Saying Goodbye

Four months ago, we welcomed home our oldest son from his mission to Washington DC. Now it's time to say good bye again as he heads back to live in the area where he served. I did not think it would be so hard to say good bye again, but it is. I am excited, though, to hear about his adventures. He will be getting a job and going to school. Maybe he'll work for the CIA or get a job on Capitol Hill. He loves art and politics. Maybe he'll become a political cartoonist.

He'll be going to the Singles Ward up there. Maybe he'll meet his future wife.

So many possibilities. How can I not be happy for him? I am, but a part of a mom's heart has to heal all over again.

There's a Girl Under There Somewhere

Laura's friend, Josh, got her a big stuffed dog for her birthday. How cute is this? If you look closely, you can see a head and some toes peeking out from underneath the dog.

Container Gardening Revisited

It's been about two months since I planted my Earth Box Cherry Tomatoes. They are way taller now and need tomato cages to support their growth. My daughter just harvested the first tomato a couple of days ago. It really has been a breeze using the Earth Boxes. Next year I want to get started earlier and be able to harvest more. This year all I planted was tomatoes, beans and a watermelon plant. While the beans are doing great and the watermelon plant looks green and healthy, I don't know if I'll get any harvest from them. I planted pretty late in the season. The picture below was taken two months ago. Look how they've grown.

Laura's Ninth Birthday

As if this week wasn't busy enough, Friday night was Laura's ninth birthday party. This party had change written all over it. Earlier this year we were talking about what kind of party to have. Since Laura's birthday is in August, she thought it would be fun to have a "Winter Party". I thought that was a neat idea. I set about gathering ideas for games and refreshments and ordering "winter" party supplies from Oriental Traders. About a month ago, Laura decided that since she and her friends are so into "Pokemon" that it would be more fun to have a Pokemon party. WHAT! No Way! What about the snowmen and winter games and snow cones?

We compromised and decided to have a Winter/Pokemon party. It was strange, but the kids didn't care. They had fun.

The next change came a few days before the party. I started doing a "Fourth Friday Game Night" at church a few years ago. It has gone through changes itself. We used to have a big group. We would play games and let the smaller children play their own fun games. People moved and youth grew up and moved away as often happens. Our group went a little inactive. It was resurrected several times, but usually would not meet in the summer since people were gone on vacations.

This month there was talk of having "Game Night" again since it was the 4th Friday. I figured, "oh, well...I've already made a change. What's one more?" So we had Laura's party at church in the Primary room. The younger children played in the cultural hall during this time, but later we all shared refreshments.




We did not play all of the games I had planned, but the kids had fun. We did decorate snowmen picture frames for the above picture. Leiden made some amazing Pokemon drawings on the computer and led the kids on a hide and seek to find them. We decorated our own cupcakes and opened presents. The kids played Pokemon Sorry. Two and a half hours later it was time to go home. I think our Winter Pokemon party was a success. And so was Game Night.






The older boys were not there on Friday night for Laura's party. They had already planned to take a little road trip to visit with friends. Since Logan will be leaving next week, they had to take the opportunity to visit while they could. But they were back on Saturday to sing Happy Birthday to their sister.

Dinner at Chili's

Lane had an interview with the Stake President tonight to get a temple recommend. We decided to go out to dinner as a family one last time before Logan leaves. Chili's is one of our favorite places, so that's where we went.




We love the chips and queso. We got assorted burgers, chicken fried steak, steamed broccoli and mashed potatoes and Laura got her standard, Mac & Cheese. Good times!

The Temple...

It was with reverent anticipation that we prepared to go to the temple with our second oldest son. He is not leaving for his mission for a month or so, but since his brother will be leaving soon, we wanted to go early and share in this special occation. This is the OKC Temple at night. Isn't it beautiful?

Two Down and Three to Go or The nest is getting emptier...

It's hard to believe that my oldest son, Logan, will be moving to Virginia to live in just 4 days. He served his mission in the Washington DC South mission which encompasses the northern part of Virginia. He met some wonderful people there and has the desire to go back to live for a while. I could not think of a better place for him to be (except here in Oklahoma-haha). He will be surrounded by friends who can help if the need arises. Although, I will be sad to see him go, I am excited to see what this next phase of his life will bring.

He has always loved art and politics. Being close to Washington DC will be a great place for him to exercise his love of both.

So...Logan leaves in 4 days and his brother Lane will be leaving in a little over a month. Yikes! I don't know if a mother is ever ready to let her children go. At least this mother isn't, but I know it has to be. I'm excited for my children. I know they will be outstanding adults. They have been outstanding youth.

Dear Elder Pierce...

