And The Winner Is.....

You ladies are great!! Thanks for the fabulous response to the give away!! Trent pulled the lucky winners name out of the hat this morning......
Drum Roll, Please........
The winner is RedGateFarm!!! Let me know your mailing address and I will get them shipped out right away. Thanks for playing!!
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Merry Christmas Give Away!

Merry Christmas my Bloggie Friends! Lurkers included, leave a comment to enter the Merry Christmas Give Away! My Christmas present to you: my attempt at a cute Christmas table runner, and a couple blocks of that World Famous Cheese that Rob is so good at making. His specialties, String Cheese and Colby. I'll run the give away until Monday morning, December 21, so I can get it sent out to you right in time for Christmas! Merry Christmas everybody! You have all been a special part of my year!

Yummy!

Carmel Puffcorn is one of our all time favorites around here! It is a treat that is reserved for an occasional movie night. Yum Yum!! Too Delicious!!
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Carmel Puffcorn
1 Package Old Dutch Puffcorn
1 cup butter (not margarine)
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
2/3 cups light corn syrup
1 tsp baking soda
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Combine butter, brown sugar and corn syrup in sauce pan. Cook on medium heat until mixture has melted. Once mixture has melted, add the baking soda. This will cause the mixture to foam.
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Pour the puffcorn in a large roasting pan. Cover with mixture and mix well. Bake in 250 degree oven for 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes. Cool and break apart. Enjoy! It is one of my junk food downfalls, especially good with that Johnny Cash movie.

Winter in Black and White

Tough Little Cowgirl

Sometimes, no matter how good you are to your horse....

No matter how many treats you give her or how many times you tell her she is the best horse in the whole wide world....

She still decides to be a little bugger and run off with you.

Sassy took off running under some trees with Grace when we rode the other day. Grace was mostly scared, but she also got several superficial scrapes on her pretty face. Guess we'll continue working on that one-rein stop. Being a cowgirl is tough sometimes. It does make for some bragging rights with the boys, tho, the day after:)

5 kids, 4 horses, 2 dogs and a Pine tree

A New Christmas Tradition

One of our Christmas Traditions since buying the farm 3 years ago has been to go out back and cut down a pine tree from our property for a Christmas tree. They are not the prettiest trees, but the memories that are made are worth the fanciest tree on any lot:) With the cold stretch of weather that we have had we have not been able to get out and cut a tree yet this year. Today was beautiful, and above 20 degrees, so the kids and I took the horses and dogs out back to the old "junk pile" where Trent knew there was a beautiful tree.

The horses, all lined up and ready to go.

We headed up the hay field.

Enjoying our ride!

Along the fence line, headed for the woods.

Making our way through all the trees.

These are dreams coming true!

We eventually found the boys, who went ahead to scout things out.

They had already found the perfect tree.

We decided to cut down a little bit bigger tree.

Trent got the lariat from Grace, and proceeded to tie it onto the tree.

Then Alexis helped him tie the other end to Chance's saddle.

We have never used Chance to pull anything, so we were not too sure how he would respond to dragging a Christmas tree behind him. Like anything else we have asked him to do, he quietly responded and followed Alexis.

Little Solomon came along for the ride again. He has this ponying all figured out!

Headed back home....

With a new Christmas tradition.

Goodmorning Mom!

Good morning Mom!

Your horse is out!

Okay, so day 4 of this is not so funny anymore!
I took advantage of it, tho, this morning when Lightning decided to get out with Chance and took a ride around the hayfield. Then I rode to the back of the pasture and shut the gate that leads out to the horses' back pasture. My guess is that they are stepping over the electric fence back there.

Finding just the right size log to use to jump back on my mighty stead is always helpful when I ride bareback.

Headed back home.

Chance, still on the wrong side of the fence.

Once everybody was settled back in the barn, I finished the rest of the morning chores.

We'll see what tomorrow morning brings:)

The Christmas Season

I just had to laugh as I read my account of the Christmas season from last year! See, I am not a very Christmasy person. We still do not have our tree up this year, we plan on going Christmas shopping tomorrow, I just ordered presents to be shipped before the big day next week (which also includes Alexis' birthday), and am not ready yet for the extended family Christmas this weekend! Have I mentioned I have some issues with procrastinating, and really do work best under pressure?? Like the night before?? Drives my husband crazy!! Then, there's that whole birthday thing coming up again. It happens the same time every year, you would think I would be used to it by now. But, I did rent the Little House on the Prairie Christmas movie and checked out half of the childrens Christmas books in the library, so there may be some hope. On the top of my Christmas wish list is a big, fat, stinky, hairy, Nubian Billy goat that I found on Craigslist (you know, you meet the nicest people selling farm animals on Craigslist:)). I wonder if Rob noticed it, next to that Johnny Cash autobiography (or the Johnny Cash reads the Bible cassette series) or the antique egg scale. Kitchen towels will be nice again, too. Or a new kitchen appliance, like say, a dishwasher. Naw, I'd rather get the Billy goat.

