A Late Summer Garden

We are blessed to have a late summer garden this year after all!! As I am sure that you all know, IA has had so much flooding, rain, thunderstorms and tornadoes this spring and summer that many crops and gardens have had little or no chance to grow. Well Ashley, our 18-year-old daughter, and two of our younger kids, decided to plant a garden and see if they could get anything to grow, even if it was late in the summer. Well they were successful! It's growing beautifully! They actually tilled up the area of ground themselves, planted, watered, and have been weeding it all themselves! I am so proud of them!! They planted corn, carrots, yellow squash, cucumbers and pumpkin. Next year, weather permitting, we plan to double or triple the size of the garden. What a great blessing this is! God is ever faithful to provide.

A New Motto...

Our home is clean enough to be healthy,

Organized enough to be peaceful,
And blessed to know its ALL
God!

New Puppies!!

We have three new arrivals here this week. One of my Petite Le Fleur dogs has 3 new babies (2 males and 1 female), and I have two more pregnant mommies due in August! What a blessing for my new breeding business!

*Heaven's Tiny Petals does NOT sell to Puppy Mills or Pet Shops!

Updates On Our Family

Well things are still crazy around here, which I guess you could say is a "norm" with our family, and something I just need to accept as a part of our lives. :+) The twins, Anja and Alara, were here for 2 1/2 weeks this time. Then last night their parents, and the girls, were in a bad car accident. Both of their parents are in the hospital, and right now the girls are with their great aunt. We will probably have them here with us while their parents recover. The next thing is that we got a big swimming pool for the kids here at the farm. It's plenty big enough for the younger ones and the teens (and takes 2000 gal. of water to fill each time). As a matter of fact, we had 20 kids here to play in the pool on Monday between our neighbor kids (who are also a family with 10 kids), my nieces and nephews, and my kids! Do you know how much it takes with to feed that many kids? Precisely 4 loaves of bread, 1 1/2 jars of peanut butter, and 3/4 jar of jelly! :+)

Along with the swimming pool comes sunburns. My poor Sheyenne is by far the worse. She has burned on her arms, shoulders, and chest and back. She also has blisters the size of quarters. We have her on special creams, Aloe Vera gel, Ibuprofen, Tylenol, etc., but she is still miserable. She had sun block on, but apparently, it didn't help enough. She is just like me in this I'm afraid. I can remember many Track and Field days at school and the terrible sunburns I used to get, then topped off with numerous vinegar baths I used to soak in trying to ease the pain. Doug tried taking all the kids to see the movie "Kung Fu Panda" tonight, but Sheyenne is so miserable that they are coming home early. I hurt for her.

Well today is the day that Samuel, our baby boy, was due to be born. This has been a hard day for me today. I know he is safe in God's loving arms, but I still want to hold him and be able to kiss his tiny face. I will always miss him and love him. Does the pain ever really go away?

My dog breeding business is doing well. I am glad to have my dogs here and now have two dogs that are bred and another one being bred. I have one litter due in 2 weeks, and one due in mid August. Prayerfully, I will have a third one due by the end of August as well.

We went to the Exotic Animal Swap Meet in Allen, NE again this past weekend. We had a wonderful time!! And no rain! YEA! There were people there from ND, SD, IA, NE, MN and WI with numerous animals for swap and/or for sale, such as: camels, llamas, goats, pot bellied pigs, dogs, cats, ferrets, bunnies, baby calves, guinea pigs, donkeys, mini ponies, horses, peacocks...you name it! We brought home 3 more laying ducks (now giving us 4 females and 1 male), since I love cooking and baking with duck eggs over chicken eggs whenever I can. And of course we also brought home two bunnies! Ashley has named hers Issac, and Zach has named his Leah. I am praying for no baby bunnies however! Dogs yes, but I really don't want oodles of bunnies! Can you have a bunny spayed or neutered?!

Ashley and the younger kids planted a garden this week. I pray that we won't have so much more rain that it washes it all out. They planted corn, carrots, pumpkin, yellow squash and cucumbers. IA is in a constant flood state this spring, with so many of the fields being washed out, so I am praying that we are past some of this and that all will grow well, even if it is later this summer that we reap the harvest. With grocery prices going higher and higher, it's certainly worth trying.

Well I think this is basically all that's basically been going on at our house the last week or so. More later, and I hope pictures too!

Storms and More Storms

It has been storming off and on for the last two or three weeks now here in IA. Not surprising, as it is spring, but the winds have been just terrible lately! We have lost two windows on our back porch (at different times), one of our gas grills, and now the dog kennel! Thank God that the dogs weren't in it at the time!! I don't know where they would have ended up as little as they are!

The kennel was over the dog house!