My Precious Little Shadow

Our little lady loves to see what Mommy and Daddy are doing and try to do the same thing... whether it's mimicking Daddy's yawn or trying to brush her hair or put make-up on like Mommy. So precious!




This isn't the greatest quality picture, but is still cute. Clara's wearing my tiara from the wedding.

Potatoes!!!

Stephen dug up some red potatoes on Saturday! He had also dug up a few others a day or so before. Here are a few shots from Saturday.



"Helping" Daddy load up washed potatoes after her first swim in the new pool.

Pool Time

This is Stephen: Somebody in the household turned old enough to have her own pool.



We take this new hobby seriously!



Notice that the lifeguard was SMOKIN' HHHhhhottttt!!! I got her email address! OooRah! And I'm going to try and hook up with her later!

Saturday Fun

Saturday was a pretty fun day for Miss Clara. One of the highlights was getting to go with Mommy and Daddy to the SPCA and look at puppies and kitties and then go to their petting zoo. Unfortunately, our camera was running out of batteries, so we didn't get as many pictures as we would have liked, but did get some.

Clara is fascinated by animals and had a great time. She was very interested in the dogs and cats inside and then had fun chasing chickens and pigeons in the petting zoo. It even looked like she tried to kiss one of the goats!





Hopefully, more fun pictures from Saturday coming soon!

Different Look... Same Us

The blog has a slightly different look, but no worries. You're in the right place.

Stay tuned for more posts soon! And make sure to check out all the posts from yesterday.

Love Birds

(I did several posts today, so keep scrolling down)

MMMMMM, MMMMMMM, Good!!!!

Hubby walked into the kitchen this evening and saw me shucking corn for supper and offered to grill it!!! I'd already thrown fish in the oven and it was breaded, so wasn't really the grilling kind, so we left it in the oven and did the rest of dinner on the grill. Oh my!!! We grilled up the corn cobs and toasted the english muffins. Also, we put zucchini, tomato and onion, with some butter and seasoning salt in a "dish" of aluminum foil and cooked that up on the grill. MMMMMM! It was all good! But I would definitely recommend giving the zucchini dish a shot on the grill!! It was fabulous! We both enjoyed it a lot!!! Doing it on the grill just seemed to add some extra flavor and Stephen cooked it up just right! And the fact that the zuc was from our own garden made it extra special! :-)

Pesto!

One project around here lately has been picking our basil and making and freezing pesto!!! Yum yum.

And Once Again...

Once again, more fun was had with the hose today!

Cuteness!

While in the restroom this morning, I heard some fussing going on outside. When I walked out this is the cute sight I saw! I pushed her out into the living room and took these shots!!! She got a little drive around the house out of it. And I don't think the legs being tucked up was just her trying to be cute... I think she was stuck! :-)




Some friends gave Clara this stroller for her birthday and she loves pushing stuff around in it AND being pushed around herself!!!

Happy Father's Day To...

... to my husband's father:

~who faithfully loves Stephen's mother
~who diligently follows the Lord Jesus
~who lovingly welcomed me to the family
~who patiently raised and trained Stephen to be the incredible man he is
~who greatly loves his grandchildren




... to my father:

~ who lovingly raised me
~ who diligently trained me (and PATIENTLY tried to help me with math :-) )
~ who diligently follows the Lord Jesus
~ who faithfully loves my mom
~ who greatly loves his granddaughter




... and my daughter's father:

~ who tenderly loves Clara's mother (me!)
~ who faithfully provides
~ who diligently follows the Lord Jesus
~ who firmly trains Clara
~ who patiently cares for her
~ who joyfully plays with her
~ who loves her


How VERY blessed Clara and I are by these three wonderful men! Thank you! We greatly respect and love all three of you!

Lately...

Hello! It's been pretty quiet from our neck of the wood lately, but we're still here! Starting last Sunday, Clara and I survived about four days without Daddy. He was off to the land of maple syrup and Ben and Jerry's ice cream... also known as Vermont! And yes, while there he did manage to visit a Ben and Jerry's factory!!! However, the REAL reason he was there was to attend a valve symposium. We missed him but stayed pretty busy with spending time with friends, doing a major organizing job in our storage room, checking out a farmers market, watching some Little House on the Prairie together, going to a program for babies at the library, etc. But Daddy is home safe and sound now, and it's good to have him back!

We spent some time out in the garden today and snapped some fun pictures.... Please remember that we snap pictures of the good stuff... like the tomatoes that are doing well, not the bok choy that all either died or got big and beautiful only to be riddled with wholes from the bugs (a complete loss), or the pepper plant that got snapped off, etc., etc. etc., etc.!!!


