My Hannah Elise turned 7 yesterday, the 13th. We celebrated at my sisters home. Hannah had requested Aunt Margaret make her chicken enchiladas and pizza for Cousin Steven and Elena who don’t like chicken enchiladas. She also requested that her cake be strawberry. Aunt Margaret and Cousin Shayna made the actual icing and decoration of the cake a surprise. Shayna decorated the room with ladybugs and flowers and streamers in green and pink. Nana, Uncle Conrad, Aunt Margaret, Steven, Isaac, Shayna, Gaelan and Emily (with Tad in utero), Lizzy, Elena, Hoppy and I rounded out the revelers. .
Here is Hoppy in a few pic’s highlighted from Birth to age 7.:
 


 

 


                                                                         a rare “toothy” smile from Lizzy

 

I forget what they were looking at….                          Dress from Emily & Gaelan

A certificate for a shopping spree to the Dollar Store with Shayna!
Psalm 127: 4-5a:
 ⁴As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth.  ⁵Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them

Thank you dearest Lord for Hannah Elise, she is a joy and blessing from your hand. May you bless her all her days, and keep her in Your ways, In Jesus name, Amen.

Rejoice in the Lord always!
~Kate

Picking up where we left off in March, here’s a quick run down…and some news for xangaland mixed in…re: we’ve bought a farm….(mom laughs when I say that since the only animals on it are cats for the present) But, we’ve bought a home on a little less than 9.5 acres…. Livin’ the dream! so you’ll see pics from that:
First up, our modest swim wear arrives and a quick model:
 
Next, a bonfire and campout at the G farm:
 
   
 

I call this shot, Bradley Vaughn at Dawn:
 

Some of the ladies making breakfast for the group that stayed over night….we were all awake before dawn thanks to an over achieving guinea hen, who I know had at least one air soft pellet shot at it from the boys tent to the cheers of the other campers.

Our Farm: The farm came with 3 kittens (whom we requested along with their mother, we’ll need mousers after all) and at least 8 others (we didn’t want) thrown in. .

 
 

                                                          Wilhelmina Luna Cocoa Dally            Hoppy with an arm full.
 

Fred Leo Dally                                George Recees Piglet Dally


Our trip to IN and PA for a wedding:
 

PA:                                                                                                        Mother of groom, & my friend:Cindy

                                                                                                         Bride & Groom far right in dk. blue

Our hostess, Hazel:


                                                                                                    Hoppy playing with Aunt Cindy’s scarf.

That’s it, speed pic. blogging, I think I’ve taken over Cindy’s “Photo”Blogging.
Have a blessed week, ours is whopper busy:
~Kate

I’ve had my issues with them recently, mainly getting hacked like nobodies business, despite doing everything facebook said to do.  I now have my computer set to wipe all cookies/temp. internet files/ etc…. after every session. I also re-set to a new password every week now. Bit of a pain, since every session is like new and I have to sign in on all sites and all…but worth it I feel. At any rate, many of you probably heard this bit, but I didn’t know about it until the newsletter I get from consumer reports. So, just FYI to those of us who didn’t know how nutso the facebook guys can be:

“And Facebook? It was a Consumer Reports web site that blew the whistle on this online social network site when it quietly decided to change longstanding privacy policies.

With virtually no notice to its more than 200 million users, Facebook tried to slip through an astonishingly invasive plan to eliminate virtually all user privacy rights:

Talk about signing your life away — or that of your child, spouse, or unwitting parent! But after the uproar unleashed by our disclosure, Facebook quickly retracted the outrageous policy.”

I’m glad they retracted it, but keep an eye out gang, if you use them, check now and then to see if they’re trying to get all Communist on you.

~Kate.

A smattering of pictures to cover various thingy’s. Some get togethers for Christmas time, just for fun, etc…:
   
Jewel V., Lizzy, Elena, Jhanna V.,Chloe V., Mae C, Hannah

It’s blurry, but a great time in the straw bales: The C family, Dorny family and my gals.
 
Elena with part of her cowgirl set she got for her birthday…and that Lazy ‘ol Dog!

Sweet Jewelly V.
And in Feb I think or March it was, we went up to the G homestead to put on another cover to their green house which had blown away in a whopper wind storm one night….we actually didn’t get it up because the cover ended up being the wrong size, but we did get some chickens and rabbits moved. It was bitingly cold that day too! Brrr…  

  We got it up with the help of some other friends about a week or so later.
Sometime in Feb/Mar. we went with the V. family and the Dorny’s to an Alpaca Farm a few hours north…it was great fun, but also, really really cold!

While the Dorny’s and Mrs.C & her kids lived with us, I had Nana’s room (while she stayed with Margaret & then went to Fl). In order for us to do our separate homeschooling, the girls and I used Nanas room. You can see the mess her room is from when I had moved a bunch of my stuff in there in order to give Steve & Heather more space in my room. This video is of two of the girls practicing their ballet to a selection from our Composer study on Johanne S. Bach.:

And video of Mr. Dorny playing “Monster” with the kids. The jist of the game is: the “Monster” hides while everyone counts, then they go looking for the Monster who then jumps out on them and everyone runs for base.

In March, the Dorny’s began to move back to Fl. We kept their dogs until they found a place. We spent some time with the G’s and the V’s (who have since moved to TX… We miss you guys!!!)

