Happy Birthday Laura Jean!

Today we celebrated Laura's 2nd birthday by going to a local park and having a picnic with some friends and family.. The Kings, as well as both of Stephanie's sisters and Nana and Papa Ben joined us in celebrating the birthday of our blue-eyed and blond haired darling.

Blow out the candles sweetie!

Grant and Daddy

Grant, Daddy and Nana!

Stephanie with little Matthew wish Laura a Happy Birthday

Sweet friends

Nana and Mama

'Aunt' Stephanie and children construct a darling cardboard oven for Laura

Becca made her a baby blanket

'Tanks Becca!'

What's this.. a fun doctor's kit from Nana and Papa Ben

Gracie appoints herself the doctor

Papa Ben

Ashley and Susanna

Ashley and friend Elizabeth get a great (?) backrub

(easy Susanna!)

Grant, the fisherboy

Ryan catches something!

Ashley snaps a few photos of the lovely goose and ducks

Time to head home after a fun (and warm!) day at the park..

Happy Birthday Sweet Laura Jean!

Around-the-House Stuff

It seems like not much is going on around here.. sometimes we are able to pull off some order.. other times things get out of hand and wild! Keeping two boys under wraps in an apartment and inside much of the time can be a bit challenging!  But we are all seeming to manage alright.. once in a while we are even able to join a home fellowship on sundays which is a nice break as well as a great chance for fellowship! A few weeks back we were blessed to also attend the Church body in Oregon.. In addition, sometimes the Kings and our family are able to share a meal or activity together too which is always such a blessing. All the while, Grady has really been enjoying working with Jeremy, learning more about computers and IT work.

Laura with her very first braids!

Ashley, doing an Irish Jig?

Ryan, adding drama to his story!

Speaking of Ryan, when did he get to be such a big guy! 13 in July..

Very cute girls! Now, where is the sun to go with your sun hats? ;)

Amanda plays around with the color settings on her camera..

She can chose for it to only show one color at a time..

all the rest being left in black and white

Last Sunday, young brother Jake used the lovely new green growth

 on this evergreen to illustrate

 how it should be with our walk with Jesus.. are we growing?

 Will we give him the little things and trust him to use us for His plan?

A beautiful day for a meeting.. the children love running around outside afterwards..

Making 'Soup'

Gracie pushes her little friend on the swing..

(Let us)  not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

(Hebrews 10:25 ESV)

Milk Maids Once Again!

We are so grateful for our dear friends who live just down the lane from us.. AND who have goats which they are allowing our girls to milk! Yay! Fresh goat milk again. At this time our older girls are milking 2 goats in the morning and are able to keep the milk in exchange for paying some for feed. Our friends have a lovely little farm.. complete with horses, goats chickens and the like..

The oldest daughter loves spending her time training horses! Great job S!

Sunny Days in WA!

No really, there have been a few!  Whenever the lovely sun peeks her head out of the grey skies, we try and do *something* out of doors! Taking walks and bike rides have been fun pastimes here. In addition, we will sometimes enjoy meals together, the King Family and ours at the picnic tables.  Anyone else visiting the ‘Mission Home’ is always welcome too!

Sharing dinner together.. in hopes there may still be enough daylight for a walk

After dinner, we start heading on a walk..this time we plan to explore the creek!

 

A nice chat with a friend of the Kings

The boys hack down nettles so that the walking party can proceed

Heading down toward the creek

Taking a rest in the lovely green grass..

 

 

As the sun sets, we all head home

Grady and the children like to ride into town and over the pedestrian bridge,

which goes over the train tracks.

Mandy, looking down at the train tracks below..

Here Mandy is taking little Gracie on a walk just down the road from the house. It is such a pretty setting here! We are blessed for sure..

Going Worldly?

In general, our days these days consist of trying to finish up some schoolwork for the boys, getting the little girls in ‘line’ and trying to get on some  semblance of a schedule. (Thank you Stephanie for the inspiration) It has been an adjustment for sure.  No sun, indoors all day.. blech.  BUT, it has been nice to really focus in on the family, listening to sermons together, singing together (albeit  off key!)  One of the fun things we have been doing is unit studies again.  Now, I know that some people view unit studies as unprofitable and even worldly-minded;  but for us, we have to do something here to keep us from going stir-crazy! LOL. In addition, as our family continues to pray for the Lord to enlarge our hearts for the world, we do see the benefit of studying cultures and countries at this time for our family. 'Unit Studies' as a whole seems to be a great way for us at this time to accomplish that goal! We are greatful to Amanda Bennett who has offered all of her Unit Studies to us FREE of charge due to us being missionaries. What a blessing. Her unit studies are in E-Book form and although we as a family are trying to lessen our time on the internet, we have figured out ways to utilize her study without being online much. We open her ebook and  (plan on) printing (once I can figure out how to! LOL) some of her pre-planned worksheets (blank maps etc) and then look at her list of complimentory books in order to check them out from the library. We try to stay away from the youtube links included as we have recently seen such trashy clips, you know, the ones after the great youtube you just watched! Ugh! But really with a little pre-planning I think anyone interested in this type of curriculum would be very happy with it.  She does such a great job organizing her information! Check her exhaustive unit studies topics at http://www.unitstudy.com/

 Our latest study has been on the country of Ireland. Traditionally a Catholic country, riddled with generations of warfare and infighting, it has been very interesting to learn more about.  There are many prayer needs for the country of Ireland…  mainly that there would be a true revival of authentic Christianity. Praise the Lord, wouldn’t that be a blessing in and amidst a very atheistic and godless continent?

  Of course the kids all want to move to ‘The Emerald Isle’ next  (or at least have Grandma Bonnie take them all for a visit!) But for now we had to settle on preparing and enjoying a nice traditional Irish meal!  Our friends the Kings, graciously allowed us to spend the evening  in their home and share it with them! 

Amanda and Ryan prepared an ‘Iced Beet Salad” (which was my favorite!) Mandy made some” Irish Soda Bread “(both gf and wheat) served with orange marmalade.. Ashley and Amanda with the help of a few of the King children prepared “ Irish Ginger Cookies” w/icing and Mama made some traditional “Irish Lamb Stew” (which by the way was really horrible and needed a LOT more salt! LOL)

Did you know that Ireland is separated into 2 part.. Northern Ireland actually

 being part of the UK?The main differences being that Ireland (proper)

 has been mainly Catholic while Northern calls itself Prodestant.

 Hence some of the violence between the two over the years..

The children in our outdoor kitchen, preparing the meal..

                                                                                           
                                                                                  

Yummy Iced Beet Salad

Irish Soda Bread

Becca helps pass out the cookies

Clover shaped cookies!

Irish Stew

Mandy

Stephanie's sister, Susanna

Here is a 'shamrock', much like the ones reportably used by St. Patrick (who almost single handedly converted all of Ireland) to describe the trinity.

 Now onto China!  Library here we come!

Blog Update

Originally we started blogging as a way in which to create a diary-of-sorts for our children..  We saw it as a way to remember what the Lord has taken us through and to document fond memories we were creating. Unfortunately it has become too time consuming for this Mama to keep up on! J In order to better serve our family, we have decided to only update our blog twice monthly, around the 1^st and 15^th of each month.. at least for now.  And to be quite frank, there isn’t much to ‘report’ these days anyhow! Thanks for reading!

Blessings, The McDonald Family