Joseph's 10th Birthday...double digits!

Joseph turned 10 on Easter Sunday!

Normally, I love to bake cakes for our children's birthday.

They usually make a requests and I try and comply to the best of my abilities!

This year with Easter and two birthdays in one week and expecting it just seemed like a great

idea to let someone else do the baking.  I sure did miss it though.

Joseph chose cookies and cream cake.

We added a couple of bay blades on top as a surprise and those awesome sparkler candles.

Here's a smile to warm your heart!

This was very early in the morning!

 Pa and Nanny sent the green stuff!

 Mom and Dad caved to a video game!

We only do electronics Friday through Sunday, so this game will last awhile.

 Our homeschool group planned a Father -Son day at Lego land at Phipps!

It was a major hit!  According to Dad it was also pretty wild!

Avoid going on the weekend if you can.

Ready to head out for Lego fun!

This was a week later, but part of his birthday.

 Joseph and giant Lego guy.

 A Lego Atlanta city scape.

 Joseph and Merlin

 Joseph on a Lego race slope.

He loved this!

 Lego Atlanta Braves stadium.

Joseph got an awesome pedal go-cart from his Mimi and Papa, and I need to get a photo to post!

It wears energetic boys out!

Next up:  Isabelle's birthday!



Eastery Sunday - 2012

 Easter Sunday 2012 was shared with Joseph's 10th birthday! It was a big day of celebration around our house!

Unfortunately, I did not get any photo's of our family at church this year.

Our table Saturday evening.

 Two baskets waiting for children to wake up and dive into chocolate!  Believe me they wake up very early when there are special occasions!  This year, their dear mother instituted a rule: No candy before church! The reason being is that we were all a little too excited during worship last year!

 Isabelle and Joseph: Blessings to our family!

 Joseph: Always proud to dress up!

 If you take a close look you will see there are five of us now!
Isabelle has her first pair of heels on as well!

 Our drinks table for dinner.

Simply set table, but it's fun!

 Uncle Kelley

 Brendon our chef!

 Isabelle our helper!

 Sebastian and Mimi

Obviously, I did not get pictures of everyone.  Papa and Lora and myself were all at dinner that night too!

Brendon prepared beef tenderloin from the half a cow we purchased a few months back.  It was totally delicious!  He also tried out a new roasted potato recipe, which is actually his best one ever!  I will have to share it with you.  Much thanks to Jamie Oliver!

Dessert was Joseph's birthday cake and that's our next blog post!!!

Easter 2012 - Egg dying on Saturday

We love to do this each year!  I always think I'd like to get a Ukrainian egg decorating kit, but we always end up with trusty old Paas dyes!

Oatmeal Blueberry Muffins - GF

I have seen some recipe's for oatmeal blueberry muffins floating around lately.

I happened to have a craving for them for about a week, and I also just happened to have some gluten free oats in my pantry and blueberries in my freezer. 

They are only slightly sweet and would be great toasted for breakfast.  They are very moist.

My family LOVED them!!!

INGREDIENTS

11/4 C quick cooking oats ( I had gf oats)

1C any gluten free flour or GF flour mixture

1/3 C white sugar

1T baking powder

1/2 t salt

1C milk (I used Almond milk)

1 egg

1/4 C vegetable oil (I used grapeseed)

1 C blueberries

DIRECTIONSHeat oven to 425F

1. Combine oats, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Mix in milk, egg, and oil; mix just until dry ingredients are moistened.  Fold in blueberries.  Fill greased muffin cups 2/3 full with batter. ( I used a 1/4C measuring cup and it was the perfect amount to pour into each muffin hole)

2. Bake at 425F for 20 to 25 min.  (They were done in 20 min in my oven)

I can see where some brown sugar sprinkled on top before popping in the oven would be oh so tasty!

Also, I would double this recipe next time!

You could also add in a little mashed banana if you wanted.  This is an easy recipe to play with.