Broccoli!

Some lovely looking tomatoes....

Some of our tomatoes are getting REALLY tall... almost my height!!! These are the ones that we bought as small plants. They have tons of tomatoes coming on... Clara has "helped" picked some prematurely.

Stephen picked our first peppers today!


And more fun was had with water today!!! If you can't tell, playing with water is Clara's FAVORITE thing to do out in the yard!






And in answer to Mom M.'s question... Clara has four teeth on top, four on the bottom and three molars.

Corn Cob Pro

On Memorial Day some friends had us over for a BBQ and we had a great time! One of the fun things that happened was that Clara got her first try at eating a cob of corn! She liked it and it was so adorable to watch her!!! Well, noticing that corn was on sale this week, I decided to grab some. Here are some shots from last night. Again, she thought it was pretty good stuff and not a bad way to eat it!

Yummy!

Gotta love her technique.

The very munched corn cob.

Quote Of The Day

Here's a quote I appreciated today!

"And when we love one another, His love is perfected in us. This means that God's love to us has achieved its goal. We are never intended to be terminals of God's blessings, but channels only."

-William MacDonald

Taking After Daddy

Some cute shots from this morning of our Mini Marine!!! :-)

Scaling Mount "Dining Room Chair" And Other Adventures

Clara figured out the technic required for scaling the dining room chair today... and she did it in a dress no less!!! So, we are on to a new stage of life... now, not even the things on the table are going to be totally safe!

Clara also really got into "Ring Around The Roses" today. It was so cute! She and I did I-don't-know-how-many rounds.

This evening was a lovely one for spending time out in the yard and we did, the whole family!!! Clara discovered the joy of playing in and drinking out of a shooting hose!!! It was so funny!!! We had about as much fun watching her. She even walked right through the stream one time. Here are some pictures of the fun!!! As you can see, she was soaking!

A Few "Snap-Shots" of Life Around Here.

Ok, time for a little news from our neck of the woods. It was super humid here today and then the clouds, lightning, thunder and a little sprinkling came in... so at least it wasn't just humid for the sake of being humid!

My handsome hubby has been getting a work out and riding his bike to work on some days! He was rather wet when he got home tonight. He enjoys the exercise and challenge of braking his previous records.

I'm staying fairly busy with house work, errands, and Miss Clara. I tried out a new recipe for supper involving chicken, sausage and white beans. Stephen and I both really liked it, so it made it into my recipe collection book that my Mom made me!!!

It's been fun to start using fresh herbs from the garden! So far we have used oregano, basil and rosemary. That just leaves the cilantro... it doesn't seem to be doing to great though, so we may not get much out of that. We have lots of little green tomatoes coming on and a few baby zucchini and today I saw the first little tiny head of broccoli! That was exciting!

Clara continues to amuse, impress, challenge, and melt our hearts. Some of her latest antics include demonstrating that she seems to understand that q-tips go in your ear (I know, that's dangerous!), make-up brushes are used on the face and diaper mats go on the changing table. Today, she snagged a cup off my dresser... it had some tea in it, which was thankfully no longer hot, and she dumped it on the ground. While out doing a couple errands she threw a fit when put into her car seat at one point... we went to one more store and came home. After getting home I took her out and set her on the grass, at which point she proceeded to climb back into the car and into her car seat. Go figure! Though we do have our share of struggles as parents we also have our smiles... like Clara giving Daddy a massage again tonight and then giving him a kiss a little later. We love that girl!

I started a Bible study on I John a little while back and have just wrapped up the section that goes through chapter 3. Before I sign off, let me share some of my favorite verses from that chapter!

I John 3: 16-18

"We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
But whoever has the world's goods, and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?
Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth."

Garden up-date

It was so fun to walk out into the garden the day after getting home and see the progress that had been made in ONE week! Wow! It was impressive! Here are some pictures I took since getting home.














These are our best looking "from-seed" tomato plants! One of them is as tall as Clara now. It has been so exciting to see them thrive, after their VERY dismal beginnings!!!




The potato plants had already started to bloom before I left, and continued to do so.




My "from-seed" johnny-jump-ups were blooming when I got back! What a welcome home!




Basil, which grew a bunch while I was gone! We put fresh basil and oregano in the lasagna tonight!




There are bunches of green tomatoes starting on our "from-plant" tomato plants! I don't know that we had noticed any before I left. A few are pictured here. I also saw a couple little ones on one of our "from-seed" plants!




Claires and the "from-plant" tomatoes. They had grown soooo much in one week!




And here is the sweetest thing we have growing in the garden!