6-30-10 Hay

Today was another calm day at home. L & J milked twice; in between, Levi went to CIT and Jesse worked on projects around here. Inside, we worked on sewing, Our Family Circus, baking, laundry, weeding, and so on. Anne S. and her 3 children came out for lunch and to discuss some curriculum questions she had; the kids had a good time playing together while we visited. After they all went home, I read to them for a very little bit then took a catnap before a walk. I took 4 kids with me to watch Rob Uhlman bale the last of the pasture hay; it was a beautiful afternoon. Grandpa let Jacob do some driving when he brought the bales up to the house. I did a solo walk to Broadway and back then while the kids did chores and supper prep. We made it to church barely on time and were encouraged that, as soldiers of the Lord, our commander will NEVER fail us. He will NEVER let us down. After singing a farewell to Akihiro, Carrie, and Tomoki, we enjoyed a bit of fellowship then came home to beds.

A few pictures:

Pheasants at 6 weeks. We have to put blinders on them because they’re very cannibalistic in captivity.

6-29-10 Birthday Blessings

Dear Lord, thank You for so many things – I cannot name them all.

From peace and joy to rain and sun to our children large and small.

Thank you for America, for countless freedoms true,

For freedom from persecution so we are free to worship You.

We know there are so many, Lord, who suffer for their faith,

Facing death and torture, overcoming by Thy grace.

Hunger, beatings, prisons; some must endure such awful trouble…

But not here in America – we live in such a bubble.

Protected from persecution (for now anyway, that is)

(We don’t know what the future holds for those of us who are His.).

But in our cocoon of safety, let us not laze along, half asleep;

Help us share Your love with others who are lost in sin so deep.

Whether teaching our children at home, or the garbage man who comes,

The lady down at Kroger, give us Your love for each and every one.

Give us a heavy burden for their lost and dying soul;

Give us the chance to share with them how they can be made whole.

It seems so hard to do that, Lord; it doesn’t come with ease.

But this we want to do for You; it’s You we want to please.

I know You’ll give us words to speak, or maybe just a smile,

Or we can try to show Thy love by going that extra mile.

There are so many lost in sin – at times it hurts my heart.

I want to pray for every single one; sometimes I don’t know where to start.

You know who is on my list, Lord; call them right now, every one.

Take away their sleep at night until they receive Your Son.

Dear Lord, bless the missionaries who labor in faraway lands.

Bless Tim in our home today, right now, as he leads our own little band.

Be with us both each and every day as we do our best for Thee;

Help us diligently train our children for eternity.

Bless them each and every one, Lord; we love them all so much.

Help me make more time for hugs, and for a sweet gentle touch.

Soften my voice, I beg Thee Lord – take away ugly harshness and sting;

Fill me with Thy praise and joy so it touches everything.

Cover where I lack, Lord; help them overlook my faults,

So that they too want to serve Thee when they become adults.

So many times I fail thee Lord, for this I beg forgiveness;

Lift me up to higher ground, and help me to spread cheerfulness.

Thank You for my husband, Lord, a gem above all other men.

Thanks for a close loving relationship; I’m so undeserving of him.

But You gave him to me anyway, Lord; You brought us together in faith

So that we can walk this life as one, together to finish our race.

Thanks for each one of our children; they are so precious to us.

How we love them, every one, even when they fight, fret, and fuss.

Thank you for our homestead here, our cows, our chickens, our pets.

Sheds, barn, orchard, creek, and the view – how much better can it get?

Thank You for our wonderful home – a shelter from the world -

A place where we can take respite when satan’s darts are hurled.

Thanks for morning sunrise, for sunsets in the eve,

For peace and joy, hope and heaven, for all those who believe.

Thanks for eyes to see these things, for a tongue to praise Thy name,

For healthy bodies inside and out; for freedom from disease and pain.

So many have such sickness, Lord; so many are so ill.

Help all those who are so afflicted, that they can praise You still.

Thank You Lord for grandparents, for uncles, aunts, and cousins.

