Labor Day...(litteraly)

My oldest sister once got a birthday card for my mom that showed a 1950's family sitting around the table, the mother standing above proudly displaying a beautifully roasted chicken. In the voice bubble, the mother was saying: "Trixie wasn't much of a pet, but as a main dish she should be terrific!!!"

And that, my friends is precisely what we will be having for dinner tonight. This morning Dad, Anna, Joel and I butchered and cleaned 3 of our 4 roosters. So Clem, Trixie (ironically... and by the way, he was named before we knew he was a rooster) and Merl are no more. We talked dad into letting us keep General (formally known as Magnolia) for future uses. such as making it possible to have more chickens to be raised for meat and eating purposes:-P

So on this Labor day, I only had to work this morning (yay!) but have been rather busy, what with the chickens and preparing greenbeans for freezing, and canning stewed tomatoes and hot peppers and Tomato soup. Actually, Anna did the soup. And it is soooo tasty! yummy... I wonder if it would be possible to can my mom's delicious pumpkin soup. I would be in 7th heaven if it were. To have it year-round would be a delight.

And also speaking of labor, My sister had her baby on Friday! he weighed 9.7 lbs and was 20.9 inches long. And he has a FULL HEAD OF HAIR!!! my goodness, he is a little doll. Little Jeremiah Benjamin looks quite like all of his siblings, except (for now anyway) he has dark hair, and all the others are blonde.

Well, I hope everyone is having a wonderful day of rest, as I plan to start resting soon too, on this dreary and cool September day! I must hunt down some Road to Avonlea movies to watch.
Farewell!

awaiting fall

On Saturday its supposed to be 63 degrees out. I have to say I'm looking forward to a nice chill in the air. Especially as it has been in the upper 80's to mid 90's the past 5 days. I love fall. Its my favorite of all seasons. Partially because of all the smells and things associated with autumn, burning leaves, cinnamon apple and pumpkin spice candles, changing colors of leaves, apple picking, apple cider, pumpkin pies, fresh apple pies, canning apple sauce and tomato sauce and grape jam. The only thing about Fall that I'm not fond of is Halloween and raking leaves. I don't mind raking leaves too much, just when its FREEZING out and the leaves are damp and stiff and don't want to be raked.

I have discovered I like to can. I've been canning with my sister this year ( Salsa, Hot Peppers, pickles...) and decided I really enjoy it. Last year I wasn't able to really help with anything cause of my job, but this year I have had enough time to help out, and have been enjoying it... Well, except for the pickle incident. Which really wasn't an incident, it was just about 90 degrees out (and we have no a/c) and humid and steamy (in the kitchen anyway) and I had poison ivy all over my hands, and my sister and friend Naomi ( who was helping) had burned themselves by not wearing gloves while slicing up hot peppers (we canned hot peppers that day too), so we'd fill up when jar and then plunge our hands in ice water. It was misery.
However, our discomfort was worth it, as the pickles won a blue ribbon at our county fair last week, along with the salsa Anna and I canned the Saturday before the fair.
Speaking of the fair, I entered peanut butter cookies in the baked goods catagory, and won a blue ribbon and a best of show ribbon. That was exciting. the Judges ate all but one of the cookies too. AND, I have decided that I will post the recipe for everyone on here, but probably not today. If we are friends on Facebook, I'll post a status to let everyone know when its up.

Lately I have been doing quite a bit of working. Working two jobs can be tiring, but at least when I go to bed, I can usually fall right to sleep. Tomorrow and Friday I'll be working all day, possibly quite late.

Yesterday I got a new journal. I used to ( ok, this was about 7 years ago) write in one regularly, and I hope to get back in the habit. I like to go back and reread things and such.
AND, I am using a fountain pen with it. There is something slightly old fashioned and nice about fountain pens. I don't use one often, but I think for my journal I'll try to make a point of it. I also liked using one to write letters, but I haven't really written a letter in a while.
Well, I have a mirade of things to do, more important to writing random things on here, so I'll be getting to them:-)

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

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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.