Happy Birthday Sweet Laney Rae!

I cannot believe my baby- my punkin- is TWO today!

Laney Rae,

You are beyond precious. We cannot help but look at you and laugh overcome with joy.

Joy is set forth in those beautiful eyes.

Excitement for life is your song.


The people who know and love you describe you as "FUN"!

You show us daily what is means to live out life excited about what each day holds.

When you are outside wondering, you are content. Walls and rooms are not your friend.

You are the family comedian. Laughter is a language that you love deeply.


We are so thankful for you. I pray blessings over your little life. May you never lose your spark for life. I pray it grows into a passion and excitement for Our Savior who loves you so much.

I'm remembering today when you were a tiny new life in our family. And now you bring so much life and laughter to our home.

We love you precious girl!
Mommy, Daddy, Kaylyn, and Ruthie

Laney Rae's New Trick!

Laney Rae has discovered the stool/fridge/cup combo.

She loves getting herself a cup of water.

The things I love about these photos are:

- her hair isn't fixed and is hanging all in her face, yet she still persists despite her lack of sight.

- she is using her mouth to hold her cup while she hops up on the stool.

- she is wearing only one sock and overalls.

- she checks to see if her water actually made it in the cup.

I love this little girl!

She is absolutely a joy and full of excitement. Already, you can see her little independent personality develop and she definitely doesn't mind it all being caught on camera!

Nesting- a beautiful mess

Now that we live on farm, I see things within nature and can only attribute the genius of creation to the Creator Himself. Through Him all things were made (John 1:3). Not that it took living on a farm to acknowledge this, but there is something about having nature right at your fingertips all day long.

I see pigs, chickens, birds, cats, and dogs scope out the perfect spot for weeks and weeks to have their babes. Or they spend their days up to the arrival of their young, gathering straw or fluffing hay.

Nesting.

Its a natural occurance in a pregnant momma's life. I'm by no means comparing myself to a pig or chicken- well, I kind of am. I'm just acknowledging that this is a stage common to animal and human alike. I've witnessed it over and over on our farm and now its happening in my own brain.

I'm convinced that every toy must go and that my children not only DO NOT play with toys, but they use toys to create obstacle courses throughout our house. My children might be the only ones around who play with wooden spoons and rocks because they don't have any toys. Just teasing.......although, that isn't a bad idea. They'd probably rather play with wooden spoons anyways.

I'm organizing things like crazy. But, you know that in the process of organizing your house must implode from within to bring about all of the nasty. The nasty is coming out and either going in the trash or garage sale pile. I'd probably give you my very favorite things in my home right now if you came over simply because I'm in purge mode!

Kaylyn's room is getting a Shabby Chic makeover complete with varieties of floral fabrics, pink damask print wallpaper, a chandelier, and crystal lampshades. She is going to LOVE her new girlie room. She still resents me because I refused to put pink in her first "big girl" room.

We are using all of the non-pink stuff for Laney Rae's new room so its working out perfectly.

I'm really excited about Ruthie's new room! I was blessed by a dear friend of mine (who happens to be a brilliant designer) with new baby bedding featured in this issue of Better Homes and Gardens (this is her actual house and now my actual bedding). Its beautiful! Thanks Holly! You seriously should go over to her website and take a gander! I was at her home today hanging out and visiting. I left inspired and refreshed.

There is lots going on around here.

Inside our home.....crazy nesting woman who wants to purge or organize everything with an almost complete edition.....yeehaw!

Outside our home.......a farm store and farm kitchen almost done, landscaping going in, vegetable garden in the works, and work being done to our outside porch areas.

Here are some photos I'll leave you with. These were snapped in the "tearing up" session I had with KK's room last week.

It might be a bit before I'm able to post again. I have a million things in my brain that HAVE to get out and be

created,
painted,
thrown away,
reorganized,
planted,
cleaned,
or sewn.

Whew! That's a wrap.

I've loved every minute of being Kaylyn's room mom for her class. Its been super fun!

One of our tasks as room mom is to coordinate our class project for our big fundraiser. Its a festival of sorts complete with a live auction in which they auction off each of the class projects. Projects range from thumb-printed picnic tables, gift baskets, trunks with hand prints, and mosaic bird baths. The goal is to incorporate the students as much as possible in the actual project.

