Year in Review-April 2017

 April 2017

I didn't realize we did so much and took so many pictures in April until I was ready to make this post!

Lamb 3 was so proud of the cake he made for his 9th birthday.

He received a Lego house that could change seasons. He was very excited to put the basketball hoop outside the house. He spent a lot of time trying to figure out which pieces would be used to make different seasons such as pieces that made a fireplace for winter made a grill for a summer barbecue before he opened the box.

We celebrated at my parents' house. He wanted green candles for his cake.

My last Lamb in his last year to wear the number shirts. I have such fond memories of  the Lambs wearing these.

Here the birthday Legos are put together until he decides to change it to the next season!

His life size skeleton puzzle was much smaller than him and too easy for him to put together.

Lamb 3 spent some of his birthday money on a Spiderman glove with silly string.  He had fun for a couple of days.

Photo Credit: Steve Blakey
Lamb 1 was an acolyte for the first time for the beautiful Easter Vigil service.

The ladies wore Easter bonnets and Easter was a joyous day at our church.

My mom hosted us for dinner on Easter. I was so full from Easter breakfast at church, that I wished we would have celebrated at my parents the next day. After the owl relish tray, she attempted a Easter bunny relish tray.

Lamb 2 and 3 dyed eggs, but Lamb 1 thought he was too old to dye eggs.

Lamb 2 continued and enjoyed his gymnastics session.

I worked the Vera Bradley outlet sale in 2003. I tried to work the sale this year, but it was much more complicated to be hired than when I worked. It ended up we had a lot going on that week and I was glad I didn't work the sale and miss activities at church and with our family. I did go on the "free" day along with a few other customers! I didn't spend that much money, but got some nice gifts. I may try to go every few years, but definitely won't fight the crowds to shop every year even though this is in Fort Wayne. This photo is when I was in the middle of the line to pay!

My sister made her godsons a Jeopardy game with answers from the small catechism in honor of Lamb 1's upcoming confirmation. We played some of the game with my dad, but it was taking too long and we never finished that game. Maybe next time my sister visits?

The last Saturday in April was a very full day. First Lamb 1 had confirmation questioning. He did very well.

Then my mom's church hosted an apron party for ladies. I attended as my mom's guest. They had these cute homemade decorations with the schedule of the day's events. My mom was one of the hostesses and her table had old mixing bowls with cookie cutters etc. as centerpieces.

I had taken many of my aprons from my collection to my mom to display at the party. Everyone brought one apron to tell about to the party. It was so much fun to hear about other aprons. After the party I discovered another box of my aprons as we get settled after moving. Oh well, at least I found some before the party!

My mom's apron is made out of a feed sack, mine is from Beatrix Potter's childhood home.

With the apron that my grandma gave me when I was about 10 years old. It was used as at a wedding reception for the ladies that served cake.

My mom with the apron that she made in home economics class in high school. She eventually became a home economics teacher. She wore this apron for many years early in her marriage and it is worn out. I am so glad she kept it even during her downsizing a few years ago.
I made a photo book of the apron party as a gift for my mom. She has had fun showing it to friends.

After the apron party, we went to an out of town basketball game for Lamb 1. 

Lamb 2 and 3 had to go along to Lamb 1's basketball games. Here they are standing on some famous basketball player's footprints. I don't know who it is, but some pro player from Indiana. It got to be too many games so usually Lamb 2 and 3 went to my mom's during games when Ram had class.

The Lutheran high school started a middle school team to try to build the boys skills before high school. Lamb 1 was on the 7th grade team. They learned a lot, had a lot of fun, but lost early in the tournament. I liked that all the Lutheran schools were involved in one team for boys that were really interested in basketball.

Photo Credit: Steve Blakey
Our Synodical president, Rev. Matthew Harrison was supposed to preach at our church in April in honor of our 125th anniversary. He was unable to come due to a family emergency. Our district president, Rev. Jamison Hardy, preached that day. The seminarian that assisted that day, Winston Grieser, was in 4th grade at the school that I taught at when I began teaching. Bishop Hardy was a student at CUW when I was in college. When our church photographer posted this picture with Winston on the left; Rev. Hardy preaching; and my family in the front row; I just had to laugh at how the small LCMS world collides years later. That was a very fun day with lots of friends. We are very blessed that we are able to be back in Fort Wayne and attend our church.

I entered Katie Schuermann's pie contest in April.

My sister and I are 7 years apart and ever since she was born we have been competing with each other. She was on the launch team for Katie's new book, The Harvest Raise, so she received a e-copy around the time that I was competing to try to win a t-shirt. She bragged a lot, but wasn't allowed to talk about the book with me until it was released. 

Year in Review-March 2017

March 2017

In March the first Lamb became a teenager!

My mom enjoyed having Lamb 1 over to decorate his own cake. She taught home economics so was glad to use her skills to teach her grandson and spend some one on one time with him.

Lamb 1 received this huge Lego set for his birthday. He built it quickly and displayed it in his room. 

