The adventure

We went to Canadian Adventure for the week, I think this is our 5th year in a row. Troy always goes up to work and do projects and we tag a long for the fun of it. We try and help out as much as we can, this year the boys had dish duty every meal. You would think they would complain about it and hate it, but when asked what their favorite part of the week was, dishes came first. Funny huh? I'm glad they are learning to enjoy serving, even when the job isn't glamorous.  While we were in Canada, we discovered a little beach near the boat landing. It is a sandy cove carved out of the bank. The boulders surround it and make it look protected and private. We were able to name it and claim it as they say so it is officially dubbed 'Beabers Cove' We cut a path throught the woods, hung signs, and now anyone else who comes up can find it and enjoy it too. The boys really get a kick out of the fact that a beach in Canada is named after us. Hopefully the water levels will still be such next year that we can enjoy the cove again. That is the only variable to be concerned about. Don't want high water dumping a load of driftwood on our beach or low water making it a 50 foot walk to the waters edge. This year it was just perfect and that's how we'll be remembering it.

The supplies have arrived

Here it is! If you look closely you will see Wyat standing behind this huge pile of boxes. He's actually standing on his tip-toes. This is our school curriculum for this year. It's for two of the boys. I'll be home schooling a 2nd grader and a 4th grader. Can you spell O-V-E-R-W-H-E-L-M-E-D? I just did. That's a lot of stuff! The good news is, the boys are excited. They had a great time opening all of the boxes and looking at all of the fun stuff. They didn't even look at the 300 page teacher manuals for 3 different subjects. Why would they? They definitely don't look as exciting as the other books. But I saw them. Oh did I see them. Of course I picked them up and very quickly put them back into the box. After all, school still doesn't start for a couple of weeks. I can pretend it's not starting at all for a little bit longer.

At least until the shelves go up in the closet and I have to put all the books away.

But that won't happen for at least two weeks. So I'll just enjoy the last of the summer for as long as I can.

Dirt under my fingernails

First harvest. Can you say delicious? I can't think of a better way to give my kids a healthy snack than to send them out to the garden to eat some fresh peas warmed in the sun. They love them!

This year we planted a garden. Again. I call myself an experimental gardener because every year is an experiment. I choose the seeds and plant them with the faith that they will grow. This doesn't always happen. Like my carrots last summer. We planted the seeds and waited and waited and waited. Nada. Good thing carrots are so cheap at the store. This year I thought I'd try Bok Choy. If you've never had it, it 's kinda like a cabbage/lettuce/celery cross. I like to chop it up and add it to my roamine lettuce to give it extra texture and substance. I've had good luck with lettuce varieties in the past so I thought the bok choy would work too. But, nope. It grew, but before it ever made the dense head it is supposed to have at the base, it flowered out and overall was a bok choy bust. Bummer.

But my tomatoes, oh WOW! We planted about 20 starts all over the yard to see if we could get any produce this year. In the past the harvest has been very very slim for tomatoes. Since I don't like to give up because I love tomeatoes, I decided maybe we'd err on the side of overkill this summer. It worked! We will have about 5,000 tomatoes because all of the palnts except 2 are ginormous and producing buckets of tomatoes. The boys have tasted the first ripe cherry tomatoes off of the vine, one of their favorite snacks. so, if all goes well and this fruit ripens before it frosts, we will be rolling in tomatoes. I guess we'll be really prepared if the dog gets sprayed by a skunk. But let's hope that doesn't happen.

You know why I really like to garden? It's a place where you can watch the truths of scripture lived out before your eyes, in your own yard. I can show the truths to my children and we can talk about it, a hands on lesson, many teachable moments at my fingertips. No longer just words in a book, but living (or not, depending on the plant) pictures for them to grasp and hopefully have a deeper understanding of. Jesus used stories of plants, seeds, harvest, and sowing for a reason. He knew we needed the real life examples that we could touch and see to help us relate. If you've never grown something, give it a try. If it fails to grow or if it produces a beautiful plant, you'll have so much to think about in relationship to your spiritual growth and the conditions that surround you. It makes the dirt under my fingernails all worth while.