Wedding Day

Life is just flying by. Can't believe it has been a month since I have put a post up. Well here is a sweet moment that just made me smile on Thursday with this sweet boy.

 (That is how his eyes photographed, all I did was sharpen them. So blue!)

 We were sitting on the ground playing. 

Micah said, "Are you ready for your wedding day?"
"I already had my wedding day. I married Papa."
"No, are you ready for your wedding day?"
"Who am I going to marry?"
"Me and you."
"Okay."

We stood up and started dancing. Then he kissed me and we walked around the house. After that more dancing. All of this was initiated by Micah. So so sweet knowing I am the love of his life right now.

Blanket Love

I am not sure when Jane's attachment with her blanket began nor why, but she carries it around everywhere like Linus from Charlie Brown. Since she was a baby I would tuck her in with a blanket but not the one she loves now. She found these ones on her own and won't let go. Thankfully I do have two that are the same material and she likes them equally so I can get them washed. I am partly tempted to buy another to be on the safe side. When she is tired or in need of comfort she grabs the blanket and pulls it up to her face. As a baby it made me a bit nervous that she was covering her mouth and nose (I quickly got over that). It is nice that she developed an object as a sleep cue because I can just lay her down with one of the blankets and she is ready to sleep. I wonder when the attachment will fade, right now it looks like it is staying for quite some time.

Recent Moments

Life is adventurous, entertaining and of course busy! Here are a few of our recent captured memories.

 



Baby bums are so cute.

 

 

Micah had a blast at the harvest party this year. He worked the press for over an hour.

 

The Farmer got to go up flying with our brother in-law. He got some beautiful pictures with all the trees changing colors.

 

I am no longer nursing Jane. She seems to still miss it in the mornings but over all she has adjusted great.  

 

The kids marching with strainers on their heads. Quite entertaining. It was in fact Jane's idea to put the strainer on her head. 

 

 "Micah God's Mighty Warrior". He is dressed up resembling a character in a book we have titled Will God's Might Warrior.

Micah God's Mighty Warrior (with a different hat)

 

All of us riding in the land cruiser, a first for Jane.

12 Months

 My oh my, my baby is one! Life has flown by and shows no signs of slowing down. As I have said before Jane is a joy to us, and this past month has been no different. She continues to grow and develop. Our biggest milestone she reached this month is walking. We have a walker! She is getting pretty quick too.Walking around occupies most of her time and entertainment, she loves walking around the house. She especially loves "marching" around the house either following people or leading people around. I also get great laughs chasing her around.

Some of her other favorite activities are playing with stacking rings, stacking cups and blocks. Jane also finds it quite funny to stick her fingers in other peoples mouth. Micah and Jane both crack up laughing when she puts her finger in his mouth and thankfully he has learned how to be gentle. I love seeing their relationship develop. Her talking hasn't development too much. She says bye, daadaa, bah bah for me, and she will make a sort of barking noise when asked what a dog says. We have started to wean, I am dropping one feeding per week (we were at four a day). Jane still LOVES watermelon. You should see her smile the moment her eyes see a slice. On the flip side she already doesn't like vegetables. I guess it is pay back for all my picky years. Jane has four teeth now. Two on the bottom and two on the top. The top two are now all the way in yet, but they have broken through.

 I will write a whole post of this but another thing about Jane right now is her love of her blankets. There are two that are from the same soft fabric and she is attached. It is pretty cute. We were just at the doctors for a check up. Jane weighs 20lbs 3oz and is 29.5 inches tall. The grow so fast in the first year! Still can't believe it has been a year. What a blessing Jane has been to our family.

3 Year Old Interview

I can't claim to be original on this one (came from Pinterest). I'm not sure I can every claim to be original with anything sine Pinterest is around. But nonetheless here is an interview with Micah at age three. The plan is to ask Micah the same questions every year, it will be fun to see how these answers change.

How old are you?....showed me 10 fingers and answered 5

What is your favorite color?....blue

What is your favorite toy?....fire truck

What is your favorite fruit?....lemon

What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch?...peanut butter and jelly

What is your favorite thing to wear?....beavers

What is your favorite game?....trains

What is your favorite animal?....cow

What is your favorite song?...he started to sing a made up song with nonsense words

What is your favorite book?....Are you my Mother?

