{almost wordless Wednesday...}

Eleven is beautiful...

 We love you Lenna!

{the rest of Lenna's Birthday...}

Lenna wanted to make her own cake this year for her birthday...

it turned out beautiful!

This was the first time she tried to "pipe" icing and she did a great job with giant roses!

We had a great evening celebrating with friends and enjoying cake & ice cream!

{Hudson Cream}

This morning, we loaded up in the car bright and early to drive to Hudson, Kansas to take a tour of Stafford County Flour Mills, home of Hudson Cream Flour.

  Randy was our tour guide for the morning and he did an awesome job explaining it all to the kids!

We got to tour the packaging facility, notice the kids hair nets!

They were watching them bag 50# bags of flour here!

From there, we watched them bag 5# bags and package them from individaul bag..

  to case...

 to the pallet!

 Then to the warehouse ready to ship...

Not only does this mill mill and package their Hudson Cream (my favorite by the way!)

But also mills flour for other labels like Kroger Organic, Kemach High Gluten Flour, and several others.

A cool thing about this mill is that all the wheat they mill comes from a 20 mile radius around the mill- completely local! They can even tell you the field and harvest dates.

They are one of a few mills that mill Short Patent Flour.

 Another plus is that you can buy flour right there at the mill so we came home with 65 pounds of flour today! We'll see how long it takes us to use it up, not long I'm sure at this house!

 This food blogger did a great post about their trip to the mill.

Check out this you tube video about the flour mill as well.

You can't tour the actual mill, but they have a great video that explains the process and here is the building where the milling takes place.

 If you are a baker... check out Hudson Cream flour, you will love it!

 If you are ever near Hudson, Kansas, it is worth your time to stop in!

Thanks Randy & Stafford Flour Mills for a great tour today!

I thought I would share a few "dust" pictures as well, these were taken today. The wind has been horrible in this part of the country lately! Yesterday was worse than today, but this is what it looked like driving home! *updated* I learned this morning that they closed a stretch of this highway about 2 hours after we drove it because the dust got much worse with zero visibility, there ended up being several wrecks as well.

 It is very flat in this region of the country and usually you can see for miles and miles- the windmills above you can see 10+ miles away on the average day. Not today!

I caught this of Lenna when she got out of the car today- crazy wind!

 Happy Monday!

{what are you reading?}

Just curious what you have been reading lately, my stack is tall and it seems like there are few moments to sit...

I am enjoying "Notes from a Blue Bike: The Art of Living Intentionally in a Chaotic World" by Tsh Oxenreider.

{A little story...}

Today my big girl turns 11!

Where has the time gone?

Some days this feels like yesterday...

 and other days...

just a distant memory...

 I was making the kids beds this week and when I got to Lenna's and started taking everything out of her bed, I realized how much it says about her and how much it tells her story...

 Meet Lambie...

 Lambie turns 11 this week too. Lenna went to the NICU right after she was born, our sweet elderly neighbor came to visit when Lenna was a day old. She gave Lenna Lambie and we tucked her in next to Lenna in her little bed.

Lenna and Lambie have seen a lot of life together...

They have snuggled each night and traveled thousands of miles together over the last 11 years.

 Lambie has been to the Philippines, China, Hungary and Kenya as well as on many road trips through the years. We have so many pictures of them together.

If you are a Cars 2 fan, you might remember this conversation with Mater and Holley Shiftwell... 

Mater: Oh, for a second there I thought you was trying to fix my dents.

Holley Shiftwell: Yes, I was.

Mater: Well then, no thank you. I don't get them dents buffed, pulled, filled or painted by nobody. They way too valuble.

Holley Shiftwell: Your dents are valuble? Really?

Mater: I come by each one of 'em with my best friend Lightning McQueen. I don't fix these. I wanna remember these dents forever. 

It reminds me of Lenna and her sweet Lambie, he has a few stains that she won't let be washed out because they are valuable....

Meet Pooh...

Pooh has also been around along time. He arrived in a care package from our friends, Troy & Andrea, while Lenna was in NICU. We have walked through much together, making Pooh very special. Here is Lenna & Troy standing in a hospital window in South Dakota 9 years ago,  bitter sweet memories are found here...

