Judah's Thanksgiving Outfit

This past Sunday we were thinking about getting a family picture after church, so we all tried to dress similar.  I pulled out an adorable little outfit for Judah that just happened to match our colors for the day!  He had never worn this particular outfit before so I couldn't wait to put it on him!  The end result was, in my opinion, adorable x 10.  Of course, if something is adorable, pretty, captivating (you get the point) I have to take a picture of it! :)

So, here's a couple photos of the littlest Wassenberg decked out in his handsome suit!! :)

 This first picture was taken on our trampoline right before we left for church.

All of the pictures below were taken at my great-uncle's house where we met for our monthly family Nash Luncheon.

That look on the left is Judah's "surprised" look.  He does it whenever he's close to something he's not supposed to touch, when something excites him, or if he drops his sippy cup from his chair during a meal. :)

Look at that hair!!  (I may be a tad biased... ;)

Absolutely precious!!!

What a little cutie!

(Yes, his sleeves are rolled up in this picture...Judah gets into everything, so Mama was probably trying to keep his white shirt white! :)

There you have a short little post!  One day soon I need to post about some of the "older" Wass children since I post about the little guys so often!  We'll see...

I hope you and your family have a blessed Thanksgiving!!

Kimber :)

3 Birthdays in 3 Days!

Two weeks ago we celebrated three birthdays in the Wassenberg house!  Judah turned 1 on September 7th, Lexi turned 14 on September 8th, and Caleb turned 12 on September 9th.  Yep...three birthdays in a row! :)

We started Judah's birthday by going in and singing to him. 

He was a little shocked to see us all!

But everything was better when Mama got him! :)

Mama rocking Judah during devotions.

After devotions, we had our breakfast of eggs and drop biscuits.  Since Judah's birthday happened to be on a Wednesday, we couldn't throw him a big party so we put a candle in his biscuit and sang to him! :)

As with anything Judah discovers, he wanted to touch the candle.  Thankfully Mama held it far enough away.  :)

When the song was over, Daddy blew the candle out for Judah. Then we put the bowl with the biscuit on his plate and let him go after it! :)

 Hmmm...

...interesting.

Soon Judah was stuffing the entire biscuit in his mouth.  Mama had to retrieve some of it so he wouldn't choke! 

Cleaning off the bowl! :)

Since we never really celebrated his birthday, we did a more formal party 9 days after his real birthday.  We invited Judah's best friend (a.k.a. his cousin, Asher :) and Paw-paw and Na-naw for a yummy feast!

Judah playing with a rainstick before dinner.

The "little guys" table.

Dinner was roast beef, mashed potatoes, carrots, greenbeans, and rolls.

After dinner Judah opened his presents!

Hannah got Judah a sippy cup and once he saw it, he didn't care about any of his other presents!

Judah got a toy hammer from his cousin, Asher, and Na-naw and Paw-paw got him some outfits! :)

Asher playing with Judah's tissue paper. :)

I guess Judah thought Asher was doing something funny!

Judah's cake was a home-made, chocolate-chip banana cake with fudge frosting.  Hannah helped me decorate with M&M's.

Judah didn't know what to think of everyone singing to him!

(In case you were wondering, that bright spot on his face is a reflection of the candle on my lens!)

 

After the singing, the eating began!  Every time someone turns 1 in our family, we give them a piece of cake and let them go after it!  It's so much fun to watch...Judah got icing all over his face!

Judah won't leave anything on his plate!

So there you have Judah's 1st birthday!

---

The next birthday was Alexis'.   We sang "Happy Birthday" to her that morning as she waited for us in bed (in our family, you're not allowed to get out of your bed on your birthday until we come get you!)...

Lexi all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed!

For breakfast that morning, Lexi chose Cream-of-Wheat and toast/pop-tarts.

We put sugar on our cream-of-wheat.  The recipe calls for salt, and we tried it once, and thought it was disgusting!  So, we go the "sweet route."

Lexi chose grilled chicken, macaroni 'n cheese, greenbeans and rolls for her dinner.

