Rachel Grace's Dedication on Mother's Day

"Here am I and the children whom the LORD has given me!"

Isaiah 8:18

After my last posts you pretty much know what happened on our Mother's Day this year but I'll just do a quick recap with some pictures to illustrate! :)

We left around 6:00 AM that morning and arrived around 10:00 AM. We had two stops at a gas station for potty breaks, breakfast, and gas (most of us were still in our jammies but thankfully there was hardly anyone there!).

Hannah in the car.

Erika, my 14-year-old cousin, took this picture.

We had to get to their church early (furnacecreekbaptist.org) because Mama was singing for Rachel's dedication.

The service went very well...

Mama sang beautifully once again! :)





The associate pastor (left) and my Aunt Stacey with Rachel and Uncle Mike.

Praying

My Uncle Mike is the Pastor of the church, so he did about 2/3 of the actual dedication. Here he is asking the family to try their hardest to point Rachel in the Right direction.

He also asked the church family to do the same.

Here he is getting ready to read a letter to Rachel or his little "butter bean."

Aunt Stacey and Rachel

Reading the letter

After the letter was finished being read he took Rachel, and after 1 or 2 things he....

...went up and back down the aisle of the church, showing her to the people.

Coming back down the aisle.

Aunt Stacey and Rachel going back to their seat with the present that contains the letter to Rachel that will be opened on her 12th birthday, or when she accepts Christ.

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After the church service, we went back to their house, had a sandwhich lunch, played Kemps and Spoons, talked, etc. and then celebrated my Paw-paw's birthday (which was that day).

Sarah made Paw-paw his favorite cake: Boston Creme Pie.

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Now here are some pictures of Rachel Grace! :)

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Striving to be like Jesus,

Kimber

Emerald Isle Portraits; Hannah Elysse

"...The young woman was lovely and beautiful..."

Esther 2:7

Here is Hannah's Emerald Isle, NC collage:

Striving to be like HIM,
Kimber

Emerald Isle Portrait; Daddy, Mama, and Lydia (the youngest in the family currently!)

"Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house, your children like olive plants all around your table."

Psalm 128:3

Here is the collage of Daddy, Mama and Lydia - the youngest member of our growing family - so far!!!! (Hopefully there are lots more to come! I'm all ready for another one!)

[Lexi helped me pick out the color-style of the words]


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Striving to be like HIM,
Kimber :)

P.S - The next post will be on Mamma's early Mother's Day and then hopefully my cousin, Rachel's, dedication, Lord willing.

Mamma's Early Mothers Day and Pictures of Lydia (again! :)

“ Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you."

Exodus 20:12

Since we had a full weekend ahead of us last week and would be gone on Mother's Day, we decided to do Mama's Mothers Day on Saturday. We woke up around 6:30 AM Saturday morning and started to prepare breakfast-in-bed.

We decided that the menu would be: eggs, cereal, drop biscuits, a fruit bowl, juice, and grapefruit (Mama's favorite).

Alexis made the eggs for us.

I cracked 5 eggs (just enough for Mama and Daddy) for her and then she hurriedly made them up.

These are the flowers (weeds) that are growing all in our cleared land for the many-animal-farm.

Alexis, still wearing her jammies, Rode the bike down our road that morning, picked some flowers and came back with them.

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Hannah was in charge of the fruit bowl and other things and I made the drop biscuits. The boys were woke up around 7:00 and just kind of helped wherever we asked.

Around 7:30 we started making our way up the stairs with the food, cards, gifts, and more.

Mamma had finished taking a shower and was in her rocking chair when we went upstairs. We started singing "Happy Mother's Day" (to the tune of Happy Birthday) as we went up the stairs and into her room.

Before we sat down to eat, Mama opened her cards, read each one, and then started snacking on her buffet! :) I had set up the gray table in her room while she was taking a shower, so after a few trips downstairs to get the rest of the food and utensils, we sat down to eat after a prayer.

These are the eggs and drop biscuits.

The drop biscuits are a family-favorite (for most of us). We put chocolate chips or cranberries or sprinkles in the muffins and they taste really good! As you can probably tell from the picture the biscuits are a little brown because they were ready about 20 minutes before we ate but I left them in the cooling oven to keep them warm until breakfast.




