Lots to Say

This will probably be a somewhat long, but hopefully not rambling post as I was sick for about 48 hours and haven't had a chance to share the going ons of the Scott house for several days.
Jakey did pick our first ripe tomato the other day and we have since enjoyed 2 more by the way of BLT's. I did not however get a pic of him picking it though as my camera kept shutting off on me. Grrrr....I think the batteries need to be changed. Now that the first few have ripened so many more are beginning to blush at us. I see homemade salsa in our future!
The results of the gardening survey are in. With 11 people casting their vote, the majority of you said that no, you haven't ever grown a food garden, but would love to. Thanks to all of you who participated.
It has been so nice just walking out to the garden to get lettuce and tomato's for salad or our BLT's. Last night Jacob, my little assistant chef helped me in the kitchen making vegetable stir fry with pork and noodles, sushi and spring rolls. He cut veggies, toasted sesame seeds, fanned the sushi rice as we cooled it, made the spring rolls in the toaster oven and then set the table. I love working with him in the kitchen and he loves being there.
Our project for the Memorial Day weekend will be putting up a beautiful 27' round, top of the line, above ground pool that we just purchased off of craigslist.com yesterday. The owners had only used it 3 months before the husband was transferred. They have moved with it twice and now their back yard isn't big enough for it. The price was fantastic! It even came with a creepy crawly automatic cleaner! I will take and post pictures of the progress. This will be the 3rd used pool we have put up in our 18 years of marriage. We should be getting fairly good at it by now.
It is 8:08 am and Jordan (almost 2) is standing beside me already asking for a popscicle. He says, "pop-hee-hee". When I say,"No, popscicle" he says, "Oh man....". Cracks this mamma up every time. :)
In the midst of our joy and excitement over the Lord providing our family with a wonderful pool, our hearts have also been saddened for the family of Steven Curtis Chapman who lost their youngest adopted daughter on Wednesday night when their teenage son accidentally struck her with their SUV in the driveway. I cannot imagine their grief. Todd and I had the privilege of seeing him in concert the beginning of May and so much of the concert focused on how God had blessed the life of their family through the adoption of their 3 little girls from China. He talked about how their adoption experience is a constant reminder of what God has done for us in making us joint-heirs with Christ because we have been adopted as sons and daughters of the Living God. We will be praying for this family for comfort, especially for the son who was driving.
Lastly, if you have about 8 minutes I want to encourage you to watch the video titled "Absolutely Amazing" over on the right side of my page. See it over there? It was shared with me by a friend and I couldn't help but post it here for you to see. Your heart will be blessed and encouraged by it, I PROMISE!!!
I am so glad that it's Friday and a long holiday weekend is ahead of us. I never got to the berry picking this week but maybe I'll still be able to get some before the season comes to an end.
Have a great weekend everyone!

Gardening and Math?

This year we decided that due to rising food costs we were going to try our hand at gardening once again and this time we were going to invest the necessary time and money into the prep work so that our garden would, Lord willing, produce a harvest of veggies rather than weeds and an insect buffet as had happened in the past. We did lots of research and decided to go with the square foot method. So, for all you homeschoolers out there who are wanting to put in a spring garden while at the same time learning about not only botany but math, I encourage you to read on.

Square foot gardening is based on most beds being 4' x 4' giving you 16 sq. feet to work with. That right there is a small lesson in AREA.

After daddy built our boxes my 6 year old son and 8 year old daugter measured (there's a lesson) and marked of our boxes at one foot intervals all the way around. They then hammered in nails at each mark and used string to make a grid giving 16 squares to plant in. Here's where some practical math skills come into play. One box we planted full of bush beans and black-eyed peas. Here's a question:

If we plant 4 seeds in each square and there are 16 squares in this box, how many bean plants will this box hold?

More problems:

*4 squares are planted with cucmbers. If each plant produces 8 lbs. of cucumbers during the growing season, how many pounds will we have harvested?

One 4X4 box is planted with tomaotes. If each tomato plant produces 10 tomatoes, how many tomatoes will we have harvested?

I'm sure you are seeing my point. If your children like mine say things like, "Math is dumb. I'm never going to use this stuff....", it is easy to show them how practical math is for so many things.

We have also been doing the Exploring Creation through Botany study this year from Apologia Ministries. What great prep work for our gardening project. Back when we started the study we didn't have any plans to garden this spring. God is so good to have prepared us this way. We've been seeing what we learned about His glorious creation at work throughout the whole process.
Psalm 19 says, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands."

I'd like to paraphrase and also say that "The plants and vegetation declare the glory of God: the flowers proclaim the works of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowlege. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world."