Gardening Girls!

We planted a little garden this week! My little girlies, our sweet friend, Gwen & I spent 5 hours planting our winter garden on Thursday morning. Gwen has been gardening her whole life so she came over to help us get started. (Thank you Gwen, for sharing all of your wisdom & knowledge about gardening, mommy-hood & everything else! I had so much fun with you!) Her teenage daughter, Sheree, came over to play with our 4 girlies while Gwen & I worked. (Thank you Sheree, our girls love you & you were such a great help to me!) Our sweet little Ava took an awesome nap while our big girls came outside to help. Amy, Ashley & Abby were my sweet little helpers and had so much fun playing, digging, planting and watering! We planted broccoli, onions, kale, rosemary, thyme, sweet basil, oregano, mint, cilantro and curled parsley. We are excited about our little garden and we can't wait to eat our veggies and cook with our fresh herbs! We are planning on planting a summer garden in the spring with all the salad veggies and anything else we can grow! Gardening reminds me of how amazing God is! He creates life and allows it to grow. I"m so grateful that He shows His love for us by providing practically & even delights in allowing us to enjoy fun things like veggies from our own garden! We planted on Thursday & by Sunday we already had kale and onions coming up that we had planted from scratch ~ amazing! I must say, Daddy was pretty impressed by how much his "outdoor gardening girls" got done & he is very proud of us! If you don't know me well, I'm not exactly the most outdoorsy girl you'll ever meet. I try, but sometimes my love of all things neat & tidy comes shining through even when I try to "suppress" it : )! I'm about as opposite as can be of my sweet sister, Emily. She's my beachy, all natural, "granola-girl"! I love her with all my heart & there are so many things about her I wish I was! My friends who know me well were surprised (dare I say, shocked : ) !, but very happy to hear about my gardening adventure! I had so much fun gardening with our little sweetie girls ( & Gwen too!)! Our garden will be a fun part of home school this year for our girls and I! It was HARD WORK (I was super sore the next day from all the ground breaking!) but SO MUCH FUN! : )

Ava's is 13 months old!

Ava turned 13 months old today! Our little baby is officially a "toddler"! It has been so much fun watching her learn & grow every day and oh how we love this precious little girl! She is walking really well and she likes to play "Ring around the rosies" with her sissies. She goes around and around in her own little circles and sings "Ozie Ozie" and "Ash Ash" along with her big girls! Her new walking tricks are changing direction mid-stride, walking backwards and stair climbing with no hands. (Mommy's nervous about the last one and we won't be encouraging that skill for a while! : ) !) It's really cute and makes her seem like such a big girl! Ava's personality can best be described as happy (always smiley and giggly~ well, not always, but close!), content (unless Daddy comes into the room and doesn't come to love on her right away, then she tells us about it : ) !), curious (she's very intrigued by her world around her and what her big girls are doing!), caring (loves to share her food and always "gives" a bite before she takes one!), affectionate (she loves to give big wet kisses, huggies and pat pats to us & any friend who will allow it : ) ! Her favorite little friend to love on is sweet little Sarah Kryger! ) and she is just very sweet!

Here are Ava's 13 month stats:

20 pounds 4 ounces
29 1/2 inches tall

Happy 13 Month Birthday & welcome to "Toddler-Hood" our precious little Ava Gracie Goo! : )

Miniature Apple Pies ~ Yum!

My Girlies & I just made the most yummy snack ~ homemade miniature apple pies!

I found this recipe today and thought we'd try it as an afternoon/after nap snack. All my girls, even my little 4-year-old Abby, made their own with Mommy watching so it's easy enough for little ones to do. I love being in the kitchen with my girls and it was a lot of fun! Okay, here's the recipe and how you make them.

Slices of bread
Apple
Sugar
Cinnamon
Vanilla Extract
Butter

The original instructions said to "roll" the piece of bread out flat but since we don't have 5 rolling pins, we just "smushed" the bread with our hands. For obvious reasons, my girls enjoyed this part! "You mean we get to smush and play with our food?"! So cute! Set the bread aside. Combine sugar, cinnamon and vanilla extract in a small bowl. I let my girls pour, shake and "measure" while I watched closely. The recipe didn't come with amounts, so just kinda guess how much to make a dry, crumbly mixture. Use a cheese grater to grate 1/4 of an apple into each child's bowl and then let them mix it all together. (You may have to add more of something until it looks like a semi-wet apple pie-ish filling? I don't know......just do your best! : ) !) We used Granny Smith apples (my girls' favorite kind) and it turned out great but you can use whatever kind you want. Each of our mixtures was enough to make 3 little pies each. Put 1/3 of the mixture onto the smushed bread, roll up and secure with a toothpick. Butter the outside and place on a cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. While the little pies were baking, the whole house smelled like warm apple crisp ~ YUM! When they came out of the oven they were crispy on the outside, warm & bubbly on the inside & caramelized on the ends ~ YUM again! : ) Hope you enjoy them as much as my happy little bakers & I did!

