And for those who haven’t met her, this is J’s Christmas present, Pumpkin:

She came to us early, on Thanksgiving weekend.

Our day has been blessed so far; may yours be filled with the love of family and friends but most of all love from the One whose birth we celebrate today. Happy birthday, Jesus!

An English Prayer

For rosy apples, juicy plums,
And yellow pears so sweet,
For hips and haws and bush and hedge,
And flowers at our feet,
For ears of corn all ripe and dry,
And colored leaves on trees,
We thank You, Heavenly Father God,
For such good gifts as these.

- Unknown

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. – Jas. 1:17

XOXOX,

Phisch

Hold on, let me take a moment to let you know that these photos have been delayed because (1) I like to take my time in processing them. School starts soon, we’re finishing the last days of our vacation so Life is taking precedence. (2) I have since had the opportunity to shoot babies. I mean *babies*! I’ll let you see a sneak peak of those soon, ok? In the mean time…These are from our first day out in Orange County. We got together over at one of our old hangouts, the Irvine Spectrum for dinner and just to, well, hang out.

My oldest, enjoying my new phone. What’s he doing? Taking pictures, of course!

This is my middle sister. Hold on, let me introduce you to the rest of her family.

My nephew. Yes, I think he’s cute, too.

My brother in law. There’s a reason for the quirky smile. He was laughing at something he and my hubby were up to. Incidentally, it was hubby who took this one.

So. Much. Fun. You know kids, they don’t care how cold the water is, they just set their hearts on enjoying the experience and they do!

Dad does a great job of drying him off. Here are all three of them!

Later on, we all headed to the Adidas store for the sake of my oldest. The two younger boys got to play catch in the store. It’s ok, they were careful and didn’t break anything.

It’s not hard to tell this is just one of his favorite places to be, is it? I love that gleaming expression.

More photos to come! But let me leave you with this one that my oldest asked me to take:

Tail end of last week was taken up with cleaning and laundr, laundry, laundry.

Thursday was bible study in the afternoon for me and I was so distracted I ran over a skateboard on the way out. So sad, it was brand new, too. That left me frazzled for the rest of the day. Ugh. I’m too easily traumatized and shocked, right? Right.

Friday: packing and laundry. Kids bored because they pack and mom unpacks and washes what was packed and repacks. Off to bed…the boys who said they’d be up all night were out like a light. God is good! They need their sleep.

We get up at 3:30, load up and are on the road in an hour. Dog is excited as are the children but I manage to sleep at some point. This time I get to drive more! As a result, while we’re in El Paso we opt to drive straight throught instead of stop in Tucson, AZ. I only get tailgated once but that was plenty. The I-10 seems to be perpetually under construction. Going 80mph down to 45mph and one lane just HURTS, that is all. I have a close bond with my gas pedal.

Anyway.

We made it around 11:30pm to SIL’s, hale and hearty but tired. Because we drove straight through, we got to go to church with SIL on Sunday, have lunch then in the eve go have cheap n good sushi at Irvine Spectrum. So far, so fun!

It’s really hard to resist a polite “would you like one?” from a little kid with puppy dog eyes and a big grin. I do have to admit their follow up statement of “NO FREE HUGS!” got a few grins (and one aghast look that I knew of). Faith of a child, yes? So awesome to see it happen!

It didn’t take long for us to find out that the church across from where we were standing was offering free snow cones. Our boys really wanted them badly, but of course the syrup is loaded with food coloring. They took the plain ice snow cones without too much fuss, though. It was hot so we were thirsty!

To make up for their not being able to have any of the snow cones from last night, this morning we made syrup so we could have our own at home. Here’s what we made…

Cherry Vanilla Syrup
Based on this recipe

1 bag frozen cherries, 16 oz.
1/2 cup water
2 cups granulated sugar
2 tsp. vanilla

Pulse the frozen cherries and any bits of frozen juice from the bag in a food processor until the pieces are a consistent, fine size.

Place the cherries in a saucepan with the water and sugar and bring to a boil.  Boil for 5 minutes or until it’s slightly syrupy. If it’s too thick, it might be hard to use for snow cones. Pour through a fine-mesh sieve, pushing the syrup out of the solids.  Allow to cool, then mix in vanilla.

Store in the fridge in an airtight container for later use.

Lemon Syrup
Based on this recipe

1 cup of lemon juice (we used 9 lemons)
Finely grated rind of 5 lemons
2 cups sugar

Put the sugar, lemon rind and lemon juice in a nonreactive saucepan. Stirring frequently, cook the mixture over medium-high heat. As soon as the sugar has dissolved completely and the mixture has come to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer briskly, stirring occasionally, until the mixture has thickened to a syrupy but still pourable consistency.

