Grandchildren and birthdays!

My Husband and I had the opportunity to spend 3 days last weekend with our daughter and family. Above you can see their their 5 children, our grandchildren. We had a great time. We also celebrated 3 of their birthdays. Chick #4 just had his birthday and chick #2 and #3 have their birthdays in March.


Here is #3 and #4 looking at their gifts from me and Papa, just wishing it was time to open them!


Our oldest daughter always bakes and decorates their cakes and this one was special as it included all 3 of the birthday children. The #4 is for four year old chick #4. After the Happy Birthday song, they each took turns blowing out their set of candles.

The cake had Iron man's head on and was decorated with her very delicious butter frosting.

Mom cuts the cake!

Birthday boy #4 gets to try the first slice of cake! Um-um-um good!

Finally the time has come to open those enticing gifts.

Roller blades for our 10 year old grandson!

The other 2 both received roller skates.

Our 7 year old granddaughter trying out her new roller skates and her stylish hat we gave her.

Don't forget the 4 year old! He had to show off his roller skates too.

All 3 opening their gift from Aunt Lissa and family. WOW! It's a big floor puzzle!

Our oldest granddaughter helps puzzle and fits the last, 60th piece into place. We all had fun looking for certain area's on the world puzzle map.

A special treat for Valentines day, 2 hours at the town roller rink! Hear is mom with 4 of her 5 children. What fun they had! There are not many roller rinks left but we are very happy that this hard wood rink is still in operation. I as a child spent many hours at our country roller rink and both our daughters spent many hours at a Omaha Roller skating rink, they even took dance lessons and can still skate very well!

The baby and me enjoyed watching. Here you can see how she glows during the blue light skating session.

She loves our older, calm and gentle 12 year old dog.

She enjoyed her Valentine gift from us. Look at that smile!

Her hands are constantly in her mouth, I'm thinking it wont be long until those little tooffers start peeking through!

I think our dog loves the special attention even if it means being dressed in different costumes.

Me, my husband with his new suit, along with our 5 grandchildren. We are missing our oldest grandson who's birthday was on Feb. 17th. We are hopefully going to spent the day with them on Feb. 28th.

Me and our youngest grand baby! We had so much fun!

Here she is with Papa, not quite so sure about him!

Mom with her sweet rosy cheek baby.

Family's are such a blessing from God, We give thanks for family and for His gracious Love and care, and for every precious hour we get to spend with them.

A Valentine for all time!

A Valentine for all time, for everyone is the special message of LOVE form our Creator, God our Father, who gives us His precious word through scripture.


For God so loV ed the world,
That He gA ve
his onL y
BegottE n
SoN
T hat whosoever
Believeth I n Him
Should N ot perish
But have E verlasting life.'
John 3:16

Yesterday at our Porcupine Mission Service the message was about Gods Love. As you can tell from the flannel graph, Creation was the start of that love. After the service, he used his puppet Brains, to summarize quite a few Bible stories, Brains got a little confused and had them all intertwined and mixed up.

One of our sweet little girls coloring a heart magnet.
I wish I could show you all of the beautifully decorated hearts but there were about 36 so I only snapped pictures of a few. They were to remind them of Jesus constant love for us even when sometimes we feel like nobody loves us.

We also colored and cut heart pop-up valentines with the John 3:16 verse on it.

Even the adults got excited about this craft.

They had special friends in mind to receive these valentines with Gods message of love.

Since Valentines Day is just around the corner, I will share a few special Vintage Valentines. I was so excited last week when I found and purchased a book of vintage punch-out flocked Valentines. These certainly brought back memories of when I was in Grade school. We always decorated a box to hold all our Valentines. I remember the excitement and then carefully examining each Valentine several times over the next week or so.

I thought these Deer were really cute. You can see the flocking is on the heart to the right. For those youngsters out there who don't remember flocking, it is almost a velvet , plush feeling texture.

I noticed a lot of the Vintage Valentines showed a mail man. I would guess that was due to most Valentines being mailed rather then emailed or sent over the phone as our new generation would do.

I hope you enjoyed looking at these interesting Valentines, I certainly enjoyed punching them out, putting them together, folding them and making the envelopes too.

I normally use previous Valentines to decorate the house at this time of year. Below you will see some very special Valentines made by my Grandchildren.

These are some I have received from very special people who know me well and know I love the old fashioned Vintage looking Valentines. Below is a close up of two of my favorites. The first one came from My oldest Daughter and family several years ago. It folds open to hold the card. Isn't it adorable?

