Missing My Guys

Tim and Zeke left on Monday morning at 3:00 a.m. to go to Missouri to visit Tim's grandmother.

They got there safely and are having a wonderful time.  It is a good bit colder there though.  They have sent me pictures from the Springfield Zoo and Zeke seems to really be getting spoiled by everyone.  I can't blame them.  He is an easy going, well behaved, quiet type young man, that is easy to shower with love.  I pray his re-entry back into normal life, into our mega family on a farm, will be taken in stride by him.  :)

It is never easy when Tim or I go out of town.  It does not happen often but we truly are one and are a team in everything we do around here.  I have to fully rely on God in times like this and keep telling myself that it is only for a short week.  It will be over with soon.

Boy, am I missing them so much every day. 

This year I decided not to push myself with Tim being gone.  We are lightly home schooling and trying to do something fun every day.  I want to stay a "happy busy" to keep my mind off it all but not overwhelm myself.

So...we started off our week bright and early on Monday morning with butchering 9 roosters.  :)  I know...not fun at all but really needed to be done.  The roosters are done growing and are consuming a lot of feed right now.  Also, 30 or so happy roosters crowing at 5:00 a.m. every morning can be a bit much.  So we did 9 two weeks ago and did 9 Monday and now have 8 more to do sometime soon.  It only took two hours and we spent the rest of the day together playing board games.  It really was a good day.  Productive and then we had  fun all afternoon. 

Tuesday, we had three appointments. (two of the three appointments were people coming to our home for things with Antonio)  I spent the time in between the appointments, cleaning all of Zeke's work and play areas around the house.  It is not easy to sort his things with him around.  It stresses him out.  He does not like people touching his stuff or moving it all around.  So while he was gone I washed every piece of clothing in his wardrobe, sorted it and washed all his bedding.  I think I did 10 loads of laundry.  No kidding.  The kids and I also dumped out all his toy buckets and wiped everything down and sorted them all out.  I also cleaned out his home school desk area.  Whew.  Everything of his is organized and clean now.  It looks great!

Wednesday was Therapy Day.  We have to have Antonio up, pottied, showered, diapered, dressed, medicine, breathing treatments and g-tube fed.  All the barn chores and milking done.  All the kids and myself ready and out the door by 7:30 a.m.   We do it every other Wednesday.  I stop and get breakfast on the way for the children and am at the Therapy place by 8:00 a.m., so all of the children receiving PT, OT or speech can be seen.  We are usually done by 11:00 am.  Then we always pick up a friends child to come and play for the afternoon.

Wednesday afternoon, for something fun, I helped the children make "Sun Catchers".  I found a really neat craft idea using clear colored pony beads to make these from.  If you want to google it, they are called "Pony Bead Sun Catchers".  There was also a youtube tutorial on them.  I decided to do it for a fun project this afternoon to cheer the children up and keep their minds off Zeke and Tim being away.  It was a fun and inexpensive craft that busied the kids for hours.  I was even drawn into it and lost track of time. :) 

Try this at your own risk of course...But basically you put a toaster oven out side.  (yes, the melting plastic smell was stinky and probably toxic)  So we put our little oven out side to bake them.

You make designs using clear pony beads in pie tins, muffin tins or on cookie sheets (in side of metal cookie cutters).  Above is our friend that comes to spend time with us often.  She was making a wonderful heart sun catcher.

William likes things in order and to have a plan.  He got out his Kindle and down loaded a pixelated picture of Mega Man to work from.  It took him about an hour!

Carolyn filled a VW bug cookie cutter and made some small flowers.

Then she went back to one of her all time favoite hobbies.  Making animals out of pony beads.

Carolyn helped Antonio fill his tins.  She put in what colors he wanted and in a way he wanted them.

Here is Elizabeth making her flowers and patterns. 

You pop them in a 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes and the beads melt all together, nice and shinny.

