Summer Vacation Staycation by A & Mommy

Well, since PJ, G, and L are off in the wild blue yonder, we decided to make a SUMMER VACATION GRAB BAG.  Every night we will draw a slip from the bag that tells an activity that we can do.  Today's activity was "Write a blog post on the blog," so here we are.  

When Mommy asked me what we should write about, I said, "Camp!"  I am going to camp this Sunday.  I am so excited, and it is SOOOO hard to be patient.  When we asked Daddy, he said, "We should write about which type of motorcycle is the best."  We just laughed.  Mom wanted to write about our county fair entries and how she has been spending hours online trying to find good curriculums for her third and fourth grade class this fall.  We decided to write about our summer staycation.  

Today, Mommy and I picked beans from the garden and talked about if Mom should use her hardly-grown beets or hardly-grown carrots for the county fair division, "Smallest Vegetable in Show."

 Mom's also going to enter some of her AMAZING strawberry-rhubarb jam and her sauerkraut (I personally think sauerkraut is gross).

I made a doll crazy quilt for the county fair.  Umm...I made a lot of other entries, BUT, I decided not to take a picture of them.

Mom and I made cinnamon-raisin-oatmeal bread today. It's STUPENDOUS!  In the first picture, I was saying through my teeth, "This bread is getting really hot on my hands!"  Then I started to cut with an electric knife that I personally think sounds like a chainsaw!

That's all for now! -the Youngest Child and her mom

Happy Harvest Day

Cosmos, Zinnias, and Marigolds

Three types of tomatoes

the BIGGEST tomato!

The tomatoes are starting to come in from our garden.  Though summer is winding down, the garden keeps on giving with lots of harvest coming in the fall.  Today I picked beets and pickled them as well as many tomatoes that are beginning to ripen.  The deer are awful, so I thought I would pick some of them before the deer eat them.  They ripen just fine indoors.  One tomato was half the size of Amy's head!

One of the greatest pleasures I have enjoyed this year from the garden are the annual flowers I included amongst the vegetables.  Marigolds, zinnias, cosmos, gladiolas, and sunflowers (we never saw them grow very much since the deer ate them off the stem) brightened our senses.  Glory to God, our Creator - a creative Genius!

Lots of Love,

Elysia

Highlights

My neglect of this blog forces me to list the highlights of our summer in a bullet format:

• Elysia's garden got bigger this summer with the highlight being a new patch of strawberries, and some additional rhubarb plants from some local farms. We really enjoyed eating the fresh peas, cucumbers, lettuce, etc. 

• Our cat ran away after only two months of making our home its habitat. We put out fliers, looked for hours and spent time chasing down leads to no avail.
• An active summer of driving around for appointments, weeks of Bible Camp, and airport runs kept Elysia in the driver's seat much of the time. The time driving aggravated her hip condition and back pain thus changing her mind and scheduling hip surgery for September 2.
• Ethan spent two weeks in May teaching in the beautiful African country of Uganda. two months later in July, he travelled again, this time to teach pastors in South Asia.
• Ethan spent Father's Day in bed with pneumonia.
• Gretchen and Peter John experienced ministry first-hand by loving the poor and serving on a mission trip to South Dakota in June.
• Amy and Elysia went to the Sherburne County Fair. She rode a Ferris Wheel for the first time!

• Peter John was our faithful keeper of our yard through weekly lawn mowing and trimming.
• Gretchen improved her culinary skills (and kept our kitchen hot) by her daily baking and cooking projects.
• An inch worm got into our A/C Heat Exchange wall unit thus burning out an off-brand Korean machine with an expired warranty and no options for replacement parts. Amazing what a little worm can do.
• Lizzy and Amy devoured the books on our shelves and at the Princeton Library. We visited the library every Monday on our way to violin lessons. The girls are learning so much from their teacher, Jill Musick Selin, who teaches out of her farm house in rural Princeton. Gretchen has excelled under her tutelage as well.
• Ethan's sister, Sharon, spent five days with us while her son was at Bible Camp. While she was here, she helped Elysia repaint our basement bathroom a light Aqua color to match the turquoise and pink decor. Yay!
• Peter John was invited by his Uncle David to spend a week in Utah and Montana with him and cousin Andy which included a backpacking trip to a lake for camping in Yellowstone Park. David put him in the front of the hike because he was a good pacesetter. PJ is almost six feet tall now at age 12.

