Things Are Looking Up

It is amazing how a couple days of things breaking, dying, falling apart can reap weeks of trying to put it all back together again.

Our big van seems to be fixed. If you hear a slight hesitation in my voice, that is because... there is. I'll claim the van as "mine" again, but the other van is shot. Dale thinks it is the transmission, and right now it looks like we are going to be in the market for a second vehicle. The poor old van is just tuckered out, and we don't want to sink a lot of money into it to keep it going. Hopefully that will all be resolved over the next few weeks.

The crock pot issue is resolved. Dale called Kitchen Aid and they are sending us a new insert for a discounted price. Fine with me. I just want to use my crock pot again!

As far as glasses go, Esther and Benjamin both got new frames. Yay! Amazing how much better they can see with proper eye wear. Of course I had to get them both to model. You can see their enthusiasm here.

(Excuse Esther's messy hair... I had just called her in from playing outside)



Then there is my tall ham.

"Benjamin smile!"


"No, SMILE, as in show me your teeth."


I tried again but he got distracted by a certain sister who was doing bunny ears behind his head. SO helpful.

NOT.



"Okay, you know what, just look natural."




Not that natural wisenheimer. .



"Come on, just one nice smile!"
(I swear he is worse than a two year old!)



Nice! There is that handsome face I love.

We have been up to other things besides messing around with the camera. I started a quilt for Isaac for his second birthday coming up in December. Yeah, I anticipate it taking me that long to do it, even though it will be machine pieced and quilted. Pretty soon I will have to drop all my "fun" sewing for "chore sewing" for this fall and winter. I am giving myself to the end of September, then I need to get a wiggle on it. If I finish his top before then I will jump right into the fall/winter pile. The other night I spent a great deal of time pressing a billion of these four patch units.



Jerusha has been a busy little bee lately too. She helped me make some banana bread the other day. She is proving to be quite a good helper!



We get our eggs from a friend. They are farm fresh and tasty! We usually get some duck eggs too. Duck eggs are much larger than chicken eggs, and are very rich. Their shells are like titanium... extremely hard to crack. They are fantastic to eat, but we generally use them in baking. Here is a picture of a smaller duck egg and a large chicken egg. The duck eggs is still bigger, even as the runt of the dozen.



Of course after the bread was out and cooled, we had a little tea party that afternoon. Who can resist the smell of fresh banana nut bread?



After she was my little helper in the kitchen I let her loose outside, where she proved that she was quite industrious.

She played with Isaac for a bit while I tortured, um... chased and tickled some of her siblings.



When I was done she got busy painting the little lean-to they all constructed a while back. (Please note, no real paint was harmed in any way during the filming of this event. That there is mud paint.)



There is just a bit of what we have been up to. The weather is turning decidedly "Fall", and we are in the midst of taking down the pool and putting the AC's away for the winter. We are also finishing up stacking wood, and looking forward to starting the applesauce making next month or so.

Have a blessed day!