day with the husband

Posted on September 14, 2018 by Shanda

Rich and I celebrate our 23rd wedding anniversary on Sunday the 16th of September and since Sunday is a busy day for us, Rich took today off so we could spend time together while the kids were in school. He’s at an eye doctor appointment now (4:30pm) so I have time to post a few photos.

We ate breakfast at a diner, the next town over, even though at the moment we don’t “like” this town because their youth football teams beat our teams very badly last week. That was Rich’s remark anyway, which made me laugh. This diner was hopping with folks “of a certain age.”

This is a small town to have so many people at a diner for breakfast and Rich thinks it’s because it’s such a nice place but I think it’s because there is a senior living community just down the road. It was fun to see people coming in a various times and getting enthusastic welcomes from their friends. There was an older lady that looked similar to my Aunt Betty and I kept looking at her. There was an older man with an oxygen tank. There were hugs and loud conversations. “Yeah, I feel good today!” said one gentleman to another. Rich and I settled in to our eggs and potatoes and just enjoyed the atmosphere before heading to my hair appointment.

This was taken in the car after my appointment. My hair stylist, I think, let the dye sit a little too long because my head along the hairline is also dyed and it will not come off yet. I had the roots done and a little trimmed off the ends and Rich worked on his laptop outside in a lawn chair while he waited for me. We had enough time that I could have dropped him off at home while I had my appointment but he said he wanted to stay with me. Then we drove the backroads to the mall and stopped at an apple stand/coffee/bakery on the way.

Rich picked out a nice apple but when he ate it in the car he said it was mealy, so that was a little disappointing. Out it flew through the car window into the trees.

He saw this toy tractor and pointed it out because he liked it. He’s a farm boy still. He has a small John Deere tractor in our garage.

He took me to Barnes and Noble and I bought the newest Flow mazazine but once I got home I realized that someone had taken the free wrapping paper out of it so I’m a little annoyed about that. I also got a Breathe magazine and the Newbery Honor book Echo, which is a big beautiful hardcover book with 585 pages!!!! I hope it’s as good as I am anticipating. I can’t read it until I’m done with The Windy Hill (1922). Rich got a couple of men’s fitness magazines and one of them has a young Arnold S. on the cover only wearing a small bathing suit which was horrifying to see. Rich is slowly easing into running again after his disc surgery but has been able to keep working on his upper body and to me, looks amazing. I’m so proud of him and the way he continues to get up early three days a week to work out and keep himself healthy.

I took a photo of the cover of this book because……..

Inside there was a photo of fiestaware (mixed with Bauer). SO pretty!

We sat at a table by the window for a while. He had a pumpkin spice latte and I had a matcha green tea latte and then we drove back home.

We ended up having a good hour to ourselves before the bus came.

family of butterflies

Posted on August 14, 2018 by Shanda

fullsizeoutput_593f Grandma Cindy Butterfly

fullsizeoutput_594a Mama Shanda Butterfly

fullsizeoutput_593b Grace Butterfly

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David Butterfly

fullsizeoutput_5934 Caleb Butterfly

fullsizeoutput_5945 Seth Butterfly

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We had fun taking these photos yesterday at the Crossgates mall in Albany, NY.

Happy Tuesday, friends!

the children

Posted on August 13, 2018 by Shanda

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We took a quick “all seven” photo on Saturday because Jacob had to leave Sunday morning to go back to college and start football camp.

Each so unique, each so loved and cared for, by me and their father. Always.

be amazed!

Posted on August 8, 2018 by Shanda

First of all, it’s been a joy and a delight to watch kitty-kitty Walter (our new pet) get used to his new surroundings. He is curious and “literally plays with everything”, says Dave. You see in the photo that he is being tempted by Sherlock’s twitching tail.

Second of all, it’s 8:07 in the morning and I’m the only one awake!! Seth NEVER sleeps past 7 and most of the time is up even earlier. I just found him sleeping in the addition on the couch. He spent the night in there because of the air conditioning. So I wonder, is he still asleep because 1) he didn’t sleep well? or, 2) he COULD finally sleep peacefully out of his hot upstairs bedroom? Whatever the reason, it’s nice to sit here and type………….

“You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of your presence and the pleasures of living with you forever.” Psalm 16:11 (thank you, husband, for sending along the verse)

I was thinking this morning about the enjoyable fruits of the Holy Spirit, those only-from-above giftings of God to our souls. In those oftentimes rare/unnoticed moments of deep spirituality when we find ourselves really able to love outside of ourselves in a mysterious way. We have joy, and it is unexplainable, gentleness toward every living creature, peace, beyond comprehension! And, patience like our *big brother* Job. These beautiful character qualities/fruits aren’t from us (we cannot muster them up, they cannot be faked) and are the Holy Spirit within us, given to us, and no reason for pride or boasting.

