Hearts Full of Joy

spring in nauvoo 3

our crabapples are blooming

our maples have leaves
our tulips are lovely.... the temple's tulips are breathtaking...

our new baby redbud isn't doing a thing (yes, those are dandylions in the background, our lawn needs some attention).....

the temple's redbuds are stunning. this is what our redbud hopes to grow up to be someday....

 

redbuds at the temple on our househunting trip one year ago (on a sunny day, which i am still waiting for this year).

pattern making

we planned to have our shop open last weekend, but hit the inevitable and unavoidable road bumps that slowed us down. our real and ultimate goal was this weekend, and we are on target for that. this week i have started something i have long planned to do: making patterns for reproducing some of the antique quilts in my collection, and reproduction quilts I have made. it is heavy brain work (at least for me) to write a pattern so it can be understood, diagram it, and make sure nothing is left out no miscalculations are made. here are  my first two patterns:

"susie's subonnets" is a vintage quilt in my collection. I love it for it's folksy quirkiness.
each block is uniquely different. the shapes and sizes of the bonnets, arms, shoes, etc all vary.

"antique baskets" is a reproduction quilt i made using antique 1800s fabrics and reproduction fabrics. most of the fabrics in teh baskets are really 1800s antiques.

spring in nauvoo 2

our first tulip

our asian pear, "nashi" in japanese

our first strawberry buds

our gracie blossom
the red buds are starting to bloom, the crabapples aren't far behind, and the dogwoods are around the corner....much more to come

coming soon

 
scheduled to open soon.....our shop.
busy-busy with preparations!
more to come....

spring in nauvoo

the woods behind our house our greening up...we are returning to the season when even rainy days are beautiful because the rain just intensifies the green.

the maples are blooming.

more to come....

noah is 5!

his birthday comes just two days after mia's. so it's that crazy time of year for us when a holiday and two birthdays fall in a week.

his favorite present was the jumbo pad of construction paper from natasha.

daddy tied up the tire swing that we drove around town to find in someone's "city clean-up" pile of garbage on tuesday.

the big present, combined for both noah & mia, is the fort/jungle gym/play set (we haven't yet decided what it will be called) that daddy is framing up. he planned  to have it done for the birthdays, but his time has been spent on re-modeling the building for the shop we are opening....more on that to come.

but yesterday wasn't just noah's birthday. i have a cousin and two good friends with the same birthday. and yesterday on facebook we discovered that at least 5 more of our friends were born on the april 17th, bringing the total to at least nine wonderful people in our lives who share this birthday. what a good karma day! it was a beautiful day this year, the best spring weather we've had so far, causing my shy daffodils to get serious about bursting and blooming.

noah got up and put on the same shirt he had worn last year on his birthday, but not intentionally.

 

noah one year ago, on his 4th birthday.

the easter bunnies

this is what the easter bunnies wore this year. mia & noah recycled and wore what i made them last year. i tend to do that with both halloween and easter - my built-in anscestral thrift...or laziness?. grace had outgrown last year's dress, it is now a shirt, and so i made her a new outfit with the 1838 pattern book i have been enjoying so much.

she is wearing the cap and pantaloons i stitched by hand. the dress was machine sewn, but also a complete joy to make.

oh, and mia & noah really are the true easter bunnies. mia was born on easter, and noah was due on easter, although he kept us holding our breaths and chose to come 6 days late. i found that to be a much harder wait with adoption than it had been with my own pregnancy. gracie, well she's just a bunny.

the rodenbergs joined us for easter dinner and an egg hunt!

gracie wearing last year's easter dress (by pure coincidence) as she helps brock plant a tree. we have planted seven more trees, 4 fruit which brings our orchard to a total of 12 trees (two each of apple, peach, pear, plum apricot, and cherry), a red bud, a dogwood, and a maple. i have planted 22 flowering plants: hollyhocks, peonies, columbine, lillies, and dahlias, 25 strawberries, two grapes, and grass seed in some bald spots. our lettuce has finally come up, and maybe our first pea, and onion bulbs have now been planted. it's so interesting learning the quirks of a new climate. we are in love with not having to water our lawn, garden, and landscaping, and so enjoy the wildlife that regularly visit: deer, cottontails, squirrels, cardinals, etc. but with every up comes a down, and we are fast learning to battle the moles that are tearing up our ENTIRE yard and flower beds, and the raccoons who dig up our grass looking for grubs, while trying to keep our trees, flowers, and garden safe from the deer and rabbits. we can tell you which repellents work the best. we planted a new baby grape yesterday that had leaved out. this morning it was nibbled to a 1/2 inch nub.

