Here's another snapshot into our hectic lives...!
Bodie is getting huge!
Sam is such a little worker!
Helping Abi do carrots
Abi is amazing! She takes care of the garden pretty much by herself, then puts up all the garden goodies all by herself. She's a pretty awesome sister! (I hate gardening and cooking, so I'm more than willing to let her do it if she wants to.) :P
Nate and Gin on their honeymoon in Estes Park, CO. :)
Abi got an enormous amount of potatoes this year... 335#, to be exact! We had some late nights trying to get them all finished before Nate and Gin's reception here and our church's annual Tent Meetings.
We par roast the potatoes, then freeze them.
I was making pancakes for everybody one day. I flipped this one over and discovered a smiling face looking back at me. ;)
Gram sent this to us... :D
Dad, Mom and I went to a celebration of life for a good friend of ours from the community who had passed away. We spotted this poor female pheasant. She met her demise via a mini van... Poor thing! It was a little humorous, though. We couldn't help but chuckle.
Right in the middle of our busy cleaning week (btw, altogether, we clean 17 houses now), our fridge decided that it would be a good time to quit. :) Thankfully, Bob Brandt was available to come diagnose it's problem. It felt like we were camping since we were living out of coolers. :P
Bodie decided to take a nap in a farrowing crate. :)
I went through our tupperware one day, matching lids and containers. All of these lids were without a mate! No wonder our lid container was overflowing all over the place!
We hosted a reception back here in Griswold for all of our friends and family that weren't able to come to the wedding. I made table center pieces out of old blue mason jars and burlap ribbon.
Just for kicks...
Abi milked Talitha one day just to see how much Bodie was actually drinking. It was less than she expected, which means Tito is drying up on her own! :)
Kels sent this picture to us. Katelyn said that she was Gin and Doughy was Nate... The blanket was her wedding dress. :P
Little miss crooked smile! How we love that unique little grin! :)
Nate and Gin surprised everybody by coming Wednesday night for church. It was such a treat to have them there! On Thursday, we invited them over for chicken enchiladas.
I burned green treat boards with a torch to add texture to the centerpieces. (Actually, I only burned one of them to show Sam how, then he finished the rest. Thanks, Buddy!)
The boys brought out all the big guns for a big shoot out with Nate. It was fun! :)
Doughy was so adorable with ear plugs jammed into his ears! :)
Nate looks positively doped over Gin! :P
I made over six gallons of iced coffee on Friday. Yummy!
Abi made oodles and oodles of cake balls... White, chocolate and orange flavored. It took her two days to make them! She really did an awesome job!
Mom went to the job one day to give the guys a hand on a few things. :)
Saturday morning found us up bright and early loading the van and getting ready for the reception. Mom, Abi and I arrived at the community center around 9 to set up and make last minute things.
Finished centerpiece...
Yummy, yummy!
Reception table...
We thought it'd be nice to wear our wedding clothes for the event.
Little ham! :)
I was so tired! It had been a long day! A while after Nate and Gin left the reception (they were staying in Gram's camper), we got a text from Gin letting us know that Nate had spiked a fever. :-/ Poor Nate! He was sick for most of the remainder of their visit.