Hoppy in Connor G’s boots.                 Liz & Jewel                              Jewel & Angela V.
 
Hoppy and her special buddy Chloe….she misses her lots, asks to call her even.

And the early hours of the day 3 or 4 am, the dogs got me up to show me it was snowing! . Then our winter wonderland picture at a more sensible hour!

And a video of the romp in the snow. Elena says “Oh my gosh! ” at the end, cause she discovers that Domino’s (the black standard poodle) giant Pooh Bear doll is frozen to the ground! He was very sad mourning over it, but perked up when it thawed out enough for him to dig it up. Pooh became an outside bear after that! .
And that’s enough for now….
Have a blessed rest of the week gang.
~Kate

So, I had left off our re-cap, cause I wasn’t in the mood or had the time to fiddle around with xanga and bunches of pictures and so forth.
I’ll pick up where I left off….The short -short version. First up, Christmas morning, the girls in their finery and opening some presents from the Sheriff’s Office which Frankie’s co-workers sent. We had an open house after the a.m. family bit, so we were joined by the V family, the T’s,the C’s, the A’s (who aren’t really pictured) The G’s and maybe a few others…..
 

Mae C. & Lizzy                                               Mr.&Mrs. V


Shayna & Hoppy…  Hoppy opening makeup from the officers and Uncle Conrad saying “from who?”
 
Hats from the CRT team! Elena wears hers non-stop.  Lizzy with a gift from the Van M’s in FL.

My girls all kitted out in their SCSO outfits! Mister!!!!

What is Christmas without……TWISTER?!!!  All boy game of course, we no mix the genders…no…no…
So we have Cousins Gaelan and Isaac, Bradley V. and David A. (Gael’s brother-in-law)
 

Miss Crystal T. holding Declan a.k.a. “Muppet”. The son of the family that lived with us for a bit in the fall.

And poor Baxter, he was played with quite thoroughly and bore it all very patiently.

On to January and Elena’s 10th birthday. She was joined by her buddy, Holly G. who celebrated her birthday around the same time- so we combo-ed a party on the fly at a small group meal we opened our house up for after church, it was a spontaneous, if you come, you’ll be at a party…so have fun!

Elena, Holly & Hoppy w/ the pinata (victim) …….Chloe V.

Some how during this party, people started getting dangled….it was quite amusing in an odd way…

Lizzy dangled…

Holly G., Amanda G., Connor G. dangling our Hoppy..

Connor G. and his Mom…a slow horse I’m thinking..   Elena tickling Chloe (a.k.a. Dimples)

Mr. V dangling Chloe V.                 Mrs. V, Jhanna V. and Baby H.

Mr. G & Amanda G.     A sweet pic…..   The Vlettes helping with baby H.

Jhanna and the pinata….and chillin’ on the horse…

Bradley V.: “No Pictures! No Comment”….    Mr. G. grabbin’ some food.

Lanie & Holly’s masterpiece…..         Elena’s gift made by Amanda!
 
Holly opening a gift ….         A Mr. G. pile-on…
 
One more Mr. G!!

And lastly:

So, that’s us up through part of Jan…..more to come…
~Kate.

and so, I’m on youtube and I stumble on this really interesting young entertainer.He is called Vitas, a knickname of sorts. 

He happens to be a Russian male soprano, or countertenor I think they are called…something like that. At any rate. He is a pop singer and very popular in China. The red scarf is worn for this song because of the really odd video he made for it where he has gills; someone mentioned that whoever came up with his video subject didn’t fit the translation at all. At any rate 3 of the videos I saw, looking for the translation in English, showed him in different outfits but always the red scarf; however in other videos he does not wear a scarf. Btw, check out the audience they show you after he sings the “chorus” .

We’ve been going through the Bible, starting from Genesis, a chapter after every meal and we’re in 1 Samuel now.
So, we’re cruising along reading through, and we read the chapter on David and Goliath.
Goliath, being a Philistine, is a bad guy.  Course, if you’ve ever seen Davey & Goliath from the Lutheran clay animation series, you will know that Goliath is the name of Davey’s faithful and doofy dog.  My little Hannah named her favorite stuffed dog Goliath in his honor, well and good.
So, we read of Goliath and his wretched obnoxious defiance of the One True God and we read of how David kills him by slinging a stone which “sank” into Goliath’s forehead.  Next thing we know, Hannah is crying miserably.
Me: “What’s the matter Hannah?”
Han: “Goliath was a bad guy?”
Me: “Yes honey. He was bad, and David killed him”
Han: “But he was a bad guy?” sniffling miserably here..
Me: confused “Yes hun, a bad guy….” light dawns …”are you upset because you named your dog Goliath?”
Han: bursting into tears “Yeeeeees! I don’t want him to be a bad guy!”
Me: trying not to laugh “Hannah, your Goliath is a good dog. It’s okay. Your Goliath is good. That Goliath was bad, but yours is good. It’s okay.”

Golly, girls are great What fun we have as we trundle through life.
Course all this brought back Elizabeth’s answer at 6 years old as to why God flooded the earth.
“Because people were singing bad songs, and it annoyed God.”

When you here bad music and see a rainbow, Praise God for His promise not to flood us again…there’s an awful lot of bad and annoying songs out there! .