Doings

So I'm sitting at the library now, and thought to write a blog, since our computer at home is so terribly slow. So sorry for all fellow computer people at the library who may be annoyed at constant typing.

I thought to write a blog on what I've been doing lately, as I have been so fearfully neglectful of any information this past month.

I have been working everyday (but Sunday) either at the farm or babysitting, and next week I start a second part-time (for now) job. Its nice, cause I will be able to have a month off for my trip.
Ohh, GREAT NEWS! our tickets are booked, and I am FOR CERTAIN going to Africa! I can't even relate to you the immenseness of my exitement (as I'm certain the all capital letters must have showed you) so On October 14, we will drive to a neighboring state and leave from that airport (in doing so, it was cheaper by nearly $800 for the three of us going to Africa as well as Ukraine) and fly into PARIS (Granted, I will only be seeing the inside of the airport, but I'll take great joy and being able to tell people that I have been to Paris before. 3 different times in fact, by the time these excursions are over and I return home) then from there to Budhapest, Hungry, and then we will take a train from Budhapest to the Ukraine, stay there for two weeks, in which time we will be doing Childrens' programs, and visiting churches and then the last 3 days we will be involved in a youth outreach/open air conference thing ( I don't recall what they called it) Then we will all take the train back to Budhapest, and four members of our team will head home, and the rest of us are going on to Mozambique, Africa. I don't know what all we will be doing there yet, but am so excited!

The trouble will be in the packing. I get one 40 lb. suitcase to pack for an entire month of living out of. Now this wouldn't be so hard, except that the Ukraine will be cold, and Mozambique will be beastly hot (it will be their summer, and its not uncommon for temperatures to reach 120 degrees) so I'm sure it will be an...experience:-)

well, that is all for now, I shall relate to you other events at some other time, so in the mean time, farewell!

CHEO

Some pictures of my sisters graduation at CHEO.

My niece Rachel and I. I was taking care of her during the ceremony

.

About 1/3 of the way through the commencement, Rachel conked out and slept through the entire thing!

My oldest brother, Greg, and his wife Bethany ( Bethany took these pictures... I swiped them off of facebook;p)

Audrey and Brady, my niece and nephew.

The CHEO graduating class of 2010

my parents giving Christina her diploma.

Bethany's sister Eliza graduated this year as well.

The new graduate

And Eliza and Christina after the ceremony, Congrats girls!

After the graduation, my whole family (except for two of my brothers) and their children went out to eat at Cracker Barrel, wherein I discovered I love fried okra. And so does Brady. He ate half of my serving:)

Usually we have to drive a couple hours to the building where CHEO is held every year, but not this year. It is our tradition that after CHEO, whoever is the newly graduated one in the family, gets to choose where we eat. I believe the last to trips both choices were Cracker Barrel ( mine was in 2008, and I had chosen Cracker Barrel as well:-) )

Be blessed!

Summer.

Just some pictures taken over the summer.

My niece gets her first taste of watermelon. She LOVED it!

Sisters: Anna, Julie, Andrea, Cara (Me), and Christina. Missing are Bethany and Bonnie



Me and my newest nephew, Danny ( My brother Dan and his wife Julie's little boy.

Chickens relaxing in the heat.

Growing grapes.

Part of our garden

Bare feet in the garden

What I see every time I look out our kitchen window.

Wellies. I love these boots. I was working in the bean field this morning, so mine are the really dusty looking ones!!

And this is what I've been reading (for the third time) as I waited for these pictures to load.

Summer Is Here

And it is hot and muggy out. I walked out of church this afternoon, and it felt like I was walking into an oven. It was even worse when we all piled into the van. The air conditioning doesn't work, so you can imagine how lovely that felt:)

So today after church and lunch, I was walking around our garden and I stopped off at the grape vines and blackberry bushes, and I found our first ripe black berry, which I promptly ate, and it was delicious. Thanks to the help of some birds, our black berries have sprung up EVERYWHERE. We have them in the pine trees, in the far back corner by our house, in the tree in the front yard... and waaayyy more than what we had down by the grapes. Hopefully some black berry jam will be in order this year:-) we don't usually have that many grow, but I think we are in for a bumper crop this year!

