Outdoor Wednesday!!!

Good morning, friends.

Oh, my, 2 posts in the same week, I believe that is a record. I saw this little weekly meme at one of my other favorite daily stomping grounds and thought I would participate. Here are my blooming azaleas. They are really showing out. You can click on the pics. for a closer look.
We bought this house at the end of May last year and by the time we saw the house the azaleas had already bloomed, so we had no idea what color they would be. They are breathtaking to say the least and I want about 20 more of the same color all around my yard.LOL

A couple of weekends ago, we worked on some landscaping and mowing of the lawn. This is the Gerber daisy my daughter picked out for the front porch. It's blooming beautifully.

And here is a geranium I picked out for my front porch table. I just love geraniums. Red is my favorite color of geranium but my daughter's is pink. I guess you can tell who won.

Last but not least, this is what we have on the mini farm this week. The week before we left on our cruise, we noticed this chicken missing. She is a small chicken, a Wheaten Old English Game Hen to be exact. So we just thought something must have gotten her while out free ranging one day. We had looked everywhere and she was nowhere to be found. Well, she came out of hiding this week and look what she has with her.

She has 7 little chicks. This is the first time we have let one of our hens keep their chicks. We have always been afraid that predators would get them. However, she is doing a great job keeping her little brood safe and we are going to leave them alone and hope for the best. I can not tell you how much fun it is to watch a momma chick walk around the yard with her little babies in toe. It is pure joy.

I have to say letting the chickens raise babies the natural way sure beats this.

~

We have 7 baby Americauna chicks in our laundry room. I bought them last week. They are the ones that lay the blue and green eggs. I will keep them in the laundry room for about another week and then they will go to the barn.LOL

Well, that is all for my Outdoor Wednesday. I hope you will all head over to A Southern Daydreamer and check out a few more.

~

~

Have a great day!!!

Changes all around us....

Good morning friends. It has been a tough week and last few weeks to be honest. My husband has begun the journey of deploying. He is currently away from home doing training. Yesterday was my birthday so he did sneak back home for the night. I just love him for that. He literally drove 2+ hours home, got home at 8:00 and had to leave at 5:00 this morning. I was so sad for him to leave. I know you do what you have to do but I just want to go on record saying that I hate this and I just want to cry. The loss for me and my children for this next year is overwhelming me right now. I am trying ever so hard to be strong and to just cry out to Jesus for strength. He is the only one who can provide it right now.
~

On to other topics. We had a great time on our cruise. It was just what we needed. I have so many pictures but I thought I would limit it to these. Here is the beautiful sunrise over the ocean one morning at sea.

We spent a good portion of our time out here on the balcony just watching the vastness of the ocean. God's handy work is amazing. I love this picture.

This is when we ported in Cozumel. We had a great time going through the streets and shopping. Then my honey and kids went off to zip line, rappel, and snorkel. They had a great time and I had a great time just relaxing. We also ported in Calica and went into Playa Del Carmen. It was fun.

Now for the not so great part, we had left our Shih Tzu, Beaux, with my mom. I will preface by saying that Beaux was extremely attached to our family and since we were going to be away for 6 days, we hated to leave him at the vet. We knew he would be depressed and didn't want it to go on for that long, bad decision. My mother said he did not eat or go to the bathroom for days. She said he crawled in a corner and snapped at her when she came close. On the fatal day she let him out in her fenced in back yard. He seemed to do better outside. Well, while she was at work he either dug out of the fence or climbed over. I am not sure which. He got in the road and was killed. I can not even begin to tell you how devastating this has been for our family. I think, as women, we have a natural need to baby something. I would love more real babies but do not have any so this was my families baby. He was my oldest daughter's 16th birthday present and we all loved him dearly. He slept with my daughter every night and went straight out to the barn with her every morning for chores. I made him an egg almost everyday of his life. He was rotten and I don't plan on doing that again, hence his separation anxiety. Anyway, this was Beaux and we love and miss him dearly.

The flip side to the horrifying accident is that my mother also cried for days. She knew how upset we would be and thought we would be mad at her. We were mad at ourselves for putting my mother in such a terrible predicament. I never thought that Beaux would act so terribly. I just wish in hindsight that we had taken him to the vet and boarded him. Although, I do think that God had a bigger lesson for us. I think we had put Beaux on such a pedestal that we also needed to learn a huge lesson.

~

Anyway, my mother thought the best thing to do was to find my daughter another Shih Tzu. So she drove to Memphis and got this little guy. If you have been in this situation, you know this just made it worse. Mother was just trying to make things better but we needed time to grieve. Not to mention, I probably would not have gotten this same breed again. They just get so attached. However, we took him so that she would not feel like we didn't appreciate the gesture or that we were mad. Oh, it has been hard. On several occasions I have accidentally called him Beaux, bringing us all to tears. His name is Murphy and he is now an 8 week old chocolate and white Shih Tzu. He is a cutey.

