Baptism!!!

I love that 3 of my kids have accepted Jesus as their Savior
and 2 of them have been baptised!

Halee was just baptised a few weeks ago!
It was a cold day but such an exciting blessing!!

Malachi was baptised several years ago!
His love continues to grow~

I can't wait until all four of my precious children
secure their eternal security by accepting Jesus into their hearts and lives!
I pray this day comes soon!
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Finding Fun!!!

I love how my kids find fun!!
My boys kept telling me that they were going to play with the cars they built. Finally I went to take a look then I ran for my camera!!!
Here's what I found...

Is that cool or is it
just me being impressed since it's my boy!?!?!

The story I got is that Micah my almost 7 yr. old made this car first from junk sitting around their Grandpa's shed. And then wouldn't let my older son play with it so he made this....

His own car!
Now they love their "Pine Tree Club" even more!!!!
What kids can do with junk amazes me... I love it!!!!

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I Love Vacation!!

I love VACATION!!!
As you know we were gone on vacation last week.
I posted a few clues here as to where we were going and...
Kris actually guessed it right!!! Great job!

We went to the
Turkey Run State Park area in Parke County!

(It's about an hour west of Indianapolis)

We had a great time with wonderful weather.
Only had rain one evening. Cool temps to start the week and hot temps to end. Perfect for hiking and then perfect for swimming!

If you live in the Midwest (or anywhere for that matter) I encourage you to try it out! It's like entering another world. Not typical Indiana hiking paths! You have to see it to believe it!

This is the bridge you have to cross to get to the hiking area!

It's crazy how cool the trails are.
The kids just go wild whenever we come here! Up this side and then up the other.
Always running ahead to see what's around the next corner.

Does this look like Indiana to you??
Trail #9 is my favorite. It's the first one we took this trip and totally ignored the "extremely rugged warning" Actually it was very dangerous at times esp. with kids and babies. It took us a couple of hours to hike but was soooo cool! I broke my toe a few weeks ago and hiked in flip flops (not so smart but worked!). My SIL slipped once with a baby strapped to her but She's really good at catching herself because the baby didn't even wake up!
Needless to say we were cheering to finally see the bridge again,
but would go do it again any day!

If you make it to The area
DO NOT GO HOME
without visiting Shades State Park
about 30 min. from Turkey Run.

We hiked trails 1, 4, and 5
Some say it's better than Turkey Run
and we also love that it's NEVER busy like Turkey Run is!

We did see plenty of Covered Bridges
and took lots of pictures!

They Played at the playground ALL. THE. TIME.
Our campsite was right beside the playground
which is perfect when camping with 13 kids under 11

On the down side we didn't eat a lot of evening snacks after 7 pm. For some reason the raccoons thought they owned the place. They would come within 2 steps of us. And I'm not talking about 1 raccoon I'm talking RACCOONS.... We would see 6-8 raccoons at any one time. Beside us, Behind us, Right in front of us. They didn't care what we did...
Anyway We still managed to eat plenty all the other hours of the day!!

And we swam several of the hot days.
The kids loved it.
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So there you have it,
I LOVE VACATION!!!!

Visit Sarah here for more Things I Love Thurs!

PS. I have plenty more pictures and stories
to share with you over the next few weeks!
Stay tuned!

Things I Love Thursday - Garden

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it before but
I LOVE MY GARDEN!!!
Here's an update...

This was taken over a week ago.
I've meant to do a garden update days ago and well you know how it is...
It just didn't get done!!!

The peppers were weighing the poor plant down
to the ground so I had to stake it up.
Worked pretty good!

I whined for weeks saying I think I just have green tomatoes and that would never turn but one day we found this and since I've harvested about 5 red tomatoes. (yes that was a long sentence!) Patience is something I'm not good with a lot of the time!!!

My tomato row looked like this before we went camping for the weekend. While we were gone we apparently had a major rain down pour or wind and it left my tomato row looking like this...

I can't seem to fix them either.
So There goes a bunch of tomatoes hidden under being smashed with no sunlight. We'll see how they do.

And oh I just adore the little tiny watermelons growing so quickly. I can seriously see the difference from one day to the next!
My 10 yr old shares my excitement and
goes out early every morning to give me a report!!!
***
So how's your garden doing???
Leave your link in the comments I'd love to come check it out!
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Letterboxing

We love to go letterboxing!
We've only went one day but it was great!
It goes right along with the camping/hiking theme which we love!

If you've never done it or heard of it
you can go here and read all about it!

All you really need is a rubber stamp, ink pad, compass (sometimes), and notebook.
Then you just print the instructions from your computer and off you go to find the little box hidden somewhere along the way!
**
We have hopes to hide one of our own.
We just need to make the time and do it!!

Have you ever been letterboxing?
If so how many stamps do you have in your notebook?
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Things I Love Thursday

Once again I love my

kids Imagination!!!
This is their new Pine Tree Club!
New and Improved!!!
They're enjoying a pitcher of Kool Aid on a HOT day!!
Their Grandpa helped them put the
2nd story of pallets on safely.
Everything else they did themselves!!

They spend a lot of time here fixing their house!

And of course no fort is complete without a satellite dish.

I got a kick out of that one!

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Let us know what you love

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Things I Love Thursday

The Beach/ Dunes!!!

We took a day trip to the Warren Dunes at

Lake Michigan and had a blast!!

Perfect weather (except the wind)

Running from the waves!

Cousins playing!

They thought with the wind it was cold!!!
Halee with her cousin Ali

What's better than muddy sand!

There are 11 cousins on my side of the family

The oldest is 10 years old!

Climbing the big Dunes!

My 3 yr old hiked this far and decided he was done.

Well he wanted carried, sorry no way bud!!
I thought he worked those little legs pretty good!

Posing at the top!

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Things I Love Thursday

We love Swimming!!!

And we've been doing lots of it lately!

My just turned 3yr. old swims around all by himself like
he's been doing it for years!!
I call him my little fish!

Micah doing... well we're not sure most of the time!!

Check out how long Halee's arms look!

It must be some kind of optical illusion ...

At least I don't think her arms are that long!!!

I'm on a roll with great camera work!

Chi wanted me to take a picture of him doing a somer sault.

This is how it turned out!!!

Too Funny!

Finally the pool is warm enough to get in.

I officially got in for the first time last weekend!

And we've been in every day since~

**

I'm hopeful that we will be able to swim through September so we can still have our 3 month swimming season, but I doubt it. I think its just been a very cool June.

I guess we'll take what we can get!

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