June 2009 Update

And the adventures down here in Oklahoma continue! Even though summer brings extreme heat, it brings many fun things with it. . .
. . . of course swimming is one of them. . .
. . . finding critters another (and an all-time favorite!). These are three baby red-eared sliders we stumbled across one at a time over a couple of weeks. One we found on one of our nature walks (the one towards the bottom of the picture-his name is Yo-Yo), the one on the upper right, named Olive, found by some friends of ours who knew we liked turtles and held onto it for us, and the third is a turtle we stumbled across by a pond and noticed it has a bad leg, so we kept it and named it Crutchy (Newsies anyone?). Since they're aquatic, we keep them inside the house in an aquarium. As for outside, we currently have a handmade box turtle habitat made by Vince and Dad for our two box turtles. One of them has become very fond of Mom in particular and nibbles on her toes! Here are the kinds of things we find to feed them:
Now consider, with me, for a moment, the size in proportion to Pete's hands holding this earthworm. They are bigger than some of the snakes we've found down here! We joke about starting a business bringing loads of these up to the Minnesota fisherman and making the big bucks!
Thanks to our zoo membership, summer has also brought numerous (and I mean numerous!) trips to the Tulsa Zoo. The kids mostly like it for the nature exchange center where they trade in the rocks, fossils, animal skeletons, and other "cool" things they find for points to get other "cool" things. But Gabie's favorite: the train! Due to his newfound interest in Thomas the Train, he is absolutely obsessed with anything having to do with trains. So we rode around the zoo on the Zoo Train. Of course, Gabie threw a fit when it was time to get off! But his interest in Thomas the Train has provided some amazing benefits. With that and the help of all the willing assistant "teachers" around here, Gabie has learned to identify numbers, colors, and can count up to 5. I imagine that even if you have 20 kids, this stage never gets old. It's so fun to see them learn. Although, some learning is a little more difficult (for mom):
We waited until we were able to get a washer and dryer before deciding to potty train Gabie. We've never waited this long before with any of the kids (he's 3 years and 4 months), but I think if I had to do it again, I would wait again! The first day we started, he was going on the toilet all day. Within just a couple of days, he's dry at nights and most of the day. The washer and dryer has been necessary, however, as we have had accidents. I think we'll be renting a carpet cleaner next week!
And as always, the culinary adventures continue. At the farm that we work at once a week, the strawberry patch was ready for harvest recently. We decided to also pick strawberries that were overripe and juice them. I have been doing juicing once a week and doing spinach, carrots, and the strawberries. After they're juiced, I put them in ice cube trays and use them for lots of nummy summer drinks. We used the strawberry juice cubes to make homemade strawberry lemonade. YUMMY! The spinach and carrot juice cubes go in our "fruit" smoothies for a full-day's worth of fruits and veggies with breakfast.

Some of the other adventures on the farm have included riding in the farm truck across the 80-acres (a favorite of the kids'), getting chased in the truck by donkeys, planting corn, and helping with a garage sale for the farm owners to raise funds for a mission trip to Malawi, Africa. And even though we give our time there to serve as Jesus wants us to and to build up our heavenly rewards, we leave there every week with fresh produce from the garden! It has been an absolutely blessing for us! Even Gabie has come to love working there.

And the homemade bread continues. Faith is learning how to do things so she can "make them for my kids when I grow up." Unfortunately for me, the kids have pretty much lost all taste for store-bought bread, so the pressure's on! Even Grandma Wilma at the farm prefers my homemade bread, so I guess I can't blame the kids. Of course, Pete also loves bringing a loaf of this stuff to work (okay, about half a loaf a day for him) with his jar of p.b.

And that's about it. As much fun as it all is, we really miss everyone in Minnesota. We've missed a wedding, a birth, a few graduations, and lots of times in between. Please continue to stay in touch with us and keep us updated everyone! We love you all and thank God for each and every one of you reading this!