~

Before we left on vacation, we had decided to get this little guy. A friend of ours dog had puppies and my children had been around them since they were born. They had never really asked for one, as they knew I would say NO. However, my husband is leaving for a year and this is a good time to ask him for anything. So they did!! He explained to me that we need a good farm dog/watch dog. I have yet to see any real good farm dog qualities but I am on the look out for them.LOL However, on the watch dog front, I think he may be good for that, if not we have guns, and praise the Lord, he does not chase my chickens so far.

~

His name is Diesel and he is 1/4 blue heeler, 1/4 rottweiler, and 1/2 German Sheppard. I do have to admit he is kind of cute.

And here are the two of them together. They are about the same age and about 30 lbs. different.

We have also added 7 new baby chicks to the farm life. I really didn't need any, as I have eggs running out of my ears. I dropped off 2 dozen to a friend yesterday. However, I had lost all of my Americana chickens and I wanted some more blue and green eggs. So right now I have 7 baby chicks under a light in my laundry room. In about a week I will move them to a brooder box in the barn. I like to keep my eye on them for about a week first.

~

I guess that is about all that is going on around here. I have done some landscaping in the front and when I finish it I will post some pics. I have a long way to go to catch up to Mrs. Pickets beautiful yard. If you need inspiration go check out here beautiful pics.

~

I hope you all have a great day!!!
~

Busy days down on the farm.....

Good Morning Friends,

It has been a while since I have had a chance to sit down and really update. As usual, things have been busy, busy around here. I got back from my procedure and everything has gone smoothly. I hope to do a whole post on that soon. However, we got back on Monday and my oldest daughter came down with the Flu on Wednesday. Which meant by Friday we all had the Flu, except Hubby, who is required by the military to take a Flu shot. It was rough, as we have never had the flu. We are just now, 2 1/2 wks. later, really getting over it.

But on a more happy note, this is what we are up to..... We have disked up our garden plot. It measures 50 X 95, which will be about 4750 sq. ft. of beautiful garden. We plan on planting:

• LOTS of Peas (several different kinds)


• Tomatoes (several different kinds)


• Cucumbers (mainly for pickling)


• Squash


• Eggplant


• Zucchini


• Peppers


• Okra


• Corn


• Sunflowers


• Marigolds


• Watermelon


• Muskmelon

If you look closely you will see a little stray chicken running through.LOL
Now this is what hubby, middle DD, and Ds are doing bright and early this morning. They are taking these once little cuties to market. They looked like this back in July.

Now they look like this.

They are loaded on the trailer and are headed to the processor. It was sad to see them go but they were getting quite stinky. It has been a fun project and I think we will probably do it again if the meat is as good as we keep hearing.

And last but not least, I thought I would throw in a daily around here. Here are the horses waiting on their morning rations. As Hubby and the kids were leaving with the pigs, the horses were letting us know they are ready to eat.

Now for other news, the day for my honey to leave is getting closer and closer. He leaves our home in May for a month of training before going over to Iraq. However, he will be gone for 4 wks. sporadically between now and then. So we are leaving next week to go on a cruise. We are so excited. We will be gone from Monday to Saturday. We wanted to do something extravagant before he left and this is it!!! So today and tomorrow I will be getting things packed and then it's Bon Voyage Baby!!!

I hope you all have a beautiful weekend. It is a glorious 70+ degrees here in Mississippi, so I foresee some yard work going on here.

Good Morning, Friends....

I hope you are all doing well. We have been so extremely busy lately that I have not had time to do my usual rounds. It has felt like spring around here with temps. in the 60's -70's. So we have gotten a lot done. By the way, thank you all for your well wishes for my mother. She is doing great!!



I wanted to share a new little pretty that I got recently from the amazing Susie Harris. That girl is so good. I ordered it to go in the little blank spot outside my front door but it was so pretty that I can't put it outdoors. So here she is with an added ribbon hanging above my mantel on that wonderful old window. I wish I had some other great thing going on on the mantel but this is it. Nevertheless, it is a start.

We have also been planting fruit trees and getting our garden ready for planting.

!

In other exciting news, my husband just got a job promotion. He is excited about it but it's an hour drive from our home so I am a little weepy. We love our new house and wont be moving right away. However, when Dh gets back from Iraq, if we just hate the situation we may look at moving again. UGHH!! Anyway, you have to do what you have to do.

!

As for other news, I am having a little procedure done on Saturday, if you would all please pray for me. My oldest daughter will be going with me and we will be flying on Fri. and Mon. I hate to fly. So I should, Lord willing, be home on Monday and will check in with you all. Have a great weekend and God Bless.