• Ethan's nephew, Tim, from Dallas spent some time with us in August so that he could also attend Bible Camp at Inspiration Point. Sadly, Peter John missed camp because of a persistent fever virus. 
• Lizzy's grandparents flew her out to Arizona to visit them for a few days before our family reunion in August. Elysia gave up her sweet daughter as an "unaccompanied minor" on an airplane flight entrusting her into The Good Shepherd's hands. Lizzy was the first in our family to ever see the Grand Canyon! She took lots of pictures.
• After some major work on our cars at Integrity Automotive, we packed up Waldo, our little trailer, and took the minivan packed with camping gear for our family car trip to Montana and Eastern Idaho. The first weekend was spent in Billings to attend our nephew, Mark's confirmation and to hear his dad, Bill, preach at Yellowstone Lutheran Brethren Church. Elysia's parents and ancestors are from Montana, so we drove to Sunset Memorial Gardens to visit the graves of her grandparents and other relatives. 
• We saw Ethan's entire family for our family reunion at his brother's cabin in Eastern Idaho, and we enjoyed Bear and Moose country. What a feast for our eyes. The mountains were lovely, albeit covered in a smoky haze from the western forest fires. After the reunion, our little family rented a forest service log cabin with no electricity or water in the wilderness of the Gallatin Mountain range of Montana.  than was in his happy place. We cooked in cast iron over a fire and brought gear to protect us from the Grizzlies. We carried water from the natural spring in buckets for washing and filtering for drinking. The undistracted, quiet secluded life gave us time with each other, with God, and alone with ourselves. The girls especially enjoyed the natural springs near the cabin, and we all enjoyed mountaineering and playing in the creeks. Ethan, Gretchen, PJ, and Amy made it to the top of Pika Point on a seven-hour hike. Elysia's hips and back forced her to turn back. Lizzy went with her along with the bear spray. Ethan kept the wood stove burning at night, and we awoke to frost outside three mornings in a row. On our hikes each day we saw screeching hawks, squirrels, many small birds, mule deer, woodchucks, gophers, a pair of beavers at a mountain lake, ducks, and horses. The flowers up high on the mountain caught our attention, especially the Indian paintbrush and the lupine. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!

  

  Pika Point, Montana

  
  
• Lizzy got braces!
  

Summer is (Finally) Here!

Our garden is under two shade trees, but it is still growing well: Lettuce, Spinach, Kale, Beets, Tomatoes, Beans, Zucchini, Cucumbers, and Marigolds.

Lizzy and Gretchen at Eagle Lake today

Peter John with his cousin from Colorado

Everyone had to make their own castle with found rocks for decoration

 It feels good to enjoy warm weather. We are preparing for a busy few weeks ahead.  The month of June flew by because of all the non-stop action.  We moved the end of May, Peter John and Lizzy enjoyed a week at  Bible Camp, Ethan and I went to CO for TLI meetings, and we attended a Larson Family Reunion the last weekend in June.  In the midst of all the busyness, by Grandma Beverlee Frank passed away here in town.  She had been suffering congestive heart failure, kidney failure, and diabetes.  It was hard on the kids since they were separated from us when it happened (Ethan and I were in CO at the time), but God comforted us all and we were reunited.  The funeral was very uplifting as we thought about Grandma being in heaven with Jesus.  That made it joyous, though we were grieving.  The girls and I sang "Blessed Assurance" at her funeral, and the whole congregation sang many Gospel songs that brought comfort and hope.  We finished the funeral with a special piece that my sisters and dad sang together called "I've Got A Mansion."  Grandma loved country music and especially country Gospel music.  This was a great way to end, thinking about heaven and God's blessings to those who belong to Him.

Garden Party on East Vasa

Yesterday I went over to the garden to hoe the weeds that are coming up around our seedlings. We finally got some rain last week, so the garden started to take off.  You may have noticed that these pictures of our family planting seeds are in a different garden than previous years.  There is a good explanation to that!

