Monday Musings // Life Update + Photo Dump

These past few weeks of May have been marvelous . . . and busy! It's time for a brief recap. 😄

SOME HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE MONTH:

*The kids and Dad worked together to tear down our deck, then Pop Pop came by to pick up the rotten wood and take it to the dump. The ground in our back yard looks very bare now (especially since having a deck up for so long killed the grass)

*We attended a new church and had the pastor's family over for dinner

*My sweeet friend from the UK, Sandrina, and I Skyped for over an hour one Friday afternoon 😁

*My family picked strawberries and made plenty of jam 😋

*We celebrated my birthday 😃 A few pictures from that day:

Mom and me 💗

As a special treat, I had my fingernails painted for the first time in years! The polish stayed on for a total of three days after my birthday (not very practical, but so pretty!).

Although I chose not to eat any of these fun cupcakes (due to food allergies/stomach problems), I still got to blow out the candle and watch the kids enjoy them. 🥰

*Fruit is back in season, which means fresh fruit salad! 

*We scheduled our last day of school for Friday, May 28! After that, we get the summer off before I have to start dual enrollment college classes in the fall (I'm hoping to do four years of college online, starting in 2022, and earn my English degree) 😄

*There was sister bonding time with Ruby Jane (she does math with me, comes along on my walks, and shares some of my favorite food) 💕

*ahem* Well, I guess Algebra helped put her to sleep 😂

*I discovered I LOVE hand boilers!!

(Picture taken from online. I own the blue, orange, and green boilers in slightly different designs.)

*And finally, my mom recorded my speech and put it on YouTube! (Check out her channel and my video HERE)

How has your month been? Do you like hand boilers? Comment below!

Blessings,

Ellen S.

The Need to Evangelize // My First YouTube Video!

I've recently been taking a speech course for school called Secrets of Great Communicators by Jeff Myers, and tonight video-taped for the first time my full-length speech focusing on the NEED TO EVANGELIZE (with my family as the audience). I'm so excited to be able to share it with you all on my mom's brand-new YouTube channel! Enjoy. 😄

Blessings,

Ellen S.

Monday Musings // Strawberries!

In early celebration of Mother's Day (which is this upcoming Sunday), my family and I trekked to a local strawberry patch where we picked and purchased over twenty pounds of the round, red, juicy berries. It was a lot fun! And the house smelled so good while Mom canned jars upon jars of fresh, homemade strawberry jam. (if I could've bottled up the smell and saved it for later, I would've!) 😋

Strawberry shortcakes. Yum!

Anyways, just a quick update to let you know I'm still alive over here. 😄 With Feedburner (the service I use to get emails to my subscribers) shutting down in July, the final days of school approaching, and my having to get ready to do dual enrollment college classes in the fall (!!!), I'm not sure how active I'll be on the blogosphere this spring/summer. I still hope to hop on and post occasionally, though. Please bear with me! 😂

Do you like homemade jam? What have you been doing recently? Comment below!

Blessings,

Ellen S.