Josiah eating his cereal! :)




Seth bought Mama a mug from our church, a little bookmark-bead-thingy, and a pack of breath mints all with his own money!

Lydia was happy that morning!

After breakfast we rushed out the door and drove to Lavender Fields (lavenderfieldsfarm.com) and picked out some herbs for Alexis' herb garden. We bought 15 plants and have yet to plant them...(waiting for a dry day) Then we went to our cousin Mason's birthday party and returned home with our cousins, Erika, Allie, Claire, and Gracie. [I prayed that all of them would be able to come because there was a possibility that one wouldn't be able to, but they all did!] Daddy and Mama left for their Mother's Day date-night to Outback and we stayed home, made dinner, took showers, watched a Veggie Tale and Wall-E, painted fingernails, and talked. The little ones (those under 7 years) went to bed around 8:30, the boys around 10:15 and us (the girls) around 11:00! :)

The next morning we woke up at 5:30 and suceeded in driving out of our driveway at our ship-off time (6:00 AM) with everyone and everything in the car! We barely slept on the way to our Aunt and Uncle's house (I slept for about an hour and the rest for about 30 minutes) but we enjoyed talking and joking with each other. Mama had packed us a small breakfast and they stopped at a 7-Eleven and picked up some AWESOME doughnuts for us, as a sort of thank-you for letting them go on the date together. To make a long story short, we arrived at the Lawhorns (my cousins and family) safely, went to church, saw Rachel get dedicated, played, ate, and then got home around 9:30 that night. I'm hoping to get the pictures of Rachel's dedication up here next but I'm having a problem with RAW and Jpeg files and my picture transfer...anyways...don't worry about it! :)

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And, here are some pictures of Lydia from the other day also! :)

This is one of my favorites.

This is her face whenever she hears anything different, drops something, sees something, etc.

Smiling at Alexis

Eating a brush

Alexis was chasing her and Lydia was running to me (we were trying to get her to smile naturally) and I caught her and held her and took this picture while Lexi approached.

Lexi and Lydia! :)

Looking outside

Her favorite place to be is probably outside - she loves being out in nature (who doesn't?).

Another one of her faces!

Drinking the detangler spray...babies! :)

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Striving to be like HIM,
Kimber

The Wassenberg Men Picture; Emerald Isle, NC

"I have written to you, fathers, Because you have known Him who is from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, Because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, And you have overcome the wicked one."

1 John 2:14

Here's another of the "collages," except it isn't a collage! :) I only took one type of picture (no different poses), so there's really only one picture to show you:

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Striving to be like HIM,

Kimber

Wassenberg Girls Portrait Collage; Emerald Isle, NC

"Then the rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man."

and Adam said," WHOA-MAN" who be dat... and from then on he called her His "woman" (dad paraphrase :)

Genesis 2:22

Well, it's another beautiful day outside today! I think it's in the 70's but a bit humid which makes it feel hotter. Anyways, here is the Wassenberg Girls collage from our beach vacation:

I think everybody knows who everyone is, so I won't go through names and ages again. As you're probably wondering, Daddy took the pictures for Me! :)

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We have another full weekend ahead of us! :) Tonight the Robinsons (Alexis' best friend and family) are coming over for dinner and dessert. Bill Robinson (dad) fixes air conditioners and we've been having trouble with ours plus for some fellowship time! Tomorrow we're going to the Schermerhorn's (friends from church) home at Lavender Fields to pick out herbs for Alexis' herb garden. Then we'll be going to my cousin, Mason's, birthday party. He'll be 4 years old. And then we'll be coming back home with our cousins Erika, Allie, Claire, and Gracie (we're 99.9% sure they're coming) and maybe 2 more. Then on Sunday we're waking up early (probably around 5:30 AM) and driving for 3-4 hours to my Aunt and Uncle's to see my newest cousin, Rachel Grace Lawhorn, get dedicated and mommy will sing a dedication song. We'll then go back to their (the Lawhorn's) house and celebrate Mother's Day and my Paw-paw's birthday, returning sometime that night!

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Striving to be like HIM,

Kimber :)

Wassenberg Children Portrait Collage; Emerald Isle, NC

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,So are the children of one’s youth.

Psalm 127:4

Here is the collage for the children in the Wassenberg family (of which I am one!)!