….the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Galatians 5:22

For in him we live and move and have our being. Acts 17:28

Alas, sometimes it’s just simply hard to breath “down here”. And this is the reason we pour over the Scriptures as much as possible, and remember, and think of Him, and pray, we do these things to stay connected, to stay reminded. To stay breathing.

“But, first, remember, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs. And secondly, I give you a warning. Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly: I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the signs and believe the signs. Nothing else matters.” ~CS Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia

Home on Earth, real Home “in the sky”……….

We have had such hot days lately, it was pleasant to sit with my latest Newbury medal winner (I’m attempting to read them all) while the children swam in the pond……..

….and to have Jacob walk down the hill to show me a cool caterpillar. Thanks, Jake, for grilling us all a nice lunch yesterday!!!

At my house yesterday there were all these people: Rich, myself, Michael, Jacob, Ethan, Caleb T, Grace, Kylee, Brittnee, David, Caleb, Jack, Seth, and Sarah. But not all at once. Some came for a while and then left. Some worked all day and then came home. 🙂

Yesterday afternoon on the couch, David helped me identify a bug using the internet. It didn’t take us long, but seeing the different insects online filled me with the desire to go back outside to look for even more bugs with the magnifying lens attached to my camera. It’s such fun to stand over the flowers and plants and search for insects with your eyes……….at first you see “nothing” but little by little you see 100’s of creatures……and much activity.

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This was a small moth, about the size of a fifty-cent piece. But with my lens I can get a nice close-up. It’s amazing to see the details. Observe. Study. Be amazed.

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These pretty little white flowers grew in clusters along a thin vine-like stem.

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Meanwhile, Dave was looking in the pond for a big snake but had to make do with a little frog (sitting on his leg next to his thumb for size comparison). He sat nicely for his portrait.

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This plant has been tearing the skin on my legs my entire life. It’s just a tad thinner than spaghetti and grows plenteously by our stream. One direction of the plant doesn’t scratch you, but the other direction, oh it sticks so tightly to your legs and scratches them terribly. I’ve never identified it’s name, there is a small white flower that grows on it, maybe I can look it up in my flower identification book today.

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a cluster of silvery eggs……so beautiful!

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The band on his tail makes him special. You can see Ambush bugs to the left of it.

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THIS IS THE BUG I JUST HAD TO FIGURE OUT. AMBUSH BUG

The other day I saw one gripping a yellow jacket. The yellow jacket was upside down and dead in its front claws. It was a sight to see. And these ambush bugs are all over the flowers right now (especially Joe-pie weed and goldenrod). I beg you to read the link, you will be amazed.

In a nutshell, it sucks the bodily fluids out of its prey.

As my brother Dave says, “its horrifying”.

“slurp”

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It would take me a long time to identify all these insects but I sure would like to do it. Each one has fascinating characteristics and wears the nicest bug-clothes.

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Another ambush bug!

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And this one! I’ve never seen it before, it was so tiny I only noticed it because I was photographing another bug nearby and saw it waving around first one tissue-paper wing and then the other.

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This bee posed so nicely, I felt as if it was just WAITING to be noticed. Yes, you’re lovely.

After I breathlessly captured this photo (I thought it would fly away before I could get close) I talked to my friend Lea Ann and then took the kids to music lessons and football practice. I spent time walking around the cemetery next to the fields and then met my husband for a quick trip down town for strawberry sundaes, just the two of us, before practice was over.

When we got home, David made a chocolate cake from scratch …….

……and we had a rain storm. I sat on the porch to watch it for a while before bedtime…..

If you watch carefully you will see the world light up in a quick flash of lightening.

And now it’s Wednesday. Good morning!

You are loved.

library ‘n’ lunch

Posted on August 2, 2018 by Shanda

Do you think we should adopt this kitten to be our very own?

This morning, we picked up Brittnee on the way to the library and she brought the kitten to the car so we could all say hello to him. So far, my husband says “no”. To be exact, he threatened to buy a motorcycle if I brought a kitten home. It’s hardly fair.

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When we arrived at the library, the girls were happy to see that two of their friends were there! They sat right down on the floor for a nice visit, and I must say, they weren’t exactly “library quiet” but who can reprimand young and beautiful readers like these?

I’ve been eyeing this book for a while…..

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….so I added it to my stack.

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When I was done picking out my books, I went and found Sarah.

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And then I tried to sneak up on Seth, who was behind a bookshelf on some comfortable bean chairs. I asked him how he knew I was coming. “By your legs” “How did you recognize that they were MY legs?” “By your Converse sneakers.”

We (and our bag of books) left the library and went for a picnic lunch nearby in a most picturesque location. There were cows standing in the water on the other side of the lake.

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(((Life is Good Together)))

“Everyone please eat as slowly as you can.” ~mom

“WHY?”~children

“Because I want to enjoy myself.”~mom

*****

When Grace was done eating she climbed way up high in a tree.

