Ten things I love about Dave

WOW! Trying to limit it to ten things is going to be hard. So I will just start with the ones that come to mind first. The reason for only ten things is that I have been doing the 12 days of Christmas with him and every day since the 13th of Dec. he has gotten something from me. As an example he got 1 pair of new jeans for the 1st day, gloves for two hands on the 2nd day, a six pack of his favorite beer that he doesn't get often for the sixth day, a pack of 8 butterfingers on the 8th day and so on. It has been very fun and I love to see his excitement every morning and the disappointment when he gets the note that says he has to wait till later to get it. So sweetie, this is for you.

What I love about you:

1) the way that you lead us in prayer and God's Word every morning. What a perfect way to start the day, with God and my best friend.

2) the desire that you have to teach our Children of God and His ways

3) all the hard work that you do each day at work and then come home and work more here on the homestead

4) the desire to teach the kids how to live a self-sustainable life

5) to live a simple life

6) the encouragement that you give to me each day

7) the support you give for our homeschooling journey

8) the desire and encouragement to eating the foods that God created, not man's foods

9) the way that you let the kids help you on projects even if it doubles the time it takes you

10) the late nights of listening to me talk through things, home school ideas, curriculum's, projects I want to do, and so on.

Thanks sweetie.

I love you! xoxoxox

Misc. pictures

Every year one of the kids gets to help put the star on top of the tree. Last year Mia couldn't get it even with being on top of Dave's shoulder's. This year she finally was able to reach it.

Homemade Hot cocoa with Whip cream on top. A special treat after a long cold day of working outside.

Kids enjoying some hot cocoa.

Devotions and Coffee.

Ice crystals one COLD morning on our deck railing.

Girls in the kitchen

I'm loving all the help these two sweet girls are bringing to our family. Teaching them to love baking/cooking for our family is one of our goals for them. I'm sure they will have lots more practice as the boys get older and eat more.

Lily doesn't do much at 18 months but loves to try everything, including eating flour.

Mia is becoming very helpful now with meal prep. She loves making biscuits with our soups.

Of all the places . . .

and there is a very comfy chair right next to her!?!?

Old photos

Carving pumpkins. O.K. so it didn't happen this year before Oct 31st. but at least we did it the week after and we were able to really enjoy all the yummy pumpkin seeds.

and for some reason we cannot find our picture of all the pumpkins afterwards.

Sorry about that!! They were all very cute though.

Homestead Projects

We realized last year that during the winter our driveway gets kind of muddy. So, we finally decided to get a load of gravel from the quarry not to far away. It was an exciting morning, as the kids were really looking forward to seeing a dump truck. The poor truck driver probably had no idea there as going to be such and audience. He was able to crack the tailgate (probably some other word for it) and run the truck up and down the driveway leaving a nice coating of fresh gravel. Then dumped the remainder in a pile behind my car. The kids and I worked on spreading some more of it in areas that had dips or looked a little light.

Our chickens are truly free-range now, as they have figured out how to fly over the 4' fence. So, far we have not lost any, and they are fun to see in the yard. Today they followed us down to see if they could help with our fencing project.

The Fencing Project - Phase 1

We wanted to start enclosing our property a little better, so that we can consider getting some larger animals and keep more predator's (coyotes) out. The first phase is along our South property line that borders the berry field. The kids and I have been working on stripping off the old wire and straightening/replacing posts as we worked our way down.

We built our first horizontal brace at the corner.

We are going to be installing 47" high field fencing. It won't keep the deer our, but they are only troublesome in the garden.

Farm Hands.

All the seats in the tractors were taken, so Mia had to right in the back, but she is still light enough to do that, and was thrilled with it.

Here we had a bent t-post, so the boys hooked up the chain to pull it out with the tractor. We were able to bend it back into shape and put it back into service.

Luckily I found a book at the library that was specifically all about fencing, so I did not really know what I was doing. We are slowly learning the skills required to keep up our Homestead.