Here is the order of children for the top-left picture (above the "Wassenberg Children May 2009"). Left to right: Hannah - age 14, Me (Kimber) - 13, Alexis - 11, and Lydia - 1, Caleb - 9, Seth - 8, Josiah - 3, and Eden - 5.

Once again, just click on the picture and it will be enlarged. As you might be able to tell the sun was very bright hence a few squinted eyes - oh, Lydia also didn't understand what "look at the camera" meant so these will just have to do! :)

Tomorrow, Lord willing, I would like to get the pictures of the "girls" and the "boys" up here!

Striving to be like HIM,

Kimber

Emerald Isle Portraits; Mama and Daddy

"He stirs up the sea with His power, and by His understanding He breaks up the storm."

Job 26:12

Well, it's been awhile since we've posted on here! :) I'm letting Lexi do the post on the beach, but because I took so many pictures (over 1,000) it's taking her awhile to get the photos uploaded. So, I offered to make a collage of each individual person (or group) and post it, so that way it'll be easier for her and more fun for me! :) So, the first collage I did was Daddy and Mama. You can just click on the picture and it will enlarge...for better detail.

On Thursday, before dinner, we did all of our portrait sessions. I set everybody up and went around and took pictures - which was, of course, lots of fun for me! :) (Lexi did my pictures)

I'm going to try to upload 1 collage per day this week, Lord willing, and I'm also hoping to get a garden post up here.

Striving to be like HIM,
Kimber :)

An Update on Our Gardens (and 3 Photos of Lydia!)

"And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden;"

Genesis 3:2

Mama's best friend, since High School, Mrs. Tara, is starting to get into the gardening-thing, so she asked if I could update about our gardens. So, here are a few pictures with a little bit of explanation which is very short compared to the reading and knowledge that was required to go into all of this! :)

By the way, when I say "we" I mean the entire family helped in some way or another, making this an entire family effort. Of course, Daddy and Mommy did the most but it was a group effort.

Meet one of the asparagus plants! :)

Now, if you've bought asparagus from the store, they are about 1/2 of the size of the ones we've been harvesting off of our asparagus plants. Mamma and I (Kimber) planted around 8-12 asparagus plants two years ago in one of our front gardens (we have 2). We made a small mulch hill and dug a hole, inserted the plant, and covered it up with more mulch and dirt. You're not supposed to get any harvest the first year but for some years afterward you'll get an abundance! :) We've had asparagus at least once a week for our dinner veggie now.

This is another view of the asparagus plants - please don't ask why some are green and the others purple. :)



Ahh...strawberries! :)

Seth has faithfully harvested the little strawberries for us about once a week, and believe it or not, though they may be tiny, they are absolutely delicious! A week or two before we left for Emerald Isle, NC Daddy tilled the garden and then we bought some topsoil and filled in the low spot in one of the front gardens. After spreading it out (Jesus held off the rain for us too!) we hilled it and prepared the plants for planting! We bought the plants mainly from Southern States (our favorite West Nursery has gone out of business) and then we went around and made holes for them and put them in the ground. We covered them up with some straw and then faithfully watered them, unless the Lord did it for us. This entire process took about 1-3 days to complete, since we still had to do school, wait for the straw to be delivered, etc. In order to protect the strawberries when a frost was forecasted we put straw on top of them to keep them from dying, immediately removing the straw as soon as the danger of a frost was gone. We have to go out sometime and place all the strawberries on top of the straw (not on the ground) to keep the ants from a delightful snack! :)

Our raspberry plants!

We bought some of the plants from Lowe's and got some of them were from a friend from church. Mommy and Caleb and Seth were the main planters for the raspberries. Daddy and the boys had put two posts up and some string sometime before we planted, for the raspberries to climb up (they're big climbers) as they grow. We had mulched and "prepared" the spot for the raspberries, going to a friends house and scooping out manure from their horses for compost - yum! :)

These are our blueberry bushes, though not yet bushy! :)

We've done lots of work in the gardens this year - leveling, filling in, seeding (with rye), digging, mulching, etc. so since I gave you the above list I won't have to explain what we did to each garden, just know it took some work! :)

Almost all of the fruit trees/bushes were bought from our local Southern States (a couple minutes down the road).

It may be hard to see the blueberry bushes, but everything is so green around here that I can't help it!

One of our granny smith trees.

