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Breakfast…
We live on schedules around here. Things just go better if we know what we are eating, when we are going places, etc., etc. But Mondays I go all wild and crazy and breakfast is a surprise. It depends on the day and what is going on. This day was a quiet one and I had time to mess around with pancakes.
Chocolate pancakes.
I don’t get all caught up with being healthy, donchaknow?
She is that silly…
Peach jam day – 2016
A trip to the public market yielded us a ton of peaches. They cost about double from years before… which was still only about $12.
Nan, Marie and I worked for a few hours to make a ton of jam. Katriel read to us to entertain us.
It is so worth it. Seriously yummy.
oh what a day!
It started at 7:10 A.M. I had worked the evening before and the kids were letting me sleep in a little. Nigel came kindly to my door, “Mom. I’m sorry to wake you up, but we have a very serious emergency.”
I asked for more details. He was so calm.
”There is water leaking everywhere from the basement ceiling.”
I leapt out of bed, exclaiming, “Grab every bucket you can find!” as I looked for my glasses.
”A bucket won’t help,” he said calmly.
I ran down the stairs, into the laundry room, dumped out two buckets of rags and cleaners and ran down the basement stairs and immediately thought, “What did I think I was going to do with these buckets?”
They are so calm in the video! I was recording it as Stewart called John lest John say something like, “Grab every bucket you can find.”
He directed me how to turn off the water as he hurried to his car to head home.
The kids and I found the culprit.
It was remarkably easy to clean up, considering.
My initial praise was that Stewart HEARD the water leaking from the kitchen and investigated. Then I was touched that they tried to address it without waking me.
Then – about an hour later it dawned on me. Up until four days prior AND for the last few WEEKS that table had been FULL of school books. Thousands of dollars of school books had been on that table. It could have been SO much worse. My sewing machine had also been on there. 
My friend Jackie suggested renting a fan from Home Depot. It was $28 for the day and worked fabulously after we’d used every last towel in the house to soak up most of the water.
Oh – and just because we like to keep things fun… our A/C died the same day.
Marie is 12!
Twelve years ago the doctor said, “It’s a girl!”
I was first shocked- I only “knew” boys; then over the next 24 hours I grew so excited. Before God showed Abraham the stars in the sky, He knew this little girl would be my daughter. I trusted Him then and there to show us how to be girl-parents.
We woke up Marie with our traditional birthday songs.
And I somehow convinced my jam-loving crew that today was the day to get the raspberries we needed for jam. We picked for 90 minutes in 90○ F sunshine.
We grabbed some pool time.
And I did the jam up quickly. (Raspberry jam is the most expensive, but the easiest to make.)
Nan, Nene, Ba & Poppy joined us for dinner. And what a dinner it was! Marie and I fabricated our own dish of tortellini, Alfredo sauce, mushrooms, and spinach, garnished with fresh tomatoes. Oh yeah.
She opened a few gifts and cards.
And then we sang to her over her requested frozen strawberry cake.
Marie wasn’t the only one getting new things on this day. Look at the smile on Johanna’s face for her new math book. (That joy stops around grade 3.)
And I got some souvenirs from the berry patch. Oy.
Swimmy days… in June!
We’ve had a GORGEOUS June.
I believe we swam more this June than any other year.
This is a mixture of memories.
Truly hoping July and August are as beautiful!
Wishy washer…
The irony is that as I put the first load of laundry in the washer Wednesday morning, I actually gave thought to how blessed we had been to have such a large capacity washer; and I remembered with thanksgiving how John had been able to repair it more than once.
Imagine my shock when just a few short hours later I was presented with this:
An error code.
I looked up the code online and tried to fix it myself to no avail. I needed to wait until John could deal with it. When he looked into it Wednesday night, he express ordered the part he thought we needed. We had nothing to do but wait (and continue to accumulate dirty clothes).
Oddly enough, we’d already been operating without an overhead light in the laundry room, because John hadn’t been able to get the part for the fluorescent light. Stewart had come through with one of the boys’ lamps to help illuminate the room. It did the trick to give enough light for laundering clothes, but it wasn’t the ideal situation for John to work under.
We run a pretty tight laundry ship at our house. Certain things on each day of the week. It keeps the laundry moving and no one ever runs out of things. If we know something is coming up schedule wise, we shift the schedule a bit. It is a system that works really well… when the machines are working!
With uncertainty about how long we’d be without I decided a trip to the laundromat would be wise. John preferred I didn’t go alone. I preferred to not go alone. And Stewart found himself volunteering requested to go. He was a great help. We used three side-by-side washers and had it all washed in 30 minutes. 
I want one of these!! 
Home to dry, and wait for John to get the part.
(It worked and we were back in business over the weekend.)
Getting Saucy…
Our neighbors blessed us with apples.
Lots of apples.
Nan came over and we got busy one morning.
We cut apples in quarters and cooked them in 1-2 inches of water. After they softened a good deal we put them through the Squeezo.
I started to run out of containers. And I for sure ran out of freezer space. 
And when we were done, there were still this many left. We’d only used about 2/3 of them.
We found a home for the rest.
Labor Day 2015
We rarely do things on Labor Day, as I usually work. But I wasn’t scheduled this year so we quickly invited over friends, as well as Nan and Nene & Nan’s friend.
When we first issued the invitations, we were simply hopeful it wouldn’t rain. The fact that it turned out to be 90 degrees was a fantastic blessing.
The boys played badminton and football, and there was a lot of swimming. There was more food than we could shake a stick at. It was so fun.
I almost didn’t post this as I look super cheesy, but I ♥ this sweet sister.
And we had leftovers for days. YUM!
Dayspring Disciples 