Father's Day!!!

This is us!!!!  Sunday morning before heading off to church!  Hadassah went and got Mike a drink from Starbucks and we all loved on Mike extra much the whole day of Father's Day!!!!!!

Mike is such a loving father!  He loves these dear children with all his heart and relates with them so well!  Not a day, I am telling you, there is not a day that he doesn't put effort into each one of these kids!  He's all about staying up late to catch up with the teenagers day events.  He gives moped and four wheeler rides to the little ones often!!!!  I hop along too because I love four wheeler rides too and it's fun to ride out to the neighbors and feed "Walker" carrots and then drive around the hay fields to get to Matt and Lena's and say hi to them!  It's a small circle we make but we love every minute of it!!!!

Father's are needed in our nation today to rise up and fight for their family morals!!!!  They need to take a stand for the Lord!  Mother's need to rally around their husbands and encourage them and help them and support them!  Thats the heart beat of a Godly family because when mom and dad are in unity it flows down over the children!  Are these homes perfect?  Nope, but it sure helps!  God will honor dads that try to honor Him!!!!

We celebrated Mike all day long!  He went for his every Sunday morning run and then drove us all to church!  He was given a candy bar at church from the youth and of course the kids were all begging for a bite!  :).

We came home for lunch and took refreshing naps.  My family all meet at LaVerns for a evening of fellowship and honoring all the dads!!!


My dad is also such a wonderful father!  So much of his time, energy and money went to us kids!  He loved me every day of my life and I love him too!!!  Thank you Dad for your love and protection!  God bless you and mom!!!

LaVern's have such a beautiful home and the kids loved the tree swings!

 

The kids sang songs while some ate ice cream and then we roasted marshmallows over the campfire! The evening was so gorgeous and it was fun to be with family!!!!  Thanks LaVern and Fannie Lynn for hosting us!!!!

Happy Father's Day!!!!

Strawberry season!

It's June and that means strawberry season!!!!  We love homegrown strawberries and Fanny Lynn told  us that we could come pick from her wonderful patch!!!!  The kids were so happy to take home these juicy berries!!!!!

Sidewalk chalk .... here's an easy art for the kids to do on these hot summer days!  Grab some wide tape and make designs with it on the black top.  Then color in the areas with chalk.  Peel the tape off and see your art!

And this is me.  Soaking up the sun!!!!

These warm summer days that have the bluest of blue skies and thick fluffy clouds has us spending most of our hours outside.

We are still in the yellow phase with this COVID 19.  We have not known anyone with the virus for a long but it has now come to our home town and some people have not been feeling well.  I am so ready to have this virus over and out of any phase and move on like normal life.  I'm beginning to wonder if life will ever be the same again.  Many people have died.  Many have lost their jobs.  Thankfully, we have not experienced any of these hardships!!!!  Mike is busy at work!  Hadassah is busy cleaning.  Matthew works at the shop too.  The kids and I are home bodies and enjoying the lazy, sleep in mornings.

The yellow phase has us not at the club pool yet.  They are only taking first come first serve reservations.  It's not the style that goes well with my personality.  I'm the kind that doesn't plan ahead too much and I wait to see if it's going to a sunny day .... then decide if I go to the pool.  Everything has been filled up and so we just wait.  Hopefully, on Friday, we will move into green phase!!!!!

Even though we've not been at the local club pool yet, we are busy around home.  The garden is looking great!  We just picked our first zucchini!!!!

The pickle patch is green and lush!  We have hopes to pick big long cucumbers off of these plants soon!

The strawberry plants didn't do that well. I planted new plants and keep wishing for those big berries to grow in my garden!  Maybe next year will be better?

The onions are turning into white bulbs.

Red beets are popping through the ground and I pulled out some yesterday and want to roast them for dinner!

The lettuce is finished but we still have some spinach and kale to snip.

Fennel ... help me out!!!!  This is the first time we planted fennel and we love this vegetable!!!  The plants are looking great but I don't know when to harvest it?  We did pull one stalk out last week but the fennel bulb was still really tiny even though the green stalk was as tall as Austin!!!!  What are we don't wrong?  We love the fennel bulbs to eat!  We said at July 4th we are going to pull another stalk and try that one!

Our watermelon plant is still small but slowly growing.