So many blessed times we’ve shared – we’ve memories by the dozens.

Our church family too is so precious, Lord; we love each and every one.

How sweet to think of meeting them in heaven, when our life here on earth is done.

Thank You MOST for SALVATION, for Jesus’ death on the cross.

Thank You for the resurrection, for hope when all seemed lost.

For boundless grace and mercy, for the Bible to freely read,

For the promise of life eternal, if only Thy word we heed.

There are many more things I could thank You for – You know the list doesn’t end;

So search me O God, and know my heart; be forever my closest Friend.

“Thank You” seems so inadequate – this I can clearly see -

So I’ll live my life completely sold out – sanctified unto Thee.

You loved me as a sinner, Lord; You called me from that hole

Of satan’s awful deception, and then You saved my soul.

You give me grace, joy, and mercy, to follow day by day,

And eyes to see, and words to tell of Your wonders along life’s way.

So – I will eschew all evil, put it far away.

I will walk humbly in obedience, every moment, every hour, every day.

I will give Thee all praise and honor, Lord, and read often in Thy Word;

But most of all, I’ll thank Thee for loving me, O Lord.

You are so pure and holy, so loving, gracious, kind.

The way, the truth, the light, the lamp, my comforter, my guide.

I’ll praise Thy name forever, Lord; I’ll praise Thee every day

With word, and song, and deed, and thought every step of the way.

“To God Be The Glory, great things he hath done!

So loved He the world that He gave us His Son;

Who yielded His life an atonement for sin,

And opened the life gate that all may go in.

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Let the earth hear his voice!

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Let the people rejoice.

O come to the Father through Jesus the Son,

and GIVE HIM THE GLORY, GREAT THINGS HE HATH DONE!”

6-29-10 Happy Birthday Me

Yup, today is my birthday. I am now 41, and I’m happy to report that it doesn’t feel a whole lot different than 40 did. Or 35. For that matter, I don’t feel all that much different than I did at 30. Well, maybe I’m a little busier now than I was back then, but I’m sure I thought I was busy then too. Anyway, a very happy birthday it was; how could it not be? God has blessed me so richly with so many gifts…I would be ungrateful to have anything but a happy birthday.

Relative to yesterday, today was boring. Aahh, what a gift; I like that word. Nicer synonyms would be calm, routine, peaceful, quiet, but I like boring too. I loved my busy day yesterday, rushing from one activity to the next with hardly a break in between, but I definitely don’t want a string of days like that. Today we did kitchen work, ironing, sewing, laundry, some gardening, and I got 2 posts done on Our Family Circus. Tori and Kate are always a few posts ahead of me; I think there’s still three ready for me to edit and add pictures to. I’m so glad they enjoy doing it, because as much as I want it done and enjoy working on it, if I was doing it solo it just wouldn’t be getting done right now. Anyway. I also read to the kids for a long time in the morning, which is significant, because I don’t get so sleepy like I do in the afternoon. And, sprinkled throughout the day were sweet birthday wishes from various friends/family – phone calls, texts, cards, e-mails. Many nuggets came my way.

Today was so cool – it was beautiful. Jewel actually wanted her jacket when we had lunch outside, and she and Sarah were playing “winter” this afternoon. This is the first time I’ve seen this game…at least they didn’t have their snowpants on!

