"He [God] does great things past finding out,
Yes, wonders without number."
Yes, wonders without number."
Job 9:10
I'm back everybody!! My 2+ weeks of silence are officially over!!! Thank you all for your patience! :)
First an update on the wedding: it went absolutely fantastic!! The Lord answered my prayers wonderfully and I'm so grateful to all of you who prayed for me that weekend! Another answer to prayer is that I'm done editing the photos! It took about 2 weeks and lots of hours (I don't care to count!). I'm so thankful to my family for everything they did so that I could spend hours on the computer every day. I love them so much!! A special thank you to Mrs. Huizinga for letting me borrow her Nikon camera. Lexi became my 2nd photographer and it was so much fun photographing people with your sister! I really can't thank you all enough for all the prayers! If you want to see some of the wedding pictures go to my photography blog. Hopefully I'll be updating it once more with more wedding pics soon.
Well, since I've been blog-absent for 2 weeks I have to make up for all that time with a long post! This post has over 30 pictures on it!! (Blogger finally started working again! It's a long story, so I won't go into it.)
One of the biggest things that I have to tell you is that Judah is really smiling now. I mean really smiling. It's absolutely wonderful seeing his face light up when you talk to him!
Daddy was talking to him the other night and he was smiling like crazy!
Lexi took this photo of little-man at lunch the other day.
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A few weeks ago Daddy and some of my younger siblings built a sand box! It has become the favorite spot to play at during the day!
One Sunday evening, Daddy started creating a sand pyramid! Mr. Jon was here too, so he helped, along with most of my siblings!
I didn't get any photos of the pyramid being built. (I was having too much fun watching Daddy scoop the sand as fast as he could!) I just got the photos of them perfecting the construction! :)
After the pyramid was actually shaped like a pyramid Daddy started adding "steps" to it. Soon everyone else grabbed onto the idea and added their own unique steps to a side of the pyramid. The pyramid was only 4 sides so Daddy, Caleb, Seth, and Dowy (pronounced Dow-ee -a.k.a. Mr. Jon) each had a side.
Mr. Jon perfecting his side.
After Daddy finished his side he grabbed some of Seth's play soldiers and started adding them to the pyramid like it was being attacked! Daddy always has so many ideas! ;)
Seth finishing his side of the pyramid.
Caleb adding some finishing touches.
'Siah digging for some more soldiers.
Lydia hiding her toes.
After the big pyramid was completed, Daddy went and built two smaller pyramids on the opposite ends of the sand box.
Lexi patting down the mini-pyramid.
So, there's the introduction to our sandbox! Daddy let me know as I was typing this up that the boys liked to call the pyramid a "ziggurat" not a pyramid. Something about ziggurat seems more masculine, huge and appealing to them! :)
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Last Thursday I was so tired at staring at a computer screen for 3 hours editing photos that I decided to go outside and play with my family! I was so glad I did because the day was absolutely gorgeous...and one can never go wrong when they're spending time with their family! :) Before I went outside, I grabbed my camera and went out into the beautiful Fall air! :)
Like I said, the day was absolutely beautiful! The skies were so blue and the clouds so puffy and magnificent. I love Fall days!
Our raspberries are still producing! I know that's very random, but I was just out snapping photos with my micro lens so I had to share it with you!
Golly...I've got some mighty handsome brothers don't I? :)
(They love it when I talk about them like that!!! ;)
Like I said...
Lydia on the swing.
Hannah was swinging beside Lydia at this time and as I was heading inside Hannah goes "Look! Do you see that black thing above the door?"
Sure enough, there was this black thing above our sliding door and it was moving up and down. I got Daddy to come check it out and it was a...snake! Somehow this black snake had made it 90 degrees vertically onto the top of the sliding glass doors! We have some crazy snakes out here!
Of course, we can't pass up admiring a snake, so Daddy held him for us and we all got to watch him. Everything worked out perfectly because I had my micro lens on so I could get really close up on the snake! Once, Mr. Snake decided that it didn't appreciate my lens in its face and tried to bite it. Thankfully he only hit his head on the glass and didn't make it past the lens onto my hands! :)
Snakes are so cool! Caleb caught another little snake (it was so little it could almost pass for a large earthworm!) a day or so ago, and I got to hold it. I love feeling the little snakes weave between my fingers...they're so cold and smooth. It's a very interesting mixture! Now don't get me wrong...I will never hold a 6 ft. snake. I may end up one day, but definitely not now. Juvenile snakes are as far as I get! :)
I think this picture looks absolutely hilarious. Something about the way the camera focused made his head look really big! :)
Here's a more realistic photo of how big his head was! :)
As you can tell, Eden was awed (and maybe even a bit scared) by the snake! :)
Yes, we have some crazy snakes around here! Daddy was holding Sir Snake by his tail and he didn't appreciate being upside down so he would curl himself around his body to get upright again! It was so neat!
