I love these verses...
Psalm 30: 11-12
"Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness;
"To the end that my glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever."
Indeed, our mourning has many times over been turned into praise, dancing and thankfullness to the Lord for His great grace and mercy. Underserved as it is. I thank and praise Him!
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Coming up for air...
The last month and a half have been a swarm of activity, so I apologize for neglecting you...
First, please be in prayer for my friend Sarah and her family... their 7 month old infant died recently, the youngest of nine precious children in a wonderfully close-knit family... needless to say, this has left a tremendous hole and immeasurable hurt in their lives.
Next, my OB, who is a wonderful, exceptional high risk pregnancy specialist also very recently lost his wife to a battle with cancer... She was diagnosed one week after our Hannah was born, given months to live, and yet surpassed that timeframe given by her doctors, which was a gift and an answer to prayer. Her final month was very difficult for her and her husband as the cancer became painful and she really struggled with pain in her final weeks. I can only imagine how difficult that must have been for her husband, our wonderful doctor, to sit by and not be able to really DO anything to make things better for her... She has been gone for almost a month now, but after 40+ years together, he is missing her tremendously and learning to adjust to a "new normal". Please be remembering him in your prayers as well as their two children and grandchildren...
On a similar note, in speaking of my OB, we had another ultrasound this past week, and our little guy is growing well and everything looks good so far! We praise the Lord for this answer to prayer, especially after our very painful loss back in October. It appears that we have our third boy on the way, due in September, which means, with our labor history, we'll most likely have an August birth - which is extra fun, as we do not yet have any August babies!
Life has been swimmingly busy in recent weeks, as we finish up the school year, prepare for summer projects for 4-H, gardening, animals, and projects around the house and property... I'm told we "officially" have a farm now, haha, though with it's small size I suspect "Hobby Farm" might be a more accurate description. Either way, we are greatly enjoying the animals! George (the calf) is now weaned from the bottle... another learning experience for me, as I thought he had been dehorned, is that his bull horns are growing in! We have a trip planned for this coming week to haul him back to the dairy we bought him from, as the dairy manager said he would take care of that for us, if we wanted to make the trip - that was an easy decision!! :) The pigs are getting quite large, and will most likely be ready to butcher in late June or in July, and it appears we already have a couple of buyers for at least one of the pigs through my husband's co-workers! We've gone back to store-bought ham and bacon, as we used up the last of last year's meat a couple of months ago, so we are very much looking forward to filling the freezer with our home-grown pork once again! Next year will be even more interesting, when it's time to butcher pigs *and* our cow! I'm not sure how we'll fit all the meat into the freezers, but I'm thinking we'll probably figure something out!
Plans for livestock - we are tossing around the idea of getting another calf after butchering the pigs, so that we have another ready to butcher 6 months or so after butchering George next year in the autumn/ early winter, and there is the thought that we might sell half of George's meat and keep half for ourselves if we do go that route... that would certainly make the freezer issue less of a problem! :) Besides, I have NO idea where we would put another freezer!! Anyway, we'll see how it all goes, but raising a calf has been a considerable bit easier than I had anticipated! We shall see...
Our chicks are growing so well, they are nearly the size of the adult chickens, and another homeschooling family asked me if they could give us their chicks once they were done hatching and watching them grow the first few weeks... since we already had some, it was an easy question for them! Anyway, we now have 3 additional *little* chicks, in a brooder box back in the kitchen, haha ~ I'm looking forward to in a week or so, trying to combine our adult chickens with the big chicks, to see if they are ready to mix and get along well... if that works, then we can move the newest three chickies into the separate partition inside of the chicken shed, and I can get my kitchen counter back... again! :) Still, it's been fun having the baby chicks again, and in another few months, I suspect we're going to have more eggs than we know what to do with!! (that's easy, actually - we can sell the extras through our homeschooling group and put the money towards chicken feed!)
The weather has been interesting... we keep hoping that spring is here, and then we get another wintery storm... no snow in the last two weeks, though, so I'm hopeful! The garden has been a complete flop the last two years I've attempted it, so I'm listening to the wisdom of others and hoping to see good results this time around! So far, tomatos and a variety of squash are doing very well, protected by wall-o-waters - something I haven't used before, but seem to make a world of difference! *and* I learned a new trick this week, talking to the gal at our local extension office... she wraps plastic wrap around her tomato cages to put over the young tomato plants, so they have the protection from wind and weather, as well as the support of the cages! I'm thinking about trying that when we put more of our plant starts out in the garden (then we can move the wall-o-waters to those plants and the tomatos will still be protected!) Anyway, I thought that was a neat idea!
I guess most of this is mundane rambling... my brain feels like mush today! There are so many activities and things going on lately that it's hard to separate them out into a logical sequence and share in a blog post! Perhaps later, when things quiet down, I can share more of the interesting things and events, with my brain functional and sensible! hah!