We bought apple trees (Fuji and Granny Smith), plum trees, cherry trees, and nectarine trees to go in our orchard. Daddy was the expert planter for all of these (he plants trees for his customers) but there are still a few waiting to be planted.

A view of some of the already planted fruit trees. The one closest to you is a plum tree.

I can't wait to see all the trees when they get huge! :) Part of our orchard plantings is one of our family'svision for healthy food and ministry. Can you imagine the size of these trees in multiple years? By then, some of us might be married and we could bring our children to pick fruit on "Grandpa and Grandma's fruit trees." Isn't that exciting? It is for me! Til then, there's lots of work to get done but we're praying and hoping that all of the trees make it to a humongous size! :)

This has nothing to do with gardening, but I'm working on encouraging my brothers and sisters so...this is a type of tree-house the boys have been working on. Lexi, Eden and 'Siah have been helping to but it's mostly been the boys idea. They've nailed boards into the tree as steps and have officially made it up about half the tree. They've used their carpentry skills very well!

Back to gardening...

One of our side-gardens. Here are planted the lettuces, kale, tomatoes, peppers, beets, onions, and spinach. We put cardboard down in the rows to keep them from getting weedy and then we put down grass from the yards Daddy cuts to keep the weeds at bay in and among the rows. It really works well - we did the same for the potatoes, as I will show you in a minute.

A pepper plant.

Mama's been reading her gardening book and they suggested planting matches (top-side down) in the ground around the pepper-plant because they like sulphur. So, I was commisioned to the job of "match planting" - you can't see the matches in the picture, but I thought you should know!

As you can see from the picture - NO WEEDS! It really is great having the grass to use because it makes gardening a bunch easier!

A tomato plant.

After planting the tomatoes we stuck wire cages in the ground for them to crawl up. I think you can buy the cages at any gardening store, Lowe's, Southern States, etc. They were hand-watered at least 6 times the day we planted them, to help them not be too shocked by their new, earthy enviroment!

These are our potato plants (we have 2-3 more rows in another garden too, plus the 3 in this garden) that stretch across the ENTIRE length of our back yard. If you can't tell, we eat lots of 'taters! :) We wheelbarrowed the grass over to the aisleways, scooped it onto the ground and later came back and spread the grass out underneath, between, and anywhere near the potato plants to prevent weeds. As you can see from the photo, the row behind the grassed-row has not been grassed yet. Before we grassed the potatoes we had to de-weed and hill the dirt up to the plants to keep the potatoes growing up and to encourage an abundance of more potatoes for the harvest near Fall this year.

Another view of the beautiful, lush green potato plants! :)

(You can see the row stretching all the way to the chicken pen in the picture)

Some pea plants.

Mama planted lots of peas but only a couple came up so we had very few to trellis this year (we had an entire garden to trellis last year!). By trellis I mean put two stakes (you can probably buy them anywhere) on the rows where the pea plants are and then you just wind string (nylon, I think) around the stakes until you reach the top, whereupon you tie a couple knots to prevent untying. The peas like to climb also, so that's why you trellis them. We then very loosely tied each pea plant to the string to encourage them to climb up and not down or sideways.

Our marigolds, garlic, and more spinach. The marigolds are on the far left of the picture, the onions/garlic are in the middle and the spinach is on the far right. I think the marigolds help repel insects from the plants in this garden, hence the plantings around the garden! :)

It was an overcast day when I went out to take "garden pictures" but the sun was so beautiful over the trees so I just had to take a picture! :)

So, that's the update on our gardens and soon-to-be orchards! :) I think that we have 3 gardens dedicated to some sort of fruit and around 5 more where the veggies are. We just planted some corn last week. I would give you a picture of the corn rows but everything is...dirt brown...so you can hardly tell where the row is and where the walkway is...so I'll wait until things start growing to give you a picture, Lord willing! :)

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And just because I can, here are 3 pictures of Lydia from a few nights ago, where I was putting different clothes on her to see if they'd fit.

Our little strawberry!

(It was around bedtime for her, so that's why she has her binky)

Let's just say she wasn't a big fan of the hat! :)

Loving her bear.

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That's all for now - I'm hoping to get more beach updates soon, Lord willing!

Striving to be like HIM,

Kimber

P.S - I didn't mean for the post to be this long!