Christmas at Our House

Litte Mister Twister

So we all have to admit it... Daughter A can wear ANY hat she wants too and still look cute!

Little Miss A in her Christmas Dress

Three little ones wondering when we will open those presents?

Little T showing off his aminal!

This one's for you Russ!, here's Baby M in all his sweetness!

Waiting to get the food!

Sis. K , Bro. D and Daughter L in their jammies!

No Christmas tree for us this year! Our Christmas "bench" made it's appearance once again!

Awww! So sweet!

Here's another one for you Russ... Bro. D is getting all the food!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, full of love and family and good food! Here at our house, things are winding down. There are still a lot of boxes to recycle and we still have two church tables in the computer room, with borrowed chairs from our Christmas Eve dinner. There are a ton of goodies hanging around. Ack! And we still have New Year's Eve to look forward to. I can't believe it's going to be 2009. We are nine years into the new century. I remember ringing in the new century with Bro. Tom who is now gone from us and awaiting his heavenly home. That was a very special evening and now it seems like so long ago.

There have been quite a few changes around our house lately. We got rid of our "land line". Now we just have our cell phones. For three months, if you call our old phone number, it will direct you to my cell number. It feels weird to not have our "land line". At first I was paranoid that I would miss a call. Or that cell phone service would go away and then what would I do? But I'm calming down. Really, our "land line" hardly ever rang. So now there is one less bill to pay! The biggest change is that two of my youngest three kids moved out and into their own shared apartment. I've had to be careful to not write about this until I could collect myself. I'm ok now, really. Most of the time anyway. It's hard to have that gaping hole of my daughter's room staring at me, and wonder if she is coming back. Do I move on and make it into my sewing room, or should I leave it empty... just in case? And should our youngest son spread out in his room, or should we keep space for our missing young man, just in case? Big sigh. These are questions that haunt me. I'm happy for my two little nestlings that have flown the coop, they are so cute in their new home! I'm trying to concentrate on that part of it, so I don't ruin it for them. You know, by making them worry that I'm too sad over here... in my almost... empty... house. Our youngest is half way through his 16th year, so I'm in no danger of being an empty nester soon. But it's looming on that horizon and I'm kind of feeling like I want to turn back the clock several years.

Enough of that! I'm going to get organized and set my sewing machine up and finish some UFOs. (that's "unfinished objects" in sewing/quilting talk) I only have two days of work this week, and so that will leave me 5 days of getting things set up and figuring out where to go from here before the new year really starts.

Secret Sisters-Revealed!

So yesterday after church our sister's revealed who they had as their secret sisters. This is always so much fun. We take turns standing up in front and guessing who had us. Our dear Sis. "double R" got all of us girls these beautiful little fabric boxes in which she put our names back when we first drew names. (maybe in some of the pictures you can see the boxes), we were supposed to find a last present to fit in these boxes when we revealed ourselves. That was so much fun! Last year, she got us all these beautiful angel pins and she had our names on the back. We wore those pins all during secret sis time and then at the end we revealed ourselves by giving our secret sis her pin with her name on it! Sis. "double R" has such great ideas! So, without much further ado, since I'm pressed for time... here are the pictures!

Spending the Night w/ Grammy and Poppa

I am so excited today! It was Son J2 and Daughter M's anniversary recently and so they are taking off to spend some alone time. So, this will be the first time that the grandkiddies get to spend the night with us. The Dad and I are taking Miss A and Little Man J to the Light Parade here in town tonight! Maybe we'll take them to DQ first for a special dinner? It's going to be frosty cold, but perfect otherwise to stand by the side of the streets here in our small town and marvel at the homemade floats all lighted up for the season! Who knows? Maybe Santa will be on that last float waving to the crowd?

So first of all today I "get" to go to the quilt shop here in town and pick out fabric to make my dear friend, Gloria, her special quilt. I have the perfect center piece already, but need those other two materials that will make it her own. Too bad... I have to go to the quilt shop!

