I am proud of him, as I am all my children, but this post is going to focus just on him. He has just turned 14 years old last week, although most people who meet him think he is much older. This is partly because of the mature manner he handles himself, and partly because of his near 6-foot frame. He is a dependable, hard working, man of character and integrity, with a gentle spirit and a desire to serve God. He is a wonderful son and brother and touches everyone he is around in many ways.
I am very blessed to be his dad!
Matthew has been instrumental this past year in helping to transform the Pure Water Hollow Homestead from just a nice piece of land in the hills next to the river, into a bonafide working farm with fences, pigs, and goats surrounded by the beauty of God’s creation. He has done a lot of hard work this past year, let me tell you!
Since his birthday last year, we have added goats, pigs and honeybees to our homestead to go along with our chickens. He has learned much about construction by building and repairing goat shelters, pig lots, and pig stys. He has learned much about fencing as we struggled to unroll many feet of woven wire for the goat lots and pig lots and driving the T-posts into the ground.
This past year he has also learned how to use a chain saw to cut down trees for posts or to clear trees out of the way of trails. He was already proficient at chopping down trees with his axe and hatchet, but the chain saw really speeds things along! He has also become a master at using weed eaters and lawn mowers and has learned much about other gas-powered engines such as his four-wheeler and our golf cart.
It has been amazing to watch his physical strength and endurance increase throughout the past year as he continually rose to the occasion for so many more and difficult farm chores that needed to be done every day. For almost a year now he has been regularly carrying 5 gallon buckets of water and buckets of food every day, and bales of straw, bales of hay, truck loads of milk crates full of milk, and 100 pound bags of feed on a weekly basis, as well as moving heavy slabs of wood and other material any given day. He can now do many push-ups and pull-ups, which I don’t think he could do last year at this time, and his upper body strength has improved to where he can climb all the way up most any tree or pole now.
What follows is a collection of my favorite pictures taken over the past year of Matthew’s life, which give a glimpse of the types of things Matthew has been into lately.
Let’s start with a picture of his 13th birthday from last year. He fooled the rest of us by having his "birthday cake" made out of meatloaf and potatoes. Lisa had it decorated like a real cake!
When licking the candle, he had to act like it was icing even though it did not taste as good! It even suprised him, a bit!:
Now for some shots of Matthew at work:
And at play:
How about at rest, after working and playing so hard:
Some moments with the animals were captured on film:
And here are some nice looking general pictures of Matthew:
Here is a father son picture taken 11 months ago:
And here is a father son picture taken yesterday:
One of our heights seem to have changed a bit during the past 11 months!
I may come back to this post with a picture of Matthew’s cake for his 14th birthday. Around his birthday, I came down with a terrible stomach virus and passed it on to Simon and Christina and a bit to Lisa. We have had a rough couple of weeks. Matthew is such a nice son and brother that he did not want to celebrate with cake and ice cream until his family could enjoy it with him, so we have yet to sing "Happy Birthday" and have cake and ice cream! We are planning on doing it tonight, so…
Happy Birthday, Matthew!
We love you!!
What a wonderful past year the Lord has blessed you with and the upcoming year is sure to be full of many new adventures that we can look forward to and experience together!
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