A Day with Grandpa, Grandma, and the Cooks

 Last Friday we drove up to Grandpa and Grandma's!  We drove up to their house to visit with some friends from FL who were staying with Grandpa and Grandma.  (Of course, we went up to see Gpa and Gma too! :)

We arrived about 11:30 A.M. and ate lunch about an hour later!  Grandpa and Grandma fixed up a yummy lunch of hamburgers and hot dogs, potato salad, and chips! :)

 Eden eating some lunch! :)

 Grandpa and Grandma with Mr. and Mrs. Cook (the friends from FL).

Grandpa and Grandma met the Cooks when they lived in Cuba (Grandpa was in the Navy).  They became great friends and the friendship has continued through the years!  I remember seeing them when I was younger and every-now-and-then.  We saw them last year the day after Judah was born and we got to see them again this year! :)

As we finished eating lunch, we (the girls ;) stayed in the dining room and talked about everything from farm work to dating/courtship.  As we talked we ate the yummiest watermelon...ever! :)

Doesn't it look awesome?

As we sat around the table talking, Seth started taking apart one of Grandpa's video game devices.  Grandma said that Daddy would do the same thing when he was Seth's age!

Later that afternoon everyone in my family (but myself) got their bathing suits on and went to Grandpa and Grandma's pool.  They returned about 10 minutes later with the news that they couldn't get in without 3 actual pool members accompanying them (they were going to use Gpa and Gma's visitor passes).   So, that was a fail.

Nevertheless, the handy, dandy sprinkler was brought out to the front yard!  Soon Daddy, Mama and a variety of siblings were playing in the water.  It wasn't as great as a pool but it worked! :)

When I saw all the fun everyone was having, I went out with my lovely camera! :)

The first picture was of Grandma's flowers! :)

 Lydia joined in on the fun for only a few minutes.  Sprinklers have a way of getting water in your face, and that is something Lydia does not enjoy! :)

 Daddy playing with Eden.

The major game of the day was "attack Daddy with the noodles".  Don't think we're being unfair with attacking Daddy....he quite often goes after us with one, two, or maybe even, three, noodles! :)

Daddy has crazy noodle skill! :-D

 "Attack" from Mommy!

 Josiah leading the second wave of attack. :)

Mama's a very timid attacker.  She tends to squeal and half-heartedly swing her noodle.  It's fun to watch! :)

Josiah defeated Daddy! :)
















 By this time, the sun was starting to fade away so I went back inside.
There I found Grandma giving Judah a haircut! :)

Judah wasn't sure he appreciated Grandma's hard work, so we kept his bottle full and fed him Cheerios until it was over! :)

This was Judah a few days before his harcut via Grandma:

  

This was after:

What a cutie!

After a dinner of Grandma's chili and some leftovers, we hung out a little bit longer until 8 P.M.  Then we left for home after a great day visiting with our friends, the Cooks, and with Grandpa and Grandma! :)

Kimber :)

Last Week's Activities

"For he will not dwell unduly on the days of his life, because God keeps [him] busy with the joy of his heart."

Ecclesiastes 5:20

Well, like normal, we've been busy!  We didn't really do one "big" thing last week that was worthy of its own blog post, so this is a recap of many of the little things we've been doing! :)

Two Saturday's ago we went and picked a huge wheelbarrow full of corn from our neighbor's field.  Mr. Townsend (our neighbor) had come by a few days before and said we could go pick from his corn (we have the greatest neighbors...ever).  We brought back lots and lots of ears! :)  We shucked, de-haired, boiled and cut the corn off the cob.  Finally we put them in many Ziploc baggies and froze them!  We had 2 paper bags full of corn after putting up around 25 quart bags.  Since we couldn't eat that much corn we then canned another 7 quarts of corn!  We just finished our last corn dinner last night! :)  [We'll be harvesting more corn soon, but this time it will be from our own garden. :)]

 

 Yummy corn!

 

So, because we had so much corn, Judah chewed on his first corn cob last week! :)

Since I documented Lydia's first corn cob taste, I thought I should document Judah's as well! :)

 

He seemed to enjoy the corn cob...Judah is never one to reject food! ;)

Because I already had the camera out, I took a quick photo of Hannah's wonderful Chinese dinner:

 If you haven't had homemade Chinese, you are missing out!  In my opinion, it's SO much better than the stuff you get from the restaurants (it's also MUCH healthier!!).

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Grandpa and Grandma gave us their old pool and we have really been  enjoying it!  The pool required a bunch of intense thought as to how it should be constructed, but Daddy's hard work paid off!  It's been really nice to hop in our pool instead of driving over to our neighbor's...it's a quick and wonderful way of cooling off in this heat! :)

Lydia and Weedels in the pool!

Alexis, Caleb, Seth, Eden, Josiah, and Lydia swim in the pool most.  The rest