul in so much dirt.

The soil where we need to plant has too much clay in it. So we are mixing other dirt, manure, and compost together to fill the raised beds.

He has decided to make the beds chicken proof.  (Sounds good to me. Then we won't have to have the chickens penned up as much this summer.)
It is basicly a small hoop house with chicken wire instead of greenhouse plastic. Although he is going to use greenhouse plastic when it's cooler.
Instead of buying pvc pipe, Jordon bought a heavy duty, flexible, plastic tubing called Pex Coil to use for placing chicken wire over.
He built the main raised bed frame. Then he built a smaller frame, attaching the coil and chicken wire to it. He will fasten the smaller frame onto the main bed with hinges in order to be able to open it.

I think it is a rather ingenious idea.
He is doing a fantastic job.

Now I have to decide what to plant, and how much.

Abigail's 14th Birthday

My oh my! Where does the time fly off to?!
Saturday we celebrated our youngest daughter's 14th birthday.
Always just a simple celebration with the birthday girl's choice of the meal and dessert.
And sometimes a few little gifts.
My prayer for Abigail is that she grows into a Godly young woman who loves and serves her savior, Jesus Christ, with all her heart according to the commands of His Holy Word.

We are fans of the Piano Guys.

Boaz's 11th Birthday

The baby of the family turned 11 last Thursday. We had a little hotdog roast for him, with everyone's favorite dessert, Dirt Cake, complete with gummy worms.

For more on Boaz's birthday:
http://laurelscrazylife.blogspot.com/2012/10/boazs-birthday.html

Our Dog Gets Babied Today.

Sunday I noticed that our dog, Tayla, was limping and having a real hard time putting weight on her right foreleg. She couldn't even climb up the front steps of the house where she likes to lay in front of the entry door.
Jordon said she had a tumble down a hill and it seemed she must have pulled a muscle up at the shoulder.
This morning, I was looking at the rain coming down on this cool (60*) first day of October and I saw her in the back yard underneath an unfinished chicken tractor (roof, but no sides), shivering.
I don't know why she won't go into her roomy warm dog house.
I took her some food along with some fresh milk, but she just laid there, not interested.
So I took pity on her and had one of the boys carry her into the utility room to recover where Boaz can pamper her.

He put all his jackets down for her to lay on and a bath towel on her for a blanket; much to Johanna's disapproval. It was her towel.
I told her it would wash.

One condition had to be met for her to stay in the house.

The dreaded bath!

After the bath with someone else's bath towel.

Ice Skating

I took the kids ice skating the first week of September.
On certain days, homeschoolers get a discount.
It's still early in the season, so when we went, we practically had the whole rink to ourselves.
There were only a couple of people on it besides our skating group, which consisted of Johanna, Jordon, Laurel, Levi, Abigail, Boaz, TJ and  Rachel with Natasha and Allen, and Tori and Grant Pine.

Like always, they had fun but were also worn out by the end of the day.

They have these neat little scooters for the little ones.

Dancing

Last Saturday, we went to a dance in celebration of our friend Alex's birthday. This was the first time any of our family has been to a dance, but we all had a lot of fun!
Before we went we decided to grab a couple pictures while we were all dresses up.

This is Levi being..............Levi.

Before the dance we had a lovely dinner of BBQ. It was very good.

Logan eating a brownie.

Nathan

This was the Scottish Polka. Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures of the other dances.

Anna

Olivia and Johanna

Rachel and I

Independence Day

We celebrated Independence Day at the Smith's this year. We did a lot of fun stuff, like, play volley ball, play volley ball, and play volley ball. :)

  And some people just sat and watched us play volley ball.

  Later in the evening we sang hymns. We sang until most people couldn't see the pages. I could still see, but others couldn't.They did shoot off a few fireworks when it was dark. And they even shot a cannon.

We had a pretty good day. 

Garrett's first birthday

Saturday we celebrated Garrett's first birthday. He doesn't actually turn one until Wednesday. But it worked best to do it on Saturday because Gabriel's mom and two of his siblings are here and they will be leaving tomorrow. We also had TJ's family over.
He got little cupcakes.

Waiting for his cake.

A spoon will suffice for the time.

"Ohh, what is this? Let me touch it. "

Elise had to hold his hands because he really wanted to touch the burning candle.

He wasn't sure what to think about everyone singing to him.

Now, what to do with this cupcake?

After they had him taste it he figured it out pretty quick.

This is the good stuff.

Of course there were gifts, but we didn't get many good pictures. He had fun tearing the wrapping paper though. :)

Last week of May

So, these are pictures that I wanted to post the other day, and obviously, it didn't happen.
We got a couple bushels of peaches and had to get those put up.

The mess.

We decided that we would just freeze all of these ones. We will be getting more later on that we will can. But we like to have a lot of frozen peaches for smoothies!

Weeding the garden. I think these were taken about two weeks ago.

The big little man. Such a ham! His first birthday is on Wednesday! Can you believe it? We will be celebrating tomorrow evening though.

He is learning to walk now. He will take a couple of steps, and the last step he throws himself forward to reach his destination.

Wild roses come with June. So pretty.

One of Gabriel's cows had a calf.

It's cute. But then, aren't they all.