Goodmorning Alexis!

Goodmorning Alexis!

Your horse is out!

Again!

It's not so funny the second morning in a row, but she's still smiling about it!

Glad it wasn't my horse:)

My Baby!

My baby, who is now 5 years old.

My baby, who is starting to resist hugs and all those kisses.

Except when it's early in the morning, or late at night, or he stubs his toe, or watches a movie, or we read a book.

My baby, who nearly started crying yesterday, begging Mommy to please teach him how to write his name. And now he wants to learn how to read.

I guess when your little dumplings come home at nearly 3 years old they aren't babies very long. I'm going to go kiss him before he decides to grow up much more:)

Celebrating Adoption

Our little church congregation celebrated God moving through adoption this past Sunday. In the past 3 years 10 children came home to 5 families from Haiti, India, Guatemala, and Ethiopia. Grace came home nearly 7 years ago, making a total of 11 internationally adopted children. Blaine put together a beautiful video clip of each of the families, we wore our Indian outfits, set up displays and photo albums of our trips. All of the families were invited up on stage to dedicate our children to the Lord during the sermon. After Pastor Merrill's message on how we are adopted as God's children, we had a potluck then each family had an opportunity to share their individual testimonies. Being Rob had to work, I had the sole joy of telling our story. It was an amazing day to celebrate what God had done!

Shriners

For the past 6 years our Christmas season has included the annual Shriner's Christmas party for Grace. Our local group of Shriners puts on a fantastic party for the children who have been blessed by the Shriner's hospital. It is always a good reminder of the miracle that was performed in Grace's life so many years ago, and the wonderful people that God used to do it. Grandma Lee came with us this year (unlike last year when she took the kids for me as I was delivering her namesake goat:). Grandma Lee was such a huge part in our year of Shriners appointments so it was very fitting that she celebrate with us now, too.

There are special presents for the Shriners kids, but they never forget the rest of the family. All the kids get a little present, plus lots of cookies, ice cream, and chocolate.
Dick has been Grace's local sponsor, and is just an all around great guy!
Our local Shriners group, including Tom, our old neighbor owner of Buddy the Dog (our "first" dog:).

Go Buy Yourself Some Levi's

Woo-hoo! Go Levi's! Bring back the Men! Go out and buy yourself some Levi Docker's in support of their new advertisement. Thanks Dalyn!

Believe it or Not, No Bread Machine was Used for this Post

I have finally given up on finding that bread machine piece and have been mastering the art of kneading and baking bread. It really isn't as hard as I thought, and I have been very pleased with the results. Red Gate Farm has a wonderful tutorial if you are like me and don't have much experience or do not have much success with venturing away from your bread machine. Like anything else I do, I get lots of help:) After mixing everything together, it's time to knead, and knead, and knead. After the first rising we rolled the dough out and spread butter, then sprinkled it with cinnamon and sugar. Let it rise again, then bake. Yummy! Especially served with that virus killing soup from Cathy (made with our very own layed, incubated, hatched, and farm raised chickens) in the middle of a snowstorm.

Thrift Stores

What a find! Much needed riding boots for under $4! Whoo-eee! Made my day! And, what are the chances, just my size! But, being a certain 13 year old girl also wears my size she claimed them first. Should have wrapped them up for Christmas I guess:)

Preparing for Winter

Before the big snowstorm and stretch of freezing cold weather hit, the kids and I worked on enclosing the old sheds for the critters. We put plastic over the windows and major openings of the old buildings.

And being the old barn still hasn't fallen down:), we enclosed that, too, for the goats to keep them warm for another winter. Maybe next year this project will get moved up on The List.

Trent even helped me jimmy-rig the door on again. And it even swings open and closed!

Brrrr.... it is cold out! Zero and below for the past 3 days, and more to come. It makes me want to head somewhere warmer. Somebody has to raise goats in the Bahamas, don't they??

Lucky Solomon gets brought into the goat barn stall for his grain in the morning and at night gets to spend the night during this cold stretch. At first I had been haltering and leading him in and out. In the past few days I have quit using the halter and have just been using pressure and voice to take him in and out. Granted, he knows where the grain bucket is, but he is still learning how to listen and watch for me to lead. It is such a joy to work with this sweet little boy!

That wood stove is working hard to keep us all warm. There is nothing that compares to the warm heat of a wood stove, especially in a big, old farmhouse.

Would the Real Christian Please Stand Up?

