Picking, eating, Jammin

    So my sister Julie and I, have been talking about how we look forwards to going berry picking with our kiddos and Husbands! It's one thing to pick year after year for mom...lol...it's a whole different thing to watch your little man go haywire eating every berry he can find...and then picking a few here and there...but in the end eating more than he was picking :)
   Anyways, my mom got wind of this and called us up telling us, that right now was peak season, so if we wanted to go she was gonna take us, as well as teach us how to make jam!!!
   We were stoked! So I also called up my friend Jonna, and She joined us as well with her little guy Ishmael. We got to the patch, and heard it was pretty slim pickin...That, my friends, is what 5 little siblings come in handy for :) My mom brought them along to pick for us!! Doesn't get much better than that haha... We had alot of fun though. Ayden was so much fun to watch! Once we taught him to pick and put in our buckets...he decided it was more fun to take one bite out of every nice berry in your bucket, then put it back! So we gave him his own bucket, and taught him how to fill it. He actually caught on! But, once his bucket had a handful in there...him and his little friend went to town! It was a ton of fun watching them, for sure!

   So once we finished picking, we headed to my amazing mom's house :) She had three stations all neatly set up. One was for cutting the stems off (which she had the little siblings do for us older ones:) ), the other was the smashing and filling jars station, then finally the cooking...She even had purchased my sister and I our very own canning supplies! I was impressed with how simple it was to make for ourselves strawberry Jam! Here is how much I brought in...that is with the help of my little brother Gabe! Thanks Gabe!!

My loot!

Uncle Gabe teaching Ayden :)

So cute

He catches on pretty fast!

Please notice that he is eating the
WHOLE thing...leaves straw...and all!

He is now filling his own bucket :)

 Alrighty now on to making the Jam! Super easy!!

Step.1

Wash, Cut off stems then SMASH 2 cups of strawberries!!

Step 2. Ad your Sure Gel, Then boil until you can't stir out the bubbles

I made this picture HUGE to prove a point :)
This Step will make every healthy fiber in you SCREAM!
Step 3. Add 7 Cups of sugar!! Ouch

Step 4. Bring mixture to a boil, once again, until you can't stir out the bubbles.

Step 5. Funnel into clean jars

My sister Julie and our mom..Both beautiful :)

My friend Jonna, also Beautiful :)

Step 6. Wash rims, put lids on

Final Step, Drop in water bath, bring to boil, than start timer for 10 min!!


Super easy..once they are done in the pan, take them out and let them sit over night to seal!!
YUMMY...
It was so much fun to be able to tell people that I "canned Jam" today!! We all felt like real Homemakers :)
Thanks Mom for a great time!!

Unexpected Visitor

So as if my younger siblings hadn't had enough of "Ben and Becky's" house, they found themselves back at our place for another sleep over! Oddly enough, they had requested they stay with us :)
Why the sleepover again??? Well, my oldest brother Buddy lived in Tennessee, He worked out there doing building and roofing. We had the pleasure of seeing him about once every year, and only for a day or two! We always missed him and wished he had lived closer. Well....he was hired onto a job where the man was building a huge house. I probably won't get all the facts 100% acurate, but you will get the idea of what happened. So he was above the second story and over 20 some feet in the air when he fell off the house and landed on his feet! Thankfully he didn't land any other way, because He probably wouldn't be here today! Turns out he pretty much crushed his heels and feet, and then broke both his legs pretty good :/
     So My parents were planning on heading down to Tennessee for the weekend to help him out, with hopes (and all our prayers) that he would decide to come home with them! Ssssoooo, this all means that the two little Amigas +1 Amigo needed a place to lay their heads and then be woken up bright and early with little Ayden saying, "Hhhaayyy" and throwing his big red ball at them....all this because Ben and I wanted sleep and thought we would dump him off in the basement with the kids, in hopes that they would keep him busy!!!! Haha :) So ya they spent two nights with us! We then got news that Buddy had decided he wanted to come back to Michigan with my parents!! Praise the Lord for that!!! We are sososososo excited about having him around. It has been really cool having him just sitting there being apart of the family again. Just watching him, made me realize just how much I missed his presence even more! I'm so excited to have the opportunity to get to know my brother again, and also to have him be apart of my babies lives as Uncle Buddy!!! I want to tell the Story further, about my weekend, but with pictures...because I Love pictures!!


So Saturday was SUPER HOT!! So it called for some swimming!! Thanks to my parent's AWESOME neighbors, we were able to swim for quite some time.

So they thought it was so cool how you could easily hold another person up, while in the water...
So here Betsy (on the right) is pretending to be a bratty baby..No wonder Ayden
was afraid to go in...lol

 I was nervous about what Aydens 's reaction was gonna be, because I have put him in tiny baby pools, and he has hated every second of it...along with fireworks and any other "fun" summerish activity :)
After giving it a try, he ended it quickly with floods of tears and screams...so he sat on the patio and watched everyone else have a good time...

Then when they pulled out one of his favorite things (A Big Ball), he began to have second thoughts...

Thanks to one of his favorite Uncles (a.k.a lil Nater) and some encouragement from mommy and daddy, he slowly started having fun :)

Equals a fun time!!

Mommy and Daddy's support

Plus uncle Nate's Support...

  

He actually had so much fun that he was giving out kisses :)

Ayden Loved joining the
game of "pool Baseball"

So I had to throw this one up to. As I was snapping pictures,
he makes this face complete with the  "tick or click" noise.
I thinks he's pretty cute :)

Zachary Felt left out of our little pool party...so we snuggled a bit!
So far he loves his mommy snuggle times! And so do I :)

 So ever since we moved into our new place, we have been having lots of people over on Sunday nights! It has been sososo wonderful eating, chatting and getting to know some awesome people!!! It was even more special, because my big brother Buddy came along!! During these parties, I stay pretty busy with filling food, and taking care of my babies and of course chatting, that I always forget to snap pictures! So I asked my lovely sister Hannah if she could take some, and this is what she got. This is Buddy throwing a football with Nate our little brother! I thought it was sosoososos cute!!!