Seth and Mama set the table with our fanciest tablecloth, china, and glasses.

Lexi's dinner plate!

(The roses are just for decor, by the way! :)

Lexi read all her cards and opened her presents after the dinner was eaten and the dishes cleaned up!

 

Lexi got some candy/snack food that she likes and muck boots for when we get a horse (plus some more stuff I can't remember).

Happy birthday to you!

Lexi wanted angel food cake with cherries and whipped cream for her dessert.

The movie we watched that night (after eating the cake!) was The Fellowship of the Ring (a.k.a. the first movie in the Lord of the Rings set).  We had never seen the LR movies before but Daddy thought us older ones were old enough to see it, so we did! :)  The movie ended late that night, bringing Lexi's 14th birthday to a pleasant end. :)

---

Caleb's birthday was the day after Lexi's!  He has the neatest birthdate of us all...9/9/99!

Caleb picked out Egg McMuffins, berry crisp, and pop-tarts for his breakfast!  It was so yummy!

Caleb went to work with Daddy that day, and he didn't get back until late that night.  So, we ate our dinner of hamburgers and potatoes without the birthday boy...but we saved him some of it!

After Caleb ate his dinner, he opened his presents!

A big pixie stick!

A lovely card from Miss Lydia. :)

Caleb got some food (do you see a theme here?), a sweatshirt and cowboy shirt, and more!

Caleb's dessert pick was home made ice cream cake.  Seth surprised him with a cardboard Hummer on top!

That night (after the little ones went to bed) we watched the second Lord of the Rings series.  Once again, we were in bed late (they don't make those movies short!), ending the 3 consecutive birthdays in a row!

 

Kimber :)

Last Week's Activities

"For he will not dwell unduly on the days of his life, because God keeps [him] busy with the joy of his heart."

Ecclesiastes 5:20

Well, like normal, we've been busy!  We didn't really do one "big" thing last week that was worthy of its own blog post, so this is a recap of many of the little things we've been doing! :)

Two Saturday's ago we went and picked a huge wheelbarrow full of corn from our neighbor's field.  Mr. Townsend (our neighbor) had come by a few days before and said we could go pick from his corn (we have the greatest neighbors...ever).  We brought back lots and lots of ears! :)  We shucked, de-haired, boiled and cut the corn off the cob.  Finally we put them in many Ziploc baggies and froze them!  We had 2 paper bags full of corn after putting up around 25 quart bags.  Since we couldn't eat that much corn we then canned another 7 quarts of corn!  We just finished our last corn dinner last night! :)  [We'll be harvesting more corn soon, but this time it will be from our own garden. :)]

 

 Yummy corn!

 

So, because we had so much corn, Judah chewed on his first corn cob last week! :)

Since I documented Lydia's first corn cob taste, I thought I should document Judah's as well! :)

 

He seemed to enjoy the corn cob...Judah is never one to reject food! ;)

Because I already had the camera out, I took a quick photo of Hannah's wonderful Chinese dinner:

 If you haven't had homemade Chinese, you are missing out!  In my opinion, it's SO much better than the stuff you get from the restaurants (it's also MUCH healthier!!).

---

Grandpa and Grandma gave us their old pool and we have really been  enjoying it!  The pool required a bunch of intense thought as to how it should be constructed, but Daddy's hard work paid off!  It's been really nice to hop in our pool instead of driving over to our neighbor's...it's a quick and wonderful way of cooling off in this heat! :)

Lydia and Weedels in the pool!

Alexis, Caleb, Seth, Eden, Josiah, and Lydia swim in the pool most.  The rest of us just get in every now and then! :)

 

Eden, Lydia, and Josiah...they are almost inseparable.  They have the most fights together, but they're also the ones who play together the most! :)

The swimming bunch!

---

Our greenbeans have been producing abundantly this year!  We picked our second round of greenbeans this past Thursday and it took about 3 hours with 5 of us picking.  That should give you an idea of how many plants we have! :)  Lots of plants mean lots more yield (normally) but it also means more work.  We normally go for lots of plants because we've got enough workers to make it a little bit less "work." :-D

Nevertheless, picking greenbeans isn't the most fun job anyone could ask for...but we get it done!  After we pick them, we snap the ends off and then snap the greenbean in half (if it's big enough).

