Priority

"Having a heart of sympathy for your children will mean, by necessity, choosing a less busy lifestyle. It will mean lowering your expectations about what can and must be accomplished in a day. If it means winning your child's heart, though, the trade offs are well worth the results." Sally Clarkston

You may have guessed that life has been busy here. I didn't plan to take a blogging break, but somehow writing has fallen to the bottom of the list. Some day I'll be back, but I'm not making any promises of how soon that will be.

Hope you are taking time to enjoy your children today. 

The Lord is Good

Thanks so much for praying for our daughter's eyesight.

On Friday we visited the eye specialist again and he was impressed by how much better it looked in 24 hours. He said that she will probably have permanent scar damage. I asked him how the scar will affect her eyesight. He said that since it is not affecting her eyesight now, it probably won't ever. But if it was a couple millimeters higher, closer to the center of her eye, it would be completely different report. "She is blessed," he said.

I was so glad the doctor said "blessed" and not "lucky" because we truly do feel blessed by God.

Today (Saturday) her eye looks even better than yesterday. She can open it wider and she doesn't shield her eyes with her hands when she walks into a bright room. The doctor said that light sensitivity is common in eye injuries. Yesterday she didn't want to go outside, even with sunglasses on, but today she has been running in and out almost like normal.



It is so good to see our cheerful, bright-eyed daughter return! I admit that my faith was rather shaky this week. When Ed walked out the door with a sobbing child with swollen eyes, I wondered if she'd ever see again. I thought over all the things I could have done differently to avoid the accident. Definitely a "bad-mommy" moment.

I had to cling to the knowledge that God is sovereign and always good. He loves Brooke even more than we do and can take anything that happens to her and work it out for His glory. The life of Fanny Crosby, the blind lady who wrote so many beloved hymns, came to mind. I'm so glad we can trust God to bring healing, or peace, whichever He has for us.

Thanks again for remembering us.

The Precious Gift of Eyesight

It was one of those days (and weeks) when I didn't think I could be any busier.

But within a few minutes, everything grinds to a halt and nothing on my agenda appears important.

Our four year old was playing out in the woodshed when she came in screaming with her eyes squeezed shut. I tried to pry her eyelids open and flush out the dirt she apparently got in her eyes. After a few minutes I could see that there was still some white matter on her iris. Her eyes were swelling and she was obviously in pain. Ed came home, took her to ER, and spent the rest of the day at the eye doctor. Today he took her to visit a cornea specialist.

  
Returning home from the ER. She was so happy with her little hospital gown that she was given when her dress got wet! 

We still don't know exactly what she got in her eye, but apparently it caused a chemical burn. An abrasion is on her left eye. The good news is that she has vision in both eyes. Praise the Lord. We don't know yet how it will affect her future vision but we are praying for complete healing of her eye.



Today she is opening her eyes a little. Yesterday she would not open them unless the doctor put drops in her eyes. She squints at bright lights but I'm so relieved to see her blue eyes again!

I know this isn't my usual blogging material, but right now I'm not feeling up to sharing recipes. Will you remember our little girl in your prayers?

Make Your Own Tomato Cages

I like to use tomato cages. They are much easier than staking tomatoes and keep the plants off the ground to avoid disease and make the tomatoes easy to pick.

When we married, Ed's parents gave us some of their tomato cages. (Since I married their youngest child, their garden was downsizing the same time ours was expanding!) They are so much better than most of the cages that you can buy at the garden center. I have no idea how long they used the cages but we've used them for eleven years. They have served us well but are now starting to rust out.

Time to make some new tomato cages.



Ed had a roll of concrete reinforcing wire left from another project. It is an inexpensive way to make cages. The children helped unroll the wire and cut it into lengths with metal cutters. (Someone had to sit/stand on both ends of the wire because it wanted to keep rolling up!)

 

We cut the wire in three different sizes in hopes that we can store the cages inside each other to save space. I'm not sure if it will work since they were only a tiny bit larger, but we will try to combine them in the fall!



We cut the wire next to a "block" so that the long end of the wire could be used to attach the two sides together. We just bent the wire to connect the two sides.



In less than an hour, we had a dozen new cages for our garden. Since our tomatoes usually grow huge (apparently they like our soil) we like to use strong metal  fence posts to tie the cages to. We can get high winds at our place and a full grown tomato plant combined with some wind can pull a little stake right out of the ground. I still have some of my tomato plants covered with milk jugs because they were so little and the winds last week were terrible!

Do you use tomato cages? What kind do you like?

Four Homemade Salad Dressings

This time of year we eat a lot of salad. It is wonderful to be eating fresh produce out of our garden again.

Salad dressings are so easy to make yourself. A few ingredients, a whisk or blender, are all you need. Making your own salad dressings allows you control over the ingredients. I can avoid the vegetable oils and high fructose corn syrup that are found in most dressings.

Like granola recipes, we go through various "favorite" salad dressings. Here are four recipes that have been in our fridge this spring.

These dressings that are pictured above are listed below beginning from the left.

Caesar Dressing 
From Amy

1 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
2 T water
2 T olive oil
1/2 T lemon juice
1-2 garlic cloves (minced)
2 tsp honey
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp parsley

 Blend together with whisk, blender, or food processor.
This dressing is wonderful on a baked potato!


Catalina French Dressing

2/3 cup ketchup
1/4 cup honey
2/3 cup olive oil
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
1 minced garlic clove (or 1 tsp garlic powder)
2 T minced onion

Blend together with whisk, blender, or food processor.


Italian Dressing

1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup olive oil
1 tsp honey
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp mustard
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp basil
1/4 tsp paprika

Blend together with whisk, blender, or food processor.
This dressing make a great marinade too!

Honey-Mustard Dressing

1 1/2 cups mayonnaise
1/8 cup Dijon mustard
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup honey
1/4 tsp celery seed
1/2 tsp salt

Blend together with whisk, blender, or food processor.
This is the dressing my children always ask for.

Do you have a favorite homemade dressing? I'd love to try your recipe! 

New Member of the Homestead

I'm not a pet lover.

But every child loves a kitten.



In the last week or two, Smokey has become a well-loved friend. And even I think she is cute enough to squeeze!



Hopefully she will grow up to be a good mouser and chase the rabbits out of our garden!

Graham Granola

I guess you could say we get stuck in a rut.

For years we ate peanut butter granola. Then it was soaked granola. I didn't even look for another recipe. We liked our granola recipe so well. But recently I was looking for a change and tried this Graham Granola. It was love at first taste.

This granola has the flavor of a graham cracker and our children love it. Ed is known to pull this out for a bowl before bed. With warmer weather coming (We hope! Last night we had a frost that blackened the leaves of the potatoes.) we will turn more often to simple breakfast of yogurt, granola, and fresh fruit.

Graham Granola

6 cups quick oatmeal
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup coconut
1 1/2 tsp soda
2 tsp salt
1 cup honey
1 1/2 cup butter or coconut oil

Mix dry ingredients together. Melt butter and honey together in saucepan. Pour over dry ingredients and stir well. Spread on a baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes at 300 degrees. Stir every 15 minutes.

I double this recipe, place it on two jelly roll pans and put both in the oven at the same time. Halfway through, I rotate the pans from the top to the bottom rack.