10 Days in Indiana

Last week, the Brown family returned home from a 10 day trip to Indiana. Our purpose for going: Relaxation and fellowship with the Daming family, a visit to the Creation Museum, and a Regional Uniting Church & Family Conference.

Here are the events and details of the trip in a nutshell!

We arrived on the evening of the 13th, had a wonderful dinner and a sweet time of reading the Psalms and singing. Thursday was a day to stay at the house and catch up with the Damings, whom we had not seen since June. Friday was the beginning of a very full weekend. We started with the Creation Museum, which was just fantastic! AIG has done such a wonderful job displaying the Bible. After the museum, we headed to Anderson, Indiana where the UC&F conference was held. Friday night and all day Saturday was full of many wonderful sessions, time to talk with the attendees and see how the Lord is working in so many different families for His glory. Sunday was the end of our full weekend. What a blessing it was to be a part of the new church that was planted less than 1 year ago.

Monday was a day to sleep in and get back to "normal" life. A couple of us did the grocery shopping for the week, others did laundry, and some just went out and played in the yard and the creek. The rest of the week held many fun adventures. We went to 2 of the Goodwills, one of which was a Goodwill Outlet!! We made it to an antique store and the local Ice Cream hot spot. One of the big events was our Olympic games on the lawn. The first of the 4 events was a relay, followed with a traditional Highland games event, rock throwing. After we had taken all the measurements to announce the winner, we all headed down to the basement to the racket ball room for a good game of Wallyball! (This is just like Volleyball, but you are in a room with 4 walls, and the ball can be bounced off of them making the game a little harder!) Then we headed out back for the final event of the Olympics, tennis!! The last day of our visit we all went to a local family run apple farm. We picked for a while and then went back to the barn where we enjoyed carmel apples and delicious apple cider slushies. 

 We had a couple of day where we did not have anything planed, so we would sit on the porch to enjoy time of sweet fellowship and watch the humming birds fly by. Indiana is such a beautiful state, very flat and full of corn fields. Because Indiana is such a flat state, one can see for miles and there is nothing there but farms and fields of corn. With that view the rising and setting of the sun was just breath taking. We beheld a fantastic rising of the moon. It was so big in the sky and a deep red orange. I don't think I have ever seen anything like it. What a wonderful Creator we have! 

 Well, for now I will leave you to view the pictures posted below. Enjoy a little window into our trip to Indiana.

 Blessings,

   Blair

Glimpses of glory

A job well done...

Well, the peaches are done and the kitchen is clean. We finished Saturday night with 144 quarts on the shelf! Here are a few pictures of the work in progress. 

To give you an idea as to how big some of the peaches were, the above peach is about the size of a softball! 

Peach season is here!

Yesterday we picked up our 7 1/2 bushels of peaches. Lets just say that over the next couple of days we are going to be rather busy canning. Why so many peaches you may be thinking? Well, for the last couple of years we have missed peach season. Two years ago we were getting ready for a wedding, last year we were in Texas for for the birth of Triumph Bradrick baby. So making up for the past couple of years, we should come out with approx. 150 quarts of peaches!!

Christ at the center of home life...

Yesterday, I baby sat for a family in our church. Around the walls in their dinning room they painted the following: 

  Christ it the secret of happy home life. 

 What are some of the secrets of happy home life? The answer might be given in one word ~ Christ!

~ Christ at the marriage-alter  

~ Christ on the bridal journey 

~ Christ when the new home is set up

~ Christ when the baby is born

~ Christ when a child dies

~ Christ in the pinching times

~ Christ in the days of plenty

~ Christ in the nursery, in the kitchen, in the parlor

~ Christ in the toil and in the rest

 ~ Christ along all the years

~ Christ when the wedded pair walk toward the sunset gates

~ Christ in the sad hour when farewells are spoken, and one goes on before and the other stays, bearing the unshared grief.

 Christ is the secret of happy home life.

(Quote from Secrets of Happy Home Life by J. R. Miller. Page 3) 

This is my Father's world!