Here are a few pics of the upstairs after insulation was blown in! Now plumbing, heating and a little more electrical. These pics are a little late so there will soon be a post with all the drywall!! The upstairs is done with drywall. We are making great progress this week. Praise the Lord! This is on the west side of the upstairs. That is the roof of the old house and the hallway that enters the attic of the old house. Here is a dormer is one of the bed rooms. This is looking east at two out of the three bedrooms on the south side of the new part.
I have always loved Thanksgiving from the time I was a child, I so looked forward to going to my good friends and family's house to have all the wonderful food and a great day of hanging out with friends. Now, that I am older and a farmer's wife there is more meaning to Thanksgiving than ever! The pilgrims that celebrated the first Thanksgiving were giving the glory to God for the crops that he provided for them. When I was younger that was just a history lesson more than anything, but now I know how they felt, how important it was to them to have a crop so that they could feed and care for their families. We rely on the crops in the same, that we need good crops to provide our food, clothing and all other necessities. This year the crops were not as good as we were hoping but God still has provided so much and we are not in want! My father-in-law has said many times that "if we fill our shovel and give to the Lord, that God will give back to us and God's shovel is much bigger than ours!" God is so good and has provided for us in so many ways just in this year, that we cannot even begin to make a list of all the things we can be thankful for! I praise the Lord for the wonderful family and friends that He has given to us to help us grow in Him and to love us and care for us when we need encouragement and wisdom. I hope you all have an Amazing Thanksgiving!!
I found this poem in the High Plains Journal,
Lord, I am grateful that I am a farmer. I am glad to live close to the earth that You have made. I am happy to spend so much of my time in the open air, under the bright sun, the symbol of Your own justice and light. I am grateful for the rain and for the freshness that it brings, the rain, a symbol of Your rich and undying blessings.
I am happy to cooperate with You in Your work of continuous creation, by growing the food that men need to sustain life.
By Your almighty power You make grow seeds I plant. You fill the earth with minerals, You send the rain and the sun, the wind and the snow, and the dry, hard seeds I plant are raised to soft green life. You have given men great wisdom and cleverness to build machines that make the labor of the farmer much less burdensome.
Dear Lord, I am in Your almighty hands. I depend on You for everything. If I sow the seed and cultivate the young plants, and You do not see fit to give me a good harvest, I will be satisfied. You are the Lord and master and creator of all things. You know what is good for me and what would do me harm. I trust You, absolutely and without question.
I thank You again for calling me to a farmer's life. I beg of You never let me forget its great advantages of closeness to You, absolute trust and confidence in You, and the fullness and richness of my life, close to the earth that You have made and have so marvelously blessed.
Lord, I am grateful that I am a farmer.
Amen -Author Unknown
I have learned over the years of being a farmer's wife that I can worry about the crops and if they are going to grow strong and provide for us what we need as long as I want but in the end I have worried for no reason! All the worry in the world will not make them grow better! I have learned that it is so important to do all that we can do to help them grow but most importantly give them to God and trust that He will provide for us!
This is our precious Adalli that is no longer our "little" baby anymore! I truly cannot believe how fast she has grown. The more kiddos you have the faster they grow up. She is still our little joy, she plays peak a boo, claps her hands, waves and says bye bye, she says dadda very well, she loves to eat anything and she crawls all over and is pulling herself up onto everything! I would not be surprised if she is walking by her birthday. Her big brothers and sister still think she is the greatest and she feels the same way about them. We are so very thankful to have such wonderful blessings!
Once again I am behind the others on blogging! These are just a few pictures of Karl and Kristin's special day. It was a beautiful sunny day outside and we truly had a wonderful time celebrating the last of Mom and Dad Boenders' kids to get married. I thank the Lord every day for the family we have been blessed to have! I absolutely loved the flowers that Kristin picked out! I am sure you can imagine how many times Kristin's mom had to tie my busy little Rachel's bow. And we were all amazed that her hair was still pretty presentable by the time the wedding started, thank goodness for lots of bobbie pins and hairspray! Grandma and Grandpa with all twelve grandkids! Gideon is the oldest at 8 and Zachary is the youngest at about 3 months old. Our beautiful and handsome kiddos!
