Summer’s Close

Summer is wrapping up for us and with the end of summer came the end of our summer reading challenge.  I wasn’t as organized as I usually am about this year’s reading challenge.  I think I was being a little lazy actually and the library changed their program into something ridiculous so that sort of took the wind out my sails too. Thankfully I managed to think of something and it worked to get my kids reading this summer.  I bought them Sonlight’s summer readers.   Strawberry and Chocolate shared a pack, Bubble Gum and Blue-Raspberry got their own.  It worked out really well.  Sonlight packaged them up so nice, it was like they each got a present!

Anyway, the challenge was to get the books read before the end of July and in return I would take them to Nelson’s and buy them an ice-cream cone!  They all finished the challenge earlier then the date I set, so off we went! 

        

It was a magnificent day!  Warm, bright, not muggy!

         

I was a good girl, I didn’t have any ice-cream.  I was too busy wiping up spills and dolling out the wet wipes! 

Afterward, we decided to surprise the little people by taking them to the most adorable park ever created:  Teddy Bear Park.

I love it that my teens will still be in family photos, and go to the park with us.  lol

   

Isn’t that cool?  The whole park is like a squishy Astroturf, it’s really fun to walk on.

We ended our adventure at the Stillwater Farmer’s Market, which was quaint and delightful.  My husband spoke my love language and paid the big bucks for a gallon of pure maple syrup!  I am one blessed woman!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

The Most Exciting NEWS

This probably won’t be that exciting to YOU necessarily, but it is most definitely the most exciting news about going to the Teach Them Diligently homeschool conference to US.  You probably think I’m going to say that I’m pregnant or something…haha!  Sorry, while that would be exciting that’s NOT it!

While we in Omaha Mr. Taffy got to go to the Men’s Breakfasts, one of the breakfasts was lead by our most favorite Dr. Voddie Baucham.  Well, during that breakfast Voddie announced that he will be taking another trip to Israel and was inviting anybody who wanted to come! 

Hello?! 

Obviously it’s not free.  After the homeschool conference and graduation, Mr. Taffy and I got to go away to celebrate our anniversary.  We didn’t go far, but it was wonderful nonetheless and while we were gone we prayed through and asked, “Could we really go?”

Well the answer is a JOYFILLED Yes!! 

We are going Israel!

If you remember a while back I said one the things we wanted to do for our 20th wedding anniversary was go to Israel, we had pretty much given up on that dream but then this came up and while it’s not on our anniversary, it’s still during our 20th year of marriage!  Oh my!  I still can hardly believe it. 

We booked our spots on the tour!  We bought our plane tickets!  We still have more to pay, obviously we couldn’t pay for everything up front, but we’ll work it out. 

So in light of going to Israel in February, we have a renewed desire to loose weight.  And have I ever found the perfect solution!  (Another Cliff Hanger!)

The Battle is the Lord’s,

Mrs. Taffy

Signs of spring

Now these didn’t come from my own yard, because my yard still looks like this: that pavement is my driveway!

But that splash of sunshine on my dining room table is a sign of spring, it IS coming.

I mainly wanted to give you a little update on more intimate things in my life.  The parts I don’t like to talk about, but that need to be talked about.  I have some good news really.  God is showing Himself faithful to all our prayers, yours and mine.  I knew He would, I was just hoping I wouldn’t have to wait forever!  (sheepish grin) 

Mr. Taffy and I are getting to a better spot in our relationship.  Granted we aren’t where we want to be but we are getting there.  Our issues got put on hold as we were dealing with issues created by one of our children.  We’ve decided that this distraction isn’t going to get the best of us and we have repurposed to spend time on reigniting the love and passion between us. I’m so thankful for our daughter Strawberry who gives of her time freely so Mr. Taffy and I can spend time together, alone.  I’ve been reading a certain book by Gary Chapman, the one about Seasons of Marriage. I’ve just determined that our marriage has been in a season of winter for far too long and I am purposed to get us back into the spring.  I confess it everywhere.  Even when the snow is still coming down.  Even when the temperature falls below zero.  God has promised that we will have seasons (all of them), until His Son’s return so I KNOW that spring will come.  It has to come.  God spoke it.