The tiny elephant...

 When Lenna was about 4 months old, we went to Kenya for Shawn to have a rotation at Tenwek Hospital. We spent many hours riding in a Land Rover over cow paths with the Community Health Team while daddy worked at the hospital. Lenna passed through many hands during our time there who loved on her. This tiny elephant came from Nairobi, made by the loving hands of African women who were part of the Amani Ya Juu Project.

See the blue & white blanket elephant is on, it's Lenna's Lava-Lava, a gift from our friends who serve the Lord in the Solomon Islands as Bible Translators. Our friendship started at a Bible Storying Class at Mid-America Baptist Seminary when Lenna was 1.

The silk robe...

Lenna sleeps with this snuggled near her each night. The silk robe has it's own special story for another time, but it belonged to Lynne, my cousin, who passed away after living with ALS. You can read part of her story here. My children loved Lynne and have many memories of her and how she loved them.

Meet Elizabeth...

 I made this rag doll for Lenna when she was about 3. She has been well loved and played with over the years...

Her Glenda Quilt...

 Every Kansas born girl needs a little bit of Dorthy in their lives, this is Lenna's Wizard of Oz quilt that stays in her bed as well...

my list could go on and on of the loved items in this bed that each have a story...

see if you can find them in the picture...

The Flowered Elephant... a gift from Asem, our exchange student from Kyrgyzstan.

The stripped quilt... the first quilt Lenna made her self.

Joker... the little brown horse, when we lived in Texas, Lenna rode in the Muleshoe Young Rides Rodeo club each Monday night on a horse named, Joker.

The Highway Patrol Bear... a gift from a neighbor who is an officer.

Sarafina the Cat... her first "Webkin"

The Kitty Fleece Blanket... made by Miss Karol across the street who always remembers my kiddos for Christmas and Easter!

We love you and I loved walking down "memory lane" as I made your bed filled with special treasures!

Happy 11th Birthday Lenna!

(more pictures of our day to come...)

{Life lessons....}

Last week, we learned about how sewers work... literally!

UGH! The kids are not sure if studying plumbing is something they want to do in the future!

We also learned what it takes to replace a sewer line.

 

The kids worked on their school work in front of the sliding glass doors so they could watch the activity in the back yard.

 Thankfully it is fixed now and we will get to learn about planting yards in a few weeks;-)

We have also been working in the garden on these beautiful spring afternoons and have potatoes, peas, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, spinach, carrots and radishes planted.

These tomatoes, peppers and herbs are waiting for warmer nights so they be planted as well.

We started all of these from seed in the house under our light stand that Grandpa C made for the kids last spring. It has been fun watching them grow, now we are looking forward to fresh veggies from the garden again in the coming months!

...back to winter {and a peek at our week so far...}

Over the weekend, it seemed that Spring had arrived...

 80 degrees, sun, flowers blooming and kids outside most of the day.

Sunday, the weather started to change and this is what we woke up to yesterday morning...

 See my little tunnels in the garden... today I am going to check and see how my little plants did if the rest of the snow melts off and it warms up.

 We curled up and worked on schoolwork while the wind blew...

 and enjoyed some yummy muffins, 

 I made this mix that I keep in the cabinet which makes making muffins each morning easy!

 I adjusted the recipe a bit for us adding in some wheat flour, used half the sugar, etc.

We add apples & cinnamon, blueberries or chocolate chips when we mix them up.

We had grand plans of watching the Eclipse last night, but several were exhausted. A few of us made it up about 2:15 to take a peek and this was the view from our front yard!

Beautiful!

{The Santa Fe Trail Center}

On our way to the orthodontist, we stopped for a field trip at the Santa Fe Trail Center. 

The guide we had did a great job with the kids explaining the history and exhibits! 

Outside on the grounds they had several old buildings related to the early settlement of the area we explored...

 The first was the sod house.

 

 

Clara was one of the "official photographers"of our outing...

 They have an old train depot there as well. 

 The kids learned about morse code and got to try sending messages...

 Clara was pretending to wait on her train...

 We stopped at the old soda fountain before we left.

The kids had fun trying out the old register.

We may have to stop through again, there was a lot we didn't get to in our 2 hour tour!