Just for kicks... :)
Ok, long story... Gram let her dog, Kelsey (she was named before we really knew my sister-in-law), out around midnight on Friday night. Kelsey didn't come back for a long time, but Gram wasn't too concerned as the dog had wondered off before. Well, when Saturday morning came and no Kelsey, she began to really worry. That little dog means the world to her. Gram called us and Dad drove all over town with her looking for the dog. They didn't see hide or hair of her... A storm had blown through that night, and it was supposed to be extremely hot that day. We were really worried! Different people went out with her to look around throughout the day. Kelsey was just gone. Sunday dawned, and still nothing. We were beginning to think the worst... It hurt so much to watch Gram suffer! Sunday afternoon, Kim Bishop asked if she could post it on Facebook. Of course, we said yes! Cousin Cathy had posted lost dog ads on Craigslist and several other sites, but we never got anything from them. Anyway, within a very short time, two people had responded that they'd seen a little black dog east of town. We mustered the troops and set out to scour the roads east of town. As we were leaving, Christy and Marquel Everett pulled up at church to say that they'd seen Kim's Facebook post. After they'd seen it, they immediately left and started looking for Kelsey, but without results. We were so blessed by them! We hadn't told Gram yet about any of this because we didn't want to get her hopes up. So, we set out, some to walk along the highway calling for her, others to drive around, looking and calling. After scouring the highway for a good while, we decided to start searching the north and south gravel roads. At the toilet house (some of you know which road that is) :), we went south and Ben went north. We hadn't gone more than a mile down that road when I spotted Kelsey sitting up by the corner of an abandoned house. I shouted, "There she is!" Abi jumped out to grab her. The poor dog just whimpered and whined the whole way back, she was so relieved to be found! We were just thanking God! We'd all been praying fervently that she'd be found. It really was a miracle that we found her. A literal needle in a hay stack! We rushed back to Gram's as fast as the speed limits would permit us. It was a joyful reunion!
All of us and Zooks turned out to look, along with the Everett's. It was so special!
She'd been gone just shy of 48 hours.
Later, at our house, Nate and Gin came to visit. I had bought this emoticon pillow for them as a joke. :)
LOL! :)
Our sweet little cowgirl :)
She's such a sunshiny girlie!
Katelyn is just plain hilarious!
Nate and Gin stopped by for a couple hours Monday afternoon before they headed over to Ryan and Kelsey's for supper. It was so fun having them around!
The last of the iced coffee... We'd had so many left overs from the reception that we brought them to church for the fellowship meal. There were tons of cake balls left so we wrapped them up and froze them for our cookie contribution to Tent Meetings in a couple weeks.
We ordered Pizza Ranch for supper that evening. If you've never had their buffalo chicken pizza, you are seriously missing out!
Tuesday morning was time to say goodbye to Nate and Gin. :( We snapped a quick family photo before they left. Sadly, Kels and the littles weren't there to complete the picture.
We'll see you guys this December! Texas or bust! :)
Another kick...
I thought you might enjoy having a nightmare tonight...
Mowing the front pasture
Noah Stauffer and Marie Wall were getting married July 30 in Indiana. I really wanted to go to their wedding, so Mom and KK decided to make a trip of it. Since it was our busy week, we had to rearrange our schedule a bit, but we got it figured out! Dad got us a room at a really nice hotel. :)
Later, at the reception... KK photobombed my picture.
We had to leave by two in order to get home at a decent time. Just as we were leaving, they opened the dessert table. They were having cheesecake, so I quickly nabbed a piece on our way out. We picked up plasticware at a gas station later, then split the cheesecake three ways. It was outrageously yummy!
We had seen a sign for a castle, so we decided to find out what it was all about. The sign said it was three miles down this gravel road. So, we drove... and drove... and drove... twisting this way and that on narrow IN roads. Finally, we found the drive for it. Talk about a grand entrance! It was only wide enough for one car! We actually met a few cars and had to do some fancy maneuvering to get by them. It turned out that it is some kind of wedding venue, not a tourist place. Apparently a wedding had just finished, or they were setting up for an evening one when we got there, so we quickly evacuated. :)
We got home late, but it had been a fun two day trip!
Abi cleaned out our old freezer in order to make room for the abundance of sweet corn and potatoes.
Abi made pumpkin bread! Btw, have you ever had pumpkin bread with a slice of Velveeta cheese on it? It's really good!
We had a mouse problem, so we set a trap and ended up catching around seven mice in like two nights! Yuck! Well, one of them must've had babies, because we found this poor little beggar in Mom and Dad's room. It was barely alive. Watson enjoyed it, though!
We had so much sweet corn this year! Abi thinks she put up about 70 quarts.
Irish tea is great at keeping you awake during late night vigils! It's Abi's go-to when she wants to be lively. :)
A loaded freezer!
KK, shooting one of their handguns.
Just for one last kick...
