Our "Sharecropping" Garden

This summer our close friends, The Whetstone's, offered to let us plant some things in their garden. So, one Saturday morning I took the girls to Farm & Home with a $20 budget and let them choose plants for our garden. With some supervision they chose peppers ( several varieties), broccoli, cauliflower, cherry tomatoes, squash, zucchini, & cucumbers. We also choose a few herbs to plant in a pot for our front porch.

Grace with our basil plant.
Grace was VERY helpful and loved helping with the planting. I really enjoyed working on this with her. It is really fun now that she is interested and actually helpful!

Faith was a bit less enthusiastic about getting dirty...
Paul running the tiller for us.
Looking back I really wish we would have planted green beans and sugar snap peas...but maybe next year. I really have little knowledge of what I am doing so this was essentially like a $20 science/learning experience for the kids. Seeing these pics motivates me to take new ones as the garden is really growing! We are hoping to have some type of "Thanksgiving Dinner" at some point with veggies from the garden to help teach the kids about God's provision.

Poison Ivy

We have had our first official case of poison ivy at our house, and like anything Grace does it took over completely. Her poor face was quite itchy! But, she was quite proud of what her face looked like with the "pink" all over it.

66 Club

One of our goal's this year for Family Quest was to learn all the books of the Bible. Grace was very motivated and we worked all year long on them. She had known the Old Testament for awhile, but refused to say them to the check-in volunteer. I finally got her to admit that she, "Didn't want to have to go up front and talk in the microwave (microphone) and have everyone clap for her." So, when I promised she didn't have to do that she continued on in her memorization. The last night she said them all and earned her way into the 66 Club. We were very proud of her! We used this song to help her. This version seemed to work best for us.

Here she is with her badge. I love how she is looking at it, she was so proud.

Her new thumbs up sign she gives me when she knows she has done a good job.
To celebrate we took the whole family to a local buffet. The girls love it because they get to pick their own food & get ice cream (a rarity when we go out to eat). It was quite the eventful celebration dinner! Half way through eating I looked up and saw a German cockroach (aren't you impressed I knew what type it was.... married to the bug guy what can I say?) crawling across our table! Well, needless to say that made us ready to be done eating! Jeremy couldn't eat another bite. (I don't really blame him after the types of kitchens he has seen) Grace however was ready for her ice cream. So, I toughened up and went to get ice cream with the girls. I figured I have eaten worse on missions trips and I didn't want to spoil the celebration. We really wanted to make a big deal of this accomplishment. Jeremy spoke to the manager and they ended up giving us our meal for free. (God's provision??) Overall, it was a celebration meal we will never forget!

Grace,

We are SO proud of you. You show such a desire to learn God's word and that makes our hearts so happy. We are praying you will continue to grow in this love and someday we can't wait to see you teaching it to others!

Love,

Daddy & Mama