Tis the season

Nope, not for Christmas....that would mean that we skipped my favorite season, Fall. Tis the season for picking and canning and baking and eating all of the wonderful things that are a part of this season.

Bread, apple butter and yummy apple blackberry crisp.

B#8 absolutely loves blackberries. If given the choice between blackberries and chocolate, he would definitely choose blackberries. Whose child is this anyway?!?!

And the season for soapmaking. We only made 2 large batches of soap this year, which yielded about 100bars. Not sure if that is enough for our family for a year or not. We shall see:)

We have also been working a bit at a time on applesauce as we pick our early apple tree. We are looking forward to making apple cider again this year from our other two trees. Don't you just love fall? What is your favorite season and why?

Seven Basic Needs of a Husband

These seven basic needs are taken from an Institute in Basic Life Principles booklet. There is also one for the 7 basic needs of a wife but since my job is to focus on the needs of my husband, that is what I have been reading and *trying* to focus on lately.

1. A husband needs a wife who respects him as a man
2 .A husband needs a wife who accepts him as a leader and believes in his God-given responsibilities.
3. A husband needs a wife who will continue to develop inward and outward beauty.
4. A husband needs a wife who can lovingly appeal to him when he is going beyond his limitations and who can wisely respond to those who questions his ideas, goals, or motives.
5. A husband needs quality time to be alone with the Lord.
6. A husband needs a wife who is grateful for all he has done and is doing for her.
7. A husband needs a wife who will be praised by other people for her character and her good works.

There is so much more to this booklet than what I have written here and I certainly have a long way to go to meet the needs of my husband but this should be the desire of our hearts for our marriages, to meet our husbands needs and to honor the Lord while doing it.

In Praise of Motherhood

I read this quote from one of the blogs that I follow, "Your Sacred Calling". At first I struggled to understand just what it was saying since it appears to have been written some time ago. But knowing that the blog it was on promotes our calling as mothers I knew it was saying positive things about being a mother. I highlighted my favorite parts. Imagine our God-given responsibility of motherhood being compared to a Queen in her castle, as the quote mentions.




Woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren’t. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist. . . . when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. . . .
If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colourless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours, and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, cakes, and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it.
How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute

For Mamaw

I mentioned to my mom that I really needed to sit down and post some photos of the kiddos but just couldn't find the time to do it so I thought I would sit down and do it while the baby is sleeping but alas she is now awake so Mamaw, enjoy the pictures and for the rest of you who probably aren't as interested in seeing my "blessings" photos, I will try to post again later about what we have been up to around here.

Little Dresses for Africa

The girls and I went to a sew-in at our church. It was a day to get together and sew dresses for little girls in an orphanage in africa. We also worked on shorts for the boys and skirts for the women. I believe the ministry is called Show Mercy. Our church's goal is, I think, 110 of each item. You can visit their blog at www.littledressesforafrica.org.blog. I haven't visited the site yet.


Here is an example of one of the dresses. This dress is actually made from a pillowcase but we have been using fabric and bias tape. They seem to be the simplest thing to make. I brought the instructions home to make some for B#6 for summer dresses with a t-shirt underneath.

Here is B#4 working on one of the dresses she made.

We started hanging the finished dresses in ziplock bags on the bulletin board in church. It will be exciting to watch it fill up as we continue to make more.

Here is a friend's daughter doing some of the cutting. My contribution consisted of ironing as that was about all my tired, postpartum brain could handle for the day. B#2 stayed home with the little boys to help dad while I took the rest of the girls with me. B#6 made some beaded bracelets and necklaces for the girls in the orphanage while the sewing was going on.

Some of my favorite websites

I decided today that I wanted to do a post on some of my favorite websites/blogs. Now my family might be disappointed not to see any updated photos of beautiful B#9 or read some more personal things but not knowing who my other readers are and wanting to share some things that interest me, I thought this might be a good post to do.

www.raisingolives.com is a new blog that I have found, written by a mother of 9 also. There are so many good things on this blog from saving money, homeschooling, parenting(great posts here), pregnancy etc.

www.raisinggodlytomatoes.com is a website that is written by a mom of 10 with some wonderful advice on raising godly children in an ungodly world. I purchased her book but you can also read it through her articles on the website.

www.raisinghomemakers.com is a blog written by many different authors. Some are written by moms about raising our daughters to be godly young women who desire to do the Lord's will in their lives, even if it goes against what society thinks they should do and other posts are written by young ladies themselves as they go through this time in their lives.

www.yoursacredcalling.com is a blog by another mom of many, Staci McDonald, who co-wrote the book "Passionate Housewives Desperate for God" and "Raising Maidens of Virtue", which I am hoping to read through with my girls or at least have them read if time with a newborn and two rambunctious toddlers won't allow me to read with them.

www.ladyofvirtue.blogspot.com is a blog written by a mom of 12, I think. Her posts have all different ranges, from homeschooling to politics. I really enjoy her perspective on things.

I know there are others that I read on a very regular basis but these were the ones that came to my mind for now. Even if you don't homeschool or even have children, you might find something of interest for you at one of these. Maybe even just to help you understand our families convictions better.

Hope you all are having a blessed night.

Graduations

I can't believe that DH and I are old enough to have two of our nine children graduated. Scary thought:) but that is what we have. B#1 actually graduated last year and has been attending our local community college this year. During the summer he participated in a Police Cadet Academy in a town near ours so here are his graduation pictures from that. He is pursuing Law enforcement as his career and is actually working on the river as part of the Marine Patrol for our local Sheriff's Office.


B#1 with our Sheriff and another guy, not sure who he is actually.

The cake for the reception.

B#1 shaking the Sheriff's hand as he went forward for his certificate. During this academy they had the option of being pepper sprayed as part of their training. I do believe that they now have a healthy fear of using pepper spray on people without just cause. It is some nasty stuff which took B#1 a couple of days to be completely cured from.

Then last weekend we had B#2's graduation party here at our house in the backyard. She loves lavender so we went with that as our theme, using purple and white for our colors. The big purple things in the picture are our drink dispensers. I had hoped to borrow a friends pretty glass ones to hold our water and our punch but she was using them so it was time to get creative with what to use. A friend suggested covering the big orange water coolers from the church with table cloths and tying it with ribbon so that is what we did. All in all I think that worked well. We should have made more punch though as it went pretty quickly.

We were blessed to be able to borrow tables, chairs and table cloths from the church.

The girls made lavender sachets for all of the girls and ladies to take home with them. Nothing for the guys that came though, sorry.

B#4 spent the day before baking 85 cupcakes and then the day of the party filling and frosting all of them. We helped her a little. These are chocolate cupcakes with a peanut butter cup inside them with peanut butter frosting.

These are chocolate cupcakes with raspberry filling with chocolate frosting and a raspberry on top. We also had lemon cupcakes with lemon filling and vanilla frosting and the good old stand by of yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting. They were all yummy!