The paperwork had been submitted. Now all we had to do was wait. And wait. And wait. Even in this day of internet-sent mission papers, we still had to wait for that large white envelope to arrive in the mail.

We made several trips to the post office to get the mail early to see if today was the day. Nope! But Monday, August 11, 2008 was the red-letter day at our house. It worked out great anyway, that it was a week later than we had hoped. Larry had work to do in Kansas the week before, so we were looking at the prospect of reading the letter to him over the phone. So...everything worked out for the best.

We gathered in the living room anxiously waiting for Lane to open his letter and read the first few lines that would tell him his fate for the next two years.

"Dear Elder Pierce,

You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You are assigned to labor in the Nevada Las Vegas West Mission. "

Whoo-hoo! Pretty exciting. Lane reports to the MTC October 1st, so there is not a lot of time to prepare. Luckily, we are mostly prepared anyway. This is our second son to send out on a mission. Lane's older brother Logan just returned in April from serving two years in the Washington DC South Mission.

People who are not members of our church have asked how I could send my son away for two years with no contact but emails and two phone calls a year (Mother's Day and Christmas). There truly is no where I would rather have him be at this time in his life that serving a mission and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with those who have a desire to hear.

We looked forward to hearing about Logan's adventures while on his mission. (Elder Pierce-On a Mission blog) We can't wait to hear what this Elder Pierce will have to say and who he will meet.

And you can be sure that I'll share his adventures with you.

Summertime...

Summertime,
And the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin'
And the cotton is high

Your daddy's rich
And your mamma's good lookin'
So hush little baby
Don't you cry

Here is a picture of our pond from the woods. I love the mirror image. Catfish really are jumping. It is so fun to bring bread to the pond to feed the fish. It's a regular feeding frenzy. And that square thing in the middle of the pond is a turtle trap. We get so many turtles and they are quite aggressive in eating the fish. We need a little crowd control.

Youth Conference

We had our Youth Conference this past weekend. This is an annual event in which the LDS youth in our stake get together to attend meetings to teach and lift them spiritually, participate in a day of service and have lots of fun.

This picture is from the talent show. Two of my sons and their friends played "air guitar" to "Are You Going to be my Girl?" by Jet. My son, Luke makes one dimentional guitars out of wood, paints them and sells them. He's pretty talented. He made the guitars in the picture. He is the lead "singer" with the scarf hanging out of his jacket pocket. Another son is in the top hat with the red tie.

Here is a guitar that my son made especially for Youth Conference. The theme this year was taken from the Book of Mormon. "Be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in good works" (Mosiah 5:15). There is a picture of a beefy bee being steadfast and immovable against the wages of sin.



On Thursday evening, the kids got together to register, do paper bag skits and have ice cream sundaes. Friday morning, they started early and headed out to do service. Some youth and leaders worked at the local food bank. Others worked at a nursing home and a third group went to The Christmas Connection. This is a place that offers free school supplies in August and a place to shop for Chrismas for children who might not be able to afford these things. After a day of service, there was a dance.

Saturday was the day prepared for talks from different leaders in the church. There was a talk about prayer by Bishop Larry Pierce. He has had some really amazing stories lately about how prayer and inspiration have helped him. One day he was working to move a huge and heavy portable building. He felt inspired to stop and say a prayer. Just about a minute after that, the building slipped and fell onto a concrete block crushing it to bits. The building was stopped by another block so luckily Larry was not crushed, too. A prayer was answered.

Another time recently, Bishop Pierce met with a young man in his ward who was struggling. He felt that God did not know that he existed and that his prayers were not heard. This young man did not like his job and had applied for another job but had not heard anything for a while. Before Bishop Pierce left, he asked if they could pray together that this young man would get his job. It wasn't 15 minutes later when someone at the store called telling this young man that he was hired. The Power of Prayer is real.

Another talk was given by Sister Couch. She spoke about cell phones and compared them to the still small voice of the Holy Ghost. She used the popular phrases from the different cell phone companies to show the kids how they needed to be in tune to hear the Holy Ghost. "Can you hear me now?" and "Dead Zones" were just two of the phrases she focused on. The kids loved it and could really relate.

There were talks about missionary work, the importance of keeping a journal and group dating to avoid dating pitfalls that can arise when teens begin single dating too early.

Then it was time for dinner. A wonderful spaghetti dinner was planned, followed by another dance and finally testimony meeting. Those are always emotional. The youth get up and bear testimony about whatever touches their heart to say. It was a very wonderful and very exhausting three days. I can't wait until next year.

