H E L L O F R I E N D S:
I’m sitting here, still feeling weak and tired, but slowly getting better. I had to go to the local (happily, only five minutes away) hospital to do my 28 wk. glucose testing this morning so that I can get my Rhogam shot later on this week. I saw a sign in the lab office that said, “Happiness is when your blood work is done” and I agreed, especially because this time they had to stick me twice I was so dehydrated. (I’ve got a mug of water by me as I type this……)
Rich and the children are all better but it is taking me longer to perk up, I think because I am pregnant and was already tired out to begin with. Rich had to leave this morning for a business trip and will be back on Wednesday night so that was making me all tense yesterday, the later it got in the day the worse I felt about him leaving. He worked so hard getting things as ready for me as possible; did loads and loads of laundry, cleaned out my vehicle, worked outside, went to the store, took care of the children so I could rest and nap…..and what does he get in return? A crying & sad wife. His birthday is next week and I sure hope I can think of some ways to show him how much I love and appreciate his love for me and the children.
We had wonderful weather this weekend, I think the temps reached 70. Needless to say, I still managed to get outside once in a while, and it sure was nice to watch the children play and to feel the sunshine on us. Rich even took a nap outside on the picnic table (out of reach of chickens, lol).
Before I put up the pictures of our outdoor adventures, let me show you the reversible smock again. I’m so happy! One of you nice ladies left me a comment a few posts back, explaining how the pattern was supposed to be…..sure enough, I ripped off the ribbons, crossed the back panels, and tied the straps together on the shoulders and now it looks perfect! I had *a little someone* model the smock for us…….then I took it right back off again because Rich was alarmed.
Rich and the boys did a lot of cleaning up outside and started a fire to burn junk and stuff. One of the things to get burned was Our Christmas Tree….so long, tree of December beauty and delight! I’m so glad to have you off my driveway getting browner and browner. Rich and the boys enjoyed watching it burn. Hot dog, anyone?
Ethan and Seth enjoyed a little hug in the sun, on the end of the slide.
Rich and I watched as Sethie walked through mud for the first time. He really didn’t react to it at all, I think he was concentrating more on his destination, the chicken coop.
Rich gave all the boys buzz cuts, except our exception, CALEB, we let him grow hair because his actually stays in place nicely. Rich and Caleb got to go get their hair cut together on Saturday. Rich said that Caleb sat as still and quiet as a mouse and then he got to have a Dark Green lollypop. Dark Green Things are all the rage here, it gives David and Caleb something else to argue about. When we set the table they always yell, “I want the dark green plate! (or mug! or bowl!)”
We did a lot of resting and reading this weekend.
We got a really tiny egg on Saturday. We all laughed at it and Rich said it wasn’t worth laying.
The creamy white one is an average size, the brown speckled was so small, I saved the shell and Jacob fried up the miniature insides for a snack, and he said it tasted really good.
By the way, the April issue of Food Network Magazine has 50 ways to prepare eggs. I snatched it up. 
I like all the action in this picture….Jacob beckoning to me, Ethan getting his dog some food, Grace walking down to the boys, and Caleb sitting with a sweet smile.
M A R G A R E T T H E P R E T T Y H E N
First frog caught this spring, first turtle caught. The boys got them while I was napping and saved them for me to see when I got up.
Speaking of frogs, we are beginning to hear the call of spring peepers! So exciting!
Sister helping by retrieving the wayward baby boy. His bare feet do not slow him down.
Wintergreen leaves in the woods, I like to bend down and pick one, and chew on it….yum!
H I C K O R Y T R E E S H A V E S H A G G Y B A R K
Ethan and I found a nice sweet hickory nut by the stream and ate it up, cracking it between two rocks. Then, we decided to find the tree so we could eat some more. We found some nuts, but sadly, NONE of them were any good. It was still fun, though, and we learned things together. The woods were warm and smelled of crispy dry leaves, and pine.
Rich was playing catch with the boys at the end of the day on Sunday and I couldn’t resist taking Seth out for a picture of my husband, and my five boys…….
We weren’t feeling our best, and I was mostly miserable, but looking back on the weekend, I see and remember good memories, anyway.
Please pray for Rich as he travels, and for us as we miss him and wait for him to get home again.
Happy day to you all and thank you for stopping by!
And the Lord
shall guide thee continually,
and satisfy thy soul in drought,
and make fat thy bones:
and thou shalt be like a watered garden,
and like a spring of water,
whose waters fail not.
Isaiah 58:11
Good to be Home 
Your posts are so enjoyable. Hope you feel better soon.
=). I hope you are able to rest and feel refreshed.
