Home Again

I am not feeling great due to allergies, but I wanted to make a short post to let you all know that I am home again. We all made it through the week just fine. James probably paid the most because he had 4 tests last week. He thinks he did ok on 3 of them.

Thanks to all of you who prayed for us. I had a good safe trip. Attached are some of the pictures from my trip.

I was at College Station, TX on the campus of Texas A&M at Reed Arena. An emergecy shelter for people with special needs was set up here. The picture of the arena floor shows the cots for the patients. These were mostly full when I got there. They were rapidly discharged over the course of the week last week. I worked in the patient food service. The group photo shows a few of the people I worked with and there is a picture of me cleaning a cart we used to deliver patient's food. The other picture of cots shows our sleeping arrangements.

My next blog will show more exciting pictures of my kids, for now, I am off to take some Benedryl...

Prayers for our family are needed

I just wanted to let you all know that I probably won't be on-line for a while. I have been deployed to assist with the response to Hurricane Ike. I will be in College Station, TX.
Pray for James and the girls as they make it with out me around for a little while.

The good news is Amanda is doing better at daycare this week. Pray that she doesn't regress! Today when I went to pick her up at preschool, they were on the playground. The teacher said that she had been sitting by herself and she went over to check on her. She asked her what she was doing and she said, "praying." I had talked to her about praying to Jesus if she felt sad or lonely and he could help her heart feel better. I hope she will continue to pray next week when she misses her Mommy.

Worms (Part 2)

Please Read Worms (Part 1) before reading Worms (Part 2)

Last week Amanda started preschool at Immanuel Lutheran Childcare Center. She has been going to an in-home daycare, but after much prayer and for a variety of reasons, James and I thought it was time to make a change. Amanda was very excited about preschool last week. She was happy that she went to preschool and Clara went to daycare. When Amanda turns 3 in December, Clara will then take her spot in the toddler room at ILCC and Amanda will actually start real preschool. We will be glad when they can be together in the same location.

This week has been pretty hard for Amanda. She has had a little cold, so I think that is certainly affecting her mood. Her teachers say that she has been crying a lot. The playground seems to trigger the sadness. Yesterday was the worst. They said except for 20 minutes out of the entire day she cried. YIKES!!! I wish they would have called me! We are so sad for her and wish we knew how to make the adjustment easier. I have sad memories of daycare myself. I really think it will be better when she gets over this cold. Last night she told me "Cla-Cla preschool too." Meaning she wants Clara to go to preschool too. I explained that we really want Clara to go to preschool too, but we have to wait 3 1/2 months.

Her teacher suggested we send family pictures so she would have them to look at. So last night I got Amanda to help me pick out pictures to get developed. I picked out a family picture from our Sears trip and the one from the zoo above. Then we thought that she needed a picture of Clara too. After we picked these out, I picked out several more pictures that I wanted to get developed. This morning on the way to preschool James stopped at Walgreen with Amanda to pick up our pictures. James looked at all the pictures showing Amanda the special pictures we picked out for her to take to preschool of our family and Clara. He also showed her the pictures posted above of the worms. She saw the pictures and exclaimed "Worms!!!" When they arrived at ILCC, James gave Amanda her special pictures. She pointed at the photo package still sitting on the seat in the car and cried "Worm!" James asked if she wanted a picture of the worm. "Yes Worms!" He asked if she wanted a picture of the worm with the tomato. "Yes, worm, mato." He gave her the picture. Still not satisfied she pointed at the package again and said "Worm!" He asked if she wanted another picture of a worm. "Yes." So he gave her the other picture of the worm. So Amanda took 5 pictures to preschool today. Two lovely family pictures, one picture of her adorable little sister and 2 pictures of worms.

What will the teachers think of the Beutlers???

For more gruesome pictures of worms, visit James' Facebook page...

Worms (Part 1)

Our family has had a great time this summer in our garden. It has been our first effort to try more than a few pots of tomatoes and herbs. We started our tomatoes (big tomatoes and cherry tomatoes), parsley, basil, and a couple of bell pepper plants from seed. We also purchased a couple additional bell pepper plants and a jalapeno plant. I love tomatoes, so we had to have several plants. I think we have 13 that survived, 9 cherry and 4 big tomatoes. You may notice I cannot remember the real name of the variety of "big tomato" we have. I think that makes me a true novice gardener. We also have a strawberry patch. This was a gift from my wonderful in-laws who knew I loved fresh strawberries and wanted to try my hand at gardening. They don't really produce much the first year, so we are mostly just keeping the weeds out of there and watching them grow.

The tomatoes have really been the focus of the garden. This has been for a variety of reasons. As I mentioned above, I really love tomatoes. You can never really get a good tomato at the grocery store. Nothing is quite as tasty as a fresh vine ripened tomato. Fresh salsa and BLTs are a favorite around here. (Pork bacon for James and turkey bacon for me...) YUM!!!
The cherry tomato plants have become quite large. James said they are 8 ft tall. They are huge and loaded with ripening fruit. They are worth every minute of labor that has gone into them. Early in the season, we had an infestation of worms. The worms were insane. We would go out there daily and kill about 20-30 of them. We caught most when they were really small. These were not so bad to kill. The large ones were another story. The first day I fought with the worms, Amanda picked up on my disgust for the vermin. We sat down for snacks that afternoon and she pointed out the door, wrinkled up her nose, wagged her little index finger and said in a very threatening, deep voice "No, no worm." I wish I could write to reflect the inflection she had on the "worm." It was obvious she knew the worms were to be hated.

Every day the girls have enjoyed watching the plants grow and "turn red." Amanda still gets excited, startes yelling "turn red, turn red" and does a little dance when she sees a new ripe one.
Finally the worms seemed to have all died or at least passed from the worm stage of their lifecycle and turned into something else. (Once again I show I am not an expert gardener... I don't know the real name for the worm or what it turns into... Maybe next year I will have more time for researching details such as this...) Now is the time of the season when we can truely enjoy the fruits of our labor and thank God for allowing us the opportunity to partake of food the way it was meant to be enjoyed. Fresh, pure, and full of nutrients!!!