PS. should we get the kitty?

caleb’s most favorite pancakes

Posted on July 24, 2018 by Shanda

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The boys found me writing in my journal, still in bed, when they woke up. They also found our big beautiful (but very shy) black cat and to our surprise, he allowed himself to be loved……..

…..while petting the cat, Caleb cleared his throat and asked, “Mom could you make pancakes this morning? The ones with cinnamon?”

“You mean your favorite ones that you always ask me to make?”

“Yeah.”

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Spiced Pancakes

1 1/4 cups flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 large egg
1/1/4 cups buttermilk (I keep dry in the pantry and add it to milk)
2 tablespoons oil

Mix dry ingredients and in a separate bowl mix the wet, then pour wet into dry to combine. Fry on griddle alongside sausage or bacon. Serve with warmed maple syrup and, in my case, a sliced banana. Yum! Maybe they will be your favorites, now, too!

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*******

“The Swedish artist Carl Larsson made the everyday life of his wife Karin and their seven children the subject of his most famous watercolors. Instead of idealizing everything in its place, he painted what he saw; the dog asleep on the parlor floor, cast-off slippers, a rumpled sofa scattered with newspapers. These are the frames of a home movie shot by a doting father and an artist who focused his lens on the comforts of the real and unadorned home.” a perfectly kept house is the sign of a misspent life by mary randolph carter

love goes on and on

Posted on July 23, 2018 by Shanda

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2007 big sister

On Saturday, this photo came up in my memories on another social media site. It is a photo I took of Grace eleven years ago, when she was seven years old. I immediately wondered if we could capture the photo with her little sister, Sarah, who is eight. Rich and I were away with Ethan and his girlfriend, so Grace took the photo of her little sister.

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2018 little sister

Once we watched a lazy world go by
Now the days seem to fly
Life is brief, but when it’s gone
Love goes on, and on…….

jam mama (part 2)

Posted on July 19, 2018 by Shanda

Ten years ago almost to this very day I wrote a post on my blog which was untitled but included the words…..JAM MAMA……

“You should have seen small Grace
diving into the warm cup of jam
that I set out on the table,
with a loaf of soft white bread from the bakery.
She tore of big chunks of bread
and dipped the majority of it down
into the bright red jam. . . .
there is just nothing like that warm, strawberry taste
. . . .it’s heavenly.

She called me ‘jam-mama’.”
July 12, 2008

Ten years have come and gone……

Grace is 18 now and was at work (as a cashier downtown at the grocery store) yesterday when I walked up the road to “see if there were any raspberries left”. I determined to really look and really pick every single good enough berry I could find. This involved lots of bending over and looking underneath the tangle of vines and briars and taking my merry ol’ sweet time.

I eventually came home with 6 cups.

Incidentally, these berries grow on the side of the road, free for the foraging! I already have a gallon of them frozen in our chest freezer in the pantry. Once they ripen, we have to go back every couple of days to pick some more until they are finally all done. They are productive!

We have a small patch of wild raspberries over by the chicken coop, too, which the chickens love to jump up and eat off the cane. Then they lay us the most lovely eggs out of appreciation.

The black-cap raspberries grow on the bank by our drive way and under the dead pine tree at the bottom of the yard by the pond.

I always pick clean but you never know what little creatures may have taken a ride home with the berries. So I dumped them out to look through them.

I put them in a pan and simmered them until they released all their juice. I strained out the seeds, measured the juice (2 cups) and added them back to the pan with the same amount of sugar (2 cups). Brought to a rolling boil for 3 minutes and then beaten with the mixer for another 3 minutes. Done! So easy, so satisfying.

I was given the recipe by my very own jam mama, Cindy.

Jacob said the jelly would taste good on “that cake you made the other day” and Ethan suggested some other baked good and I said “How about homemade biscuits?” And he said YES PLEASE.

I made a double batch of biscuits and we all ate them up right away with the homemade jelly on top.

Everywhere I looked there were children grabbing another and another biscuit, slathering it with butter and jelly, and walking away with it………

This morning my feet are sticking to the carpet and the floor.

camp fire pizza

Posted on July 16, 2018 by Shanda

When I was in Alaska I was blown away by the campfire pizza they made out in the backyard over a hot fire amongst the trees and canopied by a tarps just in case it started raining.

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While Hannah and I were out about town and exploring Glacier Lake, her daughter Rebekah prepped everything for the pizza. She made homemade sauce (red AND white!) and dough, busily chopped vegetables and got the meat ready, too.

Here are a couple of short videos to “set the scene” so to speak. Hannah and her husband worked like a well-oiled machine and had the entire process down like a science. I asked her about campfire cooking in general and she said they don’t really have any favorite recipes especially for campfires; they just figure out how to cook their favorite foods over a fire. They have done A LOT of camping over the years……

seven puppies, my friends, seven puppies…. and the first-time mother dog didn’t ever want to nurse them, thus Jacob’s foot on her neck. LOL The puppies spent most of the time wandering around exploring.

