Life stays busy!

As many of you are aware, we just put our house up for sale. And that usually quite quickly brings the response: "So, where are you moving?" The long and short answer is, we don't know yet! We do have our eyes on a couple of places locally, but a lot depends on when we sell our house, what we sell it for, and how the Lord leads us meanwhile. Please pray with us that God would lead us clearly, and brings a buyer for our place! I just added a new page to the blog (to the right of where it says "Home" just above this section) to help us in advertising our house, so feel free to share the link to that page with anyone who you think might be interested, or know someone who is.

Another thing that has happened recently was that Jere was asked to be on the SALT-Haiti board. SALT is an organization that loans money to people in poor countries such as Haiti, and has it structured so that they actually have a very high success rate in people being able to actually support themselves after a time. SALT gives their clients a lot of teaching on saving money, paying back their loans, building a successful business, managing inventory, and even touch on health and family issues. One woman who was involved in the program, who had two children and no husband, is now able to pay for her children to go to school, with the money she is earning through the business SALT assisted her to start! (In addition to paying off her loan, and being able to buy decent food.) She stated to the rep who interviewed her that she has her dignity back. We are excited about the opportunity to help with such a successful, helpful program!

Jaron finished his K5 math book today, and tomorrow begins First Grade math! We're all excited about that! He is doing exceptionally well with his school work, and is reading very well for a 5 year old, I think.

I have started a handful of plants already, in preparation for hoping to garden still this summer. (That, of course, depends largely on what happens with selling our place.) The onions and petunias seem to be doing well, and I should be working on getting more seeds into dirt today yet. Spring isn't too far around the corner anymore!

Party time!

I feel like I have an awful lot to catch up on! This week was crazy busy, but an awful lot of fun! Jere's sister Grace flew home from Mexico for a couple of week to tend to the orchard, and we couldn't let the occasion go by without something happening. So the rest of the Hege siblings (minus Susie, still in Mexico, and Anita, in Haiti--MISSED you girls!!!!) got together on Tuesday. 8 children 5 and under in a relatively small space was a riot. Grandma Hege, most of these pictures are put on here especially for you!!!! ;-)

 

My boys making the chair go 'round.

Timothy's littlest girlie, Sandra.

Timothy's oldest girl, Jasmine, playing with Uncle Jere. We all had a good laugh over that one!

Our Leanna Jean getting sleepy.

Timothy's middle girl, Brianna.

Sandra again. What a cutie pie!

Enjoying each other.

The newlyweds.

Eliott and Jasmine whirling in the chair.

Then yesterday, Valentine's day, we had a handful of young couples from church over for a Valentine's party. The children (with the exception of one very privileged baby!) were all elsewhere. We had SO much fun. I hadn't laughed that much in a long time!

The cake.

The table.

A place setting.

Most of the people. (Sorry to Micah who didn't get included. I couldn't back up far enough!)

One activity was to feed each other a cookie without touching it with your hands. This was the very tame start. It only got worse--those pictures I think will remain private!!! :-)

We had such a good evening. It was fun to just relax with friends in a romantic setting, though I think I had more fun preparing than anyone else did enjoying it! Maybe we'll have to do this again next year!

Pictures and stories!

Here are a few random pictures from the last couple of days.

 

Jere was plowing snow with the tractor, and had the rapt attention of all three children!

 

Tundra is doing well, coming into the house once a day for her lessons--when I get around to doing them! She's also learning the command "Stay out." I hope. :-/

 

Now for the story. Yesterday I was needing to run to town to do a little shopping. We were about halfway ready to go, when I looked out the window and realized it was snowing, again. I wasn't sure I was wanting to tackle driving on fresh snow on already nasty roads, but a call to Jere didn't help my dilemma. He needed something in town for his job, and if I didn't go he was going to have to. So I went. The trip to town was uneventful. I took it easy and tried to enjoy the beauty of the snow all around us. The first stop was at the hardware store to get Jere's item. On coming out the wind shield was covered in melted/melting snow--and the wipers were frozen. Many times I'd seen Jere quite quickly and easily remove the build up by simply snapping the wipers as they ran, since the wipers on the van rest way down under the hood where it's hard to reach them. So I thought I'd try it. It looked so easy! But, evidently, I don't have the knack. The passenger side wiper flipped upside-down and snapped apart, pinching my fingers between it and the hood in the process somehow. So an emergency call to Jere. The answer? Open the hood! Err, um, do I have to? In the parking lot where everyone can see? Serious? Ok! So when I finally figured out how to open the hood, dropped my phone in the snow, and then figured out how to keep the hood open, it was time to tackle the wiper. But it simply wouldn't stay together. So in inspecting the other wiper I discovered a piece was missing on the broken one. Thankfully it had landed in the snow pack under where the wipers rest, and wasn't hard to find! Then to figure out how to get it all together again. . . But eventually it did. At least, it seemed like an awful long time bending over the stinky engine with snow sifting down my neck!