I planted some pumpkin seeds in our small bed and it too is growing in leaps and bounds!

Carrots, peppers and tomatoes are all growing beside each other in one bed.  I thought two of my tomato plants got caught by frost back in May and planted two new plants right beside the other ones and now they all survived.  I'm hoping to have lots of tomatoes for juice, salsa and pizza sauce!

The herb box is thriving!

I love to garden and watch these plants grow!!!!!  I'm hoping this will be the best summer of gardening yet!

  

June.

We are happy to welcome June of 2020 and let the summer times roll!!!!  We've already made so many fun memories since the beginning of the year and we hope to make many more!  We are excited to finally be out of the "Red Phase" and into the "Yellow Phase" in our county!!!!  Governor Wolf is slowly allowing businesses to reopen and we are so excited about this!

Here we are on the way to church after so many weeks having church at home.  Twelve weeks to be exact!  It was a big change at first but we did get into the mode and watch the many YouTube messages from our Pastor Merv!  We appreciated the messages but boy does it feel good to all get dressed up and head out the door together for a real church service!

 I'm going to post some favorites of the season right now!  One is that we are starting to pick fresh strawberries from our garden.  I've never been able to grow those big, red delicous kinds for some odd reason but our smaller, red delicious berries are still yummy!  I did start some new plants this spring so many our crop will be better next summer!!!

 Another favorite is our warmer tempatures!!!!  The evenings that we spend at home are the best!  I love my garden area but I love it even more that the kids play around it and in it and love that space too!

As the sun was setting the other night, I captured these three out around the garden playing the ground is lava.  They hoped from stone to stick to whatever they could but all without touching the ground.

 The evening sun was gorgeous and I just love to have summer begin!


Another thing that I love right now is that the kids spend so much time together on the trampoline.  Other summers Austin didn't like to jump high and Ashlyn was just wanting to jump away.  This summer, they are both busy jumping!

I took these two to Rita's for the first last week!  They went in the swimsuits and loved every bite of their treat!

Sunsets are so beautiful!!!!  After a thunderstorm last week, we watched God color the sky!!!!

June is also the month where so many flowers are in bloom around here!  I have lots of roses and I filled up my dining room vases once again!

Another thing that we've actually come to really enjoy is ordering food from restaurants online.  It's the only option for right now if you want to eat out.  We ordered online, picked up the food at Red Lobster and ate it in the parking lot.  This time we invited Matt and Lena along and we had a blast!

We took our own tables and had a great time on this warm, summer night!

We ate and then headed back home for a campfire!  Matt and Lena are expecting their baby number four and they wanted to shoot the "baby bomb" and reveal to the boys (and us) the gender!  We were all excited and shouted as the bomb shot out pink smoke!  This is so exciting and after having three boys, Matt and Lena are thrilled to have a pink bundle of all things girl on the way!!!!  We are so happy for their family!!!!!

We can't wait to meet this baby girl!

Mike got a long log and started our campfire with a tunnel fire.  It was neat and so fun to watch!!!!

Campfires are one of my highlights every summer!  I love to relax by the fire and watch the wood burn.  It's peaceful!

We picked some berries from my sister in laws patch and I wish for berries like these!

Ashlyn tried the chalk and tape project today!  It turned out really neat!

 One last thing that I will share for now is this.  Does anyone else have snowboards in their shower???  Austin is all about acting out characters and after Surfs Up, he asked to take his snowboard into the shower.  The only shower that we have big enough for this is the master bathroom shower.  He had a blast in the shower jumping around his board.  He's a trip!

 Have a great week!  Stay healthy!  Enjoy these warm summer days!!!!

Formal.

Two things that Hadassah was really looking forward to at the end of the school term was Commencement and Formal!  Linville was so good to offer both!  Commencement was at school and Hadassah received her diploma!  The next night, Formal was held at an outdoor location and the Seniors and Juniors got dressed up real nice and had a fun night together!

Hadassah was escorted by Jeremiah, of course, and they asked to take Mike's truck to the Formal!

Beutephotography took some pictures of some of the couples before the event and look at these two!!!  So good looking!!!!

Hadassah had a blast and her class sent the evening together and then went to two different beach houses for the final fanali!

The class of 2020 was a great class and we pray that they will be fearless for God in their future!!!!

Senior Commencement.

