Life has taken such a busy turn, that blogging has been put on the back burner on "low." Bible School, cleaning jobs, small road trips, birthdays, house life, church events, sewing, SOP, Nate and Gin's wedding, a funeral, coffee outings... Yeah, we've been a little busy. :)
Mom organized the freezers in preparation for our pig. We had frozen a bunch of tomatoes last summer, so Abi made pizza sauce for us.
Washing dishes late at night :)
Sam made these adorable foam cowboy boots for Brie's birthday.
Watson :)
Sweet baby Lainey
Doughy isn't quite ready for big boy boots yet. :)
He loves helping me do the laundry! Whenever the washer or drier beeps, he comes running to me, "Dier! Dier!"
Aunt Carol's pig and ours have been butchered. The last three are almost ready to go!
Gardening with Abi...
Try tying a knot behind your back. :)
We took Sweet Joy yummies to the boys one morning. :)
Abi planted 365 potatoes this year, one for every day of the year! :)
We've been enjoying homemade ice cream lately.
Girls' day out! :)
Micah and Kayla Smith had their first boy, Landon. Ryan and Kelsey are finally an aunt and uncle! :)
Somebody snapped a picture during church of Dad's message illustration.
Eating cookies after spending the day with us. :)
Lots of dishes!
Alaina's hair is long enough to pull up into a little propeller! She is so cute!
Katelyn wanted to wear doll clothes. :)
She's so hilarious! She wraps up in tons of blankets, then carries her baby all over.
Cleaning at a granary office
Kels gave me a bunch of cut out dresses to sew up. I figured that I can help her that way. :) It's been so much fun sewing up Alaina's tiny little dresses!
It's been two years this past April since we went to Ireland the second time! I can't believe how fast time has flown!
We gathered at Gram's with our fellow Ireland galavanters to celebrate.
Cousin Cathy tagged along too. :)
Chupps invited us over for lunch one Sunday after church. KK and Mom were having a jolly good time! :)
I like how brothers make you feel tiny. :)
Nate popped the question, and Gin said yes! :) Their wedding date is set for July 9.
We discovered a new coffee place in Treynor called The Java Supply. They have really, really yummy coffee!
The babies love lawn mower rides!
Two fisted eating :P
I took the babies out for a little walk one day. The sun was exceptionally bright!
Wearing Grandma's veil :)
I love this picture!
Abi and I made these yummy ham, swiss, and honey mustard sandwiches for supper one evening. They were out of this world!
This spider tends to show up in the most unlikely places...
I heartily agree :D
The love birds :)
Watching the boys put Doughy's pants on was the most entertaining thing since television was invented!
Whoops! Filled the popcorn popper too full!
It's probably not very safe to teach the babies how to shoot the BB gun and KK's pistol. :) They just love shooting, though!
Little cheeseballs
I found this mysterious slimy thing floating in a bucket of water at the granary office that we clean. Whatever it was, it was pretty sick looking!
We had a straight wind come through from the east toward the end of April. We estimated that the wind was sustained anywhere from 80-100 mph. It was really incredible and just a little bit scary. It was still quite early when the wind struck, so most of us were still in our pajamas. I was running around for awhile without my glasses on until I decided that it really was worth it to take a moment to run and put them on. :)
When I ran into our room for my glasses, I heard a dull boom. I didn't think much of it until I looked out our bedroom window and saw this pine tree uprooted.
We watched this tree fall. It was an incredible sight. It missed a power line by a couple feet. It would've hit it on any normal day, but that day, the wind was blowing the power line straight out when the tree fell! We were so thankful! It also missed falling on Gram's camper, thankfully!
In all, three of the five pine trees there beside the house were blown over, roots and all.
My poor lilacs... :(
The trees were lined up in a nice straight line.
Since the wind came from the east, these trees had absolutely no protection. They were already kinda dying, so in a way, it saved us the work of cutting them down and trying to remove the stumps.
Abi took this video just before we watched the last tree fall.
KK's best working buddy :)
Mom, Abi, and I went with Diana to a huge Mennonite dry goods and bulk food store in Cantril, IA. We've been wanting to go there for years, so one week, we jut decided to do it! :) The store is incredible! It spans an entire block of the little town of Cantril. They had everything you could ever want- shoes, clothes, fabric, gifts, dishes, decor, food, plants, you name it, they had it! After we left, we had lunch at a Pizza Hut along the way. Well, it was about 3 by the time we got lunch. I was so hungry since I'd had hardly anything to eat the day before, and nothing to eat that day. I got this wonderful chicken Alfredo dish! It tasted heavenly!
Chocolate whoopie pies! :P
Over that time, I had contracted a pretty bad infection in my mouth. I had bitten my cheek and it got horribly infected. Eating was extremely painful. I think the infection even went into my jaw as it hurt really bad to open my mouth. It got to the point where it was shooting pain up into my temple and across my face. I think I even ran a low grade fever with it. Thankfully, Abi had some old antibiotics that she never finished so I started taking them. Within a couple days I noticed a drastic difference! I'm all better now, though! :)
The attic dormers have been leaking for a long time. The water would leak through, trace along something, then pour through our bedroom ceiling. It's been quite a mess. Almost our whole ceiling will need replaced. BUT! Ryan spent an entire day cladding and re-siding the dormers and I am happy to inform you that it hasn't leaked in our room since!!! I am ecstatic to be able to lay in bed during a storm and not have to worry about water pouring through the ceiling! Thank you, Ryan!!!
