"Look and see, for everyone is coming home!" Isaiah 60:4

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

My cornhuskers

No, not THOSE Cornhuskers.

THESE corn huskers :D


Much cuter than THOSE Cornhuskers!


Corn has been REALLY cheap lately


so we've been having it often with dinner.


And it's been quite nice to have little helpers around to shuck too!


Isa's never been old enough to take interest in what corn looks like before it's been husked.


Shawn was just excited to pull the husks off and let the silks fly up and land on his head. Sister helped too!


Afterward, Isabel begged to take the husks and waste to the compost pile.


While we were out there

I found this lovely little plant happily growing right out of the compost.


I'm thinking it's a cantaloupe/melon of some sort.  It looks an awful lot like our pumpkins.


Kinda ironic to find such a healthy plant growing out of the very place all our food waste goes.  Trash to treasure!

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Summer surprise

for the kids at least. I had called Dyl and asked him to bring home some ice cream and toppings for a surprise dessert after dinner tonight.

I didn't think he'd go all out!


We had a whole lotta fun making our own sundaes :D
All of them started out much like this


and ended up either like this,

Dyl's creation
this,

Liz's creation
or this.


YUM!
And yes, that was homemade peach cobbler in Dyl's sundae.


His doc is (NOT) going to love me for this.
I'm sure you've noticed there were only 3 sundaes pictured.


Shawn decided he didn't want any and instead loaded up on grapes.

Then he went outside and busied himself doing this


or this most of the time.

 He's never really cared too much for desserts.
His metabolism will thank him for it in 32 years.



Hope your Wednesday was as fun as ours!

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Summertime Fun!

Summer brings so many fun things to do! We've been having a fun time around here, especially after D gets home from work.

Especially catching fireflies!


Isa LOVES catching fireflies.




She was REALLY scared of them last year


but now has no problem with letting them crawl all over her!


We've let her stay up way past her bedtime so she can have a chance at the fireflies.


And for a look at this face, 


 who could say no?



Friday, June 10, 2011

How Does Your Garden Grow? Frontyard Edition

So it's unofficially summer here in L-town! The weather has been hot and sticky for a week or so. But thankfully it's not sweltering at 8 am...yet...
So I finally had a chance yesterday to take some pics of how the front yard is shaping up so far this season!
Our front yard is only flowers, no edibles, but I'm considering changing that next season. We'll see. Regardless, here we go:


Below are some sweet peas! They're starting to get some flower buds on them FINALLY and I'm hoping it won't be long before they'll bloom! The sticks they are climbing on are their trellis. These puppies can get up to 12ft tall!
These are cosmos. They look pretty healthy, but have yet to put out any buds. Don't really know when to expect them since this is the first time I've grown cosmos so wait it out a while longer and see.


Next up are our roses. We've got two rose bushes. The first below is a Knockout rose, I believe. That sucker will bloom until about the first freeze. It's a fairly mature plant, but has little fragrance. It was one of only a few flowering plants on the property when we bought our house (BORING!), so in it stayed. I need color and excitement in my garden. I can't stand anything that is shrub only. Blech.
 This one is a hybrid tea rose. I planted it around Mother's Day as it was one of two that were intended for Mother's Day presents to my mom and myself. I let her pick which of the two she wanted for her new garden. She chose a beautiful bicolor with cream and dark pink edging. Mine is VERY fragrant and bloomed out to about 5 inches just this morning!

This coneflower is the first of it's kind to bloom this year! We were very excited to see it! I'm considering planting some white and dark pink ones, because I love how sustainable they are to this area. They are considered a native species so they support the "natural insects" that come around here.
These below are daylilies! I've become a daylily fan over the past year or so. These are Stella d'Oro and we have several of these around our front yard. I just love how sunny and cheerful they look! I've got some purple ones planted but they're not quite mature enough yet. I'm excited for them to bloom soon!

This is our very young butterfly bush! It won't be big enough to be much of a showstopper, but it seems to be happy where I've planted it.

