Merry Christmas 2011

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE LEHMAN'S

May you all have a very Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year.

The Benefit

The Mountain Moving Faith Benefit was a HUGE success.  Thank you so much for all the  baked goods  you provided. Thanks too to the Party Gallery in Bluffton for providing the balloons for the event. As you can see they added a lot of color. 

Auction itmes in the gym!!!!

Here are some of the AMAZING cookies that you guys provided.

More cookies!!!

An Amish woman did provide some pies!!

Yes, even more cookies. Thanks too for all of the people that helped to make this event possible. 

Mountain Moving Faith Event

The Mountain Moving Faith Event will be held Saturday, December 17 from 4:30-6:30 with a Live auction following the meal at South Adams Schools!!!

This is a benefit for the family of Nikki Summersett. Nikki did pass away last week and is now in Heaven. However, the family still very much needs our support!!!

Please visit the website for more information. http://nikkisummersett.com/

A HUGE thank you to all of you who are baking cookies for the event. We are so thankful for all the people who are willing to give and don't even know this family.

Hope to see some of you Saturday!!!!

I try to post some pictures next week. julie :)

A benefit for Nikki

If you have been driving around the Berne area, you have probably seen the PRAY for NIKKI signs. Nikki is a young mother in our town with Breast Cancer that has spread to her liver. They have had to stop her treatment. She had a son in May and was diagnosed with cancer right after he was born. Her and her husband Jeff, also have a three year old daughter.

Friends of Nikki are having a benefit for her on December 17 to raise money to help with medical bills.

I am looking for some really nice people to help provide some baked goods for the supper that evening. If you would be willing to bake something or make a dessert would you please contact me. (mjlehman8@gmail.com)

The family is praying for a miracle. Could you please join them in praying and support them by providing some baked goods. Thanks. julie :)

Grandpa Earl

Yesterday, Grandpa Earl passed from this life to his eternal reward!! Grandpa was definitely a man of few words. He always thought about what he said and planned his words carefully. I don't ever remember having rambling conversations with him. (That is what we do with Grandma!) He picked his words carefully--said what he meant and meant what he said. He was a man of great character. I don't remember him every getting real mad. He took everything as it came and handled it with such grace.

He was always a great Christian example to all of us. Church was important to him. He taught us that is something that we need, something that helps us grow--not just a place to go on Sunday if we need something to do. Grandpa always lead the family in prayer when we would go to there house when we were young. Once again, that was always straight to the point, but showed us how important it was to be a praying family.

Grandpa also was an excellent example to us in our married lives. He and Grandma had been married 70 years--actually Oct. 12, 2011-would have been their 71st anniversary.

I have so many great memories of good times with both Grandpa and Grandma--we lived next door to them for many years. We could see him from our kitchen window, while he slept in the La-z-boy after a hard day at the furniture store.

I don't ever remember seeing him mow his yard in Monroe--he always paid one of us Grand kids to do it. We also had a chance to work with him at the store. We spent many days after school stuffing sale advertisements for the mail. It was truly a family business. Most times when we would tackle that project Grandma, my mom, aunt Carol would finally come and help us finish it--Grandpa would take us out for supper at the local pizza place. After supper, he would let us each pick a package of Bubble Yum to take home.

Grandpa will surely be missed. Yesterday came with mixed emotion, because as we had to say goodbye--he was saying hello to Dad and all the others that had gone before him. So our loss his heavens gain.

Good bye Grandpa, we love you and we will miss you!!!

Rather not

Last night, Matt and I went with the Gideons to pass out New Testaments at a local factory. Each year, this company is nice enough to allow us to come and pass out Testaments to their workers in the parking lot. Matt has gone for several years. Actually, Matt is the one that arranges it each year. He needed a little extra help so this year I was invited to come along.

We stood out in the parking lot with boxes of Bibles to hand out. It was truly exciting to see how happy people were to receive this little gift. Some of the workers don't speak English so we had Testaments in their language for them. The men would stick them in their pockets, or some would even start opening them and looking inside.