A Little Prayer Request...

As of last Friday, my life has been turned upside down. My mom fell on a little patch of ice in her yard and tore her Supraspinatus Tendon and began to tear her infraspinatus tendon. Which, in lamens terms, is her rotary cuff in her shoulder. It is a tear that has to be surgically fixed. My sister and I have been taking turns staying with her in the hospital and then I brought her home with me for a couple of nights. She is at her home tonight but we are already feeling like that is not a great idea. Her pain is just so intense and gets worse during the night. However, she just wanted to go home for a night. My sister is going to go get her tomorrow. The surgery will be Tuesday and she will come home with me until the weekend and then go back to my sisters. If you could just say a prayer for us. We are all just worn out with this whole situation and are just ready to be on the road to recovery. I have driven the 100 mile one way trip every day this week and tonight I am dragging, oh and my house is a mess.LOL My mom is very strong and independent so you can imagine how tough this is on her and us all. So, I thank you in advance for lifting us up in prayer.

Wow, it's Jan. 12th and this is my first post of the year......

Well, it's a new year and we have had so much going on. The love of my life had been off since Dec. 19th and around here that means a lot of family time. He finally went back to work and I took the week trying to get my house back in order (lots of laundry) and getting started back with schooling. We love having him home and wish he did not have to go back to work but nothing really gets done, house work wise, when he is home. We had a GREAT Christmas and New Year. However, this little gadget has taken over the living room and the rest of my families life.LOL
It is the Nintendo Wii. My honey and I are pretty much on the same page with not being real crazy about watching television or playing video games all the time. We had fought this little gadget for going on 2 years now but decided this year to break down.LOL All we have is the Wii sports game, that came with the system, and the Wii Play but the whole family just loves it. My son and honey are now in there playing baseball. I have to say it is a great game system for getting the whole family involved. We have it set up in the living room, so no one is locked away in the bedroom, away from the whole family and it's been so much fun. We are already huge board game fans and this is just a whole other level of family fun.

Now, this is what else we have been doing on our little hiatus. I painted, or rather, hubby painted my front and back door this wonderful shade of red. It was a HARD decision going with the red. I was wavering between black and red and asked hubby what he thought. He said you have talked about red for years. He was right!! I love the way it turned out!

The color is Spanish Tile from Lowe's.

Oh and I want to put something in that big bare area by the door. What do you think Susie, do I need one of your new, absolutely adorable, signs there? Oh, and I know that Gothic light fixture needs to go, it's on the list.

Then I, not hubby, primed and painted my mantel black. I got this wonderful idea from the great Mrs. Dot at Picket's Place. Of course, hers is so much prettier with all of it's great beefiness but I still love mine. I don't know exactly how I want to decorate my mantel but this is a good start. I also need to paint the stove insert.

Another one of the projects we got done was tiling the bathroom floor. If you look at the little potty room floor closely there, you will see this horrid epoxy painted concrete flooring, that was throughout the entire house. The previous owners came in and put down this Pergo laminate wood floor, which we like but they did not do the potty rooms. So we decided on a cheap peel and stick tile at Lowe's to cover up the hideous.

The bathtub and toilet are a yellow color, which I kind of like and we chose this tile to play off of the yellow. I think the improvement is 100%. Well, that is it for the projects and I bet my manly man hubby was glad to go back to work.LOL I'm just joking, he loves this stuff.

Our plans from now until his deployment, sniff, sniff, are as follows:

*Paint kitchen cabinets and add a cabinet.

*Tile other bathroom with the same peel and stick tile.

*Landscape front of house.

*Replace outdoor light fixtures.

*Paint front and back porches.

*Plant fruit trees.

*Work on new chicken house.

*Paint all of trim in the house a high gloss white.

*Get my enormous garden area ready and possibly start planting.

Oh, the list could go on and on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I should put this in a post of it's own, as it is so important, but it is hard enough for me to get one post up much less two. However, one huge thing that I want to add that we work on every new year and are doing this new year, is our Bible Reading Plan for the year. We each, even our not so little little man, try to read through the Bible every year. We work on a plan at the beginning of every year. This year I am reading some in the old Testament, some in the new Testament, some of a Psalm, and some of a Proverb every morning. It takes me about 30 minutes to read, pray and meditate. Just 30 minutes profoundly changes the tone of my entire day. I would encourage you, that if you are not doing something similar, try it!! Reading through the precious Word of God can be life changing.

Here is the site that I got my reading plan from:

http://www.oneyearbibleonline.com/readingplan/oneyearbiblereadingplan.pdf

It's not to late to start and get caught up with me. I usually fail miserably at this but in light of my honey leaving in July, I know that I will need to cling to the Word of God and am hoping to be victorious in my goal this year!!

My totaled car and so much more...