25th Anniversary- Adding On

This October 1st my husband and I will celebrate 25 years of marriage. Might I just say WOW! And they said it wouldn't last (haha). Instead of taking some fabulous vacation that would only last a week(minus pictures and memories), we decided to build an addition to our home. I wanted to add an exercise room. One of my children wanted to add an upstairs. We started brainstorming and decided that we would indeed add two stories. The first floor will be an exercise room. The second floor will be our new bedroom. It is going to be amazing. It will be bigger than the bedroom we have now and will be high up in the trees overlooking the pond. It will have two big bay windows with window seats for curling up and reading books to my children and a fireplace. So cool! Stay tuned for further developments.

Container Gardening

I am a lazy gardener. I don't like to weed and I don't like the Oklahoma heat of summer. But I do like fresh veggies and the process of growing my own.

Over the years I have tried to love gardening. Every spring my husband tills the garden. I get out and ho, ho, ho, and weed, weed, weed. I plant my nice little rows of seeds and plants. I try to consistently water. By July my garden has become a jungle. It is hot. I have lost interest in weeding, watering or fresh produce. I have yellow submarine cucumbers and I just don't care anymore.

So...this year I am trying container gardening, specifically Earth boxes. This is a plastic box with a water receptacle in the bottom of the container. I have only planted tomatoes and beans because I decided to do this only about a month ago. All of the vegetable plants were gone from the gardening stores except 3 tomato plants. I have two cherry tomato plants growing and bearing tomatoes already and one very scrawny Roma tomato plant that I started out in a pot with no drainage hole. (sigh) Amazingly, it is starting to put off new leaves in the Earthbox.

I love how easy this has been so far. We put dirt, fertilizer and plants in the box. We watered up to the line and just let it be. Each morning I add about 1-2 cups of water with the hose and it lasts all day. If it weren't so hot here, I might only have to water every other day. There are NO weeds! I love that the most. There is a plastic cover over the Earthbox to keep weeds out.

Before I bought these boxes (from Amazon.com-free shipping) I did some research on them. The Earth box was "invented" by commercial farmers in order to produce more in less space with less water and fertilizer.

I don't suppose the Earthbox will replace a garden spot in the backyard, but for this lazy gardener, I love walking out on my back deck and finishing my daily gardening chores in about 5 minutes.

The View from the Cabin

"You've got to have a dream. If you don't have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true? South Pacific

My dream is to build a log cabin looking out on the pond. I have a plan all picked out. It will have an open downstairs with an L-shaped kitchen, a dining room and living area combined. There will be a large stone fireplace, two bedrooms and a bath. Upstairs will be a huge loft/family room area for grandchildren to sleep over. There will be a railing to look over onto the downstairs and throw confetti at midnight on New Years Eve. There will also be a cat walk out to an upstairs balcony. You've got to have a dream. If you click on the picture, it will enlarge. You can see Willow Island and the red canoe.

Minnows

The space between the creek and the pond is home to hundreds of little minnows. My daughter has been having a blast watching their activity. We had some friends over to swim the other day. After everyone left except my daughters friend, and after I had gone inside, my daughter and her friend decided it would be interesting to bring some minnows to the POOL! It was not until two days later that I decided to go for a swim. Imagine my surprise to find about 50 dead minnows in the pool. I talked to my daugher and got conflicting reports. I finally got to the bottom of the story and was not happy. I explained to my daughter why this was NOT a good idea. I don't think she will do this again. Someday I'm sure that we will look back on this and laugh, but not yet.

Apples and Peaches and Pears, Oh My...

For some reason, our fruit trees are producing this year. We have had some trees for 12 years and have barely gotten a basketful of fruit. But this year, I don't know why, our trees are loaded. We have about 30 assorted fruit and nut trees planted around the yard. Besides the peaches and pears, we have several varieties of apples. One time I bought some Honey Crisp apples at the health food store. They were the BEST tasting apples I've ever had. They really were crisp and did taste like honey. I had to do a search to find out how to get my own trees. I found some at Stark Brothers Nursery. We now have Honey Crisp, Golden Delicious and Red Delicious and a few other varieties that I can't remember. Yum. Apple Crisp, Apple-Cranberry Chutney, applesauce, German Apple Pancake, Apple Bread, Baked Apples, Apples and Cinnamon...

We also have cherry trees, nectarine and fig trees, but have not gotten much yield from them yet. The pecan and almond trees will take a while, but some day we will be abundantly nuts.

Five Little Ducks

I decided to get the kids together down by the pond one evening for a group picture. My oldest son will be leaving soon to go out into the world and seek his fortune. My second son will be leaving on a mission soon. He will be gone for two years. My third son will leave next April to serve a mission for our church. It won't be long before we will only have two children at home.

One of my favorite books to read to my children when they were little was Five Little Ducks.

