Summer farm work is in full swing around here. Which means, for me, the three oldest girls are gone helping their dad so the younger kids and I pick up the slack at home.

Taken on their recent trip to Florida with my parents

Can I just tell you how much I forget those older girls help around the house – cooking and cleaning, watching children when I have errands to run or running those errands for me?

It reminds me just how wonderful these young women are. 

I was studying Sister Cheryl Esplin’s talk from General Conference, “Teaching Our Children to Understand.” The short summary of her talk is that we can’t just teach our children the doctrine of Christ, we need to teach them to understand the doctrine of Christ, get it written on their hearts. Towards the end of her talk she says,

“We can know our children are beginning to understand the doctrine when we see it revealed in their attitudes and actions without external threats or rewards. As our children learn to understand gospel doctrines, they become more self-reliant and more responsible. They become part of the solution to our family challenges and make a positive contribution to the environment of our home and the success of our family.”

This describe exactly how my three oldest are for our family. And the younger ones are learning it too, especially from the example of their older sisters. To have children who see what needs to be done and, for the most part, just do it without being asked or complaining is a wonderful thing! I’ll say it again, I love having these young women in the house rather than teenagers!

With all the gardening, cleaning, still doing school, etc. I have run behind on some of my posts. They are about half-written so will eventually get posted {like the flapper apron!}  it just might be a few days so bear with me. We are busy doing the most important things right now such as:

• The summer reading program has started so you can guarantee what my kids are doing if there is no other work that needs to be done. Guess who gets to read to the littlest ones? Yup, I am now followed around even more by a toddler carrying half a shelf of books.
• Gardening, or rather trying to fix the garden. The weather has been absolutely crazy, snowing last week, extremely high winds that have cut down some of my tomato plants, freezing night temperatures. It’ll be a miracle if we get any good veggie crops. We are trying, but if we had to rely on what we grow in the garden this year we will starve next winter.
• School
• Farming – swathing, raking, baling, and hauling hay.

And this little video is brought to you by the letter r. If it had been a toilet it would be an uppercase R for Real Rednecks. Since it was just an old dishwasher we blew up we are only rednecks. This was done around Easter.