Adalli's first (documented) bites of Macaroni and Cheese. Needless to say she LOVED it! She is getting so big! She crawls all over, has 5 teeth, says and waves bye-bye and dadda, claps, plays "so big" and gets into all of her older siblings things! She is such a joy to have around and I thank God every day for the healthy beautiful children He has so richly blessed us with! This is a pocket bib that I was given by a friend. I always thought that the pockets were really just for show because I never thought they would actually catch anything. I was mistaken! There is a small pile of veggies and noodles in this pocket. I suppose that if you compare the amount in here to the amount on the floor it is pretty safe to say that it doesn't catch much but at least the food caught in here can be eaten, unlike the food that falls on the filthy floor! It truly amazes me how I can sweep every day at least 3 times but still end up with Adalli's knees getting brown from crawling all over. I blame it on the constant cloud of dust that seems to hover over my house on these dry days! I am so very thankful for the sunshine that comes from the dry days and in the end a filthy house is worth the crisp mornings and warm afternoons full of sunshine! O Praise the Lord, all ye nations: praise Him, all ye people. For His merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the Lord endureth forever. Praise ye the Lord! Psalm 117
We spent a couple days in Illinois at Aunt Kay and Uncle Ben's house a couple weeks ago. We had lots and lots of fun crammed in two days! This is a picture of a tug boat pushing a barge up the river. Johnathon was really interested in it. We had a picnic lunch by the river and spent an hour throwing rocks in to the big river. It was 80 degrees and so beautiful! Ben took us all to a neat park in Clinton,IA and it had this really neat castle we could climb up and look over the river and the valleys. The trees were beautiful. Fulton, IL is a small dutch community a lot like Pella. We were able to visit the wind mill there. It was built then brought over from Holland. It was so neat to see how everything worked inside. They really grind grain in it, and we were able to watch it spin and feel the grain after it came out of the stones. I highly recommend stopping. The best part about it is, it was donations only so you did not have to pay for the tour unless you felt like donating.
After carving out our pumpkins we headed to the pond to take in a little fishing. The fish were pretty tiny but we had a great time and enjoyed the warm fall weather!
Gideon and Rachel did not have school on Friday so we decided it would be fun to do pumpkins. Thanks again to grandma Jan for a wonderful pumpkin patch! First we picked out the best ones for each of us, then we headed home to get dirty. Adalli loved every minute of being outside! They cleaned out and cut out their faces. I am not a huge fan of Jack o Lanterns but it is always fun see what you can make from these fun fall vegetables. I am almost to the point where the older kiddos can clean out the slime all by themselves without me having to get dirty.
Here are some seed pods from a Candy Lily that Stacy gave to me. I think they are very pretty and a definite sign of fall. The woolly caterpillars have been everywhere this year! I have had so many in jars and containers all over, we have let them make their cocoons and come out but they are kind of ugly moths; so we try not to keep them inside their cages for to long. I much prefer them to stay and make moths outside of the house!
These are my volunteer baby pumpkins that came up and vined all over my air conditioner unit. We must have dumped some there last year. I love that about Iowa, you can grow about anything, even when you are not trying. I suppose that is not always the best thing, but for this Northern Colorado girl who needs all the help she can get when it comes to growing things; it usually works out for my advantage:) The progress we have made on our house is amazing and we are so thankful for all the help we have had in getting us this far. This is our very own farmstead that God has richly richly blessed us with! This is a neat picture of the John Deere tractor's reflection in the chrome stack of the semi.
Here is Rachel and Adalli in the combine. Adalli loves it! Adalli and dad with matching bald heads! Driving the grain cart tractor for Grandpa.
This is on the west side of the upstairs. That is the roof of the old house and the hallway that enters the attic of the old house.
Here is a dormer is one of the bed rooms.