Not everyone took one, which was fine. Some people were very nice and said they had many Bible at home and they wanted us to save ours to share with those that had none. Others, simply said no thank you and walked on.

But there was one young man last night that was leaving working, heading to his car, checking his cell phone--I asked would you like a Bible--never looking up at me he replied "I'd rather not". He continued to walk . What an interesting response. It has made me think. I wonder if he knew what this little book contained--does he know about the word of God, the plan of salvation, the fact the Jesus died for him?

So if you think about it today, pray for him. Also if you could say a prayer for those 291 people that received the little testaments yesterday, we would appreciate it.

I am truly blessed to have been able to do that last night. I am so thankful for knowing about God and his plan for my life. So thankful that Jesus died on the cross to save me from my sins. Now I pray that some of the people that I met last night will find what I and many of you have.

Have a very blessed day.

Take me out to the ball game

Happy Monday to you all!!! Hope you had a great weekend. We the Lehman's had a busy one. We had a great time. Now after reading that title I am guessing you already know what we did. Yes, we took in the Tincaps game on Saturday evening.

The company that Matt works for always has some sort of summer family party. Last year, we were unable to make it to the party, but this year I wanted to take the kids. Seriously, they feed us supper (a nice buffet meal at the park) and gave us these excellent seats on the third base line.

We are not real baseball fans so this was a real stretch for us. But never mind the fact we didn't know much about it, we still had a great time.

Ladan loved to match his ticket to his seat number--I don't how many times I had to dig the tickets out of my purse, so he could check he was in the right seat.

I am also not sure how many times I took this picture. (I never did get a good one!)

Even though we didn't know much about the game. We were very entertained by BirdZerk and all the fun things he did. They really do a lot of fun things on the field between innings!!

It was an excellent evening! We had a great time. Thanks to the people that sent us. We stayed to the end to see the fireworks!! The most AWESOME fireworks display I think I have ever seen.

So, if you ever have the chance to go to a Tincaps game. Go!! Lauren and Logan give it a two thumbs up. Have a great day!!!

Good News and Bad News

Yes, I have some good news and I have bad news. Let's start with the bad news.

Bad news!! It appears that I am just as bad at blogging with no one in the house as I am with six children. Sorry--I am trying. Let's hope I can get better at this!!!

Now for the good news. The time I have spent not blogging I have been sewing!!! Check out what I made to take to the Farmer's Market tomorrow!

A Felt Make-up Set

Even Lexi was thinking this would be fun to play with. I think it too cute and would make an excellent thing to add to the church bag for the little ones.

Sorry these pictures aren't the greatest, but I think you get the idea.

Just in case you were wondering--yep, I am still at the Farmer's Market almost every Saturday. I am having a great time meeting new people, staying in-touch with my vendor friends and selling a few things. Stop and and see me.

Home Alone

Yes, it has finally happened. This morning at 7:25 a.m. Ladan went off to school.

He was really excited about it.

Hopefully he is still excited when he gets to school.

He had quite the cheering section getting on the bus.

If you notice from the picture--someone is missing! Lauren! She had to be at school early today--so she missed the big event. (She will have to come home and look at the pictures.)

Ladan thought he needed to be the first one on. So when the bus pulled up --he walked right up to the door and stopped. Logan was right behind him picked him up by the arms and lifted him on.

I saw Ub walk to a seat and sit down. HE DID IT!!

It is now about 8:40 and I have had phone call (not from the school), did a load of laundry and answered a text message and not heard from the school. Things are going well.

Hope you are all having a great day. Hopefully, now that I am home alone that means more blog posts. (Only time will tell.) Have a good one.

To market, to market

Happy Friday, everyone. Can you believe it is already July!! Where is summer going?

Tomorrow, Lauren and I will be going to the Farmer's Market to sell some of the fun things I have been making.

Purse Organizers

Flower Pins

Coin Purses

Taggies

Apron

I have lots of other things I want to make, but these have kept me pretty busy the last couple of weeks. There are so other items that are not pictured and a couple that are still being made.

Thanks to Lauren for taking these pictures for me.

If you are in my area and have the time stop and and see us. We are in the Mennonite Church parking lot in Berne, across from the clock tower.