Phase 2 - Is when we fence North to South splitting our property into two pieces. Lord willing we will get that done this winter. Our neighbors have offered to let us borrow their 6-8 goats for our blackberries, down on the lower section. This would be a huge help.

Harvest Party!

SO for the last 3-4 years we have been going to Laurel Community Church for the annual

Harvest Party on Oct. 31st. We meet Dave's side of the family and my parents came as well. And our dear friends, the Doran's, have come the last few years since it is right down the street from them. We prefer this than taking our kids out trick or treating. This year was a really fun year for Ethan. He actually got to help out with one of the booths. It was the fishing one where he stays behind a big wall and someone flings there string over the wall and he attaches some prize in the string with a clip. He loved it for most of the night. He still is a kid though and ended up, towards the end, taking his turn with all of the games. Before all the games start though, we feed on roasted hot dogs over the fire, chili and desserts. This year we decided to help participate in bringing food. You know we bring 6 people to an event like this with boys who can put away some food so I figured that we should now bring some food to share as well. It so happens that there are prizes for the chili and pies. The men make the chili and the women make the pies. Of course I helped with the chili making but Dave did his part as well. It turned out that ours won first prize. Dave got the Chili apron of the year award. I did not expect that at all. The rest of the night was fun games and prizes and for me, chasing a toddler around. We always enjoy this party and the kids always are so excited to go. At the end of the evening, Mia had a bucket full of candy and cookies. WOW! Was it full. Thankfully we got some prizes at home to trade them with. They got to keep 7 pieces of candy and a bag of cookies and then I stuck ALL the rest of the candy in a bag and sent it to work with Dave, otherwise you would have found me in it. Especially after those Reeses Peanut butter cups. Yummmm!

Presley and Lily

Chicken License

The other week at work I was looking for a permit form on the City of Salem website and saw a form that said "Chicken License Application".I had to see what it was so I downloaded the form. Apparently if you are within the City of Salem you must have a Chicken License before you can get some birds. The process goes like this:

1. Build Chicken Coop following all the rules, setbacks etc.
2. Submit License Application with $50 fee.
3. Chicken Coop Inspector (no joke) comes out to inspect your coop
4. Receive approved Chicken License Certificate
5. Stock Coop with Chickens
6. Payments and Renewals ($50/year)
7. Live happily ever after

I can understand in a more urban area there is a need for some rules and regulations for people to abide by, but I think that this is too much. In most jurisdictions, the only time someone comes out to inspect is if there is a complaint filed. In these tough economic times when people are trying to save some money and eat a little healthier by using eggs from backyard chickens this $50/year fee defeats the whole purpose. Having your own chickens for eggs is not necessarily cheaper than buying them from Costco, but if you are looking for good free range eggs with a nice dark healthy yolk, and don't want to support the industrial food system. Then having your own chickens is the way to go. Once again the government is trying to stick their nose too far into an area where it should not be.

Dave

Our week of trial

So on Sunday, I started to have the signs of loosing the baby. I was 7 weeks along. Lily and I stayed home from church but Dave took the other 3 for a late service. We had told the kids before they left so they wouldn't keep telling everyone that our family was going to have another baby. All morning there was talk from them about our family of 7 or Mia patting my tummy and talking to the baby. We didn't want them to go on all day. It was making it so hard for me emotionally. Ethan took it really hard. He cried hard and so did I. We talked and shared and hugged. The other two it didn't really hit until Monday when I was so sick and in pain that they realized more of what was happening. We always have worship music on Sunday mornings to prepare our hearts to worship at service and the music that was on was hitting me hard. I am Falling On My Knees was one song that really struck me. Which I was doing all morning on Sunday. Falling on my knees before the Lord asking for strength. And then the one song that was with me when we lost the other baby, He gives and Takes Away, was being sung again. I know that this was all part of His perfect plan it is just so hard for our eyes to see why and how this could be perfect. It's amazing to see how this baby was already such a BIG part of our family. We loved it, yet we hadn't even see it yet. I am doing really well. We just had one hard day which I just lied on the couch and watched movies with the kids, read and slept. Ethan was a huge help with Lily and I. The kids took charge of meals and snacks which they did a great job on.