 

 

spring is coming slowly, but surely.

vintage goodness, the joys of sewing, modest dresses, and beautiful girls

friday was "mormon prom". youth from three stakes of our church descended on columbia, missouri for an evening of fun, modest, and appropriate dancing and partying. the week before, i stumbled across an ebay auction for a vintage 1950s dress, and since tashi didn't have a dress for the event, and was planning on borrowing, i snagged it for her, hoping it would fit.
 
it did! a puffy concotion of pink flocked chiffon, "home made"  (as most dresses were then, a sadly lost art). it had the sheer wrap, but we decided it needed more. the "cumberbund" sash had incredibly long ties, enabling us to cut off the ends and cover her shoulders. add a fluffy crinoline, also from ebay, and we were done. she loved it. so much funner than buying a new dress for 5x the amount we spent on this. lexi wore the dress we got her for her junior prom, coming up in a few weeks.
nauvoo 1st & 3rd ward laurels in columbia

lexi missed the memo...only pink or black dresses lex!

ande (far left) made her beautiful dress. and sarah (pink dress in center) & her aunt made her jacket) we got lexi's for steal, on sale at kathleen's bridal.

our friend brady was at mormon prom too. when he posted photos on facebook a girl asked, "why do all the dresses have sleeves?" i can't imagine allowing a daughter to dance all night with a teenage boy in a strapless gown. what are most parents thinking?

a big shout-out to amazing young women's leaders who sacrificed so much time in driving the girls to the prom (three hours each way) and staying overnight with them!

8 years

mia is 8 today. she was born on tax day, but it wasn't tax day in japan. the 15th was easter that year, everywhere. easter isn't celebrated in japan, but it was celebrated by us, a particularly happy and memorable easter that year, and three days later we got a phone call about a healthy, genki (happy) baby girl....did we want her? ummmm, YES! we had to think about it for approximately .0000001 nanoseconds. it was pure magic, an easter miracle, and  it still is.
on friday we cut off her 12 inch ponytail of beautiful hair to donate to locks of love.

before
 
after

she had a bit of a panic when the ponytail came off. but i just love her new look, the way her hair frames her sweet face. and it's wonderful to be freed from the brushing and brushing and washing and washing.....painful for both her and i.

spring flings

some of the two hundred & twenty - something bulbs I planted last fall are peeking up and blooming. i have been looking forward to spring, and it is living up to my expectations. magnolias, tulip trees, cherry trees and my daffodils and crocuses are in bloom. everything is turning green, our early garden is planted, and the birds are singing.

a generous friend has taught me how to can chicken and dried beans, which i have been excited to learn. it is a tasty and convenient way to add protein to food storage, and are very handy to have on hand. i know that my dried beans in storage will get too hard to enjoy eating before i get to them unless i can them and use them. i never think far enough ahead to have time to soak and cook them for our meals, and so i always open a can instead of using my dried beans.
i have now canned 50 lbs of chicken, fit into 24 quart jars, and 56 quarts of beans. brock figures i have saved over $250 dollars on the cost of buying that much canned chicken from the store. i got this chicken in bulk at $1 a pound. and it is so useful and convenient to have it canned. the dried beans cost me the equivalent of 20 cents a can from the store, 40 cents for a quart jar (not including the cost of the jars, which i will re-use, and the electricity for the stove top canning). 56 quarts of beans equals 112 15 oz cans of beans from the store. the friend who taught me how to do this canning opened up her bottled beans and we taste tested them against bush brand beans, which are her favorite brand.... and we all agreed, the home bottled beans were much, much better. i am also amazed that the 56 quarts of beans barely made a dent in my 125 lbs of dried bean storage. so dried beans will go a long way, but they do get hard after 5 to 7 years and won't soften with any amount of cooking. so it's important to keep rotating them. beans are such a great source of protein, fiber, and many helpful vitamins. i feel much better after adding these items to my food storage.

my mom & SIL traci came for the nauvoo women's retreat last week, which was wonderful beyond words, both the retreat, and having them here for it.

the keynote speaker was mariama kallon, and to quote from the retreat info:

"The keynote speaker is Mariama Kallon, originally from West Africa, where she endured the horrors of a civil war, watching her parents killed, her brother taken and later killed, and her sister's legs cut off. Mariama will share her amazing story of how finding the gospel of Jesus Christ helped her endure loss and despair and become the happy, outgoing woman she is today."

that little blurb doesn't even begin to explain her story. her talk was truly amazing as were all of the presenters. it was all deeply spiritual and inspiring. i was surprised to find that this little retreat, in my opinion, far surpassed time out for women. i was expecting it to be a great experience, but not as incredible as it was. i'm so impressed by the talent of my friends in our ward who put it together.


lexi & my mom

we are savoring our general conference weekend, and our eyes lit up and exclaimations were made when we heard that katsumi kusume, our stake president in japan, father of lexi's first boyfriend, has been called to be an area authority seventy. so who will be the new tokyo stake president? we wouldn't be surprised if it is the father of our dear friend...

chihiro, (shingo's sister), who was married in the tokyo temple on march 28th. (shingo's face is obscured by the groom's in this photo.)

it's been a wonderful week.