Then let them cool for 20  minutes and pop them out of their pans.  So much fun and so pretty. I drilled small holes in some of them and the children strung them together to make mobiles.

Here is Elizabeth's sun catcher she made and hung in her window.

Here is the one Antonio helped make.  He wanted it hung over his office area.

Here is Williams hanging in his window in his room.

It was a wonderful craft I am sure we will be doing again some day.

Today is Thursday and I played hookie from home schooling.  :)  I bailed and went antiquing with my dad.  It was a nice and relaxing day.  We had a great time and spent the morning away looking for treasures. 

God is so very good to us and we have had a full but productive week this week.  God has helped us get everything done that has needed doing and even though we miss the guys a lot, we know they will be home soon.

James 1:2-4 My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;  Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.  But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.


May the Lord God in heaven be your strong tower in all you go thru.  May He be your comfort, peace and your guide, leading you into the life He prepares and desires for you.  God be with you.

Blessings, 
susan 

Prater's Mill

Another fall festival! Told ya Georgia is full of them!

Last Friday evening my sister took a few children to the Great Locomotive Chase Festival in Adairsville GA.  They had a great time.

This week we have been so very busy around here.  I have not had a lot of time to post anything or even do my normal house work!  So here is a quick update of our week!

Last weekend the children helped my sister and brother in law do some brush clean up on a piece of property.  They all had a wonderful time and my sister and her husband provided a wonderful picnic for the children afterward.  Unfortunately William ended up with a spider bite on his arm.  If you look closely in the second picture you can see the fang marks and the black dying tissue at the bite site.  Poor William felt tired and puny from it.  I worked hard for a few days applying poultices of activated charcoal and Slippery Elm but saw in a few days it was spreading fast, so took him to the doctors for antibiotics.  The pictures were taken on the third day.  I am pleased to report he is doing a lot better now.

I also had to take Antonio in to the doctors this week for bowel troubles.  He is also doing much better now!  Always my happy guy!  What a blessing to us.

The girls and I had eye doctor appointments.  I did not need bifocals!  Yippee!!  I know.  Silly right?  Elizabeth needed a stronger prescription.

Carolyn was born with Congenital Glaucoma.  We have to get her eye pressures tested at least yearly.  It is a result from her biological mom drinking daily thru her pregnancy.  Carolyn's eye pressures were higher than last time so we walked way with no glasses but two more specialists appointments to get more accurate pressure readings.  This is something that happens alot when you have a child with special needs.  Very often one doctors appointment makes you walk away with several more.  :)

She ran errands with me later and had to wear sun glasses as her eyes stayed dilated for quite some time.  I had to get a picture.  To cute.

With all the appointments this week, home schooling, our big van broke down and had to go into the shop and so many more things...Oh yeah and a very sick baby goat that needed constant care...we really were looking forward to resting and having some family fun this weekend!  So now to the fun day.

This weekend my wonderful sister took some of my children to the Prater’s Mill fall festival.  She has taken a few kids each year to this for many years.  Antonio can not go as the grounds are not really wheel chair friendly so I always stay home and do something fun with him.  This year my sister was going to be brave and take four of the kids but Elizabeth got into trouble and lost her privilege to go.  So I stayed home with Antonio and Elizabeth this year.

The pictures are brought to you today by my right hand man William!  

I asked for pictures of their day so I could see what fun they had.  I got six pictures of the kids and the rest of machinery, tractors and cars!!! Teen boys!!!

Here is an exert from the Prater Mill web site:

Built in 1855, Praters Mill is a water powered mill originally fitted with the latest in grain cleaning, grinding and sifting machinery, all powered by the Coahulla Creek. During the Civil War, the mill was used as a campsite by soldiers from both sides and since it was considered an invaluable food source by the Union Army it was not destroyed. 

They do grind corn there and sell...stone ground grits, corn meal and corn flour.  Zeke is on a casin free/gluten free diet so we get corn flour here to bake him muffins and things with. 