Pour through a fine-meshed sieve into a glass jar. Allow to cool. Store in the fridge. Makes about 2 cups.

——————–
How sweet are Your words to my taste, Sweeter than honey to my mouth! – Psa 119:103

This year was a little different. NM was old enough to go to the junior high and high school camp but he had volunteered to help with VBS. We encouraged him to back up what he said so he spent the week with us, assigned with the task of helping to move tables and put up signs. He was very happy to find that he enjoyed hanging out with the other kids and playing soccer during their game times! It was a blessing to hear him say he was glad that a lot of the kids who needed them received bibles to read.

J had a great time! He and his friends were in the class I taught, the 6- and 7-year olds. They were lots of fun and very well-behaved. J was excited because he helped me tell one of the bible stories while he played King Abimelech. He loved hanging out with his friends and getting to enjoy the puppet shows.

Speaking of puppet shows: they were so much fun this year! I got to participate in a couple of them again and I have to admit it’s my favorite part of VBS. Blame it on the Muppet Show, I guess! I was blessed to see so many of the kids from last year return this year and hear about their personal growth in their walk with Jesus. One little girl, who was one of those willful types at the beginning of the week ended up crying on the last day. Why? I thought she didn’t want to be in our class! It turns out mom came only to drop off her big brother and then take her to the doctor because she was running a fever. She was crying because she couldn’t come! Poor baby.

I’m going to miss the fellowship and the kids until next year. It was lots of fun and I really did enjoy getting to teach one of the classes, especially since J was in it with me. Most of all, it was a joy to get to be a part of a body of believers that really comes together to share the love of Christ to children.

Our God is an awesome God!

Time for us to buy a toad house or two and build a bat box.

Since that didn’t work out, we headed over to Wild Basin Preserve. Yes it was hot but we wanted to be outdoors, so outdoors we went! Good thing we were armed with Clif bars and bottles of water.

The facility is open to anyone and all they ask is a suggested donation but I forget the amount. With the recent rains, the stream that runs through the preserve was pretty and the little water fall was flowing (note: it’s really a few feet high is all). Anyway, here’s some of what we saw.

Itty bitty meadows of tiny white flowers here and there:

J running ahead of me, way behind his brother, trail map in his hand:

It was my main view:

The water falls were small, like I said. But where do you draw the line between a stream running and water falls?

“MOM! Take our picture!”

“We have to go there now!”

Once, I did get ahead of him. Just once.

I have no idea why he’s grinning. I’m not sure it matters!

Funky.

See? It’s that view again.

J and I got a kick out of the rollie pollie.

I thought it was cute.

The sturdy hand holds to help ford the stream:

I don’t get it.

J saw this picture and said “that looks dangerous!”

Hehe

A few more photos here.

The stencil is made out of freezer paper. We printed the designs, cut out the parts where we wanted the paint to go, then ironed them on the tshirts (iron set to cotton, NO steam).

Paint on the design. We used Tulip “slick” paints, just red and blue. The shirts are cheapies from Target. For the stars, instead of painting them blue, I used cut outs and painted around them. NOTE: make sure you iron the shiny side down. They stick to the iron if you don’t get that part right. Don’t ask me how I know.

J working on his, very intent as you can see from his face:

NM can’t wait to peel off the stencil:

After it’s dry to the touch we peeled off the stencils (except for me, I pulled them off while they were still wet!). And here’s the result of their creative design and painting skills:

Hope you enjoyed it! Happy birthday, USA!

Texas Hill Country is just awash with wildflowers right now.

You just have to deal with this when you wade through the wildflowers and grasses:

We stopped for a moment at this place and found it’s very dog-friendly.

The Wild West isn’t complete without a prairie schooner, is it?

They had several fields of wildflowers being cultivated. But if you cultivate them are they really still “wild”?

We drove into Fredricksburg, grabbed a lunch to go then headed back out. We found a spot where we could eat outside but Sprocket found something…

She has good reason to look worried. The picnic area was crawling with these guys:

They are HUGE. I wasn’t about to put my hand or toes near them so you could get a sense of scale. They were all over the place and had even worn a path in the dirt with their comings and goings. There was also this, which I got by judiciously avoiding the ants:

And I finally remembered to get a picture of these guys, drive-by-shooting style:

After lunch, we hunted for peaches in earnest. We were trying to find a certain peach stand. We couldn’t find the right one, but there was no shortage of peach stands this year. We even had the bonus of ice cream!

“Remember when mom would make me hug you so she could take pictures?”

“Oh yeah! That was annoying because it was so hot and boring.”