I hope you are having as much fun as I am this summer! One thing the Lord is constantly reminding me of, is that when I am feeling low or stressed and discouraged...I need to count my blessings and thank Him for each one!! It is amazing how fast doing that, can change your attitude! In the Bible, grumbling is right along side other huge sins such as Sexual Immorality and Adultery!! My prayer lately is that the Lord will get my attention right away, when I start slipping into that "grumbling" state!!! Why??? Because I am sosososo incredibly blessed, and He has given me WAY more than I deserve, so much so that the very LEAST I can do...is Praise Him no matter what!! I wish it was as easy as it sounds at times! But for some reason when it is most crucial to praise Him, it can feel like the HARDEST thing!! So be encouraged when you are having a hard day, knowing that you are NOT alone!! But most importantly, Praise Jesus for all that He has done for you and given too you!!

Our new place!

     So to celebrate moving, Sunday we had a large slew of people over for a grill out, volleyball and a fire! It was an awesome time! We have so much space now, it makes having people over fun! I think it's so neat watching God answer even the silliest prayers! Ben and I didn't have peace with buying this year, so we asked God to provide the right place for us! On our list was: A Large room indoor for the kids to play, a nice neighbrohood were I could feel safe jogging in, a large backyard, good landlords, a yard Ben could mow and take care of (which he gets to do now for a discount towards our rent year round!), a clean bathroom (only because I am still part germ freak and can't live with a groady bathroom), nice carpet, lots of trees (because I LOVE being surrounded by trees), and finally a place inside that I can use to do projects...oh and I wanted to have a washer and dryer (I haven't had one for the past 2 years!!)...and yes we wanted all of this at 1. an affordable price  2. Near Ben's work....to top all of this off, we get to pay month to month...which means NO lease! So when the Lord brings our house to buy in our path, we are in no rush to get it done!
     So because we serve a BIG God, he was faithful and went above and beyond what we had wanted! We received EVERYTHING on our list and
MORE! The funny thing, our apartment complex needed to know 30 days prior to the end of our lease, whether or not we were staying. The EXACT day we had to give them our answer, I came across this duplex on craigslist. The following week we were told it was ours if we wanted it! How awesome is that!! So for those of you who have been waiting for this (Sarah), here are the pictures!

     I am still working on painting and decorating, so I will post pictures of our upstairs later! There is also an "unfinished" Basement that I didn't' get pictures of, but will later! Enjoy the pictures, because there are a lot!!

So this is our first living room..Not yet full, because we are waiting on them to fix our carpet.

This is looking into the kitchen
 from the living room.

This is my kitchen!
 Ben wanted orange...so he got it :)
It actually looks nice!

More Kitchen

This is in the kitchen, looking down to our big family room.

More Family room!

Here is the family room the the left

So here is our family room
on the right side

Ayden LOVES playing in the family room!!

He Loves this little car from
 great aunt Shari

So this is looking out of our screened in porch, and towards our yard. We have a volleyball net back there, as well as a fire pit (two of our favorite summer time activities)

Watching Daddy on the mower.
He wanted to join so bad!

Little did he know that daddy
 couldn't wait to drive him around!

Ayden LOVED the ride! 

After a few seconds, Ayden thought he knew
enough to take over the wheels!

And away they went!

My Little Loves

I Love Him!

So Sweet

Moving!! Packing..packing and more packing!

So I am FINALLY back on to this! I was off for a week, due to moving (as I mentioned earlier) and waiting for our internet to start working out at our new place! Thanks for being patient with me :) So we are totally LOVING our new duplex! It has so much fun settling in here. I painted the walls 2 days after we moved in, which I thinking scared our landlords ;) But seriously, if I am going to be living here for a year, than I want this place feel like home! We had a lot of fun picking out our wall colors, and they turned out AwEsOme!!
So about moving! Honestly, I had NO idea how stressing it was going to be! I defienetly do not want to move for at least 10 more years!! I do want to say a HUGE thankyou to all of my family that came out and helped! I can assure you I would not have any hair left, if it weren't for all
of you guys! I had my three youngest siblings spend four days with me helping me pack, unpack and watch the boys! That was priceless! My parents sure have done a good job with them! I put them to very tough work...there really was no play and ALL work! They put primer on the walls, packed every room, entertained Ayden (which is a full-time job in it's self), made lunch for everyone, cleaned, packed, packed and then packed MORE....then unpacked...unpacked more, organized...ya...they were AMAZING! The funny thing is...They want to come back for another "sleep over". I thought for sure I wore them out to the point of no return :) Anyways, it's was a lot bigger job than I expected, but with the Lord's strength (because mine ran out before I even got started) we got it all completed. My Grandparents were gracious enough to help with the transportation of our belongings. Unfortunately while taking a trailer load of our furniature to our new place, They accidentally hit a larger pot hole and it sent our crib strewn out on the road. But hey, the "distressed" look on furniture is "in"...right? They were awesome (my grandparents), and
there would have been way worse issues if they hadn't helped!
The Landlords just put new carpet in for us, which I was so thankful for, but at the same time it makes me nervous! The carpet guys didn't do the best job, so they are coming back to fix it :/ I just want it done, so I can start decorating! Thanks to Pinterest it's hard to wait patiently when you have thousands of ideas racing through your head!

Betsy is my little sister! She was amazing..

Not sure if they were REALLY having that much fun lol

Little Nater making subs for the crew!

Honestly...this was maybe a tenth of the boxes...ya.