Sunday, February 26, 2023

Blogging for a While

Jonathan enjoys going back through the old blog posts, and I noticed the pictures from the early ones had gotten large and wonky (probably when the platform changed hands). So I went through and took all the pictures out of the first few years of the blog, dragged them onto my desktop, and re-entered them so that they were converted correctly into a normal-sized picture. 

I noticed I blogged a lot more back then! Like, several blog posts a week. I must have had more time on my hands. But I also wrote less. And, darn, those kids were cute! There are so many things I've forgotten that they said or did. I love those reminders.




Jonathan is teaching Harrison how to mow with the zero-turn riding mower since he'll be taking over the lawn mowing chores once Jon leaves for college.


They spent an hour or so out there. Jon had a sequential plan for training. I was impressed.


Phoebe baked a pie for Home Ec class which doubled as dessert for Sunday lunch with Mimi and Papa. 


And then Jon made a pie for the youth group Super Bowl party.


This is my shawl I've been knitting in the evenings. My knitting stitch is pretty tight, but I think the wrinkles will loosen up after I wash and block it. 


Wallace and the other black kitten. 
Wallace is just so goofy looking. But he's also very approachable. As in, he will approach you anytime you step outside. He'll also head your direction and walk directly in your path so that you trip over him.


When we finish a habit for Habit Training in school, the kids like to celebrate. Celebration is built into habit training usually, but I had let this one go when we finished Truthfulness because I didn't know what neat thing to do to celebrate. Phoebe and Harrison noticed though and demanded a celebration of some kind. They wanted to do something to get out of the house, but not the usual stuff we do. So we landed on bowling.


Which might not get mentioned again for a while. We're just not good bowlers. But I still enjoyed it with the kids. We went to Dairy Queen afterwards which was a good consolation. 


Jonathan brought home these tulips for me on Valentines! 
He also used them for Nature Study, so win-win. We noticed they smell a bit citrusy while the other colors have their own unique smells. Who knew that about tulips?


Mimi and Papa had us over to celebrate Paul's 86th birthday. 


It's a good thing the candles tell us the age! Very helpful.


Paul was showing Jonathan the picture of him as a kid on a horse.


Mimi made a delicious chocolate cake.


Harrison had some trouble with math the other day. He cut out these pentagons and was supposed to made a tessellation out of them. The little paper shapes wouldn't stay put and kept sliding around and you couldn't get them to connect very well. So his first attempt turned out to be wrong (they didn't actually fit like he thought they did). The next day we continued the worksheet, and he mentioned he could do this a lot better on iDraw. I let him try. And it was indeed much easier and quicker.




Our youth minister is leaving to go serve in a church in Illinois. He's been here 8 1/2 years. A young lady from church made this stunning cake for his goodbye. She made our church building (in the back) and the church he's heading to (front). What a cool idea! We're gonna miss Mike; he's been so great for our kids. But we're excited for his new adventure.


Spooky fog this morning. 

We start our third and last term of school tomorrow. Twelve more weeks till summer. Summer was so busy last year that I almost don't want school to end! (Almost.) 



 

Monday, February 6, 2023

Sermons and Maple Syrup


Our preacher Jamie has been working with three boys (including Jonathan) who are interested in preaching. What a gift for those boys! Phillip has also been coaching Jon along as he studied his Bible passage and had questions.


We held their sermon service Sunday night down in the church basement where our Sunday night
Bible study always meets. The crowd was more than expected though! What a blessing. Sixty-five people were there to encourage the boys.


Jackson led our music and communion time. He's currently a student at Central Christian College of the Bible. Kemper preached first (age 16). Noah was next (age 13 and a good friend of Harrison). And Jonathan preached last (18). 


Jack


Kemper


Noah


Jonathan. 
This was his first sermon. Just an excellent job. I especially loved that he used an illustration from Amos Fortune: Free Man, one of our beloved school books. 


You can watch it above.
Or go to Jon's Youtube channel and see it there. Or watch this version of the whole service. We're sure proud of all of them!


Either Pickle or Frog. I can never remember which cat is which.


This is our brave pirate Wallace. 
He lost the tip of his ear in the Arctic Blast. He's the boldest of the black kittens. He will climb up your pant leg, use your jeans to sharpen his claws, and try to get up to your shoulder. 


Phoebe has been reminiscing about the pink birthday cake she had several years as a child. So she went to the store and purchased ingredients and made one. I think it hit the nostalgia spot.


So I guess Jonathan got into tree identification because he watched a cooking video where a guy mentioned making his own maple syrup. That made Jon wonder if we might not have maples in our yard. Which led to him identifying our trees, which he found he enjoyed, so he went to other yards in town to identify those. (It's been a great Nature Study focus for his last year of school.)


It turns out we have two silver maples. 
They have a little bit lower percentage of sugar compared to sugar maples, but they can be tapped for syrup.


So it's been sugaring time around here!


The first time we got one little shot glass full which we all tasted and drank down. This time we got about 7 ounces. We have lots of trouble with wind here on the prairie, and Jon is learning a lot with having to fix all the problems he encounters. But who knew we could make our own maple syrup?

And so the days are rolling by. We're in February now. See? Winter doesn't last forever.