After lunch I did a little reading that I’ve been wanting to do – my camera manual for one, and another book that I borrowed and would like to return soon. I walked with Karol while kids had a snack and started on chores, and then returned emails while I managed and directed the troops. Kind of a short supper because Dad and I had a meeting to attend; Levi and Jesse got home right before we left, so we got to catch up with them a little bit first. We had a productive planning meeting for Father/Son Night; we’re pretty excited about the agenda and the games for the evening. It’ll be a little different than before: different in a good way, we hope. Time will tell. And before we left the meeting, my dear friend Sandi gave me not one but TWO pans of Chocolate Float, which as she well knows is one of my absolute FAVORITE desserts. Dear Lord, thank you for bringing her to Tremont; bless her always and draw our hearts ever closer together in Christian love and friendship. She is a blessing, a treasure, a nugget of priceless value. Home again, we enjoyed Chocolate Float AND Texas Brownies which Tori made for me this afternoon! I really don’t know which dessert I like better – they’re similar but still different, and both are oh so good. With vanilla ice cream, it was a wonderful way to end another birthday…well, actually it hasn’t ended yet. This weekend Dad is taking all of us out to supper for my birthday gift. He gets me everything I need, so he didn’t know what to get me for a birthday gift. I suggested a family meal out, and so it is. And what fun I am looking forward to.

So ends another day...here's a recipe to remember:

Chocolate Float

Mix:

1 1/2 cups flour

1 1/8 cups sugar

2 1/4 tablespoons baking cocoa

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 1/8 teaspoons salt

Add:

3/4 cup milk

3 tablespoons butter

1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Pour into a greased 9x13 pan.

To make syrup, boil for 5 minutes:

3/4 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup white sugar

1 1/2 cup hot water

3 tablespoons baking cocoa

Pour syrup over batter.

Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

This is such a fun recipe because the chocolate cake batter 'floats' to the top, and the syrup ends up on the bottom. And it is sooo good; to serve, flip pieces upside down so the syrup is on top; serve warm with ice cream...mmmmmmm. Enjoy!

6-28-10 Bean Patch Ponderings

I love harvest. I enjoy picking lettuce, spinach, apples, beans, tomatoes… all the ripe produce that we’ve worked so hard to plant and cultivate. God blesses our efforts with lots of good fruit; we get the fun of picking, eating, and preserving it. It’s very rewarding to me. I especially enjoy picking beans because it’s so peaceful doing it early in the morning. Today Tori ran the inside operations (breakfast, k.p., laundry, girls’ hair, get Joshua dressed, etc.) because she’d much rather do that than pick beans; and I got to pick and ponder. As the kids woke up and came to help me, my ponder time diminished, but I still had quite a bit of time of silence before they all meandered out. Give me a beautiful cool morning and a bean patch and I think I’ve got it made; it only happens several times a year and I enjoy it every time. Picking beans this morning, I was noticing all the weeds that insist on growing even though we’ve been diligent in weeding and trying to keep them out. As I pick, I also weed; to me there’s something very satisfying in a clean row. Also this year there’s so much mold – big gross beans covered with mushy slimy white fuzz. I don’t know much about bean mold, but I assume it will spread if it’s left in the patch, so as I picked I also threw all the moldy beans away from the patch into the grass. Anyway, so I was weeding and picking, and picking and weeding, and occasionally throwing away moldy beans, and just kept thinking about how a weedy moldy bean patch is like our spiritual lives. Even though we are diligent to weed the bad out of our lives, satan insists on planting new weed seeds every day, hoping and trying to choke out and destroy the good fruit which God wants us to have. Even when the fruit is mature, at the end of its life and ready to be picked, it can still be destroyed by mold; mature Christians as well as new converts can still be overcome by satan if a.) they are not diligent to daily weed their lives of bad influences, tendencies, and habits; and b.) they get too close to a bad moldy bean; the mold can destroy them before they even realize what’s happening. We should share God’s love with the mold of the world, but in doing so we must be cautious that we don’t get so close and caught up in it that we are infected before we know it. So my bean patch ponderings just kind of reminded me that my relationship with my Lord Jesus Christ is like a bean patch; it must be diligently maintained or there will be little or damaged fruit.

End of ponderings.

