~Photo-a-day~ Mar. 19-25

Hello everyone!

This week I was busy every single night, so unlike the previous three weeks…where I was pretty much down to a schedule and relaxed every evening at home. And most importantly getting my proper amount of sleep.

I had to get my taxes done…this was my first year to have to pay taxes for my business. (cool fact, my business had it’s first anniversary on March 1st)  Wow life as an adult and you mean I have to do this every year?!?!?!? Crazy! Benjamin Franklin hit the nail on the head when he said “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”. I can’t think of a truer statement for my feeling for taxes! Christina went along to get hers done as well…so I didn’t have to go alone. After we finished we met Jonathan for dinner, it was so fun to just relax and hang out with two of my favorite siblings=)

Day 78

~on the floor~

This is the floor in the laundry room. A typical Atherton floor on a typical day!

Day 79

~above~

I had to wake up at four that morning and ran, just to get it in at all that day. Now running three miles plus going straight to work (after rushing through a shower and feeding all my animals) equals a very tired Olivia=) All morning I was nodding and yawning at work, horrible way to start a day…so unless it’s an emergency I’ll leave my running to the evenings. The reason for this was that night I went to an Amish family’s home for dinner. They have ten kids like my family, but much younger. The kids and I really hit it off, when we met last fall. They do maple syrup every year and this year they asked me if I wanted to help them (because I miss it so much) I was all in=)  I learned so much that evening. I have always used a gas stove for the boiling process and they used a wood stove for theirs. We all stood around the boiling syrup and laughed and talked till late into the night. When I left they still had a few more hours of boiling to do. I believe we boiled down somewhere from 50 to 55 gallons of maple water that night.  This is my deer by the way=)

Day 80

~hat~

okay isn’t she adorable? I took a lot of her in this hat and will post some more of them soon=)

Day 81

~sometimes I…~

sometimes I feel like a gutter that everyone’s problems (water) run into, even if they don’t know it.  And I have to find a solution for that problem and all of my own…like the gutter that moves the water to the ground. Really deep I know…but who hasn’t looked a gutter and felt sorry for them at one point in their life, I knew it, just me. I’m the only one=)

Day 82

~a pair~

a pair of helpful hands are hard to come by, this evening Isaac made bread for the first time, with my supervision. Here he is sweeping the kitchen floor (he only spilled “a little” flour) He did a wonderful job and is the perfect student. Listens and ask all the right questions.

Day 83

~a dream~

a dream come true! I paid my braces off! This was on my “goals” list for 2014 annnnnnndddd I made it! I’m so proud of my self=) if I do say so myself  And it has been less than and year since I started these payments…and now they are behind me=)

Day 84

~shiny~

Hannah just got home from spending time in Florida, last night. She went with her best friend and her best friend’s family, for about a week and a half…   Along with shells, she brought back these shiny (I just had to use that word=) sharks teeth, that she found on the beach! Impressively cool=)

Crazy week huh?!?!

It’s fun, to me, to look back over these “photo-a-day” pictures - it’s almost like a photo diary, each picture has a memory all of it’s own.

Please let me know which picture you like the best!

Happy Wednesday!!!

Thoughts from my childhood

I came into the kitchen one evening, to make my lunch, last week and saw this. Books everywhere=) My mom spent the day at a library used book sale and returned home with loads of books. She’s very cleanliness minded…these were in the process of all their covers drying from being washed.

Some of these were the very books she had barrowed from the Library and read to us when we were kids. My mind flooded with memories of my sweet mother reading to us as kids as I looked through the titles. She had the best reading voice I know, bringing every single story to life. Changing her voice for each and every character. And using all the emotion needed to engage even the most reluctant listener. She read to us everywhere: in the car, while we were doing homework, for school, for devotionals, over a meal, - and my all time favorite time – at night.

Like this one by Jean Fritz read by mom over lunch…I would always hurry with my food so I could go stand behind her chair and look at the pictures. It was always a great spot until it got crowded by my other siblings who also preferred to listen from this place.

Laura Ingalls I can picture it like it was yesterday. Christmas time and we were all just out of the tub, in our pajamas, squished on the couch around mom listening intently to this well loved story.

I loved this one…he was such a hero!

When my school crossed into American early history in 7th grade mom had me read this…wow I couldn’t get enough. I read this one in a week. Those that know me know a book hast to be very interesting, to me, for this to happen.

Galileo. I read this one and wrote an essay on it, mid grade school I believe.

And who doesn’t love the Laura Ingalls series?!?! I remember my mom reading the series to us (for a unit study) through the opened door  so that not only us girl could here but also the boys in their room. Whenever the furnace would kick on, it would get pretty hard to hear her. I would just lay there and watch the flames behind her as she read. I loved those days!

Isaac doing homework…he’s the last one of us ten still in school. Mom’s graduated all ten and he’s her last…and out of us ten I think he’s the best student of us all=)

How some of the books were transported from the sale to the car and from the car to the house.

“The Little Auto” now this was my favorite nap time story=)

One of my favorite stories of all time (mom gave me this book=) She read this over lunch and I can still remember it was soup and popcorn. And she cried when she read the last paragraph …”so a man can stand up”. that line gave us all chills

My mom read to us for hours, sometime she would have to stop because her voice was hoarse. Her water breaks which only took minutes, seemed to us eager listeners more like hours, because we were always left on a cliffhanger. But she loved to read to us. She was telling me the other day how she misses when we were all young and she’d read in the car when we all traveled together. She instilled in me a love for good literature and I hope to pass this on someday. possibly to children of my own

I know I had the best childhood growing up, without a shadow of a doubt. With parents who poured their time, not finances, into their kids (making all the difference) who wouldn’t.