Great pictures. The picture of Richa nd the boys is my favorite~should be framed and hung in the boys room. Hope you continue to get rest and perk up soon. Happy Monday ~ praying for Rich’s travels and safety. Love ya Sis
Praying for you dear friend. Try to rest as much as you can. I thought this was such a wonderful post…even on a weekend you all weren’t feeling your best! Seth does look so cute in that smock, it will be darling on your baby girl. It is so fun seeing him wandering around and exploring…though I know it keeps you all hopping. Good thing you have lots of runners to go after him. Love that look on his face when about to bang the pot!The egg is so tiny…pretty though. Love all the forest pictures especially Grace in the stream, you and Seth, and then after, the picture of Rich and all the boys. Caleb and Davey are so cute together. Please pray for me too…feeling pretty awful, even after a restful weekend. With fibro I have so many weird pains it sometimes gets worrisome, you feel like something is serious inside. Taking care of myself and leaning on the Lord!!
Great shots capturing a beautiful weekend.Hope the time your hubby away goes by quickly!{{{{{hugs}}}}
Get better quickly, dear friend ~
Oh… Having the husband home for a few days just makes it worse when he leaves again. I tell myself to be happy that I have a husband I Like to have stay home.I feel your pain. Hugs to you.
I hope you feel much better soon!!! Your sweet family always puts a smile on my face!
Hope you are feeling better soon. “single parenting” is hard enough when you feel great. Prayers for safe travels and quick return. LOOOoove that sundress. Just might have to make some for my twins…they look fairly simple to make.
My goodness, I’m feeling such post-stomach-bug sympathy for you and yours! Not much is worse…the only way one can survive is to remind oneself, “THIS, TOO, SHALL PASS!!!” The passing just cannot come soon enough! I read back through several posts and found you had also gotten a sewing bug…but this is one you can welcome. 🙂 I always got a sewing bug when I was pregnant…perhaps it relates to the nesting urge…to clothe one’s little family. Your little fellow looked darling as a model. Hope that this week finds you all well, with peace of mind while husband is away, and enjoying these early spring days.
So glad you are starting to feel a little better! I know how hard it is for you when Rich leaves I will pray that he comes back safe and soon!I have been so so so stir crazy to get out in the woods, like a lion pacing in a cage..so it was nice to see some pictures of your little patch of woods and dream!I loved the photo with all the activity as well!love and hugs dear friend!
What great pictures you took! I love the one with Seth being the model:) I hope your week goes quickly with Rich away!
Feel better! Your babies are getting soooo big!
My word I can’t believe that stomach bug! So sorry to hear your family ended up with it.We all had it the same night,in 6 hours 5 kids and I were puking(about 2-3 months ago)it was awful.It took me a good week to feel right about food again. I ordered my camera and it should be here in 2-3 days,hopefully the sun will be back then,it’s so yucky and rainy and now we are under a flood watch.I want to be there at your pond catching all the frogs and turtles! ( mostly the turtles! ) Hope you get to feeling better. I love that smock,it’s so cute! And so is your baby model!
what an enjoyable weekend! Love the pictures.Praying you have strength while your husband is away and safe travels for him.~hugs~Lanitha
Hope you feel better soon!
what a weekend ~ 🙂 I sit here glad it is over, yet, as you said and I know – there are those small things that are still dear. These pictures are wonderful – great fun of family life. I like the one of you and Seth and the one of the boys and the one of the chicken in the lap on the porch. I think all of your’s grew tall through those northern winter months!Here’s to a well, healthy new week to us all! ~:) and a quick return and safe for you all as your man is away.lys
Praying for you this week. I’m glad to hear that you are all on the mend. Love the picture of Seth walking in the mud…he’s such a cutie!
Love your posts and your pictures- as always. Praying that you feel completely better soon, and that your energy is restored. Your smock turned out so cute, and the model is quite cute as well. Hang in there. Love you!
I always enjoy coming here. I do pray this time with Rich away is not as bad as you thought it would be. I can imagine how wonderful it is for him to come home to you each day when you have been all day with your little flock, so, when he is away, it is hard and he is missed. Hope the children are pampering you a bit, and that you are feeling better! Praying for you right now.
It was so nice to have spring weather this weekend here too. Praying you are feeling better. Make sure to keep hydrated. It is amazing how being dehydrated can make you feel so bad. Praying that there is a spirit of calmness, peace, and ease for you and your household….and safe travels for your honey.~Deborah
I was laughing so hard about the pictures of Seth in the dress (and then how quickly you changed him out of it!) and my husband came to see what I was laughing about. He didn’t know the whole story yet and he looked at the picture of Seth with the toy thermometer (I think?) and all he saw was a little girl in a dress with a pregnancy test. LOL!