Lamb 2 took a gymnastics class. He loved it and would like to do more, but we only allowed him to do one session mostly because of the time commitment, but also the expense.

Ram had spring break in March and I thought we should do something fun during his break. I convinced my boys to go to the Children's Museum in Indianapolis. I grew up about an hour from Indy and my family were members and went to the museum several times a year. The Lambs were a little old for it, but they put up with it to make Mama happy. I especially enjoyed the old exhibits that have been there since I was a child, even if they have updated some of them.

Same carousel that I have judged all carousels since I was a child . I think because of childhood memories, this carousel is the best!

One picture to prove Lamb 1 was with us. He really felt too old for the museum, but found some of the minerals interesting.

Some day I'll have to find the photos of me driving the Indy 500 car just like the Lambs are here.

Lamb 3 had the most fun at the museum as he was the youngest.

The special exhibit was about the circus. The Lambs had fun, but it was way too loud and too much stimulation all at once. 

Of course they had to go down this giant slide before we left. Even Ram did the slide!

We went on Pi day (3-14) and the only thing about Pi day that the museum had was this in the gift shop where you could jump the first several numbers of Pi. Everyone besides Lamb 1 had to do it in honor of Pi day. We had worn our old Pi day shirts.

After the Children's Museum we went to Blaze Pizza for $3.14 pizzas. This was the first time we went to Blaze Pizza and we were glad to hear that Fort Wayne was getting a Blaze later in 2017. Ordering pizza is difficult for our family. Ram wants gluten free; Lamb 1 wants dairy free; Ewe and Lamb 2 want as many toppings as possible; and Lamb 3 prefers just cheese. A place like Blaze can make each of us a pizza the way we want it! It was a great deal on Pi day, but it is always reasonable for our family because we can each get the pizza the way we want it. They are large enough that most of us take leftovers home.

We had a fun day trip on Pi day, but were glad to come home instead of an overnight trip.

My mom's cousin visited. He is actually closer in age to me than to my mom.  My grandma and his mom were 16 years apart and he is the youngest in the family. We had a fun afternoon with their family at my mom's house. Our two families had a total of 6 boys and just one girl. The girl is not in this picture, but all the kids played together well even though it was too cold and rainy to play outside. The Lambs don't have any first cousins, so I am glad they are getting to know some more distant cousins.

My mom and I worked together to cook lunch when they visited.  She is not used to cooking for large groups of people. She had fun making this relish tray and the relishes were quickly eaten once all the kids saw it. Days like this make me thankful that we are back in Fort Wayne when friends and family visit.

Year in Review-February 2017

February 2017

In February there was a wedding at our church. They had the wedding as part of our regular Sunday morning service. It is my prayer that my boys eventually have a beautiful wedding like this one. I continue to pray for my boys future spouses. The entire congregation was invited to a simple lunch after church. There were many friends from the community at our worship that day and it was so fun to fellowship after. We were still pretty new members of our church at this point, but we knew plenty of people that day. I kept pinching myself that day, because for the past 14 years I would have talked to my friends that would have attended that wedding as I would have not been able to attend when we lived out of state. But this was one event where I shared with my out of state friends about the great day! Bonus: We sang the same version of the Te Deum that was sung at our wedding. It is our desire to stay in this area after Ram graduates, but we don't know if that is what will really happen. So I tried to be in the moment and soak in the memories of that day as we might not be here in a few years to make memories like this.

I don't know why Blogger is putting these pictures in a different order than I did, but my dad turned 77 at the end of February.

We gave him red silk flowers to attract hummingbirds to his backyard after reading about that in botany for homeschooling.

Ram took a tour of the campus as part of one of his college classes. He took lots of pictures to show me. This light fixture is star shaped.

My brother-in-law had an Army retirement ceremony in February. We weren't able to attend, but the Lambs wore some dog tags they received from an Army recruiter on that day in his honor. Lamb 2 was scratched by another Lamb so he has bandaids on his face.

Our book club read a biography of Rosa Young. The hostess served Southern food to honor Rosa. Bonus: I sat by a mom with a baby!

The photos didn't turn out the best, but the Lambs attended a chemistry homeschool day at Science Central. Lamb 2 was picked assist with an experiment. Lamb 3 had a lot of fun testing the ph of different liquids.

In 2016 we didn't do much shopping during the months of moving and getting settled, as  we were trying to use things from our pantry and not have more things to move. But we did put our moving truck/several items for house repairs/and some needed items at our rental house on our Costco credit card. All that added up to our biggest reward we ever had. I tried to make it last as long as possible when we received it. But we were still restocking our pantry after moving and it didn't last that long, but we were thankful for the trips of "free" groceries while it lasted. It was another example of being blessed while we were in a year of transition. We are glad to be members of Costco and get the reward every year.

Year in Review- January 2017

I love going back and reading about our family adventures in old blog posts. In 2017 I entered the Facebook world, but that isn't the same as my blog. I hope to blog more in 2018 so that I can go back and read what we did.

I am going to try to get back into blogging by reviewing what I can remember that we did in 2017, one month at a time. Since I blogged so little, there is much to tell the blog!