On to the day, and a wild one it was. Levi and Jesse milked, and after Levi went to CIT, Jesse started picking apples. Jacob did chores and worked in the orchard as well; there were many apples to pick. Last week my guess was right – there were more left on the trees than we picked on Thursday, plus the bushels that had fallen over the weekend. I joined the apple crew when beans were picked, and even Ben and the little girls could pick lots just standing on the ground. They were loving it. Tori and Kate joined us when things were ship-shape in the house, and by noon (I think; kind of forget) we had everything pretty much picked. Jacob and Kate made lunch while the rest of us hauled apples, buckets, crates, and ladders up to the house; we ended up with 4 bushels for the cows and 13 bushels for sauce…which meant I was on the phone all day trying to find takers. By the end of the day we had only 2 bushels left so most of my phone calls were successful. I’m just thankful for cell phones so I could talk and pick at the same time! Dad came home and jumped on the four-wheeler to check out the grass hay that Uhlmans were cutting for us; he went back to work and Jesse took Grandpa to ride with Rob and guide him around the wet spots. After lunch we tackled the beans and had them all snipped and snapped in 32 minutes. For clarification, we SNIP the ends off and SNAP the beans in pieces. Every time, we have this debate over which is which and who likes to do what better. So fun!

Beans done, then a short swim (Jesse went with us and Levi picked him up there to milk), and home for a snack and walk with Karol. Then chores and blanching beans; in the midst of that, U. Don, U. Randy & A. Marj, and U. Dan & A. Shirley came to pick up apples, A. Marcia stopped to pick up something else, and Grandpa Steiner stopped to drop off something. And we had beans to blanche and supper to make and chores to do. My head was spinning, but we got ‘er done! Everybody stayed on task, and we had supper only a few minutes late, with 12 quarts of beans in the freezer and fresh for supper too. THEN Dad and I (and 4 kids) went to Morton to buy a used stove for my birthday present (kind of) which will replace the shocking one in the basement. We were on our way out of Morton when Dad got a phone call; Uhlmans brought us some straw which had to be unloaded next. Levi and Jesse were home by then, and after their supper they helped with that job then took the hay rack back to Uhlmans. THEN my men moved in my new old stove. Dad and I took a short walk to check out the hay (looks very good, and smells great) while everyone else had ice cream sandwiches outside. Bibletime and beds. We had some tired kids! (and parents)

Some pictures of the day.

::Good morning Sunshine::

::Zinnias just starting to bloom::

So far we’re thinking this black tarp experiment is a success. Minimal weeds, and vines are getting bigger every day.

Sweet corn is growing, but beetles are starting to eat off the silks so it might be a small harvest.

::Bountiful harvest::

::More bounty::

En route to Uncle Jerry’s…I love this picture (thanks, Kate).

::Precious helper::

::Blessings of the farm::

::Beauty beyond words::

Hopefully we’ll have some newborn calves one of these days.

::Fun in the barn::

::The best part::

That’s all, folks.

6-27-10 Sunday School Picnic

We woke up to RAIN again! It didn’t last long, though, and the sun was out by the time we went to church. Levi and Ben, fishing in Tremont, didn’t get rained on at all…which was odd because Aunt Sarah said she had .3” this morning. (?) Anyway, no more rain, but it was very HOT by afternoon.

Akihiro Ito preached today’s morning sermon, and Dan had the afternoon service. There were many TakeAways, one being 5 words: Jesus Christ and him crucified. How simple is that, and yet how amazing and profound and miraculous also. Akihiro also shared 3 things that were shared with him when he started repenting: 1. Every word in the Bible is true. 2. Jesus Christ died for our sins. 3. The church is the bride of Christ. In the afternoon Dan spoke at length about marriage, and how wives need to submit to husbands…at which I need to do much better. Singing was beautiful, fellowship is precious, and I’m just very thankful to God for giving us such a loving church that preaches TRUTH.

Popcorn and strawberry lemonade after church, then a bunch of ‘rasslin’ around.

Eventually everyone settled down, and kids did chores and got ready to go to the Sunday School picnic. Everyone had a nice time,as usual; thankfully it was cloudy, so in spite of the heat it wasn’t too terribly hot. Levi, Jesse, and Jacob enjoyed playing the baseball game, and the rest of us enjoyed watching them. We had driven 2 vehicles so the older kids could stay when Dad and I had to take kids home for baths and beds. When we got home, this greeted us:

Amazing.