Thanks Giving Season starts

I really love that our holiday season begins with Thanksgiving. I believe that the whole season from Thanksgiving through New Years Day is a season of giving thanks. On Thanksgiving Day we celebrate a bountiful harvest, which we all truly do enjoy. We give thanks to God for all our many blessings and gather friends and family close around us to enjoy their company. Then it's on to a whole month of preparation culminating in Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We decorate our houses to remember Christ's birth, we gather and shop for presents for our loved ones, we plan delicious goodies to give to each other, we look forward to our church Christmas dinner celebration, all the while remembering that Christ was born one day a long time ago to save us and to bring us true "peace on earth and goodwill toward men". Every family has their own special way of doing this, and what a blessing and I am so thankful that we have the freedom to do whatever we choose to do! Even when the festivities of Christmas are over, we then celebrate the bringing in of a New Year. A New Year to live for our Lord, a New Year to give our lives for our family and brethren, a New Year to begin again the turning of the tide toward spring. We truly do have much to be thankful for beginning with our Thanksgiving celebration.

On that note, I'll post a few pictures of our Thanksgiving Day!

OKC Visiting Brethren on Halloween

Here are a few pictures from our HUGE weekend with the brethren from OKC. Our brethren here enjoyed them so much and we hope they all enjoyed us as well. I am desperately needing sleep since we stayed up every night until WAY past my bedtime. Even with gaining an hour on Saturday night, we used up every bit of it visiting on the word of God. This picture is of Grandson J, who is so squeezingly cute! Then it's on to Puppygail our new little puppy around the house! She's got such an imagination!

Here are Miss B and Daughter L all dressed up for Halloween. This picture is a milestone for Miss B. She's wearing the Halloween costume she didn't get to wear last year because Halloween pretty much marks the time that it's been a full year since she got so sick. She looks and feels great now and her momma even testified in church Sunday that she can JOG around the track at the high school! (just a little bit!)
Here are the two Sis. L's, double R and me!
Our little Grandson M with his Daddy, what superheros they both are to me!





We all got a little antsy waiting for Bro. M and Sis. C's plane to arrive so we took pictures of our socks! Here are a bunch of our brethren waiting for what seemed like forever for 8:30 to arrive so we could go get them from the airport... the trick or treaters kept them all entertained though...And here they are! Our dear brethren from OKC. Visiting and more visiting! Wow, what a great weekend

Welcome to Sis. Rachel...

Everyone hitch a ride on over to our newest bloggie sister... Sis. Rachel's blog at Happy Lil Family ! Welcome to the blogging world Sis. Rachel, we'll all be happy to hear about your sweet little family over there in OK... Love you!

My Beautiful Birthday Quilt

Here is my beautiful quilt my girls made for me. Each one of the family picked out their own piece of material. I talked to Son R. this morning and he said his came all the way from OKC with him when he was here earlier in the summer! What a treasure of a family I have and I will treasure my quilt that is so special to me. I love you all so much!

A little bit of this and a little bit of that...

I've just been muddling through life lately. Feeling a little stretched thin in places and having lots on my plate. There's been canning to do, putting the garden "to bed" so to speak and generally getting ready for fall. I've canned more this year than I have in a lot of years. It's been fun, but it's a little stressful too. Now, I'm sure I'm singing to the choir on that, because there's tons of ladies out there canning to keep themselves sustained all winter... I mean sustained as in not going to the grocery store for that can of green beans! My canning has been things like pear honey, dill pickles,sweet pickle relish, pickled beets, cinnamon pears, pickled hot peppers, elderberry syrup, Fall Gold raspberry jam, Chesterberry Jam and some last minute peach jam. I've been having fun with my steamer/juicer and steamed up the elderberries that Sis. J gave me from the forest around about and then made the elderberry syrup out of that. (Sis. D, you can have your's back! Mine turned jellyish too!) A patron at the library had me come and pick grapes at her house and so I steamed those and got the really pretty grape juice that's in my frig at the moment! I LOVE my steamer/juicer. I even threw in some of my otherwise useless apples from my tree and steamed them. The juice was delicious. No, I didn't can any green beans, we ate them fresh! Shared them with some dear visiting brethren back in August, froze some and ate the last fresh ones last night at dinner. Mmm...yummy! We did get a TON of garlic into the ground. 148 cloves of one variety, 84 of another, 20 of another and then 16 of the last kind. Each clove that we planted will turn in to a HEAD of garlic! That's a LOT of garlic if it grows. We want to make our own garlic powder and it won't be ready until late next summer. It takes a long time to grow. But my mouth is already watering for my own home grown garlic. We love garlic around here! I've been trying to sew too. In between helping my girls sew Christmas dresses and Regency Ball gowns, it's hard to get to that cute little doll I'm making for little Miss A's birthday next month! I made Daughter L two dolls so long ago when she was a little girl and I've had a fancy to make my granddaughter her own as soon as she was old enough. She'll turn four next month and by golly, I think she is ready for a dolly! I will be making it with her own little dress and bloomers at first, but then at Christmas time I will make a replica of the beautiful Christmas dress her mommy is making her! What fun! Next I'd really like to make those grandbaby boys some jammies. The Dad is still working on the house. He had a little trouble with finding why in the world a sink hole was sinking in the front yard. Don't worry! It was an old rotten tree stump that was years upon years old. He rented a stump grinder last Saturday and ground it up, filled the sink hole and hopefully now it will be fine. This Saturday we will be getting the new gutters at the roofline of the house. And then I think he will be done outside! Just in time too, because our much anticipated visiting OKC brethren are going to make another try at visiting the following weekend! Whoopee! Can you believe we are less than two weeks away from NOVEMBER?