January 2017

In January Ram began school for his master's of clinical counseling. We were both a little timid about him going back to school after age 40 and he had not worked for 6 months while we moved and got settled here. He ended up doing great and loved his classes.

The Lambs got back to homeschooling and a routine of piano once a week and looked forward to spring and summer activities.

In January we began Samaritan Ministries for health insurance. I will do a separate blog post to tell about our experience, but we were very pleased with our first year.

We participated in the Fort Wayne March for Life. The weather was unbelievable for January. We quickly took our coats off and carried them.

Photo credit: Steve Blakey

Godmother Visit

My Aunt Lori and Uncle Jim visited a couple of weeks ago. They were only in IN for a couple of days. Our side of the family got her for one day and Jim's side of the family got her for the other day. The Lambs had cross country practice, but we did go out to dinner with them.
The last time I saw them was when Lamb 1 was one month old. The last time Ram saw them was at our wedding. They were glad to meet Lamb 2 and 3 and see the rest of us. We are planning to get together next year again, we don't want to wait another 13 years! Unfortunately it was cold and windy when they were here. Hopefully next time they come it will be warmer.

It is a blessing to get visitors in Fort Wayne!

Godmother/goddaughter

Sisters

Blessed with Furniture

My sister had a friend that was moving out of state and didn't have room on their truck for everything.  We originally went to get some bookshelves. We gave away almost all our bookshelves when we moved. Many of our books are still packed up, but the Lambs really wanted their own bookshelves in their room. It ended up this friend was only a few blocks from our house. We made several trips with our van. We brought home 6 bookshelves of various sizes, 1 small table which the Lambs claimed for their bedroom, and 3 of these chairs for our porch. The Lambs really wanted some porch furniture like their piano teacher has, but I couldn't justify spending a lot of money when we are renting and porch furniture might not be right at our next house. The Lambs were thrilled to get these chairs. Next spring, I will get some pillows and these chairs will be great.

The bookshelves ended up two large ones downstairs; one for our religious books; one in my bedroom for my books (instead of piles on the floor by my bed); Lamb 1 got one for his bedroom; and one went in the playroom. We moved books off of one small bookshelf that used to be downstairs and gave it to Lamb 2/3 bedroom. We moved the books where we used to have our religious books and Lamb 1 claimed that for his Bibles etc. that were confirmation gifts.  I'm sure there will be more organizing and more moving books from one shelf to another, but I am confident that we have the right amount of bookshelves in this rental house now. I was pretty worn out after all that moving so we ordered pizza that night after a busy day. It was worth all the work and helpful to the family moving to not worry about some of the furniture they decided not to take. It was so great to get everything at once and not have to continually watch garage sales to get one bookshelf at a time.

Unbelievable Blessings

Ram and I made 3 trips last week to the 5 for a $1 book sale at our local library. Someone had donated some books that were not former library books and there were a lot of children's books by a few classic authors. I bought one copy of most of these books available. I figured I would look at them and keep what I wanted; try to sell what I didn't want to Hyde Brothers, our favorite used book store; and donate the rest to our new school library that is beginning at our church. We spent between $8-10 on these books last week.

I am not done looking at these books I got last week, but Ram took a few that I knew I did not want to Hyde Brothers. We had a few other duplicates in our home library and he took in one box to try to sell. I was so surprised when he said we got $125 credit from that box! Lamb 2 declared that was the perfect amount for our family, we can each have $25 to spend at Hyde Brothers. I'm not sure I am willing to share that much with the Lambs, but I will be more generous with their requests at the next midnight sale we go to! We were out of credit at Hyde Brothers so we are extra thankful for this credit.

Hyde Brothers keeps track of credit in the old card catalog behind Sam.

The book buyer, Sam, was excited to see this book in his hand. He said it was worth $100! I didn't keep it because it was too girly for my boys. I paid 20 cents for this $100 book. He bought all the children's books that I sent in so there were none left to donate to our school library.

I had asked Ram to look for our next book for my book club at Hyde Brothers because our local library doesn't have very many copies. Hyde Brothers didn't have any copies on the shelf. But then Ram noticed a person in line had the book I wanted at the top of their box to sell. He spoke up and Sam took a few dollars off our credit and gave the seller a $1 credit for it. It wasn't in the best condition and he may not have bought it if Ram hadn't asked for it. It is amazing that someone would sell the book I wanted at the same time that Ram was in the store. It was even more amazing that the book that I wanted was at the top of the seller's box so Ram noticed it! And it wasn't in the best condition so we got it very cheap and only used a few dollars of credit. But the copy is readable and fine to read for book club.

I have some more blessings to post about in our journey with Ram going back to school this year. But blessings like this trip to Hyde Brothers are icing on the cake and really unbelievable to me. I look back over the year and I just can't believe how good God has been to us during this journey. After the recent total eclipse, some have been talking about how God has to be our Creator when you see events like this. I agree with that, but I am even more amazed at all the little blessings like this trip to Hyde Brothers that happen in our lives. I really couldn't plan this, only God could organize this!