Below are some of my FAVORITES this season. These are asiatic lilies I bought last year but planted too late for them to bloom. I've been awaiting their return since last spring! (Sigh) and they were so worth the wait! They are called Commander-in-Chiefs and I'm so glad I bought them. I can't find them anywhere else.

Well, that's all for now. The backyard looks very different now too, so expect another update on that another week. Maybe this weekend we'll update on how we're planning on doing NOTHING. Thank goodness. Hope your weekend is just as relaxing!

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Garage Sale Update!

We're so excited about moving forward with our adoption, but right now things are at a standstill, of our own doing. We've been INCREDIBLY busy lately. Shortly after we announced we were adopting we held our first fundraiser!



We were very blessed to be provided with so many wonderful donations for our sale! We had so much stuff we didn't even get it all out! These pictures show what we had in the garage the evening before we opened. We also had have an entire basement full of additional donations! We'll definitely have to hold at least 2 more sales to get it down to a reasonable amount.

Friday, the first day of our sale, was great! We had a constant stream of people from 8-4! We were so excited when we had several buyers for quite a few of the big items!
Saturday we opened early and were disappointed when we had about half the people as Friday. Most of our customers came in the morning with a few stragglers during the afternoon. One informed us that Old Shawnee Days was that weekend also. UGH. So disappointing...I felt we had put SO much effort into this sale, doing everything we possibly could to get the word out.
But even while I wallowed in disappointment, the Lord sent confirmation that we were on the right track. Around the time that things were slowing down quite a bit we had 3-4 different people come and tell us about how they were in some way tied with domestic adoption! It was such a blessing to speak with these people. We loved just talking with someone who had been down that road. We've learned that there aren't quite as many domestic adoptions (or at least they arn't talked about as much/openly). We don't know of hardly anyone who has gone through domestic adoption recently. Dylan does have an aunt who has adopted (Hi Aunt Susan!) , but we THINK (please correct me if I'm wrong!) that was in Colorado and there can be VAST differences between state adoption laws.
After packing everything back up we realized we had just as much as we had our first day. Don't ask me how that happened. Needless to say, we really will have to do this at least 2-3 more times.
We do definitely feel blessed by what God allotted us, and I've gotten over my disappointment. I know this is a teaching moment and so I'm trying to learn that things won't turn out exactly the way I dream. But God has a bigger, better plan than any one I could come up with. And knowing that He's in control of it all brings me the greatest comfort of all.

Friday, June 3, 2011

Worn and weary...

but for good reason.

You see, THIS is what we've been up to lately...



We are officially announcing we are expecting baby #3! But this time, I won't have to endure being pregnant during the stifling hot summer because

WE'RE ADOPTING!!

 and we are SO excited about it!

We've known God had it in His plan for us to adopt at some point, but we always thought it would be after we had our last biological baby. Over the past year or so we've heard Him urging us to adopt now. After much prayer we knew it was time. We realized there was no need to wait until we were "done" having biological kids. And so we took the (very!) scary first step forward on our adoption journey!

We started filling out paperwork the very end of February and we were finally able to submit it to our adoption facilitator in the beginning of May. We received our acceptance letter about a week and a half ago. So now the next two steps we have to complete are to get our homestudy done and to fill out a second stack of paperwork for the agency. This will include the information that will create a file about our family to be presented to birthmothers. When a birthmom decides to place her baby up for adoption, our agency will give her our file along with others. Birthmom (not the agency) then reads through and chooses a family from these files. So you can see, this is a VERY important part of the process.

Another part that has been keeping us busy lately is our adoption garage sale fundraiser! We have been so very blessed by support from so many friends and family by donations for our sale, advice, and prayer! Today is the end of the first day of our garage sale and it's gone well so far.  We will be glad when this busy season will be over, but for now we are trying to survive life!

Thank you so much for your prayers as we go through these first few step! We are excited to be on the journey God has to bring Baby Stewart #3 home!

"Look and see, for everyone is coming home!  Your sons are coming from distant lands, your little daughters will be carried home. Your eyes will shine, your hearts will thrill with joy." Isaiah 60:4-5a (NLT)