What is your favorite snack?....fruit leather

What is your favorite thing to do outside?....play with cousins

What is your favorite thing to drink?....orange juice

What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast?....french toast

What is your favorite thing to do with Mommy?....fly airplane on you

What is your favorite thing to do with Papa?....play rough

What is your favorite thin to do with Jane?....play

Who is your best friend?....Titus

What do you like to take to bed with you at night?....sleep sack or sheet

What do you want for dinner on your birthday?....peanut butter and jelly

What do you want to do for work?....work in the garage

What do you want to be when you grow up?....Papa

A moment with Jane

God is so kind. He gave me a sweet moment with Jane the night before she turned one, just like I had with Micah. Before bed she usually doesn't let me hold her very long, she is just wanting down to play or to be put down in bed. But this night I was able to hold her. I started out singing (secretly hoping this would calm her down so I would be able to hold her longer), then we talked that she was about to turn one. I spoke of how much joy she has brought to us, and then she stuck her finger in my mouth and started laughing, I did too. We spoke of God's love and how she can chose to follow Him and He will guide her through all her life. I told her I would try and stumble and fail, but I would attempt to point her to Him. I continued to tell her what a precious sweet girl she is (crying of course). "Tomorrow is a big day for you. Sleep well sweet girl, I love you."

Micah is 3!

Micah
This past weekend we celebrated you and your third birthday. We have had a wonderful three years with you. We feel so blessed to have you and be apart of your life. We feel honored that God gave us you to guide in this life and we pray for His wisdom as we stumble through. You have grown and taught me more then I could have imagined these three years. You bring us joy everyday as we watch you grow and especially now as you say the funniest things. It is great to hear your language develop but there are a few words I will miss once you learn how to pronouce them correctly. A few of them are, bana (banana), pamma (camera), lemon juice (lemonade), pickle sandwich (meat and cheese sandwich with pickles), missuburban (our suburban), bestest (breakfast), dirtday (birthday), titar (guitar), may-cused (your shortened version of may I be excused). I love that I still get snuggles with you, I know they are fleeting so I strive to pause and soak in the moments with you in my arms. You are particularly fond of large motor activities and you have great balance. Even on your bike, you zoom around coasting and turning quickly. You also show an interest and aptitude for music. It is fun to see these sort of things emerging. It makes me wonder about your future and what God has planned for you. We pray sweet boy that you will choose to follow the Lord, that you will submit to Him and follow him with your whole life with your whole heart. Thank you for being you, I love sharing life you with!

11 months

11 months! Wow time has gone fast, and I suppose I could say that about every month with our sweet girl. This month held a lot of firsts. First steps, first time Jane stood from sitting without holding on to something, first time swimming and first tooth! Also new is we are totally done with baby food. She likes the real, feed myself kind of food. Watermelon is her absolute favorite. So now I am in the tricky stage of coming up with balanced nutritious food for a baby with only one tooth.

Jane is busy exploring her world, I can't hold her long before she is wanting to be put down. She still enjoys putting things in and out of some sort of container. She also really enjoys a board book we have called You and Me, Baby. She smiles and laughs through out the entire book. Jane has also become quite chatty. I haven't heard her say mama as much anymore but she does say dada and papa. There are even times it sounds like she is saying Micah. She has started to give kisses too. The open mouth slobbery kind of kisses, but they are great.

Loving our girl and can't believe we are almost at one year!

Orchard Update

 

It might not be as cute as the kids but we have had some milestones reached in the orchard. We so far have two planting years, 2011 and 2012. The 2011 now in its third growing season we knew was going to have some fruit. Though since it is its first year producing fruit we were not planning on harvesting and sending the fruit to market. We would just pick and enjoy it for ourselves and share it with friends and family. As the cherries were coming on we were noticing that there was a lot more on the trees then we were expecting. Before we could harvest for market there were a few hurdles to jump. Getting boxes (ordering them would mean 1000's more then we needed), finding pickers, figuring out sorting, figuring out how to cool and keep then cherries cool once picked and most importantly a buyer. It become quite obvious that the Lord wanted us to harvest this year, all of those things we answered very easily.

When the day came we started at 6:00am and it took the pickers 4 1/2 hours to pick all the cherries. It took us much much longer to sort. We loaded the boxes into the car and The Farmer parked it in a friends cooler for the night then drove into Portland in the morning. By morning I really do mean morning, he delivered the fruit at 7:00 which meant he left here at 5:15.

 The first load brought in from the field.

My parents started out checking and making sure the trailer of totes followed along with the pickers. Every time a picker fills a tote they have to check it in because they are paid per tote. The totes move with the pickers so they do not have to walk fare to check and pick up another tote.

 The Farmer getting ready to take a load to the barn, this was a slow and careful ride.

Let the sorting begin! The fruit are in ice water to bring their temperature down. Sorting involves pulling the damaged and bird pecked fruit, pulling the small fruit (only a certain size is accepted in market) and pulling the cherries without stems (stem less cherries don't sell no mater what the size).

 The first box weighed and ready to be loaded into the car.

 Future farmer/future free labor :)

Jane joined us in the barn too.

