Caroline's first Thanksgiving!

First look at snow

Birthday cake

Making my birthday cheesecake :-)

Eating Dad's chocolate

Caroline laughing

Caroline talks

Caroline's baptism (August 25th, 2013)

"To thee, O God, whose all souls are, the souls of the parents and the souls of the children, (Ezekiel 18:4 we present this child a living sacrifice, which we desire may be holy and acceptable, (Romans 12:1) and that it may be given up and dedicated to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. (Matthew 28:19).

    It is conceived in sin, (Psalm 51:5) but there is a fountain opened; O wash the soul of this child in that fountain, (Zechariah 13:1) now it is by thine appointment washed with pure water. (Hebrews 10:22).

    It is one of the children of the covenant, (Acts 3:25) one of the children that is born unto thee, Ezekiel 16:20(KJV) it is thy servant, born in thy house; (Psalm 116:16). O make good thy ancient covenant, that thou wilt be a God to believers and to their seed;( Genesis 17:7) for this blessing of Abraham comes upon the Gentiles, and the promise is still to us and to our children. (Acts 2:39).

    Thou hast encouraged us to bring little children to thee; for thou hast said that of such is the kingdom of God. (Mark 10:14). Blessed Jesus, take up this child in the arms of thy power and grace, put thy hands upon it and bless it; (Mark 10:16) let it be a vessel of honour, sanctified and meet for the Master’s use, (2 Timothy 2:21) and owned as one of thine in that day when thou makest up thy jewels.(Malachi 3:17).

    O pour thy Spirit upon our seed, thy blessing upon our offspring, that they may spring up as willows by the water-courses, and may come to subscribe with their own hands unto the Lord and to surname themselves by the name of Israel. (Isaiah 44:4-5).

Matthew Henry

Indoor clothesline

 John made me an indoor clothesline for drying diapers this winter. The heat from the woodstove should dry them nicely. Caroline and I just filled it for the first time.

Our 2013 Garden

We were blessed with a very productive garden this year!

Peppers.

We got over 50 large winter squash from two plants!

Tomatoes.

Some of the first squash of the year.

Hunter helped me plant the hydrangea John gave me this summer and much to our surprise it bloomed right away! Looking at it made me happy and I look forward to watching it continue to grow :-)

Thinning and freezing the first batch of carrots. We pulled up the other half of them later in the year.

Ready to blanch.

I think I ended up freezing 12 bags of carrots and 17 of squash (not counting all the grated squash I froze).

Part of what we picked after we came home from vacation this summer.

Sometimes the squash was a little overwhelming. We probably ate it for dinner at least 4 times a week, but I did find different ways to cook it :-). John's fav was to saute it with onions in olive oil, then add Italian seasoning and Parmesan cheese. We ate a LOT of that :-)

On labor day John and I made salsa.

These were to be turned into spaghetti sauce.

I ended up with enough for four dinners!

I couldn't tell you how many buckets of raspberries I picked (or how many handfuls I ate :-) But we do have about 10 quarts in the freezer.

And two batches of jam.

Shortly before it frosted we spent a Saturday afternoon working in the garden. Among other things we harvested this.

And last of all a picture of all of our canning. Some of this dates back to what John did before we were married, and the boxes on the floor hold homemade wine. Not pictured in this post are the strawberries, peas, green beans, cucumbers, spinach and lettuce we picked, or the 5 gallonns of grapes we were given, or the 36 pound of apples we were given that I turned into apple butter, apple sauce, and apple pie filling. I'm so thankful for all the food we were blessed with to put up!

Apologies....

My apologies to anyone who has actually tried to read this blog. Right after I started it I realized our internet her at home wouldn't let me upload pictures so the whole project got set aside. Now we've had fast internet installed so I have no excuses (well, other than a baby who got me up 12 times total in the last two nights) so I hope to first catch up by sharing pictures we took over the summer, and then update a little more regularly.

family

Evening homework and playing with daddy.

jeans

My little girl is so cute in her jeans

A favorite toy

New sweater

Caroline wearing the sweater I made for her before she was born.

Caroline plays horsie with Daddy.

Smiling in her sleep

It's a little hard to concentrate on my reading with this cuteness lying next to me. Smiling in her sleep.

How Caroline plays in her exersaucer!

Overalls

Giraffe girl

My little 'Giraffe Girl' -
(and pictures of Caroline are pretty much always blurry cause I haven't figured out to get her to stay still for more than a second at a time!)

Summer trip to SC

In August we took a family vacation to South Carolina to baptize Caroline and visit family and friends. Here are a few pictures from our trip.