In December we moved out of Ethan's parents' house so they could put it on the market for sale.  The house we are renting was up for sale as well, and it has now sold.  We are in the process of moving to another house on East Vasa, and thankfully it has a garden!  The owner of the house invited us to plant seeds a few weeks ago before we moved in so that the garden got going.  Honestly, this gift of a garden made this dramatic change a little easier to deal with.  In every difficulty, there is ALWAYS SOMETHING TO THANK GOD FOR.

The best thing to we can thank God for is for the everlasting nature of our redeemed lives in Christ.  Everyone who puts their faith in Jesus Christ will not perish. We can look at life from a heavenly outlook where the temporary things in our lives have less weight to them.  We can look at things as only things. Life does not consist in the abundance of things one possesses.  Actually, this abundance of things really weighs us down!  "For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come. Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to Him name." Hebrews 13:14-15 and Psalm 17:15 "As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness."  God has chosen us for Himself and given us a great home--a place prepared for us--to look forward to in eternity.

Harvesting Already

When my sister and fam were living in France they depended on this blog to give them a "virtual garden."  This year I have not been very faithful at updating the garden progress, so I will pack the past month and a half into this one blog.  We have already begun harvesting spinach, lettuce, dill, cilantro, rhubarb, and just this week the raspberries.  Today I plan to pick green string beans and yellow wax beans that are ready.

 Last month Gretchen and PJ helped me to cut up some rhubarb (it is a neverending harvest) along with our friend.

 Spinach was done in June so I blanched a froze it for green shakes or quiche in the wintertime.

 The raspberries were a little pink last week but Lizzy and Amy could not resist picking some.

 Lizzy and Amy are standing in front of part of the garden.  My corn is about chest high, but the local cornfields are more than 6 feet tall right now. It was an early spring so it has grown well beyond "knee high by fourth of July."

 Cucumbers, Zucchini, and beets.  I also have a lovely "Forget-Me-Not" that volunteered from last year.

Here is a good view of the beans (we have a ton of them), corn and most of the garden with our neighbor's house in the background.  It should be a good year, Lord willing.  God makes it grow!!!

When we got back from Colorado everything had grown a large amount, including the weeds! My mother-in-law was here for two days so one evening she helped me weed. It was so nice to have a partner in the weeding. I need to get out there again today. My in-laws are coming again today, and it is JoAnn's birthday, so I need to bake a cake, too.  Summer is great! Love it!

2012 Garden News by Gretchen

2012 GARDEN

 Weeds, Weeds, Weeds! Hoe, Hoe, Hoe!

Radishes, Spinach, Beans, Corn, Lettuce, Dill

Grass clippings can be a great mulch!!!

 This year, we've planted our garden early, due to the great weather! Our garden this year consists of zucchini, lettuce, cucumbers, beets, corn, spinach, radishes and much more. And, our beloved rhubarb! :) We guarantee that we'll have a wonderful harvest!

The Garden

It has been a productive year...not quite as much as last year, but I am still grateful. We had a raspberry bumper crop, and now the cucumbers, tomatoes, and green beans have been steadily flowing from the garden, to my counter, and into glass jars for canning. I have been canning pretty much anything I can get my hands on. So far, I have pickled beets, dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, three-bean salad, canned whole tomatoes, and peaches. I also froze a lot of rhubarb and green beans. Today I have been trying to strain the juice from these bags of chokecherries that Ethan and the two oldest kids picked in North Dakota. The juice takes a long time to strain in the jelly bag because it is very pulpy. I finally finished this evening and have about a gallon of juice that I placed into the freezer until I can pick up some Sure-Jell and sugar to make jelly and syrup.

The carrots do not seem to be growing, so I am not sure if any will come out of the ground this year. Much to my children's delight, one of the zucchini plants died. The other one sort of died, but then revived, and has since produced one zucchini. Another zucchini is growing, so we will see what we can squeeze out of that sick plant. The tomatoes have spotted leaf fungus again, but according to my neighbor, Harley, this fungus gets into the soil and will never go away. The only way to get rid of it is to rotate crops, but because I have a smallish garden, there is not room to move the tomatoes to another location. I still have gotten many, many roma tomatoes and beefsteak tomatoes, despite the dead leaves. Praise the LORD for that. God is good, and He will provide.