My sister who is right below me graduated last night:-) I will have some pictures up of that once my sister in law puts them on facebook and I can hijack them from there.
It was a lovely ceremony, and afterwards we all ( my family that is) when out to dinner at Cracker Barrel, and I discovered I like fried okra. So does my nephew "Biscuit" who was sitting next to me, and ate about half of my serving.

Today at church I helped in the sound booth running sound. It is interesting to see what makes people sound good and makes them sound horrible with all the EQs and such. It sounded good though.

After church there was a missions meeting at my church ( my dad is the missions director) and we mainly discussed the upcoming Ukraine trip, which I will be going on, in October. I can't wait! Next week we are having a skype meeting with some members of the church in the Ukraine. I've never attended any of these meetings, so I'm excited about it.

There is also a slight chance that I'll accompany my sister Anna to Mozambique Africa. Anna is going to the Ukraine as well, and will be traveling from there to Africa, as it will be cheaper then flying from the states. I went to Africa in 2008, and would love to go again. I miss the kids there. But I am also in great anticipation of the upcoming Ukraine trip, as this will be my first excursion to Europe, and I'm so excited to see what God has in store for us there!!!

Well, this has just become a lot of ramblings, so I shall sign off now:)
Cheerio!!!

Chickens

So last month we got some chickens. We hadn't had chickens in AGES. Years ago we got rid of all of them because we were going to get goats. We never did get goats though.
However, my sister Anna and I had been wanting to get chickens again, and someone we know had a bucn they were getting rid of, so we got some .

So my brothers and I spent days cleaning out the old chicken coop. I almost wish I had before and after pictures to show off of the coop. It hadn't been used since last year when we had ducks in there. So the grass had grown up waist high, weeds were everywhere, and it was not a pretty sight. We pulled out the old grass and weeds, dug up the old dirt, discovered food dishes that had some how or other gotten buried, pulled out the old falling apart shelter and brought in two new ones, leveled it out, and now it looks as if it never saw a blade of grass inside. I was rather proud of all our work :-)
So now we have ten chickens. And yes, we named all of them. They are Phee, Tillie, Millie, Flossie, Clementine, Trixie, Merl, Martha, Addy, and Magnolia (however we think Magnolia is a rooster, so if that turns out to be the case, his name will be General, or dinner, as that is what he will inevitable end up being)

Here are some pictures that my brother took and put on the computer (yay! I didn't have too!!!)

Flossy

Millie

Millie (I think)

Merl

Tillie (notice the Tiller behind the pen:-) lol, we were planting the garden

Martha and Phee

Addy

Thats all the ones we have pictures of. I must say I like having chickens again. We got them as Chicks, so none of them are fully grown yet, and by October we should be having fresh eggs:-)

Next on the agenda will be figuring out where to put a dozen ducks that my siblings are getting in a week to raise for 4H.

The Little Things...

I had a list of "little things'' running through my head. A pointless list of things I love and hate. So I came to the decision while I was eating dinner, that I would write a blog post about it. A pointless one, so you needn't feel obligated to read it, though I will probably announce on facebook that I have a new post up.

Things I Absolutely Cannot Stand:

• That people seem to feel the absurd urge to punctuate each sentence with "Just Sayin' ". This in my opinion displays a rather diminutive vocabulary. If the best you can do is the afore mentioned verbiage, I would recommend a Thesaurus to add to your reading list, post-haste.
• The word "Incling" I don't know what it is about this word, all I know is that it makes my skin crawl. Uhgg..
  
• The perfect alignment of little weeds growing where we planted the lettuce in the garden. I'm thinking that Burpees may have possibly mistaken what seeds went in which package. All though I don't know who in their right mind would purchase weed plants (and no, I'm not referring to the Marijuana type. California this is not)
• When I lose my keys, and then realize that they weren't lost, I just couldn't see them right in front of my nose.
  
• Library fines. Particularely large ones that I had paid, but they never updated it in their systems, so it always tells me I have one.
  
