Any excuse to climb a tree...

Dan always did love to climb trees....but he bit off a little more than he could chew with this one!  We had to leave our big ladder back at the Charlotte house because we couldn't fit it on the last load leaving in the van...soooo....Dan decided he would find SOME way up the tree!  Lots of laughs, a few scary moments, especially when Lilly dragged a upside down rod iron chair under the tree to play with and I knew right then and there how freaked Dan was of being implailed because he freaked out and wanted to chair MOVED!  He made it, though...and the kids love their swing.  We quite enjoyed the day of "How to get Dad up the tree" and then "How to get him down from the tree"....ahhh...living in the country :)

Gingerbread Houses

Another Christmas tradition....the gingerbread house display at Ballantyne Resort!  Always fun to go see what people have come up with this year!  We don't live as close to this display as we used to, but the kids really look forward to it so we made an effort to stop by on one of our trips into Charlotte.

 They even had an Angry Birds gingerbread display (funny computer game...Dan's friends will know what I'm talking about :) )  The boys laughed about that one!

 Hope that your having a very Blessed Christmas Season!  I will posting some more of our Christmas activities soon :)

Blessings,
Kimberly

The hunt for the family tree!

We started a family tradition a few years ago, of going to a tree farm in South Carolina to find our own Christmas tree and cut it down ourselves.  The tree farm is a really fun, family owned business and they even have a fire pit for roasting marshmallows and having hot chocolate after you cut your tree.  It always ends up being a great excuse to get outside all day and hunt for the best tree!

Thinking about this quote:

“My friends, adoption is redemption. It’s costly, exhausting, expensive, and outrageous. Buying back lives costs so much.

When God set out to redeem us, it killed Him."

-Derek Loux

We are ALL adopted into the family of God...Jesus was our ransom.

Dan's first mini-homesteading project

When we first moved in to our new home, Dan knew he really wanted to get the compost going.  The cost of buying a fancy, rotating compost bin is ridiculous so Dan got to work making us one.  He bought a couple used  55 gallon barrels for $23 each and used Google Sketchup to design it.  Here's a pic of it as well as the sketch up file of the frame to hold to barrel.

Compost Bin Sketchup file

Notes from Dan: "I used a galvanished steel pipe with two plywood discs on each end bolted to the barrel.  Drilled holes in to let air in and cut a door on the side.  Bought hinges and a latch to keep it closed.  Overall, it cost us about $50 to build it instead of $190.00 to buy one locally."

Happy Composting!

Blessings,
Kimberly

Christmas Novena

Today (Nov. 30th) starts the St. Andrew Christmas Novena...to be said 15 times each day from now until Christmas.  Last year, the kids and I made an effort to pray this beautiful prayer a few times each day, but honestly, we never got to 15 times each day!  Well, this year we have some pretty hefty prayer intentions and we aim to offer them up!  We've made a chain with loops on it for the learning room.  We will slide a loop over each time we pray this prayer so we have a visual reminder of how many we have prayed and how many we have left to pray each day.

We are praying this prayer for two intentions: 1. For a friend that has been diagnosed with cancer...for healing for him and 2, for our desire to grow our family....however and whenever our Lord decides to do that.  We hope and pray for the child that God is calling us to adopt...that the details will become clear to us.

Here is the prayer....

Hail and Blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold.  In that hour, vouchsafe, O my God!  to hear my prayer and grant my desires (intention here) through the merits of Our Savior Jesus Christ, and of His Blessed Mother.  Amen.

Happy Holy Season of Advent

--Kimberly

Lunar Moth Caterpillar

Very cool, very HUGE Lunar Moth Caterpillar we found in the yard!  The kids scooped it up to put it in an aquarium so they could draw it in their nature journals and before we knew it, he was making his cocoon in there!  Now we have a cocoon until spring.  We are really into nature study at our house...lots of creatures, lots of field guides and drawing journals...we love it. 

Hearts Toward Home- Our Goal: To turn our hearts toward home, towards the value of family, towards traveling together to our eternal home and setting our hearts on bringing the orphan "Home". 


Getting Things Started... Well, here we are! It has been many years in the making, but our family is happy to say that we are excitedly starting several new journeys. We have felt called to more of a "homesteading" lifestyle and have wanted to move out of the suburbs to where we can live a simple life- faith, family, learning to provide for ourselves and have more space to really invest in making a life simpler and more sustainable. We had been praying and searching for the right "homestead" and our Good Lord has blessed us with a new place we now call home...its only a few acres, but its ours and we hope to spend many years loving our life here and making it fruitful!

Our other big adventure is that our Lord blessed us with an eye-opening call to adoption back in March of 2011...I will never forget the day I found "Reece's Rainbow" while browsing some favorite blogs...we are forever changed. And we plan to ACT on that call. Please join us as we strive as a family to turn our hearts towards home...our hearts toward our heavenly home and our hearts toward bringing an orphan to their forever home... Love and Blessings, The Perrys