It is Monday evening, just after 7 p.m. here at the Eicher homestead. Supper is over with and the dishes are washed. It is time to call it a day.

On the menu was turkey, scalloped potatoes, cheese and homemade vanilla ice cream. We are taking advantage of all the snow we have to make ice cream in the ice cream freezer. I have made other kinds, but my favorite is just plain old vanilla. I can’t remember my mother making any other flavor either.

We didn’t have freezers when I grew up, so homemade ice cream was always a treat. I remember going into the cold porch the next morning and getting a dish of that leftover ice cream in the freezer canister still sitting in the ice water to keep it cold. Now I can empty the leftovers into ice cream buckets and put them in the freezer.

This is now Tuesday morning, Dec. 9. We received a few more inches of snow overnight. The wind is strong and causing the snow to drift. I need to go turn the horses outside for a while so they can get some exercise. Joanna (son Benjamin’s special friend) will help me. We still don’t have our barnyard fenced in by the new barn, so it takes two people to turn the horses out to the field. Most of the horses run straight for the gate leading to the field, except our 25-year-old pony Stormy. He is the troublemaker. He sees every opening he can to make a dash for the free open spaces and run in the opposite direction. Ha ha!

Joanna has moved from her home in Holmes County, Ohio, and made Michigan her home now. We are grateful to our daughter Loretta and Dustin for opening up their home for her to stay. No one sleeps in their upstairs bedrooms, so this was nice for them to give Joanna a bedroom up there. The little boys and Kylie absolutely love her! She has been a great help to all of us as well.

My mind keeps drifting back to five years ago today ... a day that changed our lives. Dan picked up son-in-law Mose that morning as usual, to go work another day at the RV factory. There wasn’t any snow or ice on the roads at that time.

On the highway, about 10 minutes after leaving Mose and Susan’s house, a car crossed the center line and hit them head-on. Dan was killed instantly and Mose was taken to the hospital and then transferred to a bigger hospital, where he lived for five days. He never responded after the crash, so we will never know if he heard our last goodbyes.

Daughter Susan was only 24 and left to mourn with their daughter Jennifer, 2, and son Ryan, 1. Our hearts were broken, but we needed to stay strong for Susan and the children. Susan couldn’t even begin to look toward the future. All we could do was be there for her and pray that God would comfort this young widow’s heart as she mourned the death of her first love.

Time does not stand still for anyone. How comforting to have faith in our Heavenly Father to help us through our difficult trials in life. How could we go on without “Him”? Fast forward five years and Susan once again is married and a busy mother to seven children, ages 9 and younger. She will never forget her first love and husband, Mose. We all have precious memories of him.

 On Dec. 30, Susan and Ervin will celebrate their third anniversary. Ervin lost his first wife, Sarah, to breast cancer three months before Mose’s accident. Ervin and Sarah’s three children, Kaitlyn, Isaiah and Curtis, have won our hearts, and I never think of them as step-grandchildren. They are as dear to me as my own. God does perform miracles. We don’t always understand. His ways are not our ways, so we put our full trust in Him.

Happy Birthday to my daughter Verena tomorrow, Dec. 10. We wish her many more happy, healthy years! I’m so glad she and Daniel Ray have made their home just across the sidewalk from us for now. It’s nice having them close by. We appreciate their help!

God’s blessings to all! Stay safe and healthy!

Peanut Blossoms

1 3/4 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1/2 cup shortening

1/2 cup peanut butter

1 egg

2 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

48 milk chocolate candy kisses

Combine all ingredients except the candy in a large mixing bowl until thoroughly mixed.

Shape the dough into balls and roll in sugar.

Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet at 375 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes.

Top each cookie immediately with a candy kiss, pressing down firmly so the cookie cracks around the edge of the kiss.

Makes 48 cookies.

• Lovina’s Amish Kitchen is written by Lovina Eicher, an Old Order Amish writer, cook, wife and mother of eight. Her three cookbooks, “The Cherished Table,” “The Essential Amish Cookbook” and “Amish Family Recipes,” are available wherever books are sold. Readers can write to Eicher at Lovina’s Amish Kitchen, P.O. Box 234, Sturgis, MI 49091 (please include a self-addressed stamped envelope for a reply), or email questionsforlovina@gmail.com and your message will be passed on to her to read. She does not personally respond to emails.