Daddy and Mama's trip to North Carolina

Mama and Daddy took a trip to beautiful North Carolina together to attend a marriage retreat. It was an early celebration of their twenty-fifth anniversary...Our beautiful Mama packing in the pickup. :)The conference, Our Marriages and the Marriages of our Sons and Daughters, was held in the home of the Scott Brown family. Mama and Daddy said it was wonderfully encouraging and inspired them.We were so happy that they could go! But we were even happier when they came back!

Three is a Crowd

There were three families here this Sunday, so it really did make a crowd! There were 25 of us, not including a baby yet to be born! The Lonneman family came for another visit and we met a new family; the Carpenters!

Everyone helped with the food. There was plenty of it!!!

The boys cut up the chicken

The girls helped serve up condiments and set the table. The Carpenter and Lonneman girls had to help me write all the names for the place cards...no small task. :)

The best part was the wonderful time we had talking and singing together!

The last few days when I walked accross the wind-swept field or trudged up the garden path with a bucket for corn, a breath of wind wafted by me, carrying air from another world; sweet and golden, rich and cool. For a moment the breath of Autumn was rushing down my neck and filling my senses with a tingling fragrance. It was gone a moment later, swallowed in the perfume of high-summer; but not without whispering in my ear the promise of harvest time.

~ From the Six Arrows Farm Update this week

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

Una and Grace

The Valley

This is not exactly "our" valley, but it is close to home and our valley opens into it. I see this view every morning when I take Charlie and Ben to work on the other side of the ridge. It takes my breath away every time I see it, no matter how often. I think that without even realizing it, when I recognize the familiar slopes and swells of this valley, I know I am coming home. Wherever I go, if a place resembles this, I have a moment of home-coming.
The best in this world cannot compare to heaven, but if the good things in it are "foretastes," heaven will be the first place we have never been where our souls will recognize beyond doubt that we have finally come Home.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

~1 Corinthians 13:12