Family Day Before Crystal Goes Back to College

On our way home from western Colorado last weekend, we made several stops. It was the last day we could have some family time together with all nine of us before Crystal left to return to Penn View for her senior year.

We decided to stop at an orchard and pick a few peaches just for the experience.

Western Colorado is famous for its peaches as well as its corn, melons, and other fruit and vegetables.

It was hot, and the ripe peaches dripped down our arms as we picked.

The children also explored around the blackberry and raspberry patch, enjoying the pond and the ducks on it. Danny and Hannah were ever on the alert for new feathered friends.

Behind us was more orchard against the backdrop of a barren hill.

Irrigation makes all the difference in this area of the state where the soil is rich but barren without water.

Pulling out of the orchard, we saw more heavily laden apricot trees with all those apricots almost certainly going to waste.

For a few minutes, we pulled over at a spot where we had camped several years ago. That time wild raspberries were lush, but this time they were still green.

 

 However, daisies were blooming! Real for goodness daisies, just like back in Pennsylvania! Just one bunch of them, but oh, how I adore daisies!

 A little farther along, on our way up Independence Pass, we stopped for just a few minutes at this lovely waterfall.

It was beautiful!

And at the top of the pass, we got out long enough to run to the lookout. It was cold up there!

We will miss Crystal! Here she is, watching Rose open the birthday gift Crystal got her--a beautiful horses and eagles comforter for her bed.

Right now, Crystal has just come home from working most of the day at the restaurant. Tomorrow is a long day of work, too. Yesterday, while babysitting her employer's darling girls, Crystal and I  packed her clothes early into her suitcase or car just in case she got called in to work at the last minute--which is exactly what happened!

Crystal and all the littles--showing up all dressed up "like a circus!" they said.

They had gotten into the "dressup" box, and out came a graduation gown, shawls, scarves, and various silly things. Baby is dressed up in a sock for her "broken arm." What a hoot!

Crystal will make a good mother! She is great with kiddos!

Jamming--in More Ways than One--When Kids Want to Help

There's more than one kind of jam, right?

This is apricot jam that Danny and Hannah helped me make the day after we got home from western Colorado.

At the Sayler's ranch, they had two apricot trees.

This huge tree was loaded with apricots. Sunday morning a mama deer with her fawn was out browsing around under the tree, munching on apricots that had fallen.

Mike Sayler begged us to take apricots. His wife had already made jam.

So we decided to browse and munch, too! I got the boys and we moved the ladder around and started picking.  Katie Sayler holds the bag for Rose.

 

 At home, this is just part of the apricots left over after we made jam. I hope to freeze these later for apricot crisps and cobblers.

In the middle of washing and hanging load after load of laundry, I was thankful for Danny's and Hannah's cheerful help as we scalded the apricots so the skins would slip off, and gathered and washed jars and lids.

I found a low-sugar recipe that only requires about half the sugar of the old time recipe in my very old Ball Freezing and Canning book. You just have to cook the apricots a little longer to get them to set. Here the girls are helping stir three pans of jam while I fill jars. A simple method is also to simply fill hot, scalded jars with boiling hot jam, tighten the lids and rings, and turn upside down on the counter for a few minutes to help the jars seal well. This eliminates having to can the jam and works just fine.

"May I fill jars?" Hannah pleaded. 

I hesitated. First I said no. Filling jars has to be rather precise, and kids ALWAYS make a mess. 

Prove me wrong. 

But after a minute or two I reconsidered. I thought how if I sacrifice the fun parts of work to my children they will learn to enjoy working. So I gulp back my big hurry to get the job done and I let them help. 

Let me assure you, this means temporary agony on my part,

And yes, a dollop spilled very quickly, and yes, she overfilled one jar and we had to scoop some back out. But overall, Hannah did the ladling and Hannah had fun while Mom anguished on the inside to keep her patience and manage everything. 

Only God knows how many tears are on the inside of a middle-aged lady who just wants to get the job done and not have to be patient with a 10-year-old helper.

It would seriously be so much easier to do it all myself.

BUT--then my kids would grow up disappearing as soon as they hear the word "work."

Instead, now some of my children come up with projects of their own.

Yesterday, for example, two or three children made birthday baskets or plates of jam, pumpkin roll, homemade lip balm, and cookies for neighbors they work for who were having birthdays. One neighbor got tears in her eyes.

"Shame on you!" she cried, "but I appreciate it so much!"

That is when I know that backing off and letting my youngest child do the fun part of jamming 

will pay off in the end.

While staying the weekend at Ranch Haven with our friends the Saylers, the children did another kind of "jamming."