I love Is. 58. ( verse 8, I will be praying that your “health shall spring forth speedily.” I love that word “spring”!). And praying for Rich’s safe return. How about vitamins? Are you taking your B’s and Iron? As the others have already said, the pictures are a delight. Eyes shining, little hands and big, little feet and legs, big and getting bigger by the day. I loved the chicken hugger and the frog and turtle catchers, the mud squisher and the gentle stream crosser, the nut crackers and the boys with their proud papa. Such sweet fleeting times, to be embraced in the heart and revered for the time. It is just hard to realize that when you are so stinkin tired. Praying today for you darling. hang in there. Blessings and love in sunny sc.
You have some gorgeous boy pictures up here! And, isn’t Grace getting tall and thin! I loved the picture with Rich and the boys.I am starting to get a little panic stricken as I realize the long days of “grass cutting season” are upon me and my husband will no longer be around to help. I pray I will be strong enough to handle the load he has lightened. He’s such a good husband – like Rich, takes care of everything he can for me.
that smock is the cutest thing ever!! hanging on the hanger, I thought, “eh, it’s okay” but on a model, it is adorable!!! how big does the pattern go? would it look cute on my 2, 3 and 5 yearold???loved all the other pictures, too. so much fun to see!!
You are so beautiful, I don’t know why I said that but it is so true. Maybe the LORD wanted me to say it. So maybe I will say it again, You are BEAUTIFUL, thankyou Lord for making you just as you are. Praying you get to feeling much better very soon and keep doing all you do even when you feel a little blue. There are many of us looking in for the blessings you give.
The tiny egg is cute. Have you ever made quiche? I used to make them more often, and just the other day Shayne asked why we never had them anymore. So I bought the stuff and plan on making one this week. They’re kind of a nice one dish meal.. I think blood work is my least favorite part of being pregnant. I really am a wimp with needles!So glad to hear you all are on the mend, and hoping you’ve had a good week and continued to get stronger. Rich will be home tomorrow and I’m sure that makes you feel lots better right there. 🙂
You have such a way with words! I love little Seth’s piggy toes in the mud. :o) What a perfect, fun-filled family weekend! I love all the hustle and bustle and the “quick hugs” on the slide. Hope you’re feeling better!
I love that little smock! I just may have to try to make one myself if I find out it’s a girl. I didn’t know you could find wintergreen i the woods like that! I’ll be on the lookout for that. 🙂 I like to chew on wild onion when we find it.
Caleb holding the hen, baby boy pounding on a pot, 6 handsome guys and a barefoot princess…these are a few of my favorite things!
I had looked at the original pictures of the smock thinking, ‘that can’t be right ….’ but I couldn’t seem to get my mind around how it should be. So glad somebody else knew! And I think your little model looked adorable in it! Tell Rich that he doesn’t really need to fear – my fourth son use to have this thing for finding and then wearing (parading around the house in) my panty hose. It was ridiculous, yet comical as all get out!!! He is now a very straping 21 1/2 year old, FULL male!!!What is it about guys and fires? For all but one year we have lived very much in the city. Fires are not permitted in the city! However our church owns an old Boy Scouts camp and fires are permitted there! Many a time we spent a Sunday afternoon there, letting the boys wander in the woods, climb CLAY clift (I bet you can adequetly picture what they looked like afterwords), and build a roaring fire in the fire pit.A couple of years ago, we took an extended weekend family vacation and went further north to ten acres in the middle of the woods. Some friends were loaning us their vacation home. (What a blessing!!!) Up there, you can shoot guns. And you can build fires. And you can make tons of loud noise without neighbors complaining. So we took the guns along and the “boys” (all now in their twenties) did ‘target practice’. The thing is, their ‘targets’ this time were large sized stuffed animals. Locally, Goodwill Industries has a warehouse and hosts warehouse sales on Friday’s. Any and all stuffed animals are fifty cents. The guys had all picked up a couple of stuffed animals to be their targets. Around here, well, we’ll just say they have never been fond of a certain TV kids stuffed character (whom has a voice and all in the TV show). And they found a stuffed one at the warehouse, and it was such a favorite target that we had to literally pry it out of the tree which was holding the base up the ‘targets’ were balanced on, it had been so-o-o shot at!!! Then that evening, they built a nice fire in the fire pit, and one by one tossed all of the stuffed animals on it. That took care of clean up – and the guys LOVED that they could both shoot at them AND burn them. Guys just have their own way of looking at things! Your story about a son changing a diaper made me chuckle. Our eldest son is now a daddy. I remember getting a phone call, he was ever so upset and grossed out with/by his then three month old daughter. She had ‘blown out’ her diaper, and it had gone down his leg, and into the top of his socks, and ….. I HAD to stay encouraging, but oh did I chuckle later!!!! The other day the call had to do with how he found out her second tooth was pushing it’s way through her gums ….;-pMay the Lord grant you the strength you need to get through today, and may your husband make it home safely!Cheryl B. – http://thebzhousethatlovebuilt.blogspot.com