Look At 'Em Beans!

I finally got the beans blanched and frozen today. This will not be the last day of doing that this summer. Amy was my wonderful helper!

Ribbons!

We had so much fun at the WOT County Fair last week. Last year my friend, Angie, told me about an opportunity to earn money by entering items into the fair. Angie's kids have entered for many years and won several ribbons. We decided to give it a try, and the kids and I all entered some of our hard work into the Open Exhibition where they give ribbons and awards to the first, second, and third place in each category. The kids entered several of their artwork pieces as well as woodwork, legos, and sewing (Gretchen). For the first time ever, I entered some of the crochet pieces I have done as well as fresh vegetables from my garden. I also entered two of the preserves I have made this summer: pickled sweet beets and rhubarb jelly. We were so surprised by the results!

Wednesday was the official day to enter all your items. It was SO hot that day (about 95 degrees and humid). The lady at the counter who received our items told me I did not enter some of my vegetables correctly. For example, for yellow beans, you must have 10 beans to display, and I had only 5 beans. I decided to go home and return later with the correct number of vegetables and the proper way to display. I had to cut off the green tops of the onions and the greens off the beets. After some more work, we returned, and all was entered. If I ever enter again, I will know a little better how things need to be done, and I will remember to bring plates to display them on! (I forgot this year and had to borrow from the fair ladies).

Here are the results from the items we won ribbons on. Gretchen and Peter John were in the same category for age. Lizzy and Amy were in another category together for age (up to age 7):
Gretchen -
blue, apron sewing
blue, Father's Day poem
blue, watercolor
red, colored pencil drawing
white, Sacajawea poster

Peter John -
blue, woodwork
blue, pencil drawing
blue, colored pencil drawing
blue, freehand painting

Lizzy -
blue, pen drawing
blue, pencil drawing
blue, finger paint
blue, watercolor
red, crayon drawing
red, marker drawing ladybug poem
white, freehand painting

Amy - She entered only one item and was so proud to receive a red ribbon for her pencil drawing!

Elysia -
blue, crochet baby poncho
blue, crochet infant sweater
blue, crochet baby afghan
blue, fresh beets
blue, canned rhubarb jelly
red, crochet baby booties
red, canned sweet pickled beets
white, beans, yellow
white, crochet baby bonnet
white, white onions

Spring Seeds

In the midst of a trying time with colds spreading throughout the family and now a sinus infection, I managed to transform our living room into a greenhouse the past few days. The ugly long table came in from the garage and the pots of dirt began to be filled with seeds. I planted several flower seeds (nasturtium, marigold, alyssum, petunia, impatiens, coleus), two kinds of tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and a tray of whatever each of the kids choose for their flowers/herbs/vegetables. Most of the vegetables need to be directly sown into the spring soil outside, so we are waiting to plant those, but these flowers and such will be such a blessing and a financial savings as we approach the summer season.

The Flopsy Bunnies

We have had a little varmint running around our garden for a few days. Finally Peter John chased him around this afternoon, and we discovered there were three wee rabbits in there. One ran under the fence and escaped through the rhubarb patch, and the other two were caught by Ethan and Peter John with the aid of a couple of buckets after being cornered against the fence under a sunflower. Here are the triumphant varmint catchers in a photo. Afterwards the kids and Ethan drove them out to a nearby field and let them free. Stay away from our lettuce, wee rabbits! Too bad they are wild and probably bug infested. They would be so cute to keep.

Garden Update

carrots

zucchini

onions, peppers, tomatoes, sunflowers

tons of raspberries this year!

Ethan's parents asked for more pictures of the garden. Peter John took all these photos for me. We are picking about two zucchini per day. I can't believe they grow that fast! We also just harvested a huge piles of green and yellow snap beans. I blanched and froze six bags. There will be more to come in a day or two! I am looking forward to eating them this winter. Thank you, Lord!