Spring has sprung! Well, maybe I should say it’s in the process of springing… attempting to spring… I don’t know…

The grass is green, the birds are singing, we are going barefoot on the warmer days and wearing snow boots on the snowy days… just loving the extra hour of daylight, since the time change.

The children are growing up faster than we can fully fathom. Anna Grace is almost 10, and just shooting up. I can’t keep dresses long enough for that girl. She gets a new dress that fits her, and next thing i know, it is too short.

She is creative and generous and as always, a wonderful help to me. Her favorite things to do are sewing and baking, but she is learning to do a wide variety of useful things.

Oliver is 8, my active outdoor guy. He takes an interest in the animals, and also the gardening side of things. I think he will be super helpful in the garden this year.

He is sometimes rough and tumble, other times, sensitive and tender, and some days I don’t know if I’m cut out for this parenting thing. But in the last year I’m seeing so much growth and maturity in him. He is gentle with his little brother, and they have the sweetest friendship. I’m so glad they have each other.

Ruth is 6. She’s making all kinds of progress in learning to read, and is following in her siblings footsteps, in being very interested in the cooking/baking scene. I never cook alone anymore. There’s always someone who wants to help. I just need to figure out how to carry the interest on through to the cleanup stage. 😉

Ruth is imaginative in an Anne of Green Gables kind of way. She lives in her own little dream world. Practicality is not part of her makeup at this point. We love to see her imaginative little mind at work. Right now, she and Elizabeth are really into dressing up as princesses and pretending to be twins. 🙂

Elizabeth is 4, and she is very similar to Anna Grace in personality. She is a little worker bee. She seems to thrive on being helpful, which any mama knows is a wonderful thing to have in a busy household.

Elizabeth is not quite as “romantical” in imagination as Ruth is, but she has no issue entertaining herself. She is very talkative and has a very sparkly personality.

She loves to pretend she is in school, and is diligently working her way through a math book that I gave her, to appease her disappointment in not being old enough for school. I figured she would burn out and give up, but her determination is impressive.

Harrison. My little baby boy who just isn’t staying little… He’s human of course, they all are… but we are completely smitten with him. He is going to be so spoiled if we don’t get it together.

Harrison has a very charming way of asking for things, that makes it almost painful to say no. I have never been the kind of mama who shares her coffee with her children, but I almost don’t have the ability to say no to his “have some coffee, Mama? Jist a wittle bit?”

He… well he’s a huge mess. Gets into all sorts of scrapes like cracking eggs, mixing sugar and flour in the canisters, writing on walls, or writing on his sleeping sister.

When we catch him making these messes, and try to scold him, he responds with a very sincere sounding “OH, NO!!!” which is hilarious. This stage is probably my favorite stage in the whole life of a child.

Recently, Harrison, who is OBSESSED with John Deere tractors, went to stay with my sister and her family, while we went on a trip. He must have talked about John Deere a little too much, and they decided it was time to introduce him to some other kinds.

He came home with a new tractor, and also.. imagine how hard we laughed when we drove by the John Deere dealership after picking him up from her house, and his little voice in the backseat, shouted out: “John Deere tractors… umm… FENDT TRACTORS!!! FENDT TRACTORS! FENDT TRACTORS!” We howled. 🤣

Harrison talks in complete sentences now, so that’s fun. He just chatters and sings, and spreads sunshine everywhere. 🙂 he loves singing “Twinkle Star,”and begs to sing it as a blessing before meals.

Obviously that’s not ideal, so we’ve been singing God is Great, to that tune, which makes him happy. (We sing God is Great, and he sings Twinkle Twinkle at the top of his voice.) 😅

We butchered pigs yesterday! Now we (and several friends) have a years supply of pork in our freezers; and while it makes a fun day, it also makes a long, tiring day , which we are all glad to have behind us.

We got a good early start, we had a good crew of willing help, and would have finished up earlier than usual, but… this year was my first year being responsible for the ponhoss, we tried a new king of cornmeal, and I suspect I didn’t have the broth/cornmeal ratio quite right. We stirred it for HOURS.

It eventually thickened properly, and the flavor is delicious! Experiential learning at its finest. I love that we get to pass these traditions down to our children. As we stirred and STIRRED, I was reminiscing on past butchering days as a child, and feeling so thankful that our children can grow up making these memories too.

What a rich and beautiful heritage it is, that our grandparents and great grandparents took the time to preserve and pass down. May there be bacon and sausage and community and memories for generations to come.

And speaking of traditions. There is only one menu that is acceptable for the butcher day meal at my house, and that is the menu that we always had in my childhood. 😅 It is not up for debate unless you are offering to host the butchering at your house.

Other than butchering, what have we been up to? Projects abound, and we check them off one at a time, delusionally believing that we will be done some day.

