Recital and Petit Fours

Esther in a dress from her H. cousins - before we get started on other things, I'll give you Esther's growth report :) Her two bottom teeth just started to come in...She's graduated from the swing to the high chair...She's learned to sit up on her own...sometime's she'll imitate sounds...and she can crawl just a little. So much fun!!

Someday I hope to teach her not to stick out her tongue...

On May 14, we had our piano recital - I was planning to cut back this year, but ended up with about 13 students. (Although, I mostly taught at the church instead of driving to the student's homes like before.) They all improved over this last year and did a great job at the recital! This is my cousin Sarah.

Jeshua

Priscilla

Hosanna

All of us!

Me and two Esthers -

We went to the retirement party for Mr. and Mrs. B. - It's so sad to think that my kids won't be able to have the same great experiences I had with CEF, but hopefully I can pass on the things I learned to them anyway! Thank you both for everything!

Esther is outgrowing her "I love Daddy" onsie, but then, soon she'll be able to fit her, "Daddy's girl" one :)

Like I said, she's learned how to sit up...

In May we also took a trip to TN - except for some van trouble, which Aaron and his brothers were able to fix, it went well. God protected us from all the tornados going through. We listened to "The Hiding Place" dramatized and really enjoyed that, and we bought cheese curds in WI, and were able to visit friends in IL (thank you!) - so it was fun.

Aaron and Esther after the Memorial Day service - We're so blessed to have people who were willing to give their lives for our freedom.

Aaron and I helped with a VBS in another town and the kids were giving us lilacs....one of our favorite flowers!

Pardon the state of chaos my kitchen is in! Hosanna, Miriam, and I made 250 petit fours for our cousin's wedding. It took about 3 days!

If you ever make petit fours, we learned some tricks - freeze the cake with a layer of frosting on top, freeze it again after you cut it and only take out a couple squares at a time, keep the glaze warm in a double boiler, pour the glaze over the cake on a wire rack with a pan under it, then you can reheat the extra glaze that falls through two more times before it gets too thick, but I don't think there's any way to make it easy!

The petit fours as the wedding
Esther and I after the wedding
This weekend a missionary from Africa was able to come and speak at our church. It was very informative.
We cut and froze ten bags of rhubarb - our first "preserving" of the year!

I'm sure you're all wondering where the garden pictures are...I keep forgetting to take them, but never fear, we planted it a little over a week ago (excpet the lettuce and spinach that were planted earlier - we've already ate one salad - even though it was probably a little soon...) and stuff is just starting to come up. Just today, Aaron planted a couple more things and we're praying that it won't rain too much in the next few days!
Rejoice evermore!

Summer work at the Satchwills

We've finally had a couple whole weeks without any trips! Here's just a few pictures of everyday life around our home -

This is me cleaning blueberries. We went blueberry picking three times - the mosquitos were horrible! (at least a couple of the times) We were dressed like we were prepared for cold, only it wasn't the cold we were worried about...It's such a blessing to just be able to go out and pick berries though without having to buy them.

We made a bunch of blueberry lime jam again (we did last summer too) and had fun doing it together :)

Aaron and I sort of have a method of operation worked out - I'm very glad not to have to do all of that work myself!

We also made strawberry jam (above) and raspberry jam -

Aaron checking something out on his truck - I have a lot of pictures of Aaron in these posts, but that's just the way it worked out. He wears many hats!

End of April

My computer security system was being funny, so instead of trying to figure it out, I'll just go ahead and do two posts. As many of you know, my birthday was April 27 - I was 23 - if it weren't for Aaron, I would moan about how old that is, but as it is, married people go by their kids ages, not theirs, right?

The evening before my birthday we went over to my parents for supper and had cake with the grandparents, then the day of my birthday, Aaron gave me a beautiful necklace and took me on a picnic to Zippel Bay (where we got engaged), then in the afternoon we went out for dessert with some friends (half for fun, half for business...) and ended up with a very full, busy day :)

Also, some of the church ladies had a little party for me...
It was a beautiful and calm day at the lake!

Grandma K. gave us some chives and winter onions to transplant - we put them in the bed right by the church.

Me making zucchini lasagna - as soon as I have time, I plan to organize my cooking more, but for now I use what we need to use up - and we eat a lot of leftovers! This was a new recipe and it turned out well.

Aaron and I have this disagreement about cast iron skillets - he grew up with them as the main cooking "item" and I always thought they were strictly for camping. But I'm slowly getting used to them...This was a new one that Aaron had and had never used, so he's preparing it with oil.