Thursday, October 12, 2017

Simply September

This is my largest post to date- almost 200 pictures! If you read to the end, you're amazing!

Are YOU ready for this?

These two are great friends!

Watson is so incredibly lazy.

Dad bought a motor boat for a really good price. He's hoping to sell it this coming spring. Anybody interested?

Abi is such a hard worker! She gets up early every morning to milk Sandy and do the chores. She's pretty amazing!

Early in September the skies turned an awfully funny yellowish color due to fires in Canada, California and several other states, I don't remember which. It reminded me of how everything looked during the solar eclipse.



We like to freeze our tomatoes and peppers, then process them in the winter when we have more time.



I see carrot cake in the future... We have an awesome recipe for it, by the way. 😉

😍





The littles could listen to stories for hours...

They couldn't understand how you get milk from a cow so I filled a rubber glove with water, then pocked holes in the fingers. I laughed so hard watching them try to "milk" the glove! There was water everywhere!
Anyone else do this as a kid?

Sorry, California, but, seriously? What next?

KK bought me a piece of Casey's pizza for supper one night. 😍



The moon was gorgeous one evening!



😂

Josh and Ataley's Wedding
September 9
Sheila asked Abi to make 20 gallons of caramel popcorn for Josh and Ataley's wedding reception. It took us till nearly midnight to finish it!

On Friday, Abi and I picked Irene and Annetta up from the airport. We had to stop at Starbucks on the way home. The girls stayed with us that night. It was wonderful to catch up with them again! Gavins, Gram, and our group left before 6 Saturday morning to head out to Josh and Ataley's wedding. I drove over half of the way, but then had to turn the wheel over to Irene. After just 3 1/2 hours of sleep that night, I was exhausted!

5 hours later... the wedding begins!















I enjoyed studying the reception hall decorations as we waited for lunch.











Cupcake bar











Meanwhile...

They were calling them their "monocles." 😂



Ever try feeding a baby that's dressed in wedding clothes?



Isn't she just too adorable?













They used these little wooden hearts as their guest book. 





Someone had written on their getaway car things like, "Just married" "Mr. and Mrs." It started to rain before they left so they had to park the car under the entrance roof.










Waiting for the couple with cups of birdseed...

Laina kept trying to eat her bird seed. 😂

Some of us got showered with birdseed by a group of boys standing behind us as Josh and Ataley appeared. I found birdseed in my hair and my clothes the rest of the day!

Last goodbyes...

A bunch of us pitched in to help clean up the reception hall.

Some of the boys helped by eating fudge.

The kids had great fun rolling around on these big spools later.

Poor Darby was so tired.

The Smiths wanted us to stay over into Sunday so they bought us three hotel rooms. We were so surprised and blessed! We were just going to drive home later that day. Anyway, we invited a bunch of girls over to the hotel for a swimming party. What fun!

The max capacity for the hot tub was four people, I think. We fit nine of us in it!



Dad got us supper while we were swimming. Irene, Annetta, Brie, Grace and Abi and I met in our room to eat. We were so tired that we had a rather amusing time. 😄

Back home, we took stock of the damages done on the caramel popcorn. We had a lot left over! We sent a big bag home with Jen and Sheila, a gallon with Irene and Annetta and passed out several gallons to our neighbors and cleaning clients. Even then, we still had a couple gallons left over!

The Monday after the wedding, Mom and I had to clean two houses. This house is always so dirty!
I was so disappointed that I had to clean since we had a houseful of girls that had come home with us. Jen and Sheila and Irene and Annetta stayed overnight with us and left Monday morning. Thankfully, they all left before I had to leave so I didn't have to miss anything! It was wonderful spending time with these amazing girls. I miss you guys!

The mice have been rioting around in the wall right over my head at night. They're so loud it wakes both of us up! War was declared and victory on the good guy's side was imminent.

Abi takes such good care of our chickens that they lay more eggs than we can handle!

A beautiful autumn sky

 Tent Revival Meetings
September 13-17
Our church hosted Tent Revival Meetings in September. For those of you that don't know, our church is a small store front building on Main Street in Griswold. There's a vacant lot across the street from us with just enough room to set up a smaller "circus" tent. The man who owns the lot allows us get electricity from his welding shop in the alley behind the vacant lot. The boys rig the sound system up so that there's a speaker projecting the sound into the street. 

