Newest BOI Couple: JOE & CARRIE!

Just yesterday I posted the following on Facebook:

It is with more excitement than I can even begin to convey that I announce our newest Because of Isaac couple: my beautiful and hilarious childhood friend Carrie Alford and her amazing and dynamic husband Joseph Noble Alford.

Joe and Carrie are ON FIRE for the Lord, and they will make the most amazing parents ever. All they need are individuals to help them financially afford the cost.

Please visit the link to their bio on our website. and bring your tissues as Carrie shares the intimate details of their journey to parenthood.

In just about 24 hours, we have seen $1,591 come in for this couple. They have a LONG way to go, but we are seeing it happen SO FAST.

Please remember that even if you can't donate financially, you can pray. And you can also use and encourage others to use: www.shopforadoption.com prior to any purchase on Amazon or Target or Walmart. We get 5-8% of your purchase price so please don't forget this!

Friday Funnies (on Saturday!)

Lesson learned: when you are getting ready to go to someone's house for weekly Bible study (thank you Scott family!) and you prep your kiddos in the car to make sure to give proper greetings to the hosts: make sure you tell them what NOT to say.

One of my kids decided to say: "My mom told me tell you: thanks for having us," as they shook David and Natalie's hands.

Sigh .... I guess I need to follow-up reminders by saying: "Don't add that I told you to do this."

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Annie is a new friend to our farm. She lives about an hour from us and attended one of our conferences. She has been coming up most weekends to help us on our farm. She's a bit of a tom-boy so this is her painting Hannah's nails which she said is only about the third time she's ever used nail polish. Ha!

Annie shared this conversation with Hannah tonight:

Annie: "So what time is Bible Study?"
Hannah: "I don't know. I don't even have a watch." Hannah then went on to tell Annie about a girl she knows that does have a watch. "She's not a grown up but she's not a little kid."

Braggin' on my boy!

I know we all get a little weary of people bragging on their kids. :) Which is why I don't share these brag posts to Facebook. (New policy.) But those of you who are devout Blog readers come because you like all the info. So I feel I can go ahead and brag on my kiddos.

Isaac and his piano. Abigail and ballet. Sidge and nature. Hannah and her hilarity. I like to brag. So here is a video that Isaac let me record of him playing a song way faster than it was supposed to be played:



And here is a video I "snuck" of him playing piano. He doesn't generally like to be recorded. (And don't lecture me please. I DO respect my kids choice as they age to be on the Blog or not. However, in Isaac's case, his is a fear of his teacher seeing it and saying he played it too fast or without the right dynamics. :) SO here is a fun "snuck" video. This is just him playing on his own whatever he wanted to play for a little while. He does this a lot of the day:

We Bought a Farm: Shooting my first gun

Yesterday I shot a gun for the first time. JB has already started training the three older kids on guns. But I have never carved out a time that I can be out there with him and no children and actually learn how to shoot a gun.

This may come as a surprise to some of you. Some of you who are more rural may be shocked that I have never shot a gun. Remember: I did not grow up here. In South Florida, I did not know very many "good guys" that owned a gun.

This may come as a surprise to a different group of you. Those of you who haven't been raised around guns may be shocked that I did shoot a gun.

I didn't take a picture because personally, I don't really feel like celebrating shooting a gun. It isn't that sort of experience for me.

But the truth is, on a farm, owning a gun is nearly mandatory. I have to be able to handle a predator. I have to be able to handle an animal that gets out of control. Or I have to be able to quickly put an animal out of its misery.

Anyways, how did it feel? I wouldn't say it was fun. I was looking at it as a job I needed to master. And so I will practice. I will learn how to protect our farm. My kids are also going to be taught how to handle guns as well. We will never hunt just for sport. However, we will hunt for meat. 

They are always stored safely here on our farm FYI. We always have all our guns locked up.

I really am not interested in a gun debate with any of you. I totally respect individuals who don't believe that guns are good to own. I also think that is my constitutional right to bear arms. I also think that as I document my life here on the farm, I need to include this. My life is very different from what it was. And I'm slowly embracing it.

The last of my Vermont pictures

Smiling with the "heads"

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John spotted these berries via boat. Apparently they are quite edible, and he was quite excited so we took a boat trip out to get them. Here are some pictures from that experience:

Harvesting

Kids were excited until they spotted fish.

Isaac was a big help harvesting the berries.

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Joan's awesome neighbor, Lee, was there with her boyfriend Jim. They were going to a wedding. They stopped by to see us and we had some fun eating Oreos and pretending to have water fights:

Lee is so good with kids. Here she is pretending to get shot by a water gun.

Ka-pow!

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We played "SOAKER" -- the game where a bunch of people are on teams and try to get each other wet. Here are a bunch of other pictures of our soaker game:

At the very end of the soaker game, I opted to come down and try to help push JB into the water. BAD IDEA. I ended up getting thrown off the dock by my husband and getting some rocks stuck in my foot. OWwwww!!!

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Joan took the kiddos out back for some fun sibling pictures:

I am just not sure what to say about this photo :)