The Yesda's: 2012

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Gingerbread Cookies

This pretty much sums up my afternoon - baking gingerbread cookies. YUM!

Picnic in December

On December 4 @ 4pm - we met Grandma for a picnic. We had chips, juice boxes and cookies. What a beautiful day. Hard to believe that it was nice enough to be outside with only a sweatshirt on.

Breath of Dawn Review

Breath of Dawn

by Kristen Heitzmann

This book is a Christian fiction with a little mystery and a little romance under one cover.

The story starts out with Morgan, a father of a small child, learning to adjust to living a life and raising a young child on his own, after his wife dies in an accident. Morgan has family support to help him in this transition. To help ease the transition, and putting his child's needs first, he chooses to live on a ranch near the mountains near his brother and family for help with his child.

Quinn is a single woman who makes her living buying items from estate sales and listing them on ebay. RaeAnne is the daughter of an elderly woman who has passed away, and RaeAnne is left with settling the estate. Quinn offers to work on the estate and get it ready to sell. RaeAnne takes her up on the offer - with the understanding that if/when Quinn finds a locket with a picture of her father (whom RaeAnne has never met) that she will call right away. Quinn spends days going through the items in the house, searching for the locket, and sifting through the estate.

Morgan lives near the estate, and decides to purchase the estate as a transition for him and his daughter to live on their own, but still have his brother and family close by. When he stops by the house to take a look, he meets Quinn. Quinn gets some help from Morgan in clearing out some large unwanted items from the basement. Discovering this house was once an asylum is an interesting twist to the story. In the cellar are items used when the asylum was in use. Quinn is invited by Morgan's brother and wife to Thanksgiving at their house. Morgan, his daughter and a few other close friends enjoy a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration. A snowstorm causes them all to stay there overnight. Quinn's past comes into the story and Morgan offers her a solution to overcome her past. Quinn takes him up on this offer, and the story only gets better from here. You don't want to miss out on this excellent story by Kristen Heitzmann!

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Oak Grove Sunday

Fall Sunday afternoons spent with family are always a great time.

We had a wonderful picnic lunch, then played some kickball.

A few pictures to share of our day.

Carly and Great Grandpa

Allyson, Hannah and Uncle Milt

Caden guiding the way on our hike.

Some of the group on our hike.

We have to make a stop at Crystal Hill to gather some treasures.

Throwing some leaves

Friday, October 12, 2012

Charlotte's Web Day

Allyson dressed as the character Wilbur the pig

Caden dressed as Charlotte the spider.

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Leaves

The kids have been enjoying the fall weather. They love to rake the leaves into a pile and take turns jumping into it.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Inescapable by Nancy Mehl

Road to Kingdom - Book 1

This book took me a little while to get into the story, but once I did - I couldn't put it down. There is some mystery wrapped up in the pages of this Mennonite story.

This book is about a young mother named Lizzie. She grew up in the Mennonite community, but left this lifestyle to give her daughter a better life.

5 years after leaving the Mennonite community, Lizzie feels like she is being followed, and has been receiving threatening letters. When there are problems that cause Lizzie to loose her job, she feels she has nowhere left to go, but to return to her hometown. As a single mother, Lizzie wants nothing more than to settle into a routine that gives her daughter stability and love.

Upon returning home, she has to face all the people she ran from when she left Kingdom. After re-uniting with her mother, Lizzie is directed to a small restaurant and its owner, Cora. Cora helps Lizzie with a place to stay, and a job working in the restaurant. Lizzie is beginning to enjoy working at the restaurant and finds herself liking the small Kingdom community, that she ran from years ago. Back into her life walks Noah, a good friend, and Clay, the father of Lizzie's little girl.

Forced to seek God's direction on the relationships with the men in her life, and the future of her daughter, Lizzie learns to seek direction from her heavenly Father.

This book has great characters, and also a great story. I enjoyed this book and look forward to the next book in this series.

Thanks to Bethany House Publishers for providing a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Kitten Adventure

It has been an extremely dry summer. The first weekend in August, I volunteered to help at an outdoor event. I took the kids along with me, as they would also be able to "help".

Well - it was a rainy Saturday morning. We certainly didn't want to complain about the rain - as we were very much in need of it!

The kids and I were standing outside our car under umbrella's during this event. The kids thought they heard a kitten me-owing. Well - a little later they found the kitten crawl out from underneath our car. It was one of the kittens from our house. This little kitten must have crawled underneath the car to get away from the rain.

It rode about 15 miles there and stayed safe.

Of course it couldn't ride back home in the same place it rode to our destination...so - the kids found a bag and some cardboard to help keep the kitten contained, and also protect in case of an accident. Allyson is a pretty good pillow to this kitten. It slept most of the way home - until about 4 miles from home, then it was ready to get out and run! It made it home safely.

35th Birthday

Thanks to all my family and friends that helped to make my birthday a special day.

I enjoyed Chinese for lunch at work and then went out for Mexican with the girls for supper.

Dana treated me to a pedicure after we ate.

Hotel Getaway

We were only home for a day and then the kids and I were off again - only this time to Des Moines for a work meeting. The kids went along and stayed in the hotel with me and had a blast swimming.

We even had some visitors during our stay - so fun to see Reese and Piper and play with them in the pool.

The Color Run Minneapolis

This July, during our weekend vacation to Minneapolis, we included plans to participate in this run.

I started training in March, as I am/was not a runner.

Running went well. I had run 2 previous 5k's already this summer, so wasn't too worried about the running.

Dana and I went to pick up packets the day before. Wow - what a lot of people.

We woke up early to get to the Minnesota/St.Paul Fairgrounds - the location for the run.

We were signed up to run in the 8:00 time slot. We found out at packet pick up that they would sent 1000 runners through the start every 5 minutes. Wow!

Here is our group of gals - all nice and white before the start of the run.

A packet of color to throw at the end.

Look at all those people - we were in wave 2!

Getting a little colorful!

We did it - look at all that color! So much fun!

Our group all colorful!

What a fun experience! It was so much fun! I am glad I decided to give this adventure a try! It was fun to train (yup - you read that right - fun!) and I am still running!

Saturday, July 28, 2012

4th of July

This year, my 4th of July started out bright and early. I traveled about 30 minutes to a neighboring town to run in a 5k road race. My friend from work ran along with me.

We did great - by great I mean we finished the race and only walked for a little bit in the 3rd mile. Our finishing time was 36 minutes 19 seconds.

Next, I went home, showered, and Grandpa Wayne took the kids to a spot near our house to fish.

4th of July was hot, but being by the water to fish was fun!

Caden and Dad waiting for a bite.

Allyson caught one! She loves to show off that she can hold the fish by herself.

Look at the expression on his face - this is one of the bigger ones we caught.

Holding the fish by himself - showing off the size.

Allyson is working on taking out the hook by herself.

We have quite the little fishers on our hands. They love going to this spot, as there isn't much waiting, you put your worm on, cast off, and within a short time, you have a bite. Such fun!