Planning a Holiday

Thanksgiving is around the corner and usually I am pouring over cookbooks, recipe sites for new ideas for a wonderful celebration meal. Thanksgiving has always been about celebrating our family and friends who often become family when you are as lucky as we are to be in the Military and far from any relatives. I love spending two or three days just baking, slicing, cooking, and roasting. I am not the only one who loves this, Rob loves to make the turkey each year, and the dressing. It is a warm family affair. This year we are going to My mother in laws too enjoy the holiday. My kids are super excited to see their Nana and ask him everyday what day we are leaving. They are making a list and asking me twice. Our we taking the dog? Me~Yes. Our we going to take the cat? Me~No. Mom, we need to get litter and more food so that Chole will be okay. Me~Okay. Mom should we make Thanksgiving Cookies for Nana? Me~If you want. Mom, should we pack our bags now? Me~No. These questions go on and on. They are excited to travel. They love getting to spend a few days with Nana and then they are happy to come home. I think that Thanksgiving question are all a secret cover up because they Know what Holiday is next on the list.

I also want to report on our Thanksgiving tree that my family is working on. I love asking what everyone is Thankful for. James is thankful for candy, cookies, cake, the cat, dinner(if it is good), and mom. Damian is Thankful for everyone he has ever met and will spend fifteen minutes listing everyone of them, he is also thankful for the same things as James. Rob is Thankful for his Wife, and good meals. I am Thankful for all the things mentioned (minus the wife plus a husband) and for all the little things that the rest of the family overlooked. To remind them that we have a lot to be Thankful for.

So here are some pictures of our tree so far.

I am not the best at tying bows but I like it all the same.

Well I tried to add a little color other than yellow.

I really like how this tree is turning out. I have twenty more leaves to add but they are hard to write on once they are tied to the tree.

I used pencil to write on the leaves. But if you squint a little you can see what James is Thankful for.

I love the ribbon. It has four word repeated on it so when it is tied it says things like Give Thanks, Family, Blessings, and Tradition. Which I think this tree will become.

My ceiling is a light green. I love the leaves. I miss having an Autumn show as the season changes.

I hope that your week is filled with love and laughter. Be well my friends.

Chaz-Updated

My dog has been found! The animal control center has him until Thursday. I guess it is state law that you spay and neuter your pets. I hoping that maybe his wondering days are over. Every other time he has been found and taken in and loved making new friends. This time he is in doggy jail and gets snipped. Even though I had to adopt him from the center (because it kind of scares me to go in front of a judge), I am happy to know he is safe and will be coming home soon. Thanks for reading my sad, sad doggy post earlier. Rob made it sound like it was a hopeless cause. Turns out that after three to five days in the shelter they will adopt the animals out or euthanize them. God does answer prayers! God is Good.

My dog, Chaz is missing. We have had him for eight years. He has been with me when Rob has been gone on deployments and TDY's. He sleeps in the boys room, which has always me sleep knowing he is with them. It is not the first time he has gotten out but this time he didn't have his collar on and he is very friendly and he'll come to any old name. It has been a running joke that you can call him anything as long as you call him. He is a very good dog and only barks when he wants back in the house or someone comes to the door. He got out on Sunday morning after we left for church. The door didn't latch all the way so out the front door he went. Rob feels terrible because he was the last person out of the house. Now it is Tuesday morning and it is starting to feel like he may not come home this time. My heart hurts at the idea. I can't stop crying. His collar is on his leash because he has a walking collar and we forgot to put it back on him after our walk Saturday night. One careless act that seems like no big deal can turn catastrophic. We got him when he was only a puppy, I picked him out of his litter when he was five days old. He laid next to me in the bed up until Damian was a year old. Then he wanted more space and wanted to be in the same room as the baby. He has been sleeping at the foot of James bed since we switched the boys to the twin beds. When ever I have been said he was always there with his head in my lap, or under my desk laying on my feet or laying under the table in between the boys hoping for a little leftover food. We got him July 2003 and Damian came August 2004, he was our practise "kid" because if we could train a dog we could have a baby. I miss him. I am worried about him. I keep praying that he will come home but what if he is the answer to someone else's prayer for a good dog.

I hope that you have a lovely week filled with love and laughter. Be well my friends.

Roses are red...

When we were picking out my roses and there was one red one called Love. I wanted it but the other red one ended up in my basket. I am in the middle of dinner and I looked out my window to see my husband planting my roses and I realized I do not need a rose called love. My heart and my life is filled with love.

I have a couple of rose bushes in the front. One that is blooming and one that is just happy to be alive. When we were headed out to go look at some olive trees my sweet husband picked a pretty flower for me. This one is called Easy living (or something very similar). I am feeling very happy and totally content.

I just wanted to share my flower with you. Smile my friend you are loved. If I could I would send you a pretty flower in a little vase just to see you smile, because it lights up the room.

I hope that you have a relaxing weekend filled with love and luaghter. Be well my friends.