The biggest blessing of harvesting this year was how much we learned. In particular better ways to sort, or at least that we will need to have a more efficient way to sort next year when we will have more then double the amount of fruit. We owe a big big thank you to our family for helping us sort this year! God is truly great and has blessed us immensely in this harvest and with our family willing to sacrifice time (and sore muscles) to help us.

What For

 

You know how every kid enters into that "why phase" where there seems to be an endless string of questions all starting with why. Well Micah has entered that phase but his version of why is "what for". Here is a recent conversation between him and The Farmer.

M: Papa what are you doing?
C: Weed wacking.
M: What weed wacking for?
C: To knock down weeds.
M: What knock down weeds for?
C: To keep the weeds out of the trees.
M: What keep weeds out of trees for?
C: To reduce disease transmission.
M: What reduce disease transmission for?
C: To grow higher quality fruit.
M: What grow higher quality fruit for?
C: To have better tasting fruit to sell.
M:Oh

10 Months

We have enjoyed another month with Jane. A development that actually happened more around 9 months is she will say "mamamama" when she is wanting me. We still continue to have a very close bond, of course we are still nursing so that makes sense. She knows her name now too, she might have learned it earlier but I have noticed it much more lately that she will look when you call her name. Jane has become quite chatty, there are times she will try to repeat words like hi. She will also wave hi and bye. She is not walking on her own yet but she is making progress, cruising has begun and she is starting to stand without holding on more often. For play Jane is liking putting blocks into a box. And not quite as helpful, she likes to pull toys and books off of the shelves. She has also learned how to clap. We have found Jane to be very ticklish, especially under the arms, which makes the game round and round the garden fun for us all. This girl is always on the move and wanting to explore. Getting a picture of her on her blanket was near impossible, I have a lot of shots like this one catching her in mid roll over.

Yesterday we had a scare with Jane. I was in the kitchen cleaning up lunch and she wandered into the dining room and discovered an old can of sterno (sterno is methanol). When I went to her there was dried out crystals around her. Since I wasn't sure we assumed she ingested some. The Farmer called poison control and they instructed us to take her to the ER. Jane was looking fine and the doctor was pretty confident she that even if she did ingest some of the crystals it was very unlikely that there was any methanol left. They did do a blood draw to test. We were sent home to wait results. The carrier would be coming from The Dallas or Portland to pick up the sample and then take it to Portland for testing. Ridiculous, I wanted to ask if we could just drive her to Portland. We got a call from the doctor around 7:15 that there was zero methanol, praise God. It was a relief to get that call, though I am still dealing with guilt that it even happened.

What's Next

I live an interesting life as a mother and living in the country. Here is proof.

This happened Monday.

This happened today....wonder what tomorrow will bring.

Jane and Opa

Jane and Opa have a certain liking for each other. Ever since she learned how to smile Opa has been able to easily get a smile from her just by saying hi. When I was staying with my parents while The Farmer was off being The Soldier there was one evening Jane was quite upset. Nothing I did would calm her down, which is very unusual. I was sitting with her in the living room Opa came in began to talk to her and stroke her cheek. Jane quieted down almost instantly. Once she was nearly asleep he walked away. Well it didn't take too long and she started crying again. Opa come back and Jane quieted down again. It was such a sweet moment to be apart of. I think both Jane and Opa are quite smitten with each other.

City Life

Last month The Farmer was The Soldier for three weeks. After the kids and I spent a week at home we headed into Tigard to spend some time with my parents while the soldier was away. It was different living back in the city. All the activities we were able to do were nice, but ugh the traffic! I could live without that. I visited with a few friends and got a lot of errands done (one nice thing about the city). We didn't get to go on as many walks as I thought we would, the weather was much cooler and wetter then I expected. We did get to go up the school playground and an indoor play park at a local church. The zoo was a major highlight for Micah and Fabric Depot was a major highlight for me.

We also were able to join the family in celebrating my Grandparents 63rd anniversary, which happens to be the same as our anniversary. Though we are not quite at 63 years, we are at 7 years. 

9 Months

All I can say is wow to Jane's large motor development in the last month. She has not only figured out hands and knees crawling but she is pulling herself to standing as well! Walking might be coming sooner then we think. She is still a very happy and content baby. But now that she knows how to move so well that is all she wants to do. You can't hold her for long before she is wanting down.

We have been blessed with easy babies, Jane is still a great sleeper and eater. She wakes up in the morning at 6/6:30, nap is from 8:45/9 to 10:30/11, the next nap is at 1 to 3 and bedtime is 7:15/7:30. She is eating breakfast, lunch and dinner, we are still doing baby food but have introduced cheerios and things she can gum like watermelon. She continues to be our family soprano with ear piercing screams. Also, new funny toy that she can't put down is a baby wipe. It started as a good way to distract her and keep her still during diaper changes. Now she likes to hold on it the wipe, crawl around with it and wave it around. Love these cute little things babies develop.