Looking back on a wonderful year!!

Today marks the end of another year so it is time to reflect on the many ways God has blessed us.

Family

One of the ways I feel very blessed is with the family God has gifted me with. I consider it to be a gift that my family is so close. We spend alot of time with each other, go places together and I consider them to be my best friends.

My son and grandsons surprised me out of the blue one day by taking me to lunch at the Wooden Angel. It was a very nice surprise. Those 3 guys and my husband are my most favoritest guys in the world.

My daughter and I started going to Painting With a Twist together. I absolutely love it. Who knew I could paint!! I believe that when our children are young we need to make sure that we appreciate all of the little and big moments because the do grow up so fast but memories with my grown children are so special to me also. Instead of having to be parent/child all of the time we can now also be friends. My children have grown into amazing adults that I am proud of.

I am blessed to be close with my sister and her family. While going through my pictures I realized there were lots of pictures of me and my youngest niece, she sure does love her aunt April and I sure do love her. This is a picture of us rocking our lu la roe.

My niece was so proud to win a ribbon in the children's tractor pulls at the fair. I love that I get to be there for so much of her life.

Sister, her husband and my 2 nieces.

I think my sister was trying to steal one of my goats while I was on vacation. She was doing it while trying to tell me she was just feeding them. Warning Val: they dont stay this cute and cuddly.

I cannot believe this little cutie started Kindergarten this year.

This one might surprise everyone but I am blessed to have wonderful in-laws. I get along with my husband's family and we all love each other. This is a picture of me and my sister-in-laws, we are as close as sisters. I do not get to see them as much as I would like. I have many nieces and nephews that I love and even 2 great nieces!!! It was funny because when I became a great aunt it made me feel older then when I became a grandma!

We are very blessed by getting to spend so much time with our grandsons. I know some people do not see their grandkids often and it breaks my heart. Without the closeness of my family, life would be so much harder. Please remember though that even if your earthly family does not spend much time with you your heavenly father is always waiting with arms open wide. Above is a picture from my mom's birthday party.

Strawberry picking. We do this every year. Traditions are wonderful.

Our family is blessed with 5 generations. 

pumpkinland

That is Caitlyn's boyfriend in the picture with her. He is fitting into our family wonderfully. I am so happy that she has found a great guy who treats her well.

We were able to take our oldest grandson on vacation with us this year.

It was so much fun. We felt he was finally old enough to go.

Kids putting off little fireworks on the 4th of July.

Can you see our youngest grandson hiding behind Doug?

Spidey!

Friends                                                                                                                                                        

This was my first year going to the ladies retreat and I had such a great time. I cannot wait to go next year. My mom usually goes to these things with me but she was unable to go. My friend Brenda went with me and we had a wonderful time even when the gps decided to not want to take us home. 

My friend Brenda and I singing karaoke.

Husband                                                                                                                                                     

I have the most amazing husband. He puts up with so much from me. From my crazy moods to my crazy ideas. He is always there for me. He even surprised me and gave me a pandora bracelet for Christmas, sat through the Nutcracker ballet because I wanted to go see it and takes such good care of me. We are in a new season of life. Our children are grown and we get to focus more on each other now.

2017 has been such a great year and looking back on all of it helps me to remember just how blessed we truly are. There were some hard and sad times but the joys have outweighed the sadness. I hope everyone looks back on 2017 with joy and is looking forward to whats to come in 2018. Have a wonderful and blessed New year. God bless you all!!!

Isaiah 40:31 but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

Why is he always correct?

Did you ever wonder what we do for fun here at why the simple life? Well, here it is!! One of our favorite stores to visit is Tractor Supply!! Here is a picture of my amazing husband loading some feed into the truck. I want to make sure before I say the next part that I love my husband more than anything or anyone. He is my second love. God first, husband second! They both do an awesome job taking care of me. He is a gift from God. Another thing I love in this picture is my truck! I remember when we were first purchasing the truck for me we fought about it. I did not think I would ever like driving such a big truck. I wanted a truck but I wanted to get another Ranger but Doug decided that we needed something bigger in order to be able to move round bales and other stuff that needs done on our farm. I fought it hard. I actually cried about it. But guess what, once again dear Doug was correct. The truck works much better then our ranger ever did and I love it!! I actually like to drive places, I cannot imagine driving anything else. Especially a smaller vehicle. It kind of irks me that he was right again but I am glad I learned to love my truck. It is not a new truck but a new to me truck.