Well, I guess I will start at the beginning. Last Saturday, Dec. 13th, my honey sent me down South, to Hattiesburg, for a Family Readiness Group meeting. He will be deploying to Iraq in July and he has put me in charge of the Family Readiness Group for our area. So I spent all day in meetings and it was really a very informative time. I enjoyed it even after really not wanting to go.LOL So I was coming back home and about 15 miles from my house, a man ran a stop sign and plowed into the side of my van. My husband says he T-boned me. First let me say, if you do not wear your seat belt, START!!! I was hit straight on and spun around in the intersection like a top, and walked away without a scratch other than some bruising from the seat belt. I am a believer now. I have never been in an accident before and it was terrifying. I was hysterical because I was disoriented and thinking that my children would have been in that seat that is scrunched up. We finally found out yesterday that they totalled my van. We are pleased with the amount they are giving us for it, also. We were thinking it would be much less, as a van is worthless after driving off the car lot. So now we are car shopping or rather, truck shopping. We also have a Suburban and I will now drive it and my husband is going to get a truck to drive back and forth to work. I want to say that I always have my children in the car with me but on this very rare day I was alone. I am so thankful that it was not any worse than being a little sore and that my babies (17,14, and 11) were all safe and sound at home. I am also thankful for the very nice people who stopped to help and that the man who hit me was honest and nice. It just could have been so much worse but God is faithful!

Now to the good stuff, this is what me and my middle maiden did all afternoon yesterday. We made plates of goodies to take to the men who work for my honey and to our friends and neighbors for Christmas. We made plain fudge, peanut fudge, no bake cookies, butterscotch cookies, crock pot candy, and chocolate turtle cookies. I will also send them a home baked loaf of bread and some jelly. The little cookies with nuts around them and caramel in the center are the Turtles. They are soooo good.

I wrapped them in red Saran Wrap and will put a pretty little note card on top.

We will be car/truck hunting the next few days, if you think of us please say a prayer of wisdom, as we are seeking to do the right thing.

Have a great day!!!!

First Show and Tell Friday....

I wanted to tell you about our Jesse Tree and I also wanted to participate in Kelli's Show and Tell Friday, so I combined the two and here it is. I love Kelli's blog. She is so real, down to earth, and incredibly creative. Go and check her out if you haven't already.


Ok, here is our Jesse Tree in all his glory. I want to show you the picture and then explain the concept.

First, we took a branch from a tree outside and stuck it in one of my milk bottles with some beans for stability. It of course, needed a nice red bow.LOL Then I printed our ornaments for each night and laminated them to go on the tree. Now, every night from Nov. 30 until Dec. 25 we have a devotional that pertains to some promise that God gave having to do with our need for a Saviour. Each one of these ornaments, that we add to the tree nightly, coincides with the promise for that night. So like last night we read the story of Samuel anointing David as king.(1 Samuel 16:1-13) The ornament we hung was a horn filled with anointing oil.

I have really been searching for something that sets this season apart from what the "World" looks like and for us the Jesse Tree has done it. It has been a great time of really seeing how the whole Bible is set up to show us our great need of redemption and how Jesus is that redemption.

I got mine from Graham Family Ministries. I ordered their 12 week holiday planner and the Jesse Tree was part of the planner. However, the devotions are very young and next year I may make them a little more meaty.

Here are some other great sites for Jesse Tree stuff:
http://www.jesse-tree.com/
http://rocksinmydryer.typepad.com/shannon/2008/11/jesse-tree.html ( this is Shannon at rocks in my dryer's post on her Jesse Tree) http://rocksinmydryer.typepad.com/
http://www.rca.org/Page.aspx?pid=1628

Here is a list of blogs that refer to the Jesse Tree:
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&q=Jesse+Tree&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=blogsearch_group&resnum=11&ct=title

I hope you enjoy our Jesse Tree and go and visit Kelli and the other Show and Tell's.

**************Oh, and check out the snow pictures that I posted yesterday, we got about 4 inches. Which is unbelievable for Mississippi.*********************************************

Have a great day!!!

It is snowing in Central Mississippi...

This is the little country church that you can see from my pasture. I thought this picture was beautiful.

For those of you who live in the South, you know that this little 1/2 -1 inch of snow is a big deal. The schools close and people stock up at the store like it's doom's day. It is quite the site to see. If we got a real snow we would be in trouble. However, I like this kind of snow. My kids got to play in it and they think it's the best thing. Then tommorow it will be in the 50's and all will be right in the world. God has been so good to us to give us snow twice in one year this year. We got a pretty good one in March, too. You've got to love that global warming!!!

I think this one will be our Christmas card that I probably wont get done.LOL

Have a great day!!!

Delight yourself in the LORD; and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, and He will do it. Psalm 37:4-5