Speaking of checking things off, Cory and I left the children at the homes of various family members, and took a trip to Indiana that has been in the works for a very long time.

To go way back to the beginning, I went to Maranatha Bible School in 2012, and met this guy named Jeff, who has been a friend of mine and Cory’s, ever since. A lot of water passed under the bridge since then, but Jeff invited us to his wedding, in 2019, and while we were there, he and his lovely bride, Louisa, introduced us to some of their friends. I remember meeting Reuben and Leighton, and Jeff said to Cory, “We would love to get your story for our podcast! You guys will have to come out here sometime and visit!”

Cory doesn’t remember this at all, but he said he would be happy to do that, and then we went back home, and kinda forgot all about it.

Fast forward a few years, Jeff reached out to me in 2024, asking if we would be guests on a special live event, celebrating 500 episodes.

We agreed, though we felt a bit of trepidation about the “live audience” bit, and also knowing there was no way to tell the story they were after, in a 35-40 minute span.

We made preparations and we were so excited to take a trip, “just us and the baby,” but circumstances just were not in our favor. The weekend we were supposed to leave, the older gentleman we are caregivers for, ended up in the hospital.

We didn’t feel right to just continue on our merry way and let the other caregivers figure it out, so we canceled.

We planned it again, but our children got a stomach bug. 🥴

We planned it again, and my uncle passed away. 🩶

We said, “you know… maybe this isn’t supposed to happen til some other time,” and hung it up til a more convenient season.

Fast forward again. It’s the beginning of 2026, our youngest is 2, and can easily stay with a family member, and our next little one isn’t due for a few months yet, making it the perfect time for us to take a little “babymoon” trip.

With our caregiving responsibilities, it took some effort and planning and generous community support, but the pieces came together, and for the first time since being parents, we took a trip together without our children. We had so much fun.

It took us a few minutes to realize that with no children chattering in the car, we were responsible to decide what to talk about. If you know us even a little, you know that we didn’t have too much trouble figuring that out. I giggled helplessly when Cory realized he had forgotten his sunglasses, and immediately settled on the solution of wearing his mom’s. (We were borrowing her SUV, and her shades had quite a bit more bling than Cory’s do.) He didn’t care a bit, and it was absolutely hilarious to me. He even forgot they were on his face, and almost went into a rest stop wearing them. 😅

Yes, I do have a picture, no, I’m not going to share it here. 🙂

On the way out, we stopped to see Mike and Bev in Columbiana, Ohio. They are our “faraway best friends,” we just love them, and each time we get together, we pick right up where we left off. Cory and Mike stayed up talking til 2 in the morning. Not surprising then, that we had a hard time getting back on the road at a reasonable hour…

We had a lovely time with Jeff and Louisa and their beautiful children. We even had fun recording the podcast episodes. We weren’t sure how that was going to be, but it was super laid back and they made it easy. We were blessed to be able to share our story of God’s provision and protection, with these friends. Every time we share it, we are blessed, as we are again reminded of God’s grace and mercy, both then, and now.

Now the recorded version of the story is available, from both mine and Cory’s perspective. Cory has always wanted his perspective recorded, but he is not a writer, and unfortunately I am not very good at writing from any other perspective than mine… so he especially is really happy to have it preserved for future generations.

“Because we are getting old,” he says. “And we’re gonna start forgetting stuff.” (For the record , we are 35. We are not getting old.)

It was special to be with friends, meet new people, and as always, make connections with folks who know some of the same people we know. The Mennonite Game is alive and well in northern Indiana. 🙂 we came back with multiple “hellos” to deliver locally.

Perhaps most special of all was picking up our little ones when we got back, and just reveling in the beautiful happy chaos that is our whole family riding in one vehicle. Sometimes it is a lot, but after 2 long, peaceful 10 hour drives, we were happy to embrace the littles AND their noisy conversation.

So now we are back home, and Spring is playing hide and seek, and although there have been plenty of things to do all along, the sweet tastes of springtime have inspired us. We now feel like doing the things we’ve been knowing we needed to get done.

Most exciting on my “To Do Before Baby” list is a bathroom makeover. Our bathroom is so ugly. I have all kinds of dreams, and I’ve bought some of the supplies I need, so I’m pretty much ready to start! Oliver asks me every day if today is the day. One of these days I’m going to say yes, and dig in. But first I need to do some more research on drywall repair.

Maybe I will share a before/after.

Time has flown by since I shared here that we will be welcoming a new little one. Now my due date is less than 2 months away! We are beyond excited to meet this little one, (although we have zero names picked out.)

So far we haven’t left one unnamed, so I’m choosing not to be stressed on that account. 🙂

That’s about it for our Spring update.

We wish you (and us) lots of sunshine and blue skies.

Be blessed ❤️