Here they are Sunday evening after the last service of campmeeting in the afternoon. It was such a joy to watch the children try out their musical skills. Katie Sayler can play several instruments, and has even composed words and music both for several songs. She sang and played one of her songs for us at the piano. Hunter played the bass guitar, Timmy the guitar, Rose her mandolin, Carrie the violin, and Hannah the ukulele.

Jamming a few weeks earlier with another family whose children are learning stringed instruments.

Dying Chicken Resurrects--and Prayers for Elverne Asbury

One day several weeks ago, the children brought in a chicken that looked like it was about to die.

It could not hold its neck up. I did not know what to do, and contemplated putting it out of its misery, but Danny said he thought that one time a while back a chicken was like that, and then it got better.

He thought he remembered something about a heat stroke. 

Well, we gently placed the chicken into a box of straw, and by nightfall, we were sure it was going to die that night. We had helped it drink three different times by putting its beak in water and then holding up its neck so it could swallow. But it seemed it wasn't improving

BUT--

the next morning when we woke up, the chicken was standing up, looking all around! It was still weak and wobbly, but it was up! Later, this is how it looked as it took a nap!

We were soooo tickled!
It literally seemed as if that chicken resurrected from the dead!

Many times we feel a little like that chicken--like we can't even keep our heads up. 

Inside, we're as weak and faint as a dying person. 

"But though our outer man perishes, our inner man is renewed day by day."
I don't know how often a simple night of rest will renew me when I couldn't face the days ahead
that seemed so daunting and overwhelming. 

May the Lord's grace give mercy and healing in overnight ways. 

****

Strange, those are the thoughts I had to share as I am up late, after we had special prayer for our friend Elverne Asbury who is in the hospital with hemorraging on the brain, in such pain that the meds won't help. And then surgery was postponed.

Difficult times for someone who has served God faithfully.

He was the preacher who officiated at Jonathan's and my wedding.

So hard to trust in those excruciating hours 

that God will actually work even our worst pain for good.

But somehow He does.

The darkest hour comes before the dawn.

The dogs come snooting around, letting the children who decided to sleep outside a few nights, know that it is time to wake up!

 

So when you can't keep your chin up, collapse into the golden straw of the Providence of God,

and rest your heart on His faithfulness.

In the morning, there will be new grace, and unexpected strength,

fresh hope, and real mercy.

God is "the lifter of my head."

Rosie's 18th Birthday in Western Colorado

Rose turned 18 while we were gone over the weekend to the Western Colorado Holiness Campmeeting.

We'd been planning to go for months, especially after being invited to stay at Ranch Haven where there was an extra apartment at the end of the main ranch house.

The Saylers felt God leading them to renovate this ranch into a retreat for missionaries and a place for conservative holiness youth camps and camp meetings.

Sunday morning Danny and Hannah went creeping around looking for new birds that they enter into their detailed notebooks of birds. Behind them is a huge apricot tree that is dropping ripe apricots, 

drawing a mama dear with her fawn that morning.

We enjoyed the messages by Mark Cravens, the singing of Jerald and Becky Glick, and most of all the fellowship of so many friends there. 

What a blessing to again get to visit with Nathan and Amy Bryant, who have just accepted the call to minister in Gallup, NM, where Jonathan has gone on at least two or three Mission Helps trips when Dennis Gardner was there, who has since passed away. There is a lot of excitement about the Bryants accepting that call.

Carrie was convinced to borrow a violin of Katie Sayler's, and to play with the musical instruments for the services. This was in the morning service.

The two made great friends. Here they are getting ready before the afternoon service.

Some of the kids there got together in between services to play a game.

The afternoon service was the final service of camp so that different ones who travel in from a distance can get home.

We got a family picture for our 25th anniversary, (which is at the top of this blog) and the children sat around on the ranch house deck visiting and eating snacks later that evening.

Views from the ranch.

Exploring the ranch

This was the bed for Jonathan and me upstairs. There were beds for exactly nine upstairs, and we got to sleep under these antlers!

Across the way were the old stables which have been renovated into the most charming dorm rooms with rustic cabin decor.

This room is "Moose Lodge," so of course it is decorated with moose decor.

There were Pine, Deer, Bear, and this room is Mountain View.  Jonathan is capturing a photo of a HUGE moth. We couldn't get over the amazing creativity this family has used in literally transforming a Colorado ranch into a place with countless possibilities.

An unfinished mural on one of the walls.

The huge old barn is being used for a tabernacle.

The "prophet's chamber," for the speaker or evangelist for events.

I needed a little quiet time while others visited, and I slipped away to see and get snaps of the amazing sunset in western Colorado.

Through the split rail fence

When you turned around, this is what was behind you.

While the children who enjoy music played indoors, the dads and a couple boys sat around a little campfire and visited.