Here's a photo of the all the greenbeans from one picking:

We picked all these greenbeans last Thursday and snapped them all Friday morning.

It takes about 2 hours to snap them all, so we normally listen to a Jonathan Park or music C.D.

Hannah getting ready to "snap"! :)

Lexi working it!

Seth rocked Judah for a little bit and then he came and joined the snappin' party! :)

The Yellow Snapper Team!

After a hour or two of snapping greenbeans, this was our yield:

 One basket full and one box full! :)

Friday afternoon, Lexi's friend, Jaime, came over and we then canned 14 quarts of greenbeans.  Later Mama (with varied help) canned another 3 batches making a total of 35 quarts from one crop of greenbeans!!  

Counting both times we have picked green beans, we have canned a total of 56 jars full of greenbeans! :)  And more is yet to come. :)

---

While we are on the topic of gardening, we'll talk about our potatoes!  Daddy, Lexi, and her friend, Jaime, unearthed the majority of our potatoes last Saturday.

Here's our bounty!

We still have one little garden of potatoes left...we'll get to those sometime. :)  Since we have so many potatoes we've been eating them at least once a day (or so it seems!).  We've had mashed potatoes, mashed potato casserole, potato "pancakes", fried potatoes, etc.  Yesterday we washed and chopped up some of the little potatoes.  This morning Mama canned 14 quarts of potatoes for this winter!  Meanwhile our laundry room has baskets of potatoes all over the floor! :)  [I can't end without a declaration of praise to Jesus for keeping the voles away from our potatoes...this year's crop is so much better than last year's!]

---

Judah is getting so big! 

I love his deep, blue eyes...especially when he's drinking tea (or coconut milk) from his bottle.  He lays back in your arms and just stares at you, flapping his long eyelashes.  It's the sweetest thing ever!

 

He's such a happy baby (most of the time!)  He loves saying "Da da" and I know it warms Daddy's heart when he comes home; Judah will be in our arms, reaching out for Daddy while saying "Da da" and looking into Daddy's face. 

He's starting to figure out the stairs (right photo) but we've been teaching him no so we've haven't had much trouble with that! :)

On the crawl!

Judah is getting good at crawling and is quite a mobile little guy.  He loves to climb over anything and it's hard to find something that he can't crawl over! :)

---

We did something we have never done before:  made butter!  It took about an hour of rolling a half-gallon jar of cream on the floor to get butter.  I personally thought the butter would never come but it did! 

Once the butter globules were nice and big we poured off the buttermilk and then washed the butter (weird, I know).

Butter in progress!

This was the end result:

A butter ball!

The picture doesn't do justice to just how yellow our butter was.  It almost looked like the inside of an egg yolk!

Speaking of milk and butter, we're getting real close to getting a cow!  We found a great one on Craigslist and are going to see it tonight.  If we like it, and everything works out, we will most likely have a cow within 2 months!!!!!!!!!!  (I'm more excited about what could come after the cow...a HORSE!!! :)

Daddy's going to build a shed for our prospective animals soon and then all we need are the animals!  It's so exciting!

---

I'm not sure if I made it public on this blog, but I got a rose plant from a friend at church a few months ago.  It is a Climbing America rose and I love it so much!  Currently there are about 8 flowers on it and many more blooms!

Aren't they gorgeous?!  I love roses...maybe one day I'll have a HUGE rose garden.  I'd like to have some hydrangeas too, but we'll see. :)

So there's the update on the little stuff we've been doing.  People always ask what I've been doing and I always say "not much."  Everything we do doesn't enter my mind as "out of the norm" so I just think it's part of everyday life.  Thus it may sound like we have an extremely boring life, but that is far from true!  Life here is always interesting and always changing!  

Hopefully the next time I update it'll be on the cow?!!

We'll see!

Til then, have a great day!

Kimber :)