Here is a picture of Doug on his way back into the store to get more goat feed. For some reason he thought one bag would be enough. Silly man.

This last picture has nothing to do with feed or farming but isn't he just adorable. This is my youngest grandson. In case you didn't notice he is really into spiderman this year which made Christmas shopping fun. This is the first year where he was old enough to really enjoy it.

Have a blessed day!!

~April

Changes

      Alot of things have been changing in my life and along with these changes I am beginning to see a change in myself. I still homestead, I raise my own meat, veggies, eggs, honey and hope to someday have our own fruit from our small orchard. I plan to can produce again this year I am interested in making my own cleaners and beauty products but there are things that have changed about me also. One thing that has changed is I have lost 40 pounds. I eat very little sugar and I have so much more energy and feel so much better about myself. I still drink whole raw goat's milk when the goat's have milk but I will also drink skim milk. I am interested in making my own skin care products but I also enjoy makeup and moisturizers from Sephora, I like getting my unmentionables from VS and I also like to get candles from bath and body works. I was going to start a new blog but decided that it would be better to stay on this blog and let you stay on this journey with me. I am confused by all that has changed. I used to only make food from scratch but I have been buying bread from the store. I will still shop at farmer's markets and grow my own food in the growing season and I stay away from prepackaged foods as much as possible. I have begun working at an afterschool program 4 hours a day to help with the costs of running a farm and it works out perfect because that still leaves me time to be a housewife and farmer. If my blog posts seem to contradict one another occasionally it is because this all confuses me. This is a new chapter in my life and I hope you will follow along with me while I sort this all out.

      Today was very cold. I think the high was around 20. We have to go out a few times to chop the ice off of the animals water but the animals seem to take the cold much better then I do. I have raynaud's disease and it causes me to get sores on my toes in the winter. It is painful but tolerable. I do try to keep my feet as warm as possible though. Mom had to work today so I spent the day working on our menu plan and shopping list so that and after she got off work we could go to the grocery store, mall and our weightwatchers meeting. I am up 1.6 pounds but that was expected after all of the sugary treats I ate over Christmas. Nothing exciting happened on the farm today. The winter is pretty boring, it is mainly spent trying to keep the water thawed for the animals.

Christmas was so much fun this year. I think it was our best one ever. Our 2 grandsons are at the perfect ages for it to be fun. I pray that everyone had a great Christmas and that you remembered to keep Christ first.

Living the Simple Life

While browsing pinterest today I realized that I have really gotten away from the simple life that I enjoyed so much and I have begun creeping my way into the fast paced modern world. Things that used to be so important to me have been moved to the back burner of life and it has left me feeling a little empty inside. So, this winter I am going to reevaluate my life and see what things need to be changed back to the way they used to be. We decided for me to get a part time job to help afford the lifestyle that we were living but I have discovered that instead we were trying to afford other things that did not used to be important to us. Today I am working on a list of those things that we want to do. I am not sure if my husband's list is the same but I hope it is at least similar. I have all winter to get this planned out. We are homesteaders and that is what I want to stay as.

1. learn to make my own beauty products
2. make my own cleaning supplies
3. bake bread
4. cook from scratch
5. raise cows for meat
6. raise ducks for eggs and meat
7. learn to spin yarn
8. have a list each week for things that I want to get done
9. meal plan
10. this should be number 1 on my list. Make God my first priority.
11. learn to live on less
12. purge our home of the things we do not need
13. less social media and television
14. have simple holidays

This is just the beginning of my list. I am sure it will get longer as the days go on and I know I have also said all of this before but whenever we fall down we just get back up and try again. Have a blessed day!

~April