A Good Reminder

 My gardenia bush is blooming. It is my absolute favorite smelling flower. 

A couple of times I have found gardenia blossoms waiting for me. In the seat in my car.  By the chair where I am sitting. My husband wants to show his love to me. Each time it makes me smile. And I feel very loved. 

It's a good reminder to me. It's not always the huge gifts or major events that make people feel the most loved. It's the little things, like making eye contact when you say I love you, turning down the bed for you when you are about to climb in, writing a note that encourages you, and blossoms of your favorite flower. 

I want to be like that. I want to be intentional and make sure my loved ones know they are loved. My intent is to do more of that on purpose. Life is too short to be too busy. 

Ladies Conference

I love being a Pastors Wife. I really really do. One of the things I enjoy is being able to be with the ladies of VSIBC. They are amazing! They inspire me to want to live for Christ and be closer to Him. That's some good friends, for sure!

We were excited to attend a Ladies Conference hosted by Calvary Baptist in Middleburg.

The speaking, by Mrs Sylvia Wells was so good! She spoke on topics that directly relate to ladies today. It was a blessing!

The games were so much fun! Our ladies are quite competitive!

And the food was amazing!! 

It was just a great time all around and I'm so thankful we could go!

 

Shooting his rocket

Micah was so excited to be able to shoot off his rocket he got for his birthday. Some great friends of ours have some property that they let us go there so he would have plenty of area to shoot it. The first few times were a dud but then he was able to shoot it really high in the air. It came crashing down and broke 😞

But we sure did have fun in the process!

I love being with these 3! Don't let anyone fool you into thinking the teenage years are horrible. They can be some of the most rewarding as you get to make memories with some of your very best friends!

 

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!