We passed out invitations in town again this year and got one of the largest turn outs of local people that we've ever had! Only one small family from PA came to visit on Sunday. Other than that, the only visitors were locals.
Instead of having a visiting preacher, the men from our church did the preaching this year. It was such a blessing to just be "us" this year! I felt that it was one of the best Meetings we've ever had!

The first official night of Meetings also happened to be Don's birthday. They brought along a treat to share with everyone in celebration of his birthday.

Mom's mums were gorgeous this year!

Some friends of ours were married September 16, the Saturday of our Meetings. I drove Mom and self out to eastern IA (about 3.5 hours from us) where the wedding was held. I was able to see some of my friends that I usually only get to see at Bible School! Yay!

We sat across from some young guys that never said a word. It was hilarious, they just got their food, ate and sat there silently listening to our lively conversations. 😂

I don't know what the dessert was, but it sure was yummy!

I had three cups- punch, water and coffee. 😋 I don't know what kind of coffee they served, but it was the best coffee I've had in a long time!



Back in Griswold... Poor Lynna and Doughy were battling colds and fevers.
After driving a total of seven hours on Saturday, sitting through a long wedding on hard wooden pews, then sitting through another service that night, I hurt so bad! 

Sunday lunch

The boys were scheduled for clean up on Sunday. Woohoo! We girls finally got a break! 👍 Actually, I did help them some. 😉



Loren and his girls redid the sign.

Taking the stuff down Sunday evening is always a highlight for me. After spending a lot of time with everybody and listening to God's word, those polite social barriers tend to go down between us. We are all one big happy family working together. It's always a lot of fun, but also a blessing!



Carrying the podium back into church...



Speakers for supper, anybody?



We take all the chairs out of the sanctuary and set up tables for the meals.

After we finished the majority of the clean up, the youth went to the bandshell park to sing.





😅

See, girls, this is what happens when you snitch my phone and take pictures... you get blogged!


Randomness
😍





Pumpkin

Sausage and egg bagels are the best!

Annual Camping Trip
September 26-28
Loading the car up with camping paraphernalia.
Every year our family group goes camping at a local state park. It's a wonderful time of relaxing and being dirty! 😄




Gram has a camper, which is really handy for those damp, chilly mornings!

She got ahold of Gram's straws.

Ryan said she looked like the Statue of Liberty. 😂






Baby picture























Ryan and Kelsey made us malts one evening.



We had one evening around the campfire where we sang, told stories and talked. Wonderful memories...

I made the littles hot chocolate one morning.



They're incredibly cute in their jammies!



Ryan made pancakes for breakfast one morning.



A picture of modern motherhood



It got down to 45* one night. Burr!





We cheated and made burgers on an electric griddle instead of over the fire.



Lynna slept in our tent with us.



Abi, KK and Brie walked to the Rock Cut.



The boys grilled steaks over the fire.





The boys like to string hammocks up or sleep on picnic tables in the pavilion.

Loading up 😟

Randomness Again






They love to sit on the island watching us cook!

Katelyn adores the calves! She's always running down to see them when she's here.





Iowa
America's Front Porch

This is so true!

A dear elderly friend of ours, Iris, was placed in assisted living over an hour away from Griswold in Omaha, NE. She hasn't been doing well so Mom and Aunt Carol planned a small party for her at her own house in Griswold. They invited quite a few of Iris's friends to come see her while she was home. It was so special watching Iris light up again! She absolutely hates staying at the assisted living place, but there's nothing she can do about it. Poor thing.



It was simply deafening in there with all those elderly ladies chattering away! 😝

The lovely Iris herself

I'll finish this post with quotes...












This is an amazing song! It goes along with the quote above. 👆


























I can't believe that I'm actually caught up on blogging! What a relief!
Thank you for all of your encouraging comments! I am always so excited to get them!

5 comments:

  1. Hey! I read to the end, so I guess I'm AMAZING! :D I like your new blog design. ~Mary

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey, Mary! Thank you! You're pretty amazing... but, do I know you? :)

      Delete
    2. Nope. You don't :( ~Mary

      Delete
  2. Thank you for sharing your everyday life on this blog! I look every few days to see if you posted anything new! It is always so interesting to see what you are busy with and what your life is like! Thank you so much!!! And the longer the posts the better!!! Love Martha Petrusevich

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Martha! I really enjoy sharing with my readers!

      Delete

Trying to Catch Up...

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