Now this unique Valentine came from my youngest daughter. It has many folds and if you look closely you can see the little girl on the swing with real string holding it. It is so fragile and beautiful. It even has the old fashioned/vintage look, red folded tissue paper decoration.

I have many, many, more Valentines I could and would love to share with you but I know neither of us has the time for such reminiscing.

I hope your Valentines Day is filled to the brim with LOVE. I know mine will be, as scripture says, God is Love! If God be for me, who can be against me!

She is LCMS Member

Did you know that the new Miss America is a Lutheran? ( LCMS! )
I missed the 2009 Miss America Pageant in January. Did You know that Katie S. the new Miss America is LCMS (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Listen to her talent! What a witness! both in Miss Ill. and Miss America pageant.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P8IO1w-DMk

This is the site where I found out about Miss America. Aardvark Alley
25 January 2009
Famous Lutherans, Pageant Department
Happenings congratulates Katie Stam, the daughter of a Lutheran teacher and now Miss America 2009. See There She Is ... Miss (LCMS) America.Technorati Tags: Miss America 2009 Katie Stam Lutheranism LCMS The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod Happenings Aardvark Alley

TATONKA, the mighty American Buffalo

This is what we saw when we went to the 2009 Stock Show. Someone had spent many hours creating this scrap iron Takonka, the mighty American Buffalo. It looked very interesting so I just had to take a picture of it. OK, a few pictures of it. It is created about life size. If you click on the photo it should make bigger so you can really check out the Scrap Iron.
TaTonka, the mighty American Buffalo






I really liked the way the old chains made the fur on the head and neck. I'm sure whoever created this will get a pretty penny $ $ $ for all his hard work. I guess when you see all these people at these farm auctions buying all this old scrap iron etc. you never know what it might turn into!



We also had the opportunity to see the Budweiser Clydesdale's. They had most of them in pens, more like big portable cages, but they did have one out at a time for viewing, petting and taking photo's. The lighting wasn't the best for taking these pictures but it sure is impressive to see these big gentle giant horses in person.

I love there huge feet and the beautiful groomed feathers as they call them around their ankles.

It also looks like they are all wearing shoes to cover their hooves.

How would you like that job to brush, comb all those feet everyday?

I am almost sure they don't stay that nice all by themselves.
This is one in its portable stall.

They are very beautiful and very tall and sturdy built horses. Each one has a name too.

There were other cowboys waiting their turn to rope, and show off the skill of their trained horses. All week long there are more activities to mention. Our city is full up and buzzing with action for the 10 day stock show.

Three Friends, Three Grandmothers, Three Granddaughters!

Three good friends for over 25 years.What great memories we have. Now with the years passing so swiftly, we all have grown married children. The interesting thing that happened in 2008 was we all had a new granddaughter. This was my third granddaughter and 6th grandchild but for my two good friends, this was both their first granddaughter. These sweet precious little granddaughters were each born 2 months apart.

Here is grandmother #1 enjoying some special Christmas time with her first grandchild and granddaughter. She was born in May and what excitement and joy.

Special snuggles for her grandma.

Notice her gentle touch to her grandmothers cheek. I love that feeling, a sweet chubby little hand is so special to her grandmother.

Here she is enjoying a cloth Christmas book made specially for her

with much love from her Grandma.

Here is Grandmother #2. with her darling little granddaughter. She was born in July.

The photo's above really capture the deep love this Grandmother has for her Granddaughter.
You can tell the feeling is mutual. Those granddaughters just eat up every minute of Grandma's special touch.

It's such a joy to show off those granddaughters and you can see by the smile that Grandmother #2 is one proud grandmother. And rightly so!

This is me with Granddaughter #3. She was born in September.
She is as sweet as she can be. I thoroughly enjoy every moment I get to
spend with her.


Here she is fast asleep but I still don't want to put her down!
All three of our granddaughters live far away from us.
Us three friends each got to spend precious memorable time
with our Grandchildren over Christmas or New Years.
We are very grateful for that time but it always seems to go too fast!

Me with my granddaughter all dressed for Christmas.

Here she is smiling, I just know it is because she loves visiting

her Nana and sitting on my lap!

Since I am the one who normally is taking all the pictures, I really don't have

a whole lot of pictures to choose from.

Every now and then I give my camera to one of my older grandchildren and ask if they can snap a picture or two. Most times they jump at that chance.

So now that our children and grandchildren have all gone back to their homes far away,

us three friends brag, compare notes, show each other pictures of our three granddaughters.

What a blessing they are and what a blessing that all three of us experienced it within 4 months time in 2008!