12th birthday fun!

 We had such a great time celebrating Micah's birthday! A few days before he and Silas found a Holland lop rabbit that he wanted to buy for Micah on craigslist. It was a fun trip an hour down south with my boy hearing all of his rabbit plans. Micah is wanting to get in on rabbit breeding with Silas and the two of them have quite a little business going .

The rabbit he picked up is perfect for their plans!

And Micah loved him too! He named him Hobbes.

We had big plans for his birthday. We were going to go canoeing and kayaking as a family and Micah wanted to do ton of fishing. But that day it decided to rain.

So we had to get creative. Brenna came up with a Bass pro scavenger hunt for us. We divided up into three teams.

Then we had to go around the store, taking pictures and marking things off of our list.

It was so fun!

Then we had a Burger King lunch together🙂🙂

It really was a great day celebrating our boy. We are so proud of the godly young man he is becoming! He makes us look good!

 As a side note, one of the things Micah loves to do is to create his own birthday cake for me to make for him. This year he wanted a vanilla cake in a bundt pan and then the center filled with chocolate ice cream. Then top the whole thing with a homemade chocolate ganache and crushed Oreos. It was good!

Starting to change!

 We are so excited to say that things are happening at the new building! Things are starting to change! The drive-thru portico has gone up and they are getting ready to brick it out. It was so wonderful to see things moving. We are so ready to be in this new building!

YouTube?

 We have had so much fun learning and growing with Storybook Farms. We created a page for our farm on Facebook and Instagram. We create little videos of what's going on. Always something happening,that's for sure! Well, we recently decided that since we are already making little videos we might as well post them on YouTube, too! Our channel is StorybookFarms. So if you'd like to go there and check it out, I think you'll find cute videos of cutesy animals. 😊😊😊

https://youtu.be/vr-aRJgygNI?feature=shared

Trip down south Part 2

 We were so thankful that my parents rescued us and we were able to get back to their house. Freedom was excited to see a little treasure my parents had picked up for her to play with while she was there!

And we always love to go on golf cart rides while we are there!

My parents took us out to eat that night. We all had so much fun. Just sitting and chatting and being together.

Freedom and Asa love their great grandparents!

Then, after a long day we were ready for bed! Actually that's not true. We stayed up way too late playing and talking and snacking. I just love being at my parents house and so do my kids and grandkids!

The next day we went to a Model A picnic. My parents are part of a really cool Model  A club. The people drive their antique cars and get together and just have a great time.

This picnic was at the Franklin Locks. This is a place I used to go to when I was a kid. It's changed a bunch but it sure did bring back a lot of memories!

Mom gave us lots of pampering! As usual. She's such a good mother/ grandmother!

The next day before heading back home we went to Duck Donuts. We love that place!

I love the chats we were able to have and the precious time we spent together.

And just like that our trip was over too quick. So glad we were able to go down for a bit!

 

A trip down south... part one

 I miss my parents. Bunches and bunches. Even though they only live about four and a half hours south of me, it's easy to get so busy and time passes too quickly. And like I said, I'm missing my parents! I was so thankful that I could take a quick trip down south to spend a couple days with them. It made it even more fun that Beth and Brenna wanted to come along. And it made it even more and more fun that Brenna brought Asa and Josh and Tabitha let me bring Freedom! The five of us had such a great time together!!!

We decided to stop at Sam's along the way for lunch. Do you know how cheap you can eat there?

And did you know how amazing their frozen yogurt is??

After a great lunch I let one of the girls drive so I could sit in the back with my grandbabies. Of course they quickly fell asleep.

After a while it was my turn to drive again. The kids traveled so good together! 

Then it was time to get off on the exit to my parent's house!! There was quite a backup for the light to get off and we waited for a very long time in slow traffic to get off the ramp. When it was our turn to go I noticed the car started running really, really hot and Brenna noticed a stream of fluid flowing out of Beth's car. I quickly got over and we sat on the side of the road waiting for the car to cool off.

When I felt it was cool enough for us to try again, we pulled onto the road and it started getting hot all over again. So we scooted right into the gas station and pulled over. I'm so thankful we were only 10 minutes from my parents house! Isn't that just like the Lord?? My dad came to our rescue with jugs of water. But he quickly realized that there was a crack in the radiator.

He called the tow truck for Beth's car and we all piled into his truck. Honestly, the piling into his truck part was quite fun! We were just so excited to be together!

 It's amazing to see how the Lord protected us all along the way! He's so good. And we had a wonderful time with my parents , but that was just the beginning!

Easter fun

We love to celebrate Easter! The resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is a day that deserves celebration and reflection. He is so good to us!!

Every year we enjoy coloring Easter eggs. This year was a little on the different side. The two weeks prior we had flu B go through our entire family. It was very rough! Coloring eggs took a little more effort and our brains weren't fully there yet. But we enjoyed it!

The kids got quite creative.

I decided to do an egg marking our anniversary this year. I can't believe Patrick and I will celebrate 30 years this July!

Then it was time for Easter dinner after a wonderful resurrection Sunday. It was so good to have our family around the table together with a ham dinner.

But Tabitha and I were talking... We realize something quite odd. We put a whole lot of emphasis on Christmas. Which I think we should. There's no going back on that for sure! That is the day we celebrate the birth of our Savior. But really it's a month-long celebration all of December. But Easter? Easter may be a week-long celebration for us. But that's the day we celebrate that our Savior rose up from the dead! That's the day that proves Jesus was  the Messiah. It's a huge day! Why do we only give it a week? So next year we will put more emphasis on this day. Making plans and thoughts and now for it! God is so good to us and I'm so thankful He arose!

 

Scottish Tea

Beth's next book has a character from Scotland. He's quite an interesting fellow that Beth has created. She's been doing lots of research into Scottish traditions and customs. While doing this research she discovered that a Scottish tea is quite different than an English tea. She decided it would be fun to host a Scottish tea with some of her friends and experience it!

It was a beautiful setup that she created! She brought out all of her silver service wear and tried to add pops of purple which happened to be her favorite. She also added in some keys which happens to be the theme of Heart of Purity Literature. The tablescape turned out very beautiful!

Her and Lena spent several hours baking and baking and baking.

They made clotted cream and baked cream buns. She also made scones and potato tatis. There was fruit and meat sandwiches and lots of cheese. It was so delicious!

She also had trivia and conversation starters. The conversation was definitely lively and we had so much fun and giggled a ton!

It was such a beautiful afternoon, a beautiful, delicious Scottish tea, and wonderful friends!