spring, birthdays, mother's day

What a busy, fantastic, amazing, bittersweet weekend filled with many milestones.  

Our Braveheart's 17th birthday was amazing. I spent all day making his favorite cakes..that would be strawberry butter cream cake and rhubarb cake. (fresh cut from the garden and fresh ground berries)

That same evening we held an event to celebrate our boy's birthday  at a Trivia Night for his fellow Boy Scouter who is raising money for his Eagle Scout project. We held it at our church and we had a great turn out! 

 This project will be dedicated to Braveheart as a memorial!!  This project just oozes our boy. It will be a bird observation deck. Many of you know how much he loved birds and bird watching. How can I express the blessing it is to our family to have so many people show up to support this project and remember our boy's special day and then to know he will have a special memorial in our city?

Next, it was Mother's Day. I was loved on by my kiddos left here on earth, but oh do we miss our dear one.  We fancied up his grave site for Spring, personalizing it just for him. That is pleasing to the soul.

It is bittersweet........

Just a taste of the beautiful blooms popping up around me, reminding me of my precious one until I see him again in Heaven.

summer so far again...

I finally learned how to use my juicer which I didn't want to learn before but now feel VERY led to get on it so I can really help heal my body! If you get time try to read this book about juicing. You will learn some new surprising facts and it is a quick read. These veggies are from my garden or farmer's market.

Flowers from Aldi, only $4 and aren't they gorgeous??? I love to brighten the room. Not many to really pick from my own garden when I got these last week.

Found this a few weeks ago for our school room at Good Will, furniture was half off, retro, excellent condition and it SWIVELS!! If you know me, you know I have a strange weakness for chairs that swivel. I think I paid $3 something.

My pilot mom, being interviewed again for the Wanna Be a Pilot weekend! Wish I got photos of the cool jet plane and the Chinook helicopter!

Finally found a new place to pick our own blueberries. I only had two helpers available that day so couldn't get as many as we wanted. Our old place, just never can get in there now. This one you pick and just weigh and drop your check in the bucket...quite lovely. Braveheart adores these fresh picked ones over the frozen and they're local and cancer fighting!! A must have in this house. I froze them and they are almost gone already. I hope to get enough for the year next time.

wordless wednesday

thinking of the garden

I have been thinking about the garden a little. Not starting, although I would like to plant a few seeds and will put it on my list for this weekend. Here is what I am thinking.






pumpkins.............always
gourds..................friend giving us seeds
sweet potatoes.....i would like to grow organic ones, just try it this year
potatoes.............. these are so cheap but very high in pesticides and fun so it's on
tomatoes............. always
sweet peppers.....try again
popcorn..............that was quite fun and I have some seeds leftover
lettuces variety...of coarse
spinach..............so good
butt. squash......mmmm...last well in basement
broccoli.............hoping for better results this year
zinnias...............my fave
asparagus..........will it keep coming?

I sure hope I can manage this. I will not stress though. If it can be worked in , then great. I want grow and cook those cancer killing foods!!
What are you growing this year?

wordless wednesday

here it comes...winter

Winter is officially here. I am so excited to post some wintery photos. The kids are happily applying all their snow paraphernalia and all the sleds are out and hills are being traversed and slippy slided down, down, down.....
there has been very much snow blowing, shoveling and hot cocoa too. :)

fall goings on

Making pumpkin scone snacks.....

Great Grandma's that come visit and spend time with the kids and listen to their music playing....

This is a sign that boys live here....

I finally made a homemade apple pie. I did not make the crust though this time, but I cut up all the apples bought from a local orchard.

Girl version of pumpkin decorating.

We were blessed with many pumpkins this year and I am enjoying baking them and making my own pumpkin puree, but with frequent foot resting.

fall photos

fall party creations

Scouts had a pack meeting and we had to come up with a quick treat so we tried to use what we had around the house and we made a small little batch of frosting and used our licorice and chocolate chips to make a monster snack...it was pretty tasty too.

This next snack won the prize at the meeting and T got to be the one to eat the creature! Yuck.

Damsel made this at a friends party. Cute.

look what's all over my yard!

So brilliant is the light on the leaves of the trees.....

fall photos

after the frost