 

From the hardware store it was a short drive to Wal-Mart to finish my shopping. At the check-out the elderly lady behind me asked if I minded emptying her cart for her since she "couldn't reach". Well, she didn't even try, standing behind the cart and reaching toward the basket! Once I was done paying my bill I set her things on the counter, then set about getting my children bundled back up to face a snowy great outdoors. We then took the back way home, as Jere was working close to that route. We did fine, as I again drove slowly, until we reached one turn. The road I was on had been freshly plowed, and the road I was turning into had a nice ridge of snow plowed across it, going uphill, and another vehicle came around the curve just as I was funning it to get through the slight obstacle. Thankfully he was watching and moved over enough that I didn't hit him as the van slipped and slid and spun till we got over the little snow ridge and started up the hill. We dropped Jere's item off and saw his handiwork in remaking a stairway in someone's cabin. Then we continued on the back way home. Not even halfway up the first hill the van spun out and we sat in the middle of the rather curvy, steepish road sliding toward a gravel pit every time I tried to get started again. Oh, now what? After a little, I turned on the 4-ways and backed down to where it got wide enough to turn around, hoping no one was coming because you just can't see real far either direction on that road. No one came, and we turned around and went the long way home.

 

As anyone knows who has been to our place, turning on to our road from the main one can be a little tricky with the way you almost turn around to go back up. I slid past the turn, and had a hard time backing up, so it took some maneuvering to get going again. Again, thankfully, the car that came by had sense enough to slow way down and move over so we didn't have an accident. Phew! HOME! I was SO very glad to make it over the last little hill and see our mailbox.

 

And at the mailbox is where we stayed. We walked the rest of the way! This photo was taken after lunch and the little ones going down for their naps, when Jaron and I headed back to the stranded van to scatter ashes on the ice under the snow and get our groceries.

 

We took the dog and dogsled to carry the ashes down and the groceries back. The dog wasn't real happy about stopping there--he wanted to RUN! 

On our way back to the house with the groceries. Jere drove the van the rest of the way when he got home from work. :-) I'm so grateful for a man who knows just how to do things!

Last evening we gathered in the living room and goofed off for awhile. Here's the princess with Daddy's phone.

Here are the goofers.

The princess and her daddy. Pretty special!

A slower week

At last, we were able to slow down a little over the last week. It was so nice to be able to stay caught up with laundry and dishes! Due to our hectic January, Jaron is a few days behind in school, and we're working at getting him caught up too. I was able to sew a quilt top for Leanna, and last night passed it off for Jere's grandma to hand quilt for me. Both the boys have crib size quilts given to them when they were babies, but Leanna never got any, and she's outgrowing her baby blankets! This was a fun project for me, the first quilt top I ever finished!

Something we've seen a lot of over the past week is SNOW! It snowed and blew a couple of days, creating some drifts and also some bare spots--real fun at times with fresh snow over the ice left by a couple days of rain! But it seems like every morning now the last while we've awakened to a few fresh inches of powdery puff, clean and pure. Along with that is temperatures averaging in the single digits above and below zero. Perfect February weather!

Everyone is remaining well so far. I'm amazed sometimes with the amount of sickness I hear about, that we haven't really gotten much of anything this winter. I'm very grateful, and sure won't complain about that! We thank the Lord, and also Young Living Essential Oils. It's wonderful the Lord gives us plants and such to help boost our health.

Another this we did this week was start some seedlings. I know, it seems pretty early, but every year my wave petunias just seem a couple of weeks behind what they should be when I go plant them in our window boxes. I thought I'd try planting them earlier yet this year, and hopefully will have them flowering by the time to plant them out rolls around. I also started an entire flat of onions, by FAR the most I've ever tried planting. We just eat so many onions... I'm not sure where we'll store them all in the fall, but I guess we can always give them away too!

Not sure exactly what's on schedule for this coming week. More school, and everyday things, for sure! Hopefully it will be another quiet-ish week so we can work some more at just keeping up with everyday things. God bless you this week!!