I chose to do a "Dick & Jane" theme. I LOVE Dick & Jane and old vintage fabrics. I had some on hand including some sock monkey fabric, so it worked out perfectly. I wanted our project to be unique and appeal to more moms than just in our class.

The students decoupaged the desk with fabric cut-outs and paper alphabets. We used Modge Podge. I seriously am in LOVE with Modge Podge. I want to decoupage my entire house now. Its fun stuff!

I painted the top portion with chalkboard paint so it can be written on as well!




They also applied buttons to clothes pins for our chicken wire bulletin board made out of an old window. I took pictures of the students on the playground at school to display in the window.


And lastly, I made this apron as an accessory. I just used Heat N Bond for the appliques and pockets. Its super easy to use and I'm equally in love with Heat N Bond. Its a major time savor.


I also tried my hand at sewing for the very first time. Jason bought me a sewing machine and this is the result of that- a Dick & Jane chair cushion. I will admit its a bit on the small side, but I didn't have a pattern and didn't consider the seam in the fabric nor the actual filling. So, I set my perfectionism aside long enough to appreciate the fact that I actually sewed something. I complicated things by adding the fringe between the two fabrics, but I had to have it!


We had a few other accessories that Kaylyn's teacher made (a decoupaged clipboard) and another mom made (a terra cotta pot painted with chalkboard paint and filled with chalk). These were all precious too!

So that's what I've been up to this week among a plethora of other things.

A whirlwind of sorts!

Let's see.

Since my last post an unreal amount of stuff has happened. Is anyone else's life on fast forward???

The Lord is doing some deep things within my heart, our family, and farm. Its been hard for me to just sit down and update on the happenings of life when my life is being restored and renewed in so many wonderful ways (He is not quite done with me yet), but my choice was to either sit down and update or let you continue to think I was abducted- because, you know you thought that.

I celebrated my 28th birthday.

We've had some baby calves.


Construction has started on our new addition to our house. There will be two rooms with closets when its all said and done. We are super excited about this and will have so much room when Ruthie gets here!


We've had 3 litters of piglets- and then lost an ENTIRE litter due to ONE narcoleptic pig. Needless to say, she is a goner and will be no longer residing with us on the farm!



We received another shipment in of baby broiler chicks- 250 of them!


Construction is underway on the farm store. We are adding a commercial kitchen, a bathroom (for all of the visitors), and jazzing it up a bit.


Our large flock of layers are out in the big pasture as opposed to the little one by our house. They are loving every minute of it too! Do you see this large coop with banner? We get more questions asked and this draws more attention to anything else that we have on the farm. People are fascinated seeing this many chickens on pasture. Everyone wants to know if they go back in their houses at night. And the answer to that is yes!



The farm is really doing well! We've seen God's provision in major ways and we are humbled by Him choosing to bless us in this way. We are excited to see what this Spring and Summer holds as things start picking up around here.


We are attempting our hand at the square-foot gardening method. Last year was ridiculous competing with the weeds. And our soil is not great to say the least. So we are starting from scratch and bringing in our own soil and compost in raised beds. If you are new to gardening or have even been gardening for a while but want to try something new, square-foot gardening is for you!

My girls are still as cute as ever!

Breakfast Beauty

Kaylyn literally hopped out of the buggy and said,"Mommy, take a picture of me!" And then she posed as any good poser would do.

I need to get caught up on some posts about my enormous growing belly, our class project that is due this week (YIKES!), and lots of other stuff.

Happy Birthday My Love!

We've celebrated 9 years of birthdays together and the depth of my love for you has grown each passing year.

Thank you for.....

looking to Jesus and His guidance to lead this family

being our protector

loving us more than you love yourself

being a man of integrity

blessing me with three girls that I get to be home with every single day

I love living this life with you. It is a joy to live alongside you here on this earth. I'm so thankful the Lord picked me as your helpmate. Our family is stronger in Christ because of you.

I hope your day is filled with all of the wonderful things you love.

Happy Birthday My Love!

Laney Rae's Shark!

I was cleaning the floors yesterday with my Shark (that I'm still in love with) and Laney Rae discovered she had a Shark too! She was absolutely precious. Every single room I went into, she followed with her "popper".

Back and forth she'd slide her popper across the floor totally focused and so proud of her accomplishments.

Shark vs. Popper- who will win?