The Palmer Girls x 5 : )

Happy Grandparent's Day to some of the most precious people in our lives! : )

Happy Grandparent's Day Grandpa & Grandma Palmer and Great Grandpa & Great Grandma Faulkner! This is Amy, Ashley, Abby & Ava, your 4 little Grand & Great Grand Girlies! We love you so much and we thank Jesus every day for you! God has given us a very special love in our hearts for you and we want to be sure you know how much we love you, especially on a very special day like Grandparents Day! Thank you for all the ways you make us feel special and loved and for all the things you do for us! When we come to visit we are always so happy to be with you. When we are far away, we miss you and wish we could be together ~ like today! We want to tell you some of our favorite things to do with you. Grandpa Palmer, we love to sit around the fire and makes s'mores with you, cuddle on the couch and watch a movie with you or eat a special breakfast together! Grandma Palmer, we love to bake goodies in the kitchen with you, snuggle with you and play games together! Grandpa Faulkner, we love to walk down to check the mail with you, play Hide & Seek around the house and cuddle in your recliner with you! Grandma Faulkner, we love to eat popcorn & have story time with you, play dollies with you and snuggle on your bed together! We are 4 very blessed little girls and we are so grateful to God for you all! We love you ~ HAPPY GRANDPARENTS DAY! : )

Dad & Mom and Grandpa & Grandma ~ thank you for giving the best of your lives to make ours better, for showing us how to love God and live everyday life for Him and for loving us unconditionally! Thank you for your love, care, kindness, gentleness, selfless hearts, and for the great legacy you will leave behind one day. You love our Lord with all your hearts, glorify God with your marriages, parenting, grandparenting and great grandparenting! You have lived godly lives and you have imparted much wisdom and grace to us, your family! In His amazing kindness, God gave you to us ~ we are so amazingly blessed! Besides all of the sweet, godly stuff, you are just so much FUN and we love being with you! We love you and we hope you know how precious you are to us!

Grandma Rose & Grandma Amy are in heaven with Jesus but they are in our hearts every day! We love and miss you and we will see you some day. I don't know how heaven works but we pray that you are together enjoying watching your sweet little Granddaughters. God was so kind and good to give you to us for 18 and 8 amazing years ~ we love you more than you will ever know!

With All our Love,
Randal, Erin, Amy, Ashley, Abby & Ava : )

Fun at "Palmer Prepatory" : )

We had fun in school today! We are studying the "Pledge of Allegiance" and the American Flag. We were supposed to make a red, white and blue snack for this week so I was happy when I found the "liberty" Goldfish. I gave each of my big girls a little pile of the Goldfish, a piece of paper and a bottle of glue then I pulled up a big picture of the Flag on my laptop for them to look at. I didn't tell them how to do it I just let them be creative. I absolutely LOVE that each of them have their own little perspective on how the Flag looks ~ too cute! They are memorizing the pledge and Abby (who is 4) got most of it but at the very end said, "with LITTLE~bee and JUM~stice for all" as proud of herself as could be! : ) We did a fun science experiment to see if an egg would float or sink in salt water (it floats in case you're wondering) and my girls enjoyed being little scientists! In Bible we are learning about our names, what they mean and how they are special. We made cookies and wrote each of our names on one with frosting as a project ~ fun and yummy! My awesome little napper baby slept for 3 hours this morning while we did school then she woke up happy and ready to eat lunch! (I guess there is a little bonus to being up WAY too late at Caregroup on Wednesday nights : ) !) I'm so grateful to God that Ava is such a happy & content baby! So far Amy, Ashley & Abby are loving school. They are sweet little students and so easy to teach! I'm hoping this "everything is fun" momentum carries through the rest of the year. We'll see around about March how we're doin'...... : )

"Miss Missy"

Here are some pictures of a special part of our lives that has become very sweet to us. Our girlies & I have been working one day a week for our precious friends Tom & Missy Chambliss for 2 1/2 years because of some health challenges that Missy has. We took a year off when our little Ava was born and now we're back to our regular Tuesday's at Missy's. We have grown to absolutely adore them and our girls affectionately call them "Uncle Tom & Auntie Missy" or "Miss Missy"! We grocery shop, clean, do laundry, cook meals and do whatever they need us to do. It is my way of helping my Hubby with grocery money and more importantly, our time to serve Missy & spend time with her! Missy has a preciously sweet heart, she loves the Lord, her Hubby (& her cute little Bischon Chloe : ) !), she loves our little girls and she is SO MUCH FUN! Our girls have had countless days of "girl talk", (I love it too!) cuddling, story time & fun with Missy as Mommy works. Our girls have become quite the little helpers too ~ they love to work with Mommy & do special things for Missy. God has used our time at Missy's to create compassionate, gentle & caring hearts in our little girls ~ we are so grateful to see the godly character He is developing in our little sweeties! We are grateful to God for the extra that it provides and we are grateful that we can serve Tom & Missy in some small way. The truth is, we have so much fun and we laugh SO hard together! Missy has become one of my very closest friends and our girls love her so very much! We love you Tom & Missy......99.9, NO, 100% of the time! : ) (Hee Hee! Missy loves to speak in terms of percentages ~ so funny, kinda quirky & really cute!)

First Day of School!

Today was our 1st day of school : ) I'm still amazed that we have a 4th grader, a 2nd grader, a Kindergartener and a little toddler baby walking around! I'm grateful that we get to teach our girls at home ~ how amazing that we get to watch them learn and grow every day! I really love to see the sparkle in their little eyes when they learn something new. What a gift to be able to be with my best little girlfriends all day! (God is so good!) Of course we have our moments of chaos like everyone else but I want to be right in the middle of it all! We had a great first day and our girlies were very happy and eager to learn. Our little Ava took a great 2-hour nap this morning so Mommy was able to teach Amy, Ashley & Abby each one-on-one. When Ava woke up, each of our big girls had "Ava time" where they played with her and "took care of" her! (They have created what they call the "baby-safe" area in the corner of our living room to keep Ava safe!) They're so sweet and such great helpers and Ava is such a sweet and happy baby! We're looking forward to a great school year. Hopefully our little girlies will learn as much as Mommy does! : )