Green House with RED door

These pictures are for Son R. living in the wilds of OKC wondering what in the world did his parents do to his old farm home.

The new color looks good, but I'm thinking what am I going to do with the plants that I carefully had selected to match the old Mauve color of the house? Now I have this gorgeous and delightfully smelling rose out front that is . . . purple. Yes, it's purple. Goes real well with the burgundy trim and RED door! I have to say that The Dad is very fond of his RED door. I'm pretty proud of it myself since Son Th. painted it. When he took the door off to bring it to the shop to paint he said to me, "Mom, you are going to be able to see yourself in this door when I'm finished with it!". I said, "Ok.", thinking really, "sure I will son!" But I tell you today, that you CAN really see yourself in that RED door! In fact, in the top picture you can sorta see how it would reflect any image with 25 feet of it. Soon, the door will have a beautiful brass kickplate on it that dear Uncle Paul used his big machines on to write "Pelkey" so nicely. It's bright; it's shiney. I mean really BRIGHT and SHINEY! We got it from FedEx yesterday and The Dad "oooed" and "aahhed" over it for a full 10 minutes and showed it to everyone in the house. (he's even brought it in to the shop today to show it off to everyone there) Then he promptly had a telephone conversation in the middle of BiMart with Uncle Paul telling him and anyone within 10 yards of us how much he loved this kickplate! Just kidding honey! I think you are cute! ;+) I'll post a picture of the door sporting it's new brass kickplate as soon as possible. So, what do you think Son R.? Will you still be able to find your old farm home when you return for a visit? Maybe not... since you might be blinded by that shiney RED door with it's brass kickplate.

The Good News is...

The good news is that Sis. C's spider bite seems no worse. But the bad news is... they are not coming this weekend. I'm so sad to not get to have them in my home, but I'm so glad and thankful that her spider bite is not getting worse. She is in tons of pain, so she needs our prayers still but thankfully her body is not sick now, just the spider bite itself is bad. They changed their plane tickets so that they can use them anytime within a year. So, we'll see them asap. Can't wait for that asap! Here's a picture of a group of us at Bro. M and Sis. C's huge dining table where they made "mi casa es su casa" (my house is your house) come alive. My heart was and still will be to do the same for them.

Visiting Brethren, on the way!

I'm so excited, I can hardly stand it! Bro. M and Sis. C are coming all the way here from Oklahoma on Friday evening and they will be here until Tues. morning. I love these dear brethren so much and I can't hardly concentrate on anything else. I'm dreaming of the wonderful visits we will have! Only a few of the brethren here in Harrisburg have met them, so I am as excited for the rest to meet them and fall in love with them too! I really want to post a picture of our finished, painted green house with the blairingly red front door, but I'll probably not get to it until next week. Until then, you'll find me getting all the "martha" stuff done for our company so that I can be "mary" while they are here!

***Urgent side note... I talked to Sis. C this morning and she told me that she was bitten by a spider maybe 4 times on her foot. She is in a lot of pain and needs the prayers of the brethren. It's already gone up her leg and throbs badly. I'll update as I hear anything... Sis. Lori

Happy Tea Party!

Here are some pictures...we are all so tired! But it was a wonderful day in the afternoon sun and breeze. What could be better than when the Lord blesses your efforts?

q

Here are a few of the beautiful teapots! And Daughter L sorting tableware...

Sis. D sets each table's elegant service out separately in her living room...

Time to fold napkins!