Just a note, if you haven't seen the clock tower yet. It is a fun stop. The grounds are still under construction, but the glockenspiel goes at noon, 3, 6 and 9 p.m.

You have to try this!

The other day I saw this product advertised, and wondered does it work? When I heard Oxi-clean I was tempted. (I love Oxi-clean!!!)

I spotted it at Family Dollar, I thought I am going to try this!!! OH BOY!! New favorite!!!

My shower was in need a really good cleaning!! This product is AWESOME!! My shower hasn't looked this good in years. LOVE IT!!!

If your shower needs a good cleaning drop everything run to Wal-Mart or the dollar store grab a bottle. You will be glad you did.

Happy cleaning!!!

The playhouse

The playhouse has been in our backyard for as long as we have lived here. (Almost 8 years!)

Actually Matt had built it before we moved . I think parts of the house were about 10 years old.

However, with the kids getting older and time not being on the playhouses side, we had to say goodbye to it today.

Winter was really hard. We had lost part of the roof. So today the boys took it down. It was kind of sad to see it go.

Actually it is not completely gone. We are waiting for a day with a little less wind. Before we can call this job complete.

But not bad for one day.

Update after the longest break!!!!

Can you believe it? A new blog post from me. Most of you probably thought that I had dropped off the face of the earth. No such luck. I am still here. But life with the lehmans has been crazy!!!!! What do you expect with 6 kids? But never fear--I am back with a fresh blog post, filled with grammatical errors and pictures with junk in the background!!!

Yesterday, June 13, we celebrated Lauren's 15th birthday. Actually we celebrated the last two days, but who is really counting!!! Here are a couple of shots from our 2 celebrations!!!

Right now, we are in the middle of our 10 days of Bible School! Today, is day 7!! We are having a great time!! Once again, this year I am teaching in the 5th grade. I am helping head up the good deed projects. So the 5th graders have written over 125 thank you notes and they are starting to knot comforters for people in Haiti.

School ended 3 weeks ago. But of course there were many activities before it ended. Lexi was a clown in the 1st and 2nd grade musical!

(just a note: Lexi stood on risers--that is why the costume is not full length--plus they only told us a week in advance! of couse, I didn't really do anything about it til the night before!)

Landon received an award for being in the top ten percent of his class.

I have also managed to get my flowers planted. With this strange spring weather we have had, they are finally starting to grow. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks we can mulch the flower beds and the place will look a little better.

Well I guess that is enough for one blog post. Maybe if I posted more than every 2 months, they wouldn't be so long? I don't know. Have a great day! :)

REALLY???

Looking out my window, on March 30, and this is what I see.

Really--snow!!! At the end of March? This would be beautiful in November---not March.

Hope you have a great day--anyway.

Another exciting day of Spring Break

I realize almost everyone went some place fun and exciting over Spring Break and we are no exception. On Monday, Lauren and I loaded the truck and headed out for a new adventure!!!

You see here at the Lehman house, our washing machine has been giving us some trouble. So while the part we need is on order we headed to our local laundry mat. What an adventure!!

We hauled all 8 loads into the building. (I only did laundry once last week, since I had spent a good part of Wednesday doing laundry for the musical.)

We got a few of them going at a time so they all wouldn't finish at the same time.

We did run into a little problem. But a kind AMISH woman doing her laundry their told me how to fix it! Yes, the amish woman, who doesn't have electricity at home, told me how to fix the problem.

It was great fun watching all the machines work at the same time!!! It wasn't much fun loading 13 quarters into each machine. :(

All washed, ready to dry!!!

Drying!!!!

Lesson learned while at the Laundry mat: It is really a fast!!! Not real cheap, but fast.

So if you ever have a ton of laundry and need it done quickly---go to the laundry mat. But here are a few tips.

Take baskets for each member of your family (that will save time when you get home and have to separate all the clean laundry).

The change machine will give you quarters for a $20. (That is a lot of quarters)

Take lots of hangers too!!

Don't bother with a book--we didn't really have much spare time.

So, that was a fun adventure. Give it a try some time!