Independence Day at Grandpa & Grandma's

" The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God."

Psalm 9:17

For the past couple years we've went to our Paw-paw and Na-naw's house for Independence Day but this year we decided to go the other grandparents' house.

Daddy took Hannah on down in age to Seth up Friday morning with him and Mama came up later (just in time for dinner) with Josiah, Eden, and Lydia. After Daddy cut a few of his Long & Foster homes he dropped us off at Grandma's house. We were alone for a little bit (Grandma & Aunt Amy were showing a house) but then Grandma arrived and our cousins and their mom soon later.

Aunt Amy and Amanda made dinner for us - some really good lasagna - and Grandma made the bread.

Our cousins, Amanda and Diana spent the night. The 5 oldest girls slept downstairs in the living room (lots of fun!) and everyone else was upstairs. Hannah and I slept on the futon, Alexis on the floor and my cousins on the couch and Grandpa's chair. I (Kimber) slept great!! Grandma made another superb breakfast (she never dissapoints us!) and after breakfast we went to the pool. Then we went home, ate lunch, played, and got ready for the picnic for the 4th of July.

The menu was: cookout! Hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, cold salads/casseroles, etc. Grandpa cooked all the meat for us.

In the line for dinner.

Alexis, my beautiful sister.

Eden eating her dinner.

Zoe, Amanda's pug, eating dinner too! :)

After dinner people relaxed and some rode bikes and played football.

Uncle Greg throwing the football.

Daddy throwing the ball to Diana.

Diana preparing to catch another ball.

The ice cream cake Grandma and I made.

It is the same exact one I made for Hannah's birthday party except we died one cake red and another blue (in the process Grandma got dye all over her fingers!) and decorated the top differently using 2 tubs of icing with blueberries and twizzlers consisting of our flag.

Here you see the layers better.

The fireworks!

OHHHH----AHHHH

Diana and Josiah

Seth watching the fireworks.

Seth, Caleb, Steven, and another boy that came lit the fireworks for us - they did great!

Not to be undone, Daddy and Uncle Greg pronounced the names of the fireworks and prepared them for us.

Thankfully, Daddy was far enough away to avoid any sparks hitting all the fireworks and exploding right beside him.

(If anyone has any tips to share on how to take good firework pictures, please leave a comment or email because I want to get better!)

Anyways, after the fireworks and clean-up of everything we all left for home.

We had a wonderful 4th of July and I hope that we all do not forget the meaning of the day and the sacrifices paid not so long ago on July 4, 1776.

All for Jesus,

Kimber

Lydia's First Ear of Corn

"And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food."

Genesis 1:29

Lydia was old enough for her first ear of corn last Thursday. She made some of the cutest (and weirdest) faces:

A corn beard! :)

Laughing

"Here, you can have it Josiah."

The end result is that she loves it and always points and grunts when she sees corn on the table for dinner! :)

All for Jesus,

Kimber

George Washington Jeopardy Night (Last Tuesday)

"They replied, "The man questioned us closely about ourselves and our family. 'Is your father still living?' he asked us. 'Do you have another brother?' We simply answered his questions. How were we to know he would say, 'Bring your brother down here'?""

Genesis 43:7

I've been WAY behind on my posting! Sorry!

Last Tuesday night we had a George Washington Jeopardy Night. Paw-paw and Na-naw came over and after dinner we went into the schoolroom for the questionarre! Mama asked the questions because she made all of them up (the questions were pretty hard too!).

The way it worked was that Mama would start to read off one of the questions and one of the teams ("George" or "Martha") would squeak/dong their item (a.k.a baby toys) if they had the answer. Pretty much like the televised Jeopardy.

It was really funny watching others making mistakes and making them yourself! :) It was a really fun night!

"Team 'George'" consisted of (left to right) Seth, Paw-paw, Caleb, and I (Kimber)

The boys are hiding their faces because they didn't want Hannah to take their picture.

See the yellow piano in between Paw-paw and Caleb? That was our "ringer" that we hit when we had the answer.

"Team 'Martha'" consisted of (left to right) Alexis, Na-naw, Hannah, and Daddy

(Eden and Lydia were not on teams - they wandered around and played quitely for us)

"I'm not touching the fan, Mama!"

Daddy




Mama writing up our scores.

Lydia on the rocking horse.

Asking the questions

"Are you sure???" Team Martha consulting each other

Team Martha's "ringer" is the little squeak-toy in Hannah's hands.

(It's amazing how well baby toys come in handy! :)

Well, to give you the end result Team George won!!!!! Team Martha was a couple thousand ahead of us but they lost to us on the last question (Final Jeopardy).

We finished off a wonderful, fun-filled night with apple crisp and vanilla ice cream (with all the toppings of course).

All for Jesus,

Kimber

Lydia in Mama's Shoes and a Black Widow

"Your sandals shall be iron and bronze;As your days, so shall your strength be."

Deuteronomy 33:25

I think I've told you before that Lydia loves shoes. On one of my last posts she was in Daddy's shoes...here's some pictures of her in Mommy's:

What are these things on my feet?

Somebody...help please...I can't walk in these things! :)

Thanks!








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We do gardening from 9 AM - around 11 AM as often as we can.





Hannah and I (Kimber) started out gardening last Monday morning in the greenbean row. Mama planted the greenbeans too close (we didn't thin them) so they were overcrowding each other and the sun barely penetrated the ground beneath them. Hannah moved to the middle of the row where all the plants were overcrowded and I stayed on the outside. Suddenly I hear:





"I think there's a black widow over here," Hannah calmly said.



[For those of you who don't know much about the venemous black widow spider they love cool and damp places for their webs...to read more about them click here]





I just stared at her, my eyes huge.


"Where's Daddy?" I asked.





(Daddy had stayed longer after breakfast to help out a little with the gardens)


Thankfully Daddy was coming to the backyard, so we called him over.





"Yep, that's a black widow alright," Daddy said as he proceeded to destroy it and its web using a stick and his boot.





Hannah and I looked at each other and proceeded to fastly (and nervously!) get away from the greenbean patch. Mama came over and said "I'll do that part and you girls can take over the other part of the greenbean patch where it's not so crowded."





Gratefully we moved over to the other side of the greenbean patch and continued picking.





Hannah and I were both pretty jumpy for about 10 minutes after the sighting and any little thing scared us. But then we got over our fear and eventually made it back to where the black widow was squashed and, after all the greenbeans were picked, went inside.





The picked greenbeans.



Everyone helped out at some point with the greenbeans.

All the greenbeans (I think) plus some cucumbers.

It may not look like a lot of greenbeans but we filled a 5-gallon bucket to the top and probably could've filled another one!

We listened to a Jonathan Park while snapping off the ends and cutting them in half.

After lunch Mama canned 8 quarts, while we (Mama, Alexis, and I) went to the store Hannah canned another 8 quarts totalling 16 quarts altogether. We probably could've done another 8 too!

Mama figured that we eat 80 quarts of greenbean a year so we have canned about 1/4 of our greenbean consumption!

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I have lots more to post, but this will have to do for now!

All for Jesus,
Kimber