Edited to add:  I have made these several times now.  I ran out of my grapeseed oil and so I used coconut oil! Oh, so delicious!  It is still below 80 here most days so I had to melt it, before pouring it into the batter.
We love coconut oil for all sorts of thing anyway and it is one of the healthy oils!
Give it a try with pancakes!

Garden 2012 update #2

We started to harden off the seedlings today.  Can you believe they were just seeds a month ago?

Here are tomatoes, peppers, basil and eggplant sitting out on the sunny front porch.

These are strawberries in one of the raised beds Brendon built last week.

 The fantastic little beds lined up so sweetly.  The first one contains the strawberries.

The second and third raised bed are herbs or they will be! 

The fourth one will be asparagus.

 One of our blooming fruit trees. 

 Brendon watering the strawberries.

 Mavis our border collie.  She is a hilarious trip!!!

She would love to live on a livestock farm, but for now she contents herself chasing birds, bees, runners and cyclists!

 Zippy one of the farm cats.  I agreed to outdoor cats and am proud to say they did their job this week and caught a critter! 

 RJ the other farm cat.  He is a lion and gives grasshoppers a terrible fright!

 Sarah is 13 years old.  This is the smartest and best guard dog.

Love her, but she's sure aging!

This is a great old dogwood! It's on the side of my front yard.  My neighbor thinks it's possibly near to 100 years old.  I don't know, but it's pretty neat.

Garden Spring 2012 update

On Saturday Brendon built 3 garden boxes to make raised beds for herbs and asparagus.

Here he is working hard. 

 Tonight the neighbor was out plowing and tilling his garden!

So Brendon and the kids went to talk to him and he loaned the tractor to Brendon!

 The tiller is awesome!

 Brendon having fun!

Garden 2012 Spring edition

We mowed today for the first time in 2012! 

Brendon mowed over the winter garden to get it ready for spring tilling and planting.

We enjoyed our fall/winter garden and it is SO much easier to garden that time of year, because weeds are

largely not an issue.  We had collards, turnips, radishes, various lettuces, broccoli, and cabbage.

It's so fun to send a child out the door to pluck some things for dinner!

This is our garden freshly mowed.

 We are trying potatoes for the first time.  Brendon read about the trash can method and we are giving it a try!  Here are three cans already planted with seed potatoes. 

Apparently you plant the potatoes and when they grow through the dirt you add more dirt and cover.  Repeating until it gets to the top of the can and then you just let them grow until they are ready.

 We love to eat berries.  We planted a few blueberries.  Berries tend to be crops which are heavily sprayed (also potatoes) and we try to avoid the heavily sprayed foods as much as possible.  But, have you seen the price of organic berries? Yikes!  We decided to grow our own.  It will be next year before we get any fruit off of them, but we are looking forward to it.  I think we have six blueberries planted.

Baby Blueberry Bush.

 Baby Raspberry Cane

We planted various types of apples and pear and a couple other fruit trees.

We won't get any fruit off of them this year, but we are looking forward to next year.

 This is my favorite farmer!  Planting the raspberry canes.

 We had to cut down a tree in the front yard.  We will turn most of it into mulch. 

Our most awesome neighbor has a friend with a mulcher.  We will pay to use it, but it's still much more economical than any other solutions we have asked about.

All this gardening is actually quite alot of work, but we have learned alot and the rewards are just fantastic!

We love to do it and we get to feed our family nourishing food that we know all about.

Brendon is keeping a detailed journal this year of what he's doing when, cost etc... 

Father Daughter Dance 2012

 Our homeschool group hosts a Father/Daughter Dance each year and Isabelle looks forward to some partying with the girls each spring.  Look how she's growing up!  I'm so lucky to have such a great girl and handsome husband! 

Shrove Tuesday 2012

Our children look forward to Shrove Tuesday (or Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras) every year.

And who wouldn't, with a variety of pancakes and sausage and bacon for supper!!! Please don't forget the maple syrup and cream on top!

Plain pancakes, m n m pancakes and blueberry pancakes and a plate full of pork!

Two happy children!

Let me tell you it is not a problem for grown ups to feel like a little fasting the next day!