Best "Hide and Seek" House ever

One of the benefits of a house with more storage than we've ever had before...

It sure makes "Hide and Seek" at our house A LOT more interesting :)  There are a lot of closets, cubbards and nooks & crannies to hide in...and they've managed to squeeze into them all.  They've even hoisted their younger brother and sister into cubbards above my head...but usually ends up being given away by their cries to "get me down....I wanted to hide up here, but I'll NEVER be able to get down!"

This one particularly cracked us up....since our lazy susan in the last house was small and rickety and usually such a pain that we really didn't use it, much less hide in it.  In the end, he won this round :)

Blessings,
Kimberly

A litte reading for Dan & I...

A couple good adoption reads that Dan and I will be reading over the next week or two...

The Connected Child 

  http://www.amazon.com/Connected-Child-healing-adoptive-family/dp/0071475001/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326405674&sr=8-1

and The Stength of Mercy by Jan Beazely who is the Cofounder of All God's Children International, which is a non-profit adoption ministry.

I've already started The Strenth of Mercy but had been waiting for the library copy of The Connected Child to come in.  It finally came!  So...that will definitely be evening reading for Dan and I.  We're both looking forward to learning more about the skills needed for international adoption.  Dan is even hoping to attend an all day adoption conference this month so he can get up to speed on all that I've already read and learned from other families' experiences.

As always, your prayers are appreciated as we open ourselves up to God's will for our family.
And while your praying,  please pray for "Isabelle"....that's not her real name, but a nickname given to her for her protection.  She is an orphan in Eastern Europe that has the most beautiful spirit...and desperately needs to be listed for adoption.  This girl deserves a family of her own.  Please pray she can be listed on Reece's Rainbow (an adoption awareness and grant raising organization for orphans in Eastern Europe)  so she has a chance of finding a family.

More on Reece's Rainbow in a later post...

Blessings,
Kimberly

Some much needed nature time...

Some time out together at Crowder's Mountain State Park...

So thankful to live in the South...where we can be outside year round.

Taking the kids out in the woods for a walk is like bringing them back to their natural habitat!

Everyone is quite happy to climb, build, explore and check out what kinds of nature treasures they can find.

Thank you, Lord, for time in the out-of-doors with the ones I love most.

Now, everyone else out there...get outside and enjoy some time with the ones YOU love most :)

Blessings,
Kimberly

Some Christmas pics...

A few photos from the Christmas Season....

St. Nicholas Day...

 Christmas Cookies...

Limoncello...

Waiting for The Nutcracker to start...Dan took the day off and we all went together

My little Christmas baby had his 3rd birthday...

Dan and the boys worked on making us a nativity for our yard since we didn't have one and thought we really needed one :)  

Making  the Perry Family Tradition "Christmas Cakes"

Christmas Town USA...walking the streets on the evening of Christmas Day.  Church bells playing
Christmas carols while people travel through the entire town lit up in lights....we sang hymns while we walked....

We loved this...

The finished product...very pretty lit up at night :)

Making decorations for our "Night Tree" from the story book...its our Christmas tree for the outdoor animals each year.

Hanging up the decorations and singing Christmas songs...

Hope that your family has had a very blessed Christmas!

Blessings,
Kimberly

Guess what we've been planting!

I know...its a little crazy because I have a lot of back-logged  Christmas photos to post...lots of fun things we've done or made...but I just couldn't help but post a few photos of whats been going in here at our new home...

Fruit Trees!!

 We found a really nice nursery in a nearby town...its in a really cool, three story building that was built around 1912.  Super nice people....we just went to see what they had, since Dan had heard some kind of advertisement about a sale on fruit trees.  We've know from the start that we would be planting fruit trees all along the north side of our property and we really lucked out with the sale!  We ended up getting 3 Granny Smith Apples (what can I say...that's what my kids love best), 2 Gala Apples, 2 peaches and 1 Plum.  These are full size trees so we're excited about how big they will get over the years.  Dan's looking forward to trying out all the techniques he's read about planting different things around the base of the trees to fertilize them and help them grow.  Daffodils, garlic, clover, lupines...Daffodils and garlic keep other critters away from the trees and clover and lupines are nitrogen fixers that help produce nutrients for the soil.  Looking forward to trying it out :)

My handsome husband....who was so nice as to work with the boys to get several of the trees in the ground.  We still have a few to plant...

These are our little blueberry bushes...we have a couple of them.  Looking forward to them getting nice and big :)


We are really excited to finally be settled enough to be putting things in the ground that we will be able to enjoy for years to come.  So awesome....we were chatting with the boys about how we can't wait from them to come back with their kids to visit Gramma and Grampa and pick fruit from the trees... :)

Blessings,
Kimberly

Trading Cards Art Project

Another homeschooler and blogger named Kimberly hosted a Saints Trading Cards art swap that we've wanted to try the past couple of times she's hosted one.  We finally got some done and we're able to participate!  Basically, anyone that wanted to participate needed to make 5 little pieces of artwork...each one depicting a saint.  We sent 5 as a family....Dan did one and the two boys each did two.  We sent them to Kimberly and she sent us 5 different little works of art that other people had made to trade.

The boys really enjoyed making them and also getting to see Dad's finished St. George!
My eldest made St. Clare and St. Gabriel and My second eldest made St. Basil and St. Francis.
And Dan had a little fun making St. George :)

Next time Kimberly is having one of the trading card swaps, I'll  try to post the deadline date and directions to participate on this blog.  Any age can participate...even younger children!
Its really fun getting other peoples' cards as well!  We got some really nice ones.

Blessings,
Kimberly













]

Aquaponics Primer

So as Kim has mentioned in previous post I've been interested in starting up an aquaponics system at out new house.  So I thought I would spend some time putting my thoughts down as a introduction to those visitors that are un-familiar with it.
Aquaponics is the combination of aquaculture ( the raising of aquatic animals like fish ) and hydroponics ( the growing of plants in  nutrient rich water instead of soil).  The advantages of combining these two techiniques is that the fish, plants, and some benifical bateria work together and form a symbolotic relationship.  Plants take in water and carbon dioxide from the air to create sugars but require nitrogen from the soil to grow.  Fish need oxygen and clean water and their excrement and urine contain nitrogen.  So with the help of bateria the fish refuse is converted into a form of nitrogen that the plants can use and the plants help to clean the water for the fish.
There are a lot more details which I'm learning but that's the basic gist of it.
So in later posts I'll be going over my design and progress of building my aquaponics system.