So we are at the end of the week and we are all doing much better. The kids are still sad at times and I still cry when something hits me just right, but God did give me a peace about all of this and the strength to get through this trial. With a supportive, loving husband and family and close friends I am getting through this time with lots of prayer and encouragement.

Blessed be Your name In the land that is plentiful Where your streams of abundance flow Blessed be Your name And blessed be Your name When I'm found in the desert place Though I walk through the wilderness Blessed be Your name Every blessing You pour out I'll turn back to praise When the darkness closes in, Lord Still I will say Blessed be the name of the Lord Blessed be Your name Blessed be the name of the Lord Blessed be Your glorious name And blessed be Your name When the sun's shining down on me When the world's 'all as it should be' Blessed be Your name And blessed be Your name On the road marked with suffering Though there's pain in the offering Blessed be Your name You give and take away You give and take away My heart will choose to say Lord blessed be Your name I will bless Your name, Lord Oh, You give and take away You give and take away But my heart will choose to say (oh Lord!) Blessed be Your name You give and take away You give and take away But my heart will choose to say (oh Lord!) Blessed be Your name

Lily is walking!!!!!!

FINALLY!!!! We were so anxious for her to walk. I thought that something was wrong. She could stand and walk holding onto our fingers or push something so why could she not just go. But as my mom pointed out to me and reminded me, this fits her personality. She is so laid back with everything else she just took her own sweet time in this milestone. It took her a long time to crawl and she did it just after her first birthday. She scooted for a long time before that. And she was walking holding onto our fingers when she was 14 months and finally started to push things everywhere at 15 months and day by day she was starting to get more courage and today at 16.5 months she finally took off!!!!! It is so fun to see her walk. I love to see how the kids are all just so excited at each milestone she crosses. And they will be able to enjoy it all over again with the new little one coming.

Sooooo . . .

Look closely at the following pictures. We made one for each of our family members.

We are expecting number "5" in mid June!! And we are all very excited.

Fall Harvest

over grown after a long vacation (let's say chicken food?)

Hot summer evening in the garden next to a Red Mammoth Mangel Beet

Our September Garden

Baby who LOVES tomatoes (she eats them like apples)

Green beans from our garden. We, with lots of my mother-in-laws help and their green beans too, canned 67 quarts.

Yukon Gold potatoes. These are so good roasted. We love them.

Fall has come with Oct. weather finally.

Ben, Logan and Dave working the potato/apple cannon

Team Bronson kiddos harvesting pumpkins

Getting a ride from Little Red (we almost got 7 kids in)

Picking the last of the black berries

Harvesting pie pumpkins

Our first Red Mammoth Mangel Beet. Look at the size of this thing. They are great for feeding animals during the winter months. The leaves are just toxic to animals, but the chickens will have a nice treat every now and then. These beets can get up to 20lbs. but this one was only 6 lbs.

Our fall Harvest and there is lots more to go pick too. Dave just came in with more tomatoes and zucchini. Surprisingly they just keep coming. We found a favorite way of eating the zucchini now so it doesn't get to tiresome. We still are enjoying them.

Just some fun pictures

Three ninjas

Dave and Lily doing push ups (Lily does some great sounds affects with them)

Just cute!

It's fort season.

We get about 8-10 eggs a day now. They are sooooo good. And I love not having to buy them anymore.

Our second Honey Harvest

Home school lesson. We invited a few families over and the kids had a great time playing together, more then watching the harvesting. But it was fun all the same.

Honey and biscuits. YUMMMM!

Our final product. 4 gallons!!!!