And we checked out our potatoes before helping everybody get to beds.

That’s all folks.

6-26-10 Saturday

CALM day. Dad and the boys put blinders on 147 pheasants (we paid for 150 so 147 is really good) early, and then took Joshua with them to mow and clean up at CIT. Dad did payroll in Morton, came home briefly, and then took Jesse and Jewel to Pekin to get rock for a shed landscaping project. He had to make a second trip, and Sarah went with him that time. We girls did kitchen, sewing, and computer projects, some Friday jobs, and of course laundry. And some ironing. And some emailing, phone calling, organizing, and managing. Well, really it WAS calm even if it doesn’t sound like it (relative to 6 bushels of applesauce, of course).

After Dad got home from Pekin again, we all went down to Uncle Jerry’s for awhile. With heat indices above 100, there wasn’t much else to do outside. Home from swimming, everyone showered and finished up chores. Kids had an early supper (Mexican beans and rice, a favorite), and then Dad and I did some chase in Pekin. FINALLY found a good source for butterfly (fishing) nets – a new sports store in Pekin; they have lots of good quality nets, very reasonably priced. I AM SO GLAD to have found them, because my patient Ben has been asking me to get nets for the other kids. They always take his, and then when he finds the perfect butterfly, his net is GONE. I know that had to be frustrating for him, and I’m thankful to say he’s been very patient with it all. So one of the new nets went to him, and he gets to keep his old one to share when his cousins/friends come over. I’m amazed at how many HOURS these kids spend collecting, studying, and mounting (did I mention talking about?) BUGS. Anyway. Dad and my other errands were successful also; home to rock Joshua awhile before everyone went to bed.

Now my turn; good night.

6-25-10 Applesauce Daze

Dad and I were up at 5:00 and outside by 6:00 when Aunt Sarah got here. It was a beautiful morning to be outside. The sunrise was awesome; I’m glad I’m serving a God who gives us such priceless gifts. It’s just a daily reminder that He loves to bless us.

Ready to go.

First step – washing. Kate got up on her own (at 5:45, she wants me to add) and was the first one out to help (Levi and Jesse milked).

All clean and ready to cut. We started cutting at 6:20.

Initial set-up. Jacob was the next to join the crew.

Kate and I were taking out blossoms (the ONLY waste at this step!); Dad, A. Sarah, and Jacob were cutting into smaller pieces for faster cooking.

Jacob used this cutter which worked well.

Guess who our next helper was? Bright smiles and happy chatter. “Balls” and water outside – he was delighted!

Precious helper.

Tori has a cold so didn’t get up quite as early as she would have otherwise. Once up though, she pitched right in. Which was good because about then Dad had to go to work.

We put Ben right to work too.

By 7:50, when Sarah put the last cut apples into the water tubs, it was starting to get hot.

6 tubs ready to cook; we started the burners at 7:55.

And for the next 5 hours we cooked…

…riced…

…sugared and stirred…

…and boxed applesauce.

Quite a bit of tasting also [smile].

Ben took over ricing about halfway through and did a great job.

Joshua loved his share of watching.

Queen Jewel!

We were done cooking by 12:30 and only had the cleanup to do yet.

Turning the ricer off for the last time.

Total yield: 120 quarts.

Very little waste – this is it, about 2/3 of a 5 gallon bucket.

Levi went to CIT after milking, and Jesse and Jacob worked on the mowing and trimming. Mowing done, K.p. done, including floor scrubbed a couple of times, and to swim for awhile by 2:00. Then home for chores, and I went back to walk with Aunt Marcia. Kids got our Aldi frozen pizza ready for supper; afterwards Dad and the boys went to Fred’s to get 2 bull calves – our next freezer beef. I read to little girls; big girls read, and Joshua took a nap. We were all outside playing catch when the boys got home, and Joshua woke up soon after too.

Time for some fireflies before beds.