Seth's 13th Birthday Party!

Happy 13th birthday, Seth! It was time to celebrate!

Joshua helped light the candles on the cake. Again, you wanted Cinnabon cinnamon buns for a cake.

Daddy "delivering" the cake.

There were so many candles on your cake I had to stick some on the side. Your cake looks like a tank.

Wonder what a thirteen year old boys wishes for?

As soon as you saw the candles on the cake you knew they were the trick candles that wouldn't stay blown out. We were all laughing because you blew them out on the first blow. They never relighted. So you were still tricked!

Time for gifts.



A gift card to a local sporting goods store.



A bag of candy.

And last but not least... A new bible! You have been wanting a new bible for a while now. I love to see you reading the word on your own.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. Psalm 1:1-2

You had a great birthday surrounded by good friends!

Happy 13th Birthday, Setharoonie

Well, it is official, you are now a teenager. We like to refer to this age as young manhood. Although some moms and dads shutter at the teenage years, we have come to really appreciate this special time in our kids lives. It can be a great blessing!

Here you are not yet 24 hours old.



One of your favorite places to be... Bapa's leather chair.

Your big brother was always eager to take care of you. Here you guys were watching TV together.

Here you are practicing sitting up.

Sometimes you were a little stinker... Like when you were suppose to be playing with your toys. I left the room for a minute and this is what I came back to.

This is a really cute picture of you wearing your daddy's hat.



One of my favorite baby pictures of you. I love your joyful smile!



After enduring colic for the first 3 months of your life, we cherished your smiles most of all.



Here you are at your one year birthday.



You loved your brother and always enjoyed playing with him.



Here you're around 4 years old.

I really like this picture of you at Nana and Paw-paw's beach house. You were dancing around the room with those dancing flowers on your head. From the very beginning you were a performer...

and you still are to this day. You continue to amaze us with your creativity, musical talent, and your determined spirit. Since you were 4 years old you have pretty much known what you wanted to be. We can see how God has blessed you with many talents to get you there. You have such a sweet spirit that is always eager to share with others. We continually thank the Lord for you. What a special blessing you have been to our family! Happy Birthday, buddy.

Our Braces"ville" journey

Today we arrived at Braces"ville". I have mixed emotions upon our arrival. I'm sure if you have been there you know what I mean. Some are fortunate enough to not have to go this route, but for those who are not, it is bitter-sweet. Thankful for the opportunity to travel this road, but shocked at the heavy taxes collected along the way. I know after our two year journey we will be glad we took the trip. And with two more boys I have no doubt we will travel these roads again.

Trip to Stuart Virgina

On one of our trips to Roanoke we met a cattle farmer at the local downtown market. He was selling grass fed beef. After talking with Mr. Sparks for awhile we knew we wanted to try some of his beef. The thing we like most about his beef is that he doesn't feed his cattle ANY grain or give them any antibiotics or growth hormones. Mr. Sparks encouraged us to come out to the farm and take a tour.

Here we are arriving at his home... look at all that green grass.



After spending some time chatting he took us out to check out the fields.



He has several fields so he can rotate his cattle among them.






And here we get our first look at his cattle.



This guy had been in the mud. Who knew cows liked mud?



This is where the cattle get their water. Fresh well water I might add.

Okay, here is the super cool part of his farming technique. When he puts his cattle in a field he only gives them one strip of land to graze on at a time. Then when the cattle have eaten all the grass in that strip he moves them on to the next strip. So that they are always eating fresh grass. When they have gone through the whole field he then rotates them to another field.

Happy grazing cows.



Here are just a few more pictures of his cows.

We had a great time at the farm. It is really nice to know where our meat is coming from. Mr. Sparks takes excellent care of his cattle and our family really appreciates it.

Healthy happy cows....


.... make healthy happy hamburgers. Eat on cows!

Mill Mountain Science Center

Sometimes life serves you lemons...

like finding a leak in your basement. Not just a leak, but one that had obviously been there for a while evident because of the black mold surrounding the area.

And to make matters worse someone in our family is highly allergic to mold... guess who?

that's right me!

So, while Mr. Handy Man himself demolished part of the wall in our school room I thought it best the boys and I hit the road. I was not waiting around to see what kind of yuck was on the inside of that wall.

We decided to head for Virgina to visit Granma and Bapa for a few days until the dust settled back home.

hopefully mold free dust

Another reason I love the blessing of homeschooling is when LIFE happens you can make adjustments as needed. So we just packed up most of our school supplies and hit the road. On the second day there the boys were getting a little cooped up so we decided to take an impromptu field trip.

We ended up at the Mill Mountain Science Center. Here Seth and Noah were trying to build nests like the birds do... it's a lot harder than it looks.

all i have to say is, if i were a momma bird the boys and i would be sleepin in the grass!

Seth looking at turtle shells.

They had this really cool bee hive indoors. The cool thing about it was the sound the bees made. If you put your ear up to the yellow tube you could hear their loud hum.

After exploring everything there was to find inside the science center we went outside to take a hike on one of the many trails.

The boys discovered a small playground and wanted to stop and rest/play there for a few minutes. Of course I thought of all these cool pictures that I wanted to take of them, so they humored me for a little while.

The boys climbing a small rock-wall slide.



Here are a few of the pictures I took of them.






The trail ended at the star.



This was the view at the star.



It was good to get some fresh air. We all had a good time together.

We continued our walk for a little while. The boys found walking sticks and had fun playing around with them... boys will be boys!

We missed daddy being with us, but thankfully he was working hard to clean up the mess. Looks like we discovered the leak before it got too bad. It was nice to have a change of scenery... it did me well!