We could not be more proud of Hadassah for completely all her many years of school.  She is now a graduate!  She has completed K-12 at Linville Hill Christian School!  Her teachers have all been outstanding!  She has learned life values!  School was always a fun way for her to interact with friends!  Hadassah loved long jump when she was in Middle School.  Entering High School was exciting for her especially knowing that Linville was starting up grades 9&10.  Then grades 11&12 were added!  God has been so good to us for allowing us to send our children to this wonderful school.  Thank you Linville Family!!!

With COVID-19, so many changes had to be made this school term!  Hadassah was VERY BLESSED to still go on their Senior Trip to Africa right before this whole shut down happened!  I admit, I was a bundle of nerves until we were able to meet the Senior Class back at school.  So many good memories were made over this time for the Class of 2020!  We know that many schools had to cancel their Senior plans and we are grateful to have Hadassah have this experience.

We were holding the thought of graduation lightly in our hands and not being real sure how it was all going to hold out!  Hadassah was in the class room the beginning on March, then they all went to Africa and she didn't go back into the classroom again.  When she returned from her trip, the shut down happened the next day and she finished school at home.  She was ready to receive her diploma and move on in life!

She is excited to do more cleaning as her job and be finished with school work!

The night of Commencement was planned to have all the activities outside but the weather was not in our favor.  We sat in groups of ten.  The graduates were only permitted to invite ten people to attend.  After the diplomas were received, we all went outside for the throwing of the caps.  We spent the rest of the evening outside!

At the beginning of the commencement, they showed a slide show of some of the class highlights!

Mr. Buckwalter is the head of school and preached a great message of encouragement to our young adults that were graduating!

Hadassah receiving her diploma!!!!!  Great job girl!!!!!

Her cap kept falling sliding down, so she just took it off. We all laughed and it was great!

 She just went along with it and fixed it again after walking off the stage.  It happened to a few other graduates also.

 We moved outside for the cap toss!

Um, I guess Hadassah really wanted her cap to fly away!!!!  :)))

We are just proud of how well she finished!  Congratulations Hadassah!

Of course, one of her ten choices to be invited to the commencement was Jeremiah!!!!  Love these two!

And Jess ... I could say so much about these two!  They are best of friends and I just love them so much!

Jenna moved in after school hours most days during volleyball season!  :)  Her and Hadassah played on the same team and with her home being a bit farther from school, she would often come to our house after school and just hang out until game time.  I loved how she helped herself to anything in the pantry or kitchen!  Hadassah and Jenna had a fun year together!

The next set of photos are from Mark Bulkwalter.  He is a photographer that captured so many great shots!  Thanks Mark for these precious moments!

Hadassah is so beautiful!

These ladies are amazing and God has big plans for them!

The faculty at Linville Hill Christian School is rare and awesome!  They all believe in God and have Jesus number one in their lives!!!!  All of them!  They have prayed so much for this Class of 2020 and have done so much for each one!  Many thanks to all those who ministered to our daughter and have taught her life skills!

Such a great night!!!!!

What a class of great kids!

Watching these men play in basketball was a privilege.  They let Matthew take the lead with the States Game because they were off to Africa for Senior trip!  Such great guys!

Touch the Dog ... this was a saying to face your fears.  To not run away from problems but ask God to lead and help and be your strength and then place offense!  Jesus already won the battle on the cross and the victory is won for believers in Christ!  To Touch the Dog means to look at your fears and not run.  Some of the 2020 graduates have already faced a lot of fears and "dogs" in their lives.  We witnessed at commencement, Courtney actually touching a puppy.  She has a fear of dogs because she got bit as a child by a dog but in front of everyone, she braved it and touched a dog!!!!  Great job Courtney!!!!  What a testimony of facing fears!

Mr. B spoke words of encouragement over every single graduate!!!!  Words of what their name means.  Thoughts of how to use their strengths and weaknesses.  Words of so much life!  He reminded them that the world needs them right now!  The world is hurting and dying and the world needs a group of young adults to rise up for Christ!  The message was so powerful!

Fixing her cap!

Just going with it ...

What a good feeling!!!!!  Done with school!!!!!

This was such a wonderful way to finish off the year!  To miss the whole last quarter of school in school was tough.  To be able to still honor the Seniors was just awesome!!!!!


Thank you Linville Hill Christian School!!!!!