Snakey managed to almost get onto Daddy's hand once (after repeated tries) but he always eventually fell back down. That was until he knotted himself up like this:
The snake just sat like this for a good while. We thought he had really knotted himself at one point! Thankfully he was only showing off!
This is probably my favorite photo of the snake!
Lydia petting Snakey.
Lydia liked the snake! She was a little frightened of it and didn't like when his face was facing hers, but otherwise she did okay. :)
Lexi playing with the snake.
Eden.
It was so beautiful as night started to fall. The sun was bathing the trees in warm, yellow light and it was just a perfect day for taking pictures!
When I was getting ready to put my camera away for the night Daddy told me to get in the car so we could go take some sunset photos. Daddy had seen that the sky was going to be beautiful so Hannah, Alexis, Daddy, Lydia, and I piled in the green-bean (our little Avalon) and drove over to our neighbor's field. The sky was so beautiful and the soybeans were illuminated so wonderfully! I have no idea how anyone could not love the country! Beautiful sunsets, surrounded by nature...ah...it really is the life! I absolutely love it!
But to the picture of the sunset:
Like I said it was G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S!
We were standing there taking pictures and we had two people drive by us. They must've thought that we were pretty weird because we were standing there, chewing on a weed (I forgot what it's called) and taking pictures. So much fun! :) And if you were wondering, the weed did taste good!
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Last Saturday we went to Katy Pistole farm in Bumpass, VA. Katy Pistole is an author of the Sonrise Farm Series (horse books!). I had read them a few times and was excited to find out that she was having an Open House at her farm! So, everything worked out perfectly for us to go! The drive was 1 hour away so we ate lunch in the car so we could arrive around the starting time of 2 P.M.
Once we arrived, Mrs. Pistole danced with one of her horses, and shared some many insights into horses and the Lord. It was so wonderful! I loved when she danced with her horse, Scooter. She rode Scooter completely bareback and brideless!
In my experiences with horses the only way to make them go was to squeeze/hit them with a crop or your hand. Mrs. Pistole was the complete opposite and I LOVED it! I never liked the idea of inflicting pain upon something for it to do something for me. Mrs. Pistole revealed that you can have a relationship with a horse and that you can ride them without any of that! Scooter (the horse) would come to her with a simple hand motion. He would gallop around her in a circle with simple hand motions. I'm serious...it was amazing. She didn't ever whack him with a crop, she just turned her body the way she wanted to go and Scooter went. It wasn't magic. Mrs. Pistole loves Scooter and Scooter loves Mrs. Pistole. Thus, Scooter does what Mrs. Pistole wants because he loves her (and vice versa). Scooter doesn't do what Mrs. Pistole wants out of fear, but out of love. The whole time Mrs. Pistole talked everything made sense. I could write paragraphs upon paragraphs about her and what she talked about! Mrs. Pistole is also a Christian so she was constantly drawing parallels to her relationship with her horses and her relationship with God. It was absolutely amazing!
Now, don't get me wrong, I think I will use a saddle and bridle too but if we get our own horse, I think I'd love to learn to ride without any of that!
Now, don't get me wrong, I think I will use a saddle and bridle too but if we get our own horse, I think I'd love to learn to ride without any of that!
To learn more about this stuff go to the Perelli Natural Horsemanship website here and learn a little bit more of how and why the method she uses works!!
Mrs. Pistole and I.
This is Scooter - the horse she danced with.
(Thank you Daddy for the photos!)
Speaking of horses...Daddy ordered the electric fence for our pasture last week!!! The fence should be in around next week and then we can install it! Then we can get some animals! A cow (and horse) are the highest on the list of animals we need/want. So, there's another prayer request for you all! That the Lord will provide a Jersey or Dexter cow for us. We're not necessarily looking for free (though that would be a huge blessing!) just a low price and a quality cow! :) And, feel free, to pray for a horse! ;)
Another prayer request is that the Lord will provide the materials to build the barn. We have the fence coming but the animals must have some sort of shelter. We have a certain amount that we can currently go up to but the price of wood is more than that now. So, any prayers for cheap but excellent-quality materials for building a barn would be greatly appreciated!
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Well, now that I've told you what we have done, I'll tell you what we're going to be doing in the next couple of weeks.
Tomorrow, our family is going hiking! We try and hike once every year and we absolutely love it! I'm hoping that I'll get some nice family photos to replace the pictures in my blog header that are 3 years old (yikes!).
On Friday, we have some friends from church coming for dinner.
Josiah's birthday is November 6th so we'll probably be celebrating his birthday then.
November 13th is my uncle's wedding!!! The night before is the rehearsal and most of us are doing something in the wedding so we all get to be there! Eden is so excited about being the flower girl. The other day she was walking around pretending like she was holding a basket full of flower petals! She asked if she was "doing it right" and I gave a few suggestions and then she continued down the imaginary aisle. So sweet! :)
Okay, I've held you up long enough! The next post will hopefully be on our trip to the beautiful mountains!!!!
Delighting in my wonderful Lord and Savior,
Kimber :)