• When people try to prove me wrong when I know I'm right. (and no, I'm not referring to the age of the earth)
• The fact that my beloved camera has bit the dust, with no explanation as to how or why.
• The 25 cents I know is in the bottom of my pocket, but all I can seem to pull out is nickels.
• The fact that society has chosen to cheapen women by marketing clothing that shows more skin than actual material.
• When my sheets eat my socks and I always have a mismatched pairs.
• When people speed down the road at 1:3o in the morning with their radios turned ALL THE WAY UP!!!

• Mosquitoes.

I could go into more, but that is all for now.

Little Things That I Love:

• Gardens
• Rubber boots. Seriously, I love them. And I don't care if I look like a dork marching around in them with a too big t-shirt and an old pair of over sized shorts at 7 in the morning. I'll change out of what I slept in when I'm good and ready.
  
• My neices and nephews.
• My car, Max.
• Throw blankets on a cold day, with a good book.
• The Fair!!!!!!!!!
• A good book.
• Spearmint gum
• my guitars, Eulalie, Benny, Tuck, Marty, and Jolene.
• The fact that I named all of the guitars that I play ( even though only Benny, Marty and Eulalie are truly mine)
• My Bible.
• The New Testament (especially Paul's letters)
• Celtic music
• Rolled down windows, as opposed to Air Conditioning.
• The 1940's
• going barefoot

Ahhh. There are way more, but I'm sure I've lost you by now if you actually read this hole thing.

But, as you can see, the good far out-weighs the bad.
Good evening all :D

Pruning

I have been thinking, that as we walk as Christians, its like taking care of a plant. A flowering, or fruit-bearing plant. These two types of plants need plenty of water, sunlight, weeding, and pruning. So many of us fail to grow spiritually because we aren't willing to do what I call a "Spiritual Pruning". A spiritual pruning is a rather simple concept. If you don't prune yourself (i.e. get rid of the stuff thats keeping you from your full potential in God) you can't expect growth, or to see fruit produced from your labor, or lack thereof. We can read our Bibles and go to church all we want, but if we are allowing things that don't belong into our lives, and don't get rid of them, all of our Bible-reading and church-going is in vain.

I think of it like a show I recently saw on TLC called "Hoarding: Buried Alive" which was a documentary of people who were compulsive hoarders. They would collect things, and wouldn't be able to stop collecting or to get rid of things. It got to the point where they couldn't even walk through their own homes because it was so full of junk. Their hoarding drove a wedge between them and their families, to the point where their own children couldn't stand to come to their parents homes because it was unsafe, unsanitary, and smelly.
These people who were compulsive hoarders generally had good intentions. They saw something that they knew could be useful, so they picked it up and brought it home, that way when someone needed something, they could give it to them. The problem was, this habit overcame their desire to give, it became a desire to stock. They saw something that they might decide they need one day, and that if they didn't get it right then, then it would be a waste because they had an opportunity to get that item and they passed it up.

There were other people where their hoarding got to the point where they wouldn't throw actual garbage away. For years, they would not throw away carryout containers, rotting food, paper plates kitty litter (used kitty litter). and their houses would be condemned by the city.

A lot of times we become so attached to our junk, that we panic at the thought of losing it. We become complacent and set up housekeeping in our issues, because we know it well, and we feel safe there. we loose sight of the fact that the God who created us has more for us then our stuff can offer. All we have to do is get rid of the bad in order to receive the good. And we can't do this on our own. We need to recognize that we have problems, and allow God to take them away. We have to make room for God to move into our lives.

These Hoarders on the tv show realized they had a problem. So they contacted psycologists to get help. And in the end, they were able to get their homes cleaned up, and there children and spouses were able to move back into the space where the junk had taken over the parents/spouses life.

Compulsive hoarding is a mental illness. So once they got help it didn't mean they were miraculously healed. They have to learn ways to deal with their problem. They have to learn how to get rid of the bad, and have to constantly be on the lookout for their behavior, and to learn to recognize what makes them want to start collecting things, so they can squelch it.

Its the same with pruning. A good gardener takes care of their flowers and plants, by pulling away the dead leaves, flower, and buds, which in turn allows new whole and alive and better things to take their place. But if you don't do this, the plant will eventually whither away and die.

If we let our issues take over our lives, we will loose sight of God and will whither away.