Carolyn and Zeke are very close in age and are very bonded together.  They do everything together and don't like to be apart.  We affectionately call them the twins.  Tim and Zeke are going out of town for a week and leaving this Monday!  Zeke and Carolyn will miss each other terribly.  Tim and Zeke are going to Missouri to see Tim's grandmother.  Please keep us in your prayers.  Tim and Zeke for traveling safety and  for us left at home missing them so much.  I will be home alone with the farm and children.   Lord be with us.

The children said there was a blacksmiths shop functioning and lots of neat craft booths set up.

They looked at alot of tractors.

They watched clogging and saw a lot of neat cars and trucks.

They ate good food!!

They toured the cotton mill.

Antiques!

Toured the old general store.

The children who went to the festival had a wonderful time! Thank you as always sister, for all you do to enrich the lives of the children.

Even though we had a busy and ruff week in many aspects, God is still on the throne and all is truly well.  I always go to bed at night looking back on my day and seeing His hand on every part of it.  He is always so good to us and carries us thru the hard days and weeks.  He provides in all ways and is worthy of our praise!

Fall is such a wonderful time of year!

Psalm 150:6  Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord.

Blessings,
susan

Fall Festivals

One thing that is not lacking in Georgia in the fall is festivals.  After the long hot Georgia summer months, people love to get outside and enjoy the cooler fall weather and celebrate in any way they can.  There are a lot of historic festivals this time of year all around us.  There are also many smaller church festivals just to celebrate harvest time and to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to those who attend. 

We have been very busy here on the farm lately.  We have taken a few days off from school in order to start preparing things around here for winter and cold weather.  The whole outside of the house has been washed.  The pool has been closed and covered.  We have butchered one large batch of roosters.  We have started to strip out the gardens and have about half the stalls in the barn cleaned out and re-bedded for the winter months.  Needless to say, I have not had much time to sit and write here on the blog.  But...we have taken the time to take the children to a few local festivals.  So will share pictures from those today.

Tim had to work but I took the children to Belmont Baptist Church's fall festival.  The weather was perfect and everyone who helped put it on, did a great job.

Many families from around the community showed up and everyone seemed to have a great time.

We home church and do not attend there but were invited so went to show support.

There were many inflatable things to bounce in and climb on for all ages.

They had a climbing rock wall and the local police department there to talk to the children and show them the inside of a police car.  They had the local fire department there to show off a fire truck to the kids and an ambulance too.

These types of outings can be very stressful for Zeke.  Fairs, amunsment parks and festivals can be very over simulating to him and bring on anxiety because he feels they are unsafe.  He did very well that day.

Even though I could see he was worried and anxious he would still smile for me if I asked him to smile for a picture.  Then there is Antonio! He is happy all the time.  He enjoyed eating snacks, participating in what he could and watching the kids have fun.

 

This festival had many booths there for the children to play games at and win a small prize or a treat.

Booths where they could get their face painted and decorate their own cookie.

The girls were all into the sand art!

My nervous young man.

Smile for mom!  Ah, that's better!

We do not keep a lot of sweets in the house at all but William wanted to do the cake walk.  He said he had never done one before and wanted to participate.  So I let him.

Carolyn and Elizabeth  joined him.  Wouldn't you know William won a cake!  And before I could pull the girls off, Carolyn had as well!  Yikes!!  We tried to not take the second cake but the people insisted.  So we went home with two cakes and a bunch of very happy children who enjoyed refined sugar the whole week thru! 

When all was said and done 540 guests had attended from the community and 30 had accepted Jesus.  Praise God!  What a wonderful day.

Tim and I also took Antonio, Elizabeth and Zeke, the next weekend, to the Home Depot Fire and Safety festival.  William and Carolyn were with my sister for the day that day.

 Antonio wanted his picture taken by this bulldozer!

Both of the events were free to the public and brought the children great joy.

I pray your fall is full of beautiful days and times of making happy memories.
 

Isaiah 55:12  For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

 

Blessings,
susan