Garden News

I am excited to show you what is growing on in the garden. First thing first the new additions to our garden. When we went to the local nursery to look for new trees, (we want to add a pecan, lemon, persimmon, and more pomegranates for our hedge row) for once Rob did not find anything he wanted and we came home with three half priced roses. I happily told him that they would add some beauty, and attract bees for the vegetables.

This has the sweetest smelling flowers!

This is an Olympian Rose.

This is a pink promise.

Let's just say I fell in love with this rose and I have never been so happy to receive flowers.

This is not where they will be planted, well maybe we will plant the pink one here so that I can open the window and have a sweet breeze to fill the house.

I hardly ever get flowers but when I do I am glad they are alive.

Sad news comes from the garden. Rob pulled out the melon plants. They were covered in aphids. Did you know Ants farm them? Once the ants brought them over to the melon vines they exploded. We planted them to late in the season. We learned a lesson and hopefully we will apply it next year.

Zucchini is still growing well. The squash are slowing down. I am incredibly happy with all the squash I have gotten to feed to my family.

I was surprised to find this lovely yellow squash this morning.

I think we will be able to have at least one more meal made from garden squash.

The boys may get an acorn squash before the growing season ends.

Jelly bean tomato, with a side of beets please. This little jelly bean tomato has flowers which means the boys may get a couple of tomatos after all.

I think these are called purple hull beans. Rob planted them with the squash. They are kind of sweet. So we have decided to plant a whole bed of these next year.

Butternut squash! It is a little bitty one but it will taste just as good as any. I am sure. We had two bigger ones but the boys attacked them and throw them over the fence to hide what they had done.

These are pie pumpkins.

I am currently dreaming of pumpkin pie.

Lots of pumpkin pie.

When Rob pulled out one our amaranth plants he shook out the seeds along our fence and two of those little seeds took root! God is good. I love a surprise.

I think that this a purple potato plant. We planted potatoes in the spring and we thought we had lost them but here they are making a wonderful entrance.

We planted more than a dozen different pepper plants and the Rats ate them all. These two some how came back. We may not get any peppers but it does add more greenery to the fence line.

Purple asparagus. This is another plant we thought was gone but it is a true picture of perseverance. It struggles because I often forget to water them but some how it keeps trying to grow.  

One day these little purple asparagus will turn into something truly wonderful. They may even make us a meal in a few years.

Pineapple pear flowers.

We have struggled with fire blight on our pear trees. The Bartlett pear is a lost cause.

Here is hope on a branch.

We spent the summer fighting the battle of tomato's. We finally gave up surrendering to the harsh elements.

We ignored these black cherry tomatoes

Now it is completely covered by little green tomatoes

Sometimes the lessons you can learn in the garden are not just when to plant. This year I have learned more about God's love, and his plan for us. I have no doubt that God is a loving God. I can see that he wants us to have hope, to persevere even when it seems as if there is no way to survive.



Miracles happen everyday, sometimes we don't see them because we are so busy doing what needs to be done. These small miracles are there and it is easy to see them in the garden but I have to wonder if I am missing some that happen in everyday life. I know God is with me and my family. I hope that I will continue to grow in his light.

I hope that your week is filled with small Miracles, Love and Laughter. Be well my friends.

Halloween

Another Halloween has come and gone. My husband loves to carve pumpkins with the boys so before we get to the costumes we start with pumpkins.

 Eew Gross pumpkin guts!



 My yellow kitchen also turns everyone and everything a strange yellow in the pumpkin lab.

 The boys are proud of their Dad's carving abilities.

 He looks like the Jack-O-Lantern

 Spooky! No not really but the kids had fun screaming and running away from them.

The boys looked up pictures of Jack-O-Lanterns and Rob drew them on and cut them out. It is more fun this way. Better then taping a pattern on and poking little hole to follow along.

This year the boys wanted to be a mummy and a ghost. Easy to make right? I looked up the mummy and watch many youtube videos and read many ways to wrap up a mummy. Well it is always easy to read about. It took me two hours to wrap my little mummy all the way up. With in five minutes it was coming unraveled. The videos never mentioned this! So I wrapped him up with packaging tape. And it held up almost to the end. When it did come unraveled it looked like a mummy coming undone. 

 I love how his face looked. I think it made the total costume.

 Angry eyes, scary eyes. I love his eyes

 The mummy and a little ghost.

The ghost costume caused problems because the ghost's eyes kept moving around. I tried to pin the material to the back of his shirt, I tried to tape it to his head, I tried to make him wear a hat and pinned the material to the hat. The tie was the only thing that even came close to staying on and keeping the face looking forward. Still all night I had to fix his costume every two steps.

Here you can see his beautiful big brown eyes.



Here if you look at the ghost instead of eyes you see a nose. He loved being a ghost. I think that both of them had a really great time and really that is all that matters. I can't wait to try to make next years costumes. Maybe I will not take for granted that it sounds easy. I have learned my lesson.

I hope you had a wonderful Halloween and that your week is filled with Love and Laughter. Be well my friends