I can look back over the past few years and really see where God has been leading me; removing my grip on this world and the things of it, and looking to Him for my joy, provision, comfort, and satisfaction. In many ways it has been a journey that I would not have chosen to go myself, but do we ever really seek and long for spiritual growth that is hard aside from the Lord bringing it? One of the things that I have noticed over the course of this time has been the various distinctions between people who are truly seeking God, and those who are just going with the flow of the Christian heritage of our culture. The "nice" people who really have not been transformed, but don't want to offend you. Or the one's who have sat in the same church pew for years, but have not been touched by God. The one's who make up their own God, and insist I follow him. It has caused me to evaluate, from the point of Scripture, just what the true Christian would look like. Not to judge outwardly, but to judge myself inwardly. Do I know, that I know, that I know that I am saved? If so, then what should my life look like, not work based, but heart based.
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John points out in 1st John 4:7 that those who love have been born of God. Which, in my brain, only tends to confuse things more. Our society has deemed love as making people happy, primarily ME! We have been taught by commercial adds, psychiatrists, even churches, that if I am not happy, then somebody doesn't love me. But what is love? Love is not making somebody happy at any cost, but rather seeking the good for that person at any cost. Is it greater love to let a child go undisciplined and let him have his way, or is it the greater love to discipline them for their own good? Is it greater love to watch somebody go astray in the name of love, or is it the greater love to share with them your concerns? And what is the greatest "good" for a person? Scripture tells us that we are all sinners, and apart from Christ we are all headed to Hell. Therefor, the greatest good of a person is to tell them of the saving grace that came from the shedding of blood on the cross, for their very own sins. But who wants to hear that? And who calls that love?
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John points out in 5:1 that everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. This is a continuous belief, an ongoing belief that never ends. It comes with an understanding that not only do we profess Jesus is the Christ with our mouths, but with our whole lives as well. It does not imply just mouthing the words, but living the words. The life that is transformed because they know that Jesus is the Christ, born of God, and all that implies.
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John says in 5:3 that to love God is to obey his commands, and His commands are not burdensome. This love is an action word. It is not mearly a mushy, gushy feeling deep down in our hearts, like when we see the Folger's coffee commercials, but it has an underlying depth that does not come without sacrifice. It will cost us to love God, but it will not be burdensome, but rather a joy to serve our King. To obey the commands, tho, the Christian would need to know the commands. If we reveal that we love God by obeying His commands, and we do it with joy, then we reveal that we are truly His.
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God has used the passage of Acts 10, the story of Cornelius and Peter, as a measuring rod in my life the past few weeks. Both of these men were devout and God fearing, and that is when God spoke to them. As we claim revelations from God without the first part, we best be checking where these revelations come from. Is our life devout and God fearing? Do we commit ourselves to Scripture, the reading of it, the true interpretation (not our hearts desire of what we want it to say) of it? Are we in a constant battle to rid ourselves of the sin that longs to rule, and seek to live righteously in honor of our King? Are His commands burdensome? Do we know His commands? Do we know Him?
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As the kids and I have been reading through Exodus we see again and again the Israelites' grumbling and unbelief against God. In chapter 18 Moses' father in law, Jethro, pays a visit. His wisdom and instruction to Moses is to teach the people the decrees and laws of the Lord, to show them the way that they are to live. Back in chapter 16:4 God tells Moses that He will test them and see whether they will follow His instructions. In a home with several children it is easy to see this "testing" around here; not so easy to always follow His instructions. As we know His decrees and laws, and if we are truly saved, then the Holy Spirit will begin to cause our hearts to gladly obey Him; and His commands will not be burdensome. As we learn to obey Him in the small things, it becomes easier to obey Him in the big things. Check your heart! What commands are burdensome in your life? Are you willing to take Scripture for whatever it says and just obey?
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But, how many people do we truly see living this way? How many churches are preaching salvation, sin, obedience, knowing the word, heart transformation rather than outward conformity? As we have gone through a couple of Bible studies lately I have taken a role of mostly observing. I find it interesting to see what peoples beliefs really are, and am saddened to see some of these young people, who were brought up in the church, with so little knowledge and desire for God and His word. Satan's first deceit in the Garden of Eden was to twist the word of God enough that Eve questioned it. Have we not become masters at twisting the Word ourselves, so it pleases us, rather than glorifying God in it's entirety?
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I don't think that God was kidding when He said one day He is coming back to judge the nations. The hearts and lives of everyone will be revealed. God says in Amos 7 that He is setting a plumb line among His people [Israel]. He is the plumb line, His word is the standard, His people will follow it and gladly obey it. Oh, that He would raise them up to be bold and courageous in a time such as this.

I'm Still Here!

Oh My! Four days without blogging... that must be a record for me:)) Guess I've just been busy living, preparing for and enduring this big snowstorm, baking, baking, baking, farming, homeschooling, sewing and reading. Promise I'll carve out a little time to post something wonderful; after we finally finish reading Summer of the Monkeys that is!

Another Amazing God Story

Want to read an amazing God story?? Go visit RedGateFarm. Isn't our God amazing??!!