Fourth of July!!!!

 Happy Birthday, America!!!!

We spent the whole weekend at the cabin with family!  Our freedom did not come free, we know that!!!  We are so blessed to have our founders honor God and fight for freedom!

We purchased some land close to my parents cabin and Mike was mowing the field and making some four wheeler trails on it.  He saw tons of butterflies and so we went over that night to see them!  The girls went running into the field and watched some fly!

Dad bought this side by side and it's perfect for the mountain roads and rides!

Brother John has his tracker up there and almost everyone hopped on it for a ride.  They were packed!

A bad thunderstorm went through the first night and knocked out the electric.  That was interesting.  Toilets not flushing and no lights with six families in one cabin was not ideal.  But we made the best of it and used candles and a generator for the fridges.  LaVern and Fannie made breakfast on the front porch the next morning and we had electric back on late that afternoon.  We were ready for showers and toilets flushing!

The boys and dad went on their second fishing adventure!  Last year, dad bought some kaiaks and they went fishing down the river.  This year, Tyler and Matthew each bought one and brother John had some to use!  They started off first thing in the morning.  The river was low and it took them much longer than they thought it would.  9 hours later they went 15 miles downstream catching a bunch of fish!  No one packed a lunch and all they had was a few candy bars my dad took along and Matthew had a handful of fiber balls!  They came back to the cabin both very hungry and VERY SUNBURNED!  Crazy memories!

Look at their burnt tan lines!  They were rubbing aloe vera and lavender on their hot skin and woke up sore!

Mike showed them how to clean fish!  

 

Mim made burgers for supper and Tyler grabbed two right away!  They were so hungry!

Warren was fishing from the golf cart!

I took the side by side over to the property where Mike was mowing and offered him some water!!!

So many fun rides!!!!!

Breakfast on the porch!

Mindy made sourdough cinnamon rolls and they were delicious!  She had to warm them up in the smoker because we had no electric.  Dad was trying to get the electric back to working and he blew out 16 breakers.  Not a good thing!  We tried calling the electrician for some advice but he didn't answer.  While Dad was at the hardware store looking at new breakers to buy, the electrician called him to ask him a question.  He didn't know dad tried to called earlier and instead of dad buying all new breakers, the electrician was able to come to the cabin and help us out!!!!  God knows how to remind us of His goodness!!!!  The breakers were fixed and the electric was back on!!!!  Thank you Lord!

We had campfires and s'mores and even though we didn't see any bear this time, we saw a gray fox.

This cabin is such a great place for us to enjoy!  We love it there!  Monday came quick and it was time to head back home.  The yard needed mowed at home and then we watched some fireworks from our front porch!  What a good weekend!!!!

Happy Independence Day!!!!!

Happy Birthday Austin!

 Austin is seven years old today!  He woke up to the smell of a warm coffee cake baking in the oven!  This is his favorite of all favorites cake and since we are heading to the cabin later today, I decided to bake him his birthday cake for breakfast!

We gifted Austin a Tatis JR baseball shirt.  He loves this ball player and any chance he can watch some baseball on my phone, he's into it!  We also gave him a wiffle ball bat and ball!  

He's growing up.  He's got one year of baseball wrapped up and the Flames finished in second place.  Ashlyn is his best playmate most days!  Getting together with Hunter, Adrian and Bryce is always a good time for him!  I am trying to do more reading with the kids this summer and we finished up the book of Summer of the Monkeys and then rented the movie from the library!  Austin loved this!

He thinks a birthday should be filled with gifts and he kept asking where all his gifts are today!  We gave him some gifts and my family is going to the cabin over the weekend.  Some said they were bringing gifts along for him there but it's hard for a boy to wait!!!  He's going to have such a good weekend!

We are so blessed to have Austin in our family!  He's energetic!  He's cute!  We love him so much!

Happy birthday, Austin!

Mike's 45th birthday!

Mike celebrated his 45th birthday earlier this week!  He chose to take the family to LCC for his birthday dinner.  We blessed him with some gifts and ate dinner, then went outside where the Club has a "mini golf" set up for the kids to play!  So cool!

Mike LOVES when we are all together as a family!  It's his favorite moments right now!  We love him so much and just love doing life together!

 

We finished the evening with watching the Summer of the Monkeys outside!!!!  It took a bit to get set up but I'm sure we will do this again!!!

Happy Birthday, Babe!!!  I love you SO VERY MUCH!!!!

Bible School week!

Lavender .... I love it!  I love the smell and love to watch it grow in the herb box and around Ashlyn's playhouse!  I've never used it for a syrup though until I just tried a simple syrup of sugar, water and lavender buds.  It makes a delicious lavender lemonade!!!!  This has been our favorite summer drink!!!

 

We came out of a week of Bible School at church and wow has it been both very good and very busy!  The kids loved it and this year I volunteered to help each night!  That was fun, tiring and full of life!!!  The drama team the best EVER drama story of the life of Joseph!  One of the youth guys wrote the script, a youth girl did all the costumes and many youth made it happen it night with acting!  They had a camel, cows, sheep and a elephant ... all made with the youth being the animal and some cardboard!  Just so cool!!!!

There were bible verses each night with hand motions and Ashlyn helped a few times with this!

Crafts were a part of the week and I helped with this Thursday and Friday!  The kids did a great job!

Each craft was themed with the story of Joseph.  One night we decorated gingerbread men with coats of many colors!  Then another night we made sacks with feed in each one!  

Our June is flying by quickly!  Ashlyn is all into rip sticking and wanted to go to the park for a bigger hill to ride down.  They also tried to catch some frogs.

We have zucchini in the garden and so the kids made each a loaf of their own zucchini bread.

I went out to the garden to see what they were doing the other day and they were painting rocks for our plants.  Also, someone thought the cabbage needed some paint.

I planted some wild flowers last year in the garden area and these poppies are blooming from those seeds last year.  So pretty!

More food art ... Ashlyn made a heart shape bird seed for the birds and I made more sourdough.

Second batch of lavender syrup .... we love it with lemonade!

Still reading this book now to the Littles.  We had a stall from Bible School last week but I'm ready to dig into this book again!  It's a good read but it's going to be hard to beat Summer of the Monkeys!  We loved that book!  We got the movie from the library and watched it twice!

We even got the movie set up outside last night!  I've always wanted to do an outdoor movie here at home with the kids and now we did!  I think we will do this more often!

This has been a beautiful month of June!  The weather had us visiting the pool often!  We really enjoyed Saturday when we went to Bird in Hand Bake Shop for their 50th anniversary celebration!  Good food and pony rides and bounce house.