Burnett Family

I am always looking for a way to cook up a bunch of party food,

and thought a Spring tea sounded fun…after lots of planning and

tons of baking, this was the beautiful result. :)

My beautiful family. :)

Picnic Stuffed Eggs                   Asparagus Ham Roll-ups

French Vanilla Cream Puffs       Flavorful Sausage Balls

I really enjoy planning everything to cook, but I do have trouble

narrowing down all my options, and probably end up with too much

food, as you can tell. :)

Aren’t these flowers cute?! Carinna helped with them – I thought

they turned out very fun. :)

Charity was very sweet, and willingly assisted me all day! …well, I guess she WAS a little unsure about peeling the shrimp. ;)

Carinna is making lemon curd, and Mom is working on the decorations. She also spent a lot of time and effort on making the little “signs” you see in each of the dishes. I definitely couldn’t have put all this together without all the help I had!

Chicken Salad Crescents

Sugar Cookie Fruit Pizza           Fried Shoestring Carrots

The strawberry scones are a personal recipe, and we served them

with Lemon Curd.

 

Maggie made the shoestring carrots (I think she enjoyed it?) and several pitched in and did dishes.

Cheez-it Toffee

Lemon Tea Cakes                     Bunny Bait

Skewered Shrimp

Cheesy Corn Bites                   Jalapeno Popper Dip

Yogurt-Covered Raspberries were from Sam’s Club. ;)

If you think we were having fun here, (which we were!) you should’ve seen us afterward playing games for family fun! It wasn’t the games that were so fun, but all the laughing in between that had nothing to do with what we were playing…thanks, Caleb. ;) We sure can have a good time. :D

This year’s winter has been unusually warm. Our grass is greener and taller now than it has been in a year. So…we were thrilled to get 1 1/2” of snow the other week! It pretty much all melted by the afternoon…but we enjoyed it while it lasted.

The four youngest.

Benjamin workin’ on a snowman. One of our beehives.

Maggie had fun with the car windows. :)

 Calli loves snow.                       Charity’s snow heart.

Twins forever. :)

Benjamin with his cute snowman.

We have LOTS of different kinds of flowers popping up in the yard.

Have a blessed day!

When you have this many people, I guess it takes ALOT of stuff. ;)

 

 

Notice their big smiles? They REALLY enjoyed their lunch! (smirk ;)

 

If ya’ll ever go camping, you HAVE to try this one! First, cut a big slit across the top of a banana, then fill it with butter, chocolate bar, nutella, peanut butter, and marshmellows, then roast it over the fire and consume.

Abbie and Hannah trying to come up with new roasted concoctions… :)

Gotta love singing your heart out around the campfire. =D

We enjoyed catching a lot of fish-perch, crappie, and bass.

      

Now that is what I call FRESH fish! This stuff was amazing!

Granny and Granddad (mom’s parents) joined us on Saturday, and greatly contributed to the loads of fun we had!

The hiking trail we went on was stunningly gorgeous! Near the end of the trail was this beautiful view of the lake.

…take notice of the storm clouds rollin’ in…

There was a really cool water dam near the camp ground we climbed, it was pretty epic!

We sang from the top… :)

  

On Saturday afternoon/evening/night :), the big adventure came – in the form of a STORM. Thank the Lord, those of us who were out hiking made it back in time before it hit. Knowing that a storm was coming, and that our big tent leaks (from past experience :) Mom, and others took out some stuff and piled it in the van, so it wouldn’t get all wet.  As the storm quickly approached, we snarfed down our supper, finished filleting the fresh catch of fish, Granny and Granddad headed back, and we all piled in the vehicles to take refuge, all except for J-C and Caleb who stayed in their tent to hold it down.

This is a 15 second video, of a 30 minute time lapse to show you how quick this thing came!

As the rain poured, it lightening and thundered, we waited and waited, Dad checked the weather on his phone, we phoned called and walkie-talkied each other back and forth to give each other updates…and ate good comfort food like chips and cookies…:) As we watched the wind pick up, we started wondering if our big tent, which we’ve had since Charity was 6 weeks old,(17 1/2 years) was gonna survive, so we got out and put more stuff in the van, shortly after, the wind whisked it up, right in front of our eyes and blew it into a tree!!! …so glad we took that stuff out! We found out the wind probably got up to about 60 mph!

We were very thankful that the baseball size hail didn’t hit us! Meanwhile, Granny and Granddad were having a VERY difficult time getting home. With the Lord’s protection they finally made it.

Now that it was very dark (round 10:00) and 6 of our sleeping places were slightly unavailable   GONE, Mom and Dad decided that the girls should all sleep in the van and Mom sleep in the car.

A spur-of-the-moment sister sleep-over in the…VAN…of all places!!! What a night!

 

 

The ol’ tent gone kasplat. Guess it was time for a new tent anyway. =)

 

Sunday we attended this local church, did some more hiking and fishing, and a lot of rearranging and packing-up. Our stuff needed a lot of organizing after last night.