For now, have a great week! When my husband can take a moment and scan the ultrasound pics, I'll post them here - we got a frontal face shot, a foot (I loooove baby feet!!!) and two profile pictures with our latest ultrasound - hopefully we can scan and post two or three of them :)
First, please be in prayer for my friend Sarah and her family... their 7 month old infant died recently, the youngest of nine precious children in a wonderfully close-knit family... needless to say, this has left a tremendous hole and immeasurable hurt in their lives.
Next, my OB, who is a wonderful, exceptional high risk pregnancy specialist also very recently lost his wife to a battle with cancer... She was diagnosed one week after our Hannah was born, given months to live, and yet surpassed that timeframe given by her doctors, which was a gift and an answer to prayer. Her final month was very difficult for her and her husband as the cancer became painful and she really struggled with pain in her final weeks. I can only imagine how difficult that must have been for her husband, our wonderful doctor, to sit by and not be able to really DO anything to make things better for her... She has been gone for almost a month now, but after 40+ years together, he is missing her tremendously and learning to adjust to a "new normal". Please be remembering him in your prayers as well as their two children and grandchildren...
On a similar note, in speaking of my OB, we had another ultrasound this past week, and our little guy is growing well and everything looks good so far! We praise the Lord for this answer to prayer, especially after our very painful loss back in October. It appears that we have our third boy on the way, due in September, which means, with our labor history, we'll most likely have an August birth - which is extra fun, as we do not yet have any August babies!
Life has been swimmingly busy in recent weeks, as we finish up the school year, prepare for summer projects for 4-H, gardening, animals, and projects around the house and property... I'm told we "officially" have a farm now, haha, though with it's small size I suspect "Hobby Farm" might be a more accurate description. Either way, we are greatly enjoying the animals! George (the calf) is now weaned from the bottle... another learning experience for me, as I thought he had been dehorned, is that his bull horns are growing in! We have a trip planned for this coming week to haul him back to the dairy we bought him from, as the dairy manager said he would take care of that for us, if we wanted to make the trip - that was an easy decision!! :) The pigs are getting quite large, and will most likely be ready to butcher in late June or in July, and it appears we already have a couple of buyers for at least one of the pigs through my husband's co-workers! We've gone back to store-bought ham and bacon, as we used up the last of last year's meat a couple of months ago, so we are very much looking forward to filling the freezer with our home-grown pork once again! Next year will be even more interesting, when it's time to butcher pigs *and* our cow! I'm not sure how we'll fit all the meat into the freezers, but I'm thinking we'll probably figure something out!
Plans for livestock - we are tossing around the idea of getting another calf after butchering the pigs, so that we have another ready to butcher 6 months or so after butchering George next year in the autumn/ early winter, and there is the thought that we might sell half of George's meat and keep half for ourselves if we do go that route... that would certainly make the freezer issue less of a problem! :) Besides, I have NO idea where we would put another freezer!! Anyway, we'll see how it all goes, but raising a calf has been a considerable bit easier than I had anticipated! We shall see...
Our chicks are growing so well, they are nearly the size of the adult chickens, and another homeschooling family asked me if they could give us their chicks once they were done hatching and watching them grow the first few weeks... since we already had some, it was an easy question for them! Anyway, we now have 3 additional *little* chicks, in a brooder box back in the kitchen, haha ~ I'm looking forward to in a week or so, trying to combine our adult chickens with the big chicks, to see if they are ready to mix and get along well... if that works, then we can move the newest three chickies into the separate partition inside of the chicken shed, and I can get my kitchen counter back... again! :) Still, it's been fun having the baby chicks again, and in another few months, I suspect we're going to have more eggs than we know what to do with!! (that's easy, actually - we can sell the extras through our homeschooling group and put the money towards chicken feed!)
The weather has been interesting... we keep hoping that spring is here, and then we get another wintery storm... no snow in the last two weeks, though, so I'm hopeful! The garden has been a complete flop the last two years I've attempted it, so I'm listening to the wisdom of others and hoping to see good results this time around! So far, tomatos and a variety of squash are doing very well, protected by wall-o-waters - something I haven't used before, but seem to make a world of difference! *and* I learned a new trick this week, talking to the gal at our local extension office... she wraps plastic wrap around her tomato cages to put over the young tomato plants, so they have the protection from wind and weather, as well as the support of the cages! I'm thinking about trying that when we put more of our plant starts out in the garden (then we can move the wall-o-waters to those plants and the tomatos will still be protected!) Anyway, I thought that was a neat idea!
I guess most of this is mundane rambling... my brain feels like mush today! There are so many activities and things going on lately that it's hard to separate them out into a logical sequence and share in a blog post! Perhaps later, when things quiet down, I can share more of the interesting things and events, with my brain functional and sensible! hah!
For now, have a great week! When my husband can take a moment and scan the ultrasound pics, I'll post them here - we got a frontal face shot, a foot (I loooove baby feet!!!) and two profile pictures with our latest ultrasound - hopefully we can scan and post two or three of them :)
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