Our Garden Progress: Front Yard

Our front yard garden is really coming together. My mom has been a huge help with this project.

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This is an early picture.  The flowers are much bigger now.  In the front, there are Begonias and behind them are Lilies and some Asters.  I also planted a Rose Bush in the back to add some more color.  On the right side are several Cherry Tomato plants.  The Tomato plants have grown huge.  I have been able to bless some neighbors with the abundance.

Anne is always helpful.  She is a great supervisor and encourager.

10 Month Update

Anne's new love is to open and close doors.  Because of this, Steve has installed safety locks on the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom.

 She loves to explore.  She first task each morning is to pull all her toys off the shelf and play with all of them.

 When ever possible, she wants to break out of her baby gate.  The park is her favorite place to go.

Chick Fila's Cow Appreciation Day

 

She loves to eat!

 
Her first 4-H fair.  The Elkhart County Fair is huge. She loved seeing all the animals.

At the Amish Acres Arts and Craft Festival, she saw her first puppet show.  She was just enthralled in the show.

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Weight: 16 lbs, 2 oz
Height: 26.5 inches

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Eating: She is still nursing around the clock.  She prefers to feed herself solid foods to getting fed purees.  We have breakfast, a mid-morning snack, lunch, an afternoon snack, dinner, then a bedtime snack.  This routine seems to working.  There haven't been many foods that we have had her try that she hasn't liked.

So far:
Thumbs Up: sweet potatoes, green beans, applesauce, avocado, peas, squash, carrots, bananas, whole wheat cereal, guava, watermelon, pasta with sauce, meatballs, yogurt with any fruit, BBQ anything, kidney beans

Thumbs Down: oatmeal cereal, spinach, peaches, any pureed meats (but she will eat chicken right off the bone cut into pieces)

Sleeping: Not much has changed in the sleeping department.  She still nurses around the clock, waking up every 3-4 hours during the night.  I hoping this habit breaks soon.

Milestones:

           * She is growing and changing everyday.  She just loves to explore and learn new things.

* She is crawling everywhere and getting into everything.

* She can wave now.

* Her favorite word to say is "dada."  She babbles it all day to her toys and anyone who will listen.

*Anne has 5 teeth now.  Two on the bottom and 3 on top.

Prairie Camp: Prayer

Acts 12: 1-5:

The great gift - seldom used: Prayer.
Can you really say you are satisfied with your prayer life?

Why do we struggle with prayer?
1) We are not convinced that our God is BIG enough to do what He says He will do?

2) We have an over reliance on our own answer (just find the answer in a book).
3) A misunderstanding of spiritual warfare. We are at war every day.
4) We live in a DIY society. 
5) We treat prayer as a backup power source.

It's when the experts fail us that we run to prayer.

Acts 12:1 - "It was about this time..."  Just when you things are going well, that is when the enemy likes to strike.

The most important decisions of our lives were decided outside of our control (height, birth place, gender, etc). We are not in as much control as we think we are.

We don't like helplessness but we need it in order to prayer.

- Maturity in the faith is not self-reliance.  Maturity alerts us to how weak we are. God's power is made real in weakness. (Matthew 8)

- Helpless people regularly take a inventory of their heart.  Prayer is a conversation between our hearts to the heart of God.

Don't let distractions defeat you.