I wore thick clothing so as to discourage the mosquitos which were large and very plenteous. I could kill five in one slap to the leg.

I don’t know where everyone was when I took this photo……which is of a pizza on the fire, covered in foil held down by sticks. This is the final step in the pizza making, in order to get the toppings melted. LOTS OF CHEESE.

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This was the white pizza with bacon, chicken, and onion…the best pizza I ever had!!!!

(besides my moms…..)

BEAUTIFUL evening.

BEAUTIFUL family

The fire was extremely hot they had to work fast…….

They made pizza after pizza………

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And it was cooked to perfection!

little league days and nights

Posted on June 11, 2018 by Shanda

We’ve been doing little league with the boys ever since David was about 5 (he’s now 15). Jacob and Ethan got a late start in baseball and we’ll probably always have some regret about that. However, David started very young and played every year but one, and Caleb and Seth also started as soon as they could (although we did skip t-ball). It’s not always fun for me to drive to the fields almost every night of the week, and sometimes in not the greatest weather. In fact, we still have cold evenings and we shiver as we watch the boys play. But then, we’ll have evenings so hot people are holding up umbrellas for shade.

Rich especially LOVES to watch the boys play. He mourns having to leave on business trips and missing the games. This is when it’s so nice to have the phone. I can easily take short videos of the boys at bat and send them along to Rich.

On game nights, we eat an early dinner and drive the boys to the field early to warm up and then I walk and walk and walk (with my headphones in my ears, listening to podcasts) until the games start.

Here are some photos:

Seth (9 years old, 3rd grade) started out as pitcher on Friday night. It was very hot after several cooler game nights and the boys were rather wilting toward the end.

Seth had an “off night” as pitcher and was visibly relieved when the coach put someone else in.

He’s a very good all around player. And he will play every position if possible.

One time they were warming up and he was at shortstop and he and his teammate called “Got it!” at the same time and Seth ran into the kid to catch the ball. “Seth’s a show off!” I heard. He’s not necessarily a show off, but if he yells “got it” he’s going to get it, even if his teammate said it at the same time.

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Seth’s face looked so worried as he ran to first base after getting a hit but knowing he won’t make it to the base in time. When Rich saw it, he got right up to go get him a cold Gatorade from the food booth. Usually does magic. 🙂 It’s so much better than mom’s warm water bottle.

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He got a nice hit this time…..I heard someone in our crowd say “beautiful!” as we watched it go…..

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This season, Seth had to break the habit of watching what the other team was doing with the ball as he ran the bases. Seeing him run to base with his neck twisting this way and that was silly. “Watch the base!” we would yell.

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******my heart*******.

Now for Caleb., who is almost 13 and in 7th grade.

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Everyone loves Caleb. He’s a team player, he is quite vocal about encouraging the team and telling them when they’ve had too many errors. He’s also a lot of fun and can be too goofy at times. I heard his coach get on his case once when he struck out at bat and then went to the dug out and started goofing around. Sometimes Caleb will dance after getting a good hit and making it to first base. Caleb is well-known for his realistic chicken noices and as a result, his nickname is “Chicken”. Even his coaches call him Chicken. Not because he’s scared and timid like a chicken, but because he SOUNDS LIKE ONE. Rich groans and groans.

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He’s such a calm player and rarely makes mistakes. He DOES make them now and then, but as his mom I’m always very surprised. (every mom thinks their kid is practically perfect). He looks great in all three of his positions that he plays; first base, pitcher, and catcher.

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No home runs yet this year….oh how we are waiting!! Last night he got walked three times. He was SO annoyed. He and one other boy on his team have red cleats so I’m always squinting down at the field and saying, “Is THAT Caleb?” Caleb is number 11 and his cleats used to be Ethan’s. I took these photos with my long zoom lens. He looked so very handsome with that game face.

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Here he is jogging to first after getting walked……Caleb wants a home run so bad!!!!!

The white pants have been fun to wash all season.

Pitching

As I’m writing this I’m thinking I should ask my brother Isaac to do a pitching clinic with Seth and Caleb. He was an excellent pitcher when he played years ago.

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Caleb as catcher.

Here is a video from last night. He was warming up the pitcher and looked so cool and confident. I LOVE THIS VIDEO and so does Caleb. He said, “Send that to Dad.”

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Jacob dropped off Seth and Sarah at the game yesterday after church. I had stayed home to get Caleb to his game on time and he helpfully took the other kids to church (Rich had to leave for a trip). So Sarah looked like a princess in her church dress. She had a hamburger for lunch from the food booth, and took off her shoes as soon as possible.

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