The Joy of GINGERBREAD

Sharing Thanks on the Farm

The pictures below were taken on my uncles farm in Missouri. His farm was our inspiration for moving our family and home to the Midwest. Thank you Steve, for sharing your love of home and family.

"At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city... of great and small, wise and foolish. The knapsack of custom falls off his back with the first step he takes into these precincts. Here is sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which discredits our heros. Here we find Nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges like a god all men that come to her. We have crept out of our close and crowded houses into the night and morning, and we see what majestic beauties daily wrap us in their bosom.

The incummunicable trees begin to persuade is to live with them, and quit our lives of solemn trifles. How easily we might walk onward into the opening landscape, absorbed by new pictures and by thoughts fast succeeding each other, until by degrees the recollection of home was crowded out of the mind. All memory obliterated by the tyranny of the present (cares), and we were led in triumph by nature.

These enchantments are medicinal , they sober and heal us. These are plain pleasures, kindly and native to us. We come to our own, and make friends with matter, which the ambitious chatter of the schools would persuade us to despise. We never can part with it..."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our Many Faces {of Halloween}...

Okay I am on my 3rd box of Kleenex, and praying for NyQuil to fall from the sky. And despite it all, I am here to share our festive fun from Halloween. Ain't I sweet!

Well it isn't a moment too soon, 'cause my mama has already reminded me that these pictures were due. Won't my mama be so proud of me...

Well, Halloween had all sorts of fun to be had... we brewed up some Martinelli's (from WalMart), I stewed, brewed and baked a NEW FAVE, Buffalo Nachos... move over Rachel Ray!! We cut, carved and depulped the pumpkins with some dear friends that have proven to be Godsent to Kentucky the same week we arrived here. They are sooooo ODD, but we wouldn't have had it any other way!! We had some trickin and treatin, and then said a few spells to send the kiddos sleepy to their beds. It was an evening for the mamas and papas then, to enjoy some movie reeling before calling it a night.

Love to all,...

(click on image to view in a larger format)

(Pictured here are our ODD friends, pieces of the ODD family... Pam and children, Ryan and Emery, with the girls. Not pictured Jared and Seri Odd. We love the Odds,... they make ODD, look GOOD!!)