Lantana, Birds, Gifts, God Who Saves

We have an exciting week ahead. Tim is putting the finishing touches on our master bedroom. We should be able to move things back into it, Wednesday. Ben's coming over to help Tim move the dressers and bed to the master. Then he will move the bed for the guest room into that room and put it together. We'll both them add tables, lamps and steps to the bed.

Tuesday we will move clothes once Tim puts up the closet shelves. My clothes are in two places; tops are in the laundry room and pants are in the closet in the room we're in now. When we get all of the things in, I'll post a picture.

This is my gorgeous lantana plant. My granddaughters were over Sunday and the three year old remembered that if she touched the leaves, she'd smell the scent it has. She told her sister about it.

 This is our bird feeder for chickadees. It was just about full of birds at dinner time. Tim filled the tube with seed and more birds came to eat. Sometimes it's truly amazing how many we attract.

I spent a lot of time outside today.  I tied up the tomatoes and picked one while I was there. I also picked two strawberries. Seems like the strawberries really slowed down after our first crop. There are more flowers but not sure how many more we'll get.

We have lots of tomatoes on the vine. I'm hoping we get a little bit more of the hot days so they will ripen. If they don't, we'll make fried, green tomatoes.


We now have an 8 year old in the family. Kaelynn turned 8 Friday. She had a weekend full of parties.
By Sunday, she said she didn't want any cake. My son was very smart to order a Dairy Queen cake which is mostly ice cream. Both girls ate it because it wasn't really cake.

Seems Kaelynn got a great variety of gifts. Many were games, clothes, books or fun science things.

Ben found the coolest gift for Kaelynn. This snap circuits was amazing! Kaelynn loved following the directions to  make the light bulb light up. She rewired it to make music, or turn on an alarm. She spent about 2 hours in all putting different circuits together. It was pretty interesting to watch her catch on to what she needed for different set ups. 

She began to wonder out loud what would happen if she did this or that. It was pretty cool. We told her that's how scientists work. They ask a question then keep notes on what they did and what happened. This is a fantastic way to get science into daily life.

Another great gift was this Tasty Science kit.  She and Ben made something like a pixie stix with sugar and flavoring put together.  They also made a carbonated beverage that was watermelon flavored. She loved the  bubbles she made by mixing things together.

Ben and the kids went swimming. It's so much fun to hear kids in the pool again, laughing and screaming. Why do girls scream in the pool? We've had neighbor's girls scream, and now these little ones. The girls have some so far this year. They both came with little or no experience in a pool. Zoey can swim and crawl onto and off of the rafts with the water wings on.

Kaelynn can swim to the bottom of the pool and rub her belly on the bottom.

Seeing Ben as a 'dad' is a wonderful thing. He's a foster dad, but a dad all the same.

Verse of the Day: 2 Corinthians 5:17


Here is a brand new single from Matthew West called, The God Who Stays. It is an amazing song with a story to tell. Give it a listen.


Blessing of the Day: We got some things outside done including the grass cut. We had Chipotle for dinner. We use our gift cards that we earn from using our credit cards.
I got to hang out with Zoey this morning.

Thanks for stopping by.
Blessings,