Things aren’t where we want them with our hurting son but we are seeing some improvement.  As much as it hurts to talk about we have had to let go of some of our expectations and dreams for him.  Our hearts grieve continually but God is full of mercy and grace and I’m constantly praying that my son gets ahold of that mercy and grace and doesn’t let go.  Most of this battle is spiritual.  So in some aspects I am very confident in the outcome.  That doesn’t mean that I’m enjoying the war though.  Yuck.  We had to make some hard decisions recently and enforce some heart-breaking consequences.  But there has also been much mercy exhibited. I hope my son can grab ahold of the mercy part and dwell there.  We are still so proud of him, love him so deeply and truly want the best for him. 

I realize I’m being rather vague but it’s out of respect for both my husband and my son.  I always admire people who can be completely honest about their situations but wonder how they keep from hurting people in the process.  Someday, when all hearts are healed, then I will reveal all the details that make a testimony interesting and powerful.

I wanted to thank YOU though, dear Reader.  You have been so kind to me, leaving me encouraging comments, sending me emails telling me of your own trails and hurts.  Thank for you praying.  Thank you for caring.  Thank you for hanging with me during this time of “great stretching.”

³ I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, ⁴ always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy,⁵ for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, ⁶ being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ; ⁷ just as it is right for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as both in my chains and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers with me of grace. ⁸ For God is my witness, how greatly I long for you all with the affection of Jesus Christ.

⁹ And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, ¹⁰ that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, ¹¹ being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.  Philippians 1:3-11

With love and gratitude,

Mrs. Taffy

What does love look like?

Love has a lot of faces and Valentine’s Day always gets me in the mood to share my love and show my love to the people around me.  In our house, the kids have come to accept that Valentine’s Day is a holiday for married people, after all, the history of St. Valentine’s has to do with keeping marriage lawful.  Still, it’s hard not to succumb to all the pink and heart and chocolate and diamond advertising everywhere.  And I do enjoy making them a delicious treat and flooding their ears with terms of endearment.

I’ve given up having expectation about Valentine’s Day.  There just isn’t really any point or the point is to express my love to others, not expect to receive love from others.  That being said, my husband has pretty much astounded me this year.  I’m mean, really astounded.  He read my blog post of about my longings and set to do something about it. What?  I’m still so surprised at his thoughtfulness and generosity.  I didn’t get a diamond or a trip to Hawaii, I didn’t get an elaborate date night with loads of pampering  and culinary indulgences.  I got a freezer full of meat.  Yup, you read that correctly.  Meat.

             

I took these pictures before he was actually done.

And while on the surface that might seem really bizarre, it’s so amazing that I fear I can’t express my gratitude enough. 

Not only did he plan out what to buy, he bought it, then repackaged it (with my input) in portions that would be helpful for our family.  He cooked, cut, washed, labeled, stacked, counted and prepared all this meat for me.  He saved me so much time, so much money from my normal weekly food budget.  He wrote a blog post about it here.  You can read it from his perspective, complete with charts and prices and what we packed up, specifically.  Amazing!

So now our family joke is that I don’t get diamonds for Valentine’s Day, I get a freezer full of meat.  Well, I already have all the diamonds I’ll ever need and a freezer full of meat satisfies my longing for simplicity.

I’ll be forever grateful. 

So for me, this Valentine’s Day, Love is Meat.

I shall eat of it daily.

The Battle is the Lord’s,

Mrs. Taffy

Weekly Wrap-Up 2 & 3

I’m combining two weeks into one since I’m already behind.  We completed three weeks of school so far and it’s going really well.  I still pretty happy with the curriculum choices we made and everybody seems to be thriving.

