Homestead Happenings - June 2017

 June started out fairly quiet as we tried to keep things as normal as possible for the kids. Rina always loves to feed the chickens their cracked corn when I do chores in the morning. Thankful we have only nice chickens, even our rooster is a sweetheart.

 On the first weekend of June we traveled to my sister's house to watch my oldest nephew graduate from High School. We were all so proud of him! He even gave me a rose, which I wasn't expecting at all. Very sweet. I remember changing his diapers and rocking him to sleep. Time marches by so quickly! Now his is out on his own and doing a great job supporting himself, and learning many lessons along the way.

My second oldest nephew, Marcus, adored playing with Rina while we were visiting.

 We brought my other nephew, Andrew, home with us to camp on the homestead for a few weeks. He loves to camp and fits right into our family. It was hot dogs grilled over an open fire for dinner that night!

 My stepmom is friends with Tedd Arnold who is the author of the famous "Fly Guy" children book series. When he heard about how all of our Fly Guy books were destroyed in the fire, he sent us 14 signed books to replace those we lost. Wow! We were so surprised and grateful!

 My friend, Cora, stopped by for a chat on my bench swing while passing through. Dixie managed to squeeze her way in for little love and attention from Cora. She was resting her head on Cora's shoulder in this picture. She's a sheep "dog", I'm tellin' ya! I'm going to do an "Adventures of Dixie" post one of these days.

 Got a late start on my garden because I wasn't sure that I wanted to plant one with how crazy I knew life was going to get, but I decided to plant a small one, again, just to bring some normalcy to our situation. The girls were a great help. Rina is picking my flowers (awww!) and Hailey is planting pumpkin seeds.

 I didn't know what to do about my damaged sword collection that we were able to recover from the fire that I couldn't bear to throw away. I decided to re-purpose them and use them as plant markers. Coolest plant markers ever, in my opinion!

 Dixie wants to swing, too!

 My mom brought over a gold mining kit and the kids went hog-wild. Next thing I know, Josiah has a sluice box built. It kept them entertained for hours.

 OCEANetwork, Oregon's Christian Home School support group, called up and offered me a free scholarship to go to Oregon's homeschool conference. It was the first time I've ever been able to attend, and I was able to go with my super awesome friends, Dorene and Cora. We stayed at my adopted in-laws and went to the conference during the day. I love Lamplighter books and when one of my friends mentioned to the folks at the Lamplighter table that I had lost all mine due to the house fire, they insisted I pick out any book on table. I picked the "Secret Bridge". It ended up being a really good book. That was so sweet of them. Made me cry, of course!

 We met up with some of my homeschool friends from La Grande, whom I had started my homeschooling journey with. We had SO MUCH FUN! I learned a lot and came home inspired and confident in my decision to keep homeschooling my children despite our difficult circumstances.

On the way home, we stopped by Eagle Creek and took a selfie. Little did we know that this area would be the site of a huge fire that would burn a big portion of the Columbia River Gorge later that summer. Oh my goodness, but I do love these girls!

 The next day, our contractor, Daniel, was able to come over the mountain and start prepping the ground where our new house was to be built. It was so excited to watch, after months of just feeling like we were waiting and unable to do a lot. What a privilege for our children to watch every step of their house being built. The sheep were kicked out of the upper pasture and it was transformed into a construction zone. It was a hot, dirty mess, but oh so worth it!

Here is a video of Hailey putting a Gideon New Testament bible in the corner of the foundation because as she says, "Without God, we labor in vain." God had his hand in every bit of our situation.

 Daniel, getting ready for the foundation to be poured. The kids had SO much fun on those dirt piles, which made my shop a constant mess, LOL.

This is what our house looked like a week after he started working on it. The foundation was completely finished. Daniel is unbelievably fast at what he does!

 My mom and step-dad celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary with us kids and as many grandkids as we could wrangle up, along with some of their friends. We went to Rooster's Restaurant to eat and celebrate.

 We were so happy for them! We are ever so grateful to the Lord for bringing Larry into our lives. He has loved our mom well and will continue to until death do they part.

Crazy cousins who have motorcycle fever, just like their grandparents! I think Lily and Rina look so much like each other.

What a wonderful way to end the month of June and leap right into summer where adventure and a lot of hard work awaited us. His plans are not our plans, but I can tell you one thing, they are ALWAYS good plans, even if it doesn't feel like it at the time.

God Bless,
Jackie