Five little ducks went out one day,
Over the hill and far away,
Mother Duck said, "Quack, quack, quack, quack.
But only four little ducks came back.

Four little ducks went out one day
Over the hill and far away
Mother Duck said, "Quack, quack, quack, quack."
But only three little ducks came back.

Three little ducks went out one day
Over the hill and far away
Mother Duck said, "Quack, quack, quack, quack."
But only two little ducks came back.

Two little ducks went out one day
Over the hill and far away
Mother Duck said, "Quack, quack, quack, quack."
But only one little duck came back.

One little duck went out one day
Over the hill and far away
Mother Duck said, "Quack, quack, quack, quack."
But none of the five little ducks came back.

Sad mother duck went out one day
Over the hill and far away
Mother Duck said, "quack, quack, quack, quack."
And all of the five little ducks came back.

This mother duck is a little sad that her ducklings are leaving the nest, but happy to know that they will come home bringing their families with them. Our nest will just get bigger and bigger.

The Pond

When we bought our ten acres, it was pretty amazing right from the beginning. My husband worked really hard to make it even more beautiful. We had a boggy area filled with blackberry bushes and snakes! that we would run across to get to the woods. One day we were talking and decided that maybe we could dig out the boggy area and put a pond in. We got some estimates and visited with a couple of pond builders and decided that yes this would work.

There were three large willow trees in the middle of the boggy field. I wanted to keep them and make an island in our pond. Our builder said that we could do that. I named it Willow Island.

It was really exciting watching the pond being dug. Our three oldest boys were about 8,10 and 12. The 8 and 10 year old had a blast "helping". They were covered in red dirt for days getting down in the opening for the pond. The funnest day was when we discovered quicksand over in an area of the pond. It is covered with water now. Fish have been added, too. We have catfish, perch and some bass. They are fun to watch. We don't fish, but we love to invite people over that do.

One winter our pond froze. It was really exciting. The ice was thick enough to sled on. I imagined that this might happen each winter, but it did not. It has been 8 winters since the pond froze. We have had snow, but no frozen pond to sled across. We will have to live on memories.

The Pergola

The back of our house faces west. It is VERY hot in the summer in Oklahoma. We have a deck on the back of our house, but it was often too hot to enjoy because of the extreme heat. We decided to add a pergola.

According to Wikipedia a pergola is: a garden feature forming a shaded walk or passageway of pillars that support cross beams and a sturdy open lattice, upon which woody vines are trained. As a type of gazebo, it may also be part of a building, as protection for an open terrace.

We don't have the woody vines but we do have lattice work across the top for shade. We also added some hanging baskets and some lights around the top. The fireplace was already there. Now it is a lovely place to visit. We still don't come out in the heat of the evening in the summer, but a pergola sure has helped to make our back deck more user-friendly. The lights added just the right touch.

Elders Woods

We are a family of seven. We live on 10 acres out in the country. We have a pond, a meadow and a woods. We named our woods, "Elders Woods" after the many missionaries who visited here on their p-day. We are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We belong to the church that sends missionaries out two by two on bicycles to share our beliefs with others.

LDS missionaries are dedicated young men who voluntarily give two years of their lives in service to the Lord. Missionaries work hard all week, but one day a week is called their p-day or preparation day. This is the day that they can catch up with laundry, email and letters to family. This is also their day to relax. We used to have missionaries come over to our property on their p-day and ride their bikes in the field. We had some pretty sweet hills at that time that they liked to ride. We also had a woods. One day an elder, (can't remember who) asked if we minded if he and his companion cut a trail through our woods in order to ride bikes and make it more interesting. We thought that was a great idea and so Elders Woods was born.

Each p-day for a while missionaries would come and cut trails through the woods. We met several different missionaries as companionships changed. We thought it only fitting to name our woods after these elders who worked so hard. They have gone home, but the trails remain to remind us of the good times we spent with these hard-working, service-minded young men.

We have three trails in our woods now and a tree house that we had built a couple of years ago. I love walking through the woods and watching birds and rabbits dart thorugh the bushes. In May the smell of the honeysuckle vines is intoxicating. The mulberry tree begins to share its fruit. The woods is a place of peace for me. I am grateful to have this wonderful place to go and be still and ponder.

Over in the Meadow

I decided to name my blog after a song that I used to sing to my children years ago. I would put in the Raffi tape, "Baby Beluga" and we would sing along. One of my favorite songs besides "Baby Beluga" was "Over in the Meadow."

Now we live out in the country and we have our own meadow and our own pond in the sun. These are flowers from our meadow. We have catfish in our pond, two paddleboats and a red canoe. Life is good.