Laffy Taffy making a letter Q for All about Reading-PreReading level.  He’s blowing through this!

Enjoying some self-directed learning.

Bubble Gum working on her spelling with All about Spelling.  I was originally going to start her on level two, but after looking through it more thoroughly I decided we better start with level once since many of the concepts from the first level are built on in the second level.  Really, this level is too easy for her, she’s a good reader already, but since it’s so easy she’s moving through it quickly and she’s feeling very pleased with herself because of it.  I bought level 2 also so she can just move right into the next level when she finishes, by then Laffy Taffy will probably be ready to start Level 1, he already listens to her lessons and blurts out the answers when I’m quizzing her on stuff.  Stinker.  I had to start “charging” him with push-ups for doing that!

Blue-Raspberry Reciting his Weekly Memory Verse

Here’s Blue-Raspberry reciting his weekly Memory Verse for you.  He really likes the Bible program we are using. (Please forgive the mess in the background…that would be Chocolate Taffy’s desk.  Yeah…we have a little cleaning to do before he starts school back up!)

He really enjoys making the flash cards for his Latin too.  On his very first Latin test he didn’t do very well.  He’s only been taking tests in Math so he hasn’t had a lot of experience with studying.  I told him his first test didn’t count since he had never taken one before.  Well, I’m happy to report that he aced the second test and now that he knows what to expect, I expect he’ll make that a trend!

Sweet Strawberry, she has a pretty big work load this year.  She is trying to do AP Literature as well, it’s SO much reading!  She’s accidentally broke her kindle, which was where most of her books were stored.  She can still read them on her computer and we do own several of them, but that was disappointing anyway.  She memorized about 25 biology definitions this first chapter.  Her test is sitting downstairs waiting to be graded.  I told her I would give her extra credit for every definition she wrote down that wasn’t on the test.  She was pretty happy about that.  During lunch time I encourage Blue-Raspberry and Strawberry drill each other on their Latin vocabulary. 

I was pretty sick last weekend, I think it was allergies that ran amuck and turned into a sinus infection.  I’m still working through it but feel MUCH better than I did.  While I was resting we took a trip out to the Bee Yard to watch Mr. Taffy do a little weed whacking around the hives.  The bee yard is such a pretty place!

Yeah, so those bees DO NOT like the vibration of the weed-whacker.  Mr. Taffy had to make a run for it!  We all got a good giggle from the truck.

Plugging along…plugging along…it’s such a busy full life, but it’s so exciting and so satisfying!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

Honey Makers

We are as busy as bees here, literally.  Mr. Taffy and Chocolate Taffy are apiarist’s.  That’s a fancy word for bee keeper’s.  (I feel like Fancy Nancy typing that.)  This weekend they did a little honey spinning.  At least that’s what I call it, it probably has a fancy name too.

This is a  frame that is loaded with honey comb and honey that has been forked scratched to uncap the honey comb  to let the honey ooze out.

Gorgeous!

This is the honey extractor.  Four frames fit in there and it spins around really fast to spin the honey out.  That’s why I call it “spinning honey.”  Get it?

It’s REALLY loud!

Round and Round and Round it goes when it stops the honey flows!

This is hot and sticky business.  We had to spin the honey in the closed garage because it’s warm (hot actually) and that keeps the honey flowing smoother and quicker and because if the bees smell the honey, they will come in and join the spinning party.  They aren’t exactly welcome guests if you know what I mean. 

After the frames are done spinning the honey is released out the trap door on the bottom of the spinner. 

                 

We filter our honey, but we don’t heat it.  That way we get the health benefits of the raw honey without the dead bee parts and chunks of pollen floating around in it.  You can see that the filtering bucket has a spigot on it also, sometimes we put it through another filter, sometimes we just put it right in the jars.

It’s glorious and it’s sticky and it’s messy and it’s aromatic.  This is our second spin of the season and there’s more to come!  Flow honey…flow!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy and the Busy Bee Keepers