On our way home, those in the car barely missed having a head-on collision driving on a two-lane road. They topped a hill and saw a car coming from the other direction erratically drive in their lane, to the shoulder and grass, and back to their lane. Not knowing where the car was going to end up, mom didn’t know what to do. She stayed in her lane, and the car stayed on the shoulder coming the wrong way, passing within 6 inches of the car. They think they heard the other car scraping the guard rail, and then it zipped right back in with the line of cars that it came from.  We are praising the Lord for His hand of protection and guardian angels!

Needless to say, after such a dramatic weekend, it was a very good feeling to be home ALL TOGETHER, ALIVE, WELL, AND SAFE, and in our own beds again. :) I don’t think we’ll ever forget that memorable camping trip.

Until next time…

happy trails! =)

Just in case anyone is wondering, we didn’t fall off the face of the earth, but, we DID go all the way to the upper peninsula of Michigan and back, in our big green van! There’s our shadow in a corn field. =)

 

 

I love my family, and this was a trip of a life-time! All 10 of us were able to go together…something that doesn’t happen very often any more. The purpose of our trip was to coordinate and attend the Journey to the Heart Reunion.

Here’s how it started: Journey to the Heart is a 10-day retreat that 5 of us older kids have each been to. It’s a set-apart time to seek the Lord, and each of us has been very blessed to have had this opportunity. We enjoyed it so much, made some really close friends, and had a desire to go back to the Northwoods in Michigan where it is held. Back in December, we popped the idea to the Journey office about having a reunion for everyone who has attended Journey to the Heart. Long story made short, they loved the idea, but didn’t have the time to do it themselves, so they asked us if OUR family would like to coordinate it! After much thought and prayer, we excitedly took on the project and for the past 6 months or so, we’ve been planning, creating, organizing, designing, adjusting, promoting, recruiting, and praying!! It’s been a wonderful, HUGE, learning experience for us that we wouldn’t trade for anything, and now after months of preparations, it was finally here!! We can’t wait to tell you all about it, but we have sooooo many pictures, we are going to spread it out over several posts. This post is just to document our travels UP there. =) Ya ready?

Our first stop was in St. Louis, where we went to church with the Burns family (check out their exciting new film in the making!). We arrived early, so instead of sitting around, we stretched our legs and walked across this mile long bridge. There was a nice breeze, and the sun was shining which made it very refreshing. :)

 

This bridge used to be a part of Route 66.

Macho-man. ;)

After church, we went to the Burns’ house and ate lots of delicious nachos…

played foos-ball…(while eating cookies??? :)

enjoyed some very entertaining games of “occupation telephone”…

go Nick!…

…and played a late night game of Settlers of Catan…

 

and of course they played it, Burns’ STYLE! We’re convinced that’s the only way to play Settlers now.

Thanks guys, for your generous hospitality, a great time, and all the good laughs! Now YA’LL have got to come see us! =)

  

We didn’t get very far down the road, when we stopped and got some REAL apple cider at a quaint little shop, then continued on our way.

We were driving through Iowa and decided we couldn’t pass within 15 miles of the Bontragers’ house without stopping! So, we dropped by for about 30 minutes. They were having a huge Labor Day party, with tons of people, but they still showed us great hospitality, and served us ice cream! =) Next time we come through, we’ll definitely have to plan on staying longer!

Back on the road. Iowa was probably my favorite state that we drove through – all the rolling hills and picturesque farms were a sight to see!

 

Monday night, we arrived at the Dorninks’ house in Minnesota! (Dustin and Melody were on J-C and Hannah’s Journey teams in 2009.) We were definitely feeling a difference in the weather by this time…in a good way!  We had a great evening/late night/early morning (if ya know what I mean ;) filled with great food and fun fellowship.

 

Big game of 1-100! Grab the pen!!!

They endured our my pathetic volley ball skills. :) …but we’ll have to play again sometime, because I improved at least a little by playing so much last weekend! =)

 

Ya’ll are so much fun – thanks again for opening your home to us!

 

Check out all that corn! We decided that for every corn field up there, there is a pasture of cows down here. :)

On the 3rd day of travel, when we were about an hour or so from our destination, we stopped at Lake Superior and stretched our ‘tired of traveling’ bodies. :)

 

Gorgeous shot, Charity!

This is a great way to streeeeeeetch after a long van ride! =)

 

Enjoyin’ the fresh air!

 

That water felt good!

 

Final leg: I see 2 mischievous lookin’ guys in the back row, hmmm. ;)

*Ahem, after 24 hours, split up into 3 days in the van, the chances of getting a little goofy increase considerably. :)

almost. there.

 

You should’ve been there to see our excitement when we saw this sign and pulled into the long awaited drive-way of the NORTHWOODS CONFERENCE CENTER!!! We are so thankful for the Lord’s protection the whole way and for Him sustaining us…and our van! =) Lord-willing, in the following post we’ll share more pictures and tell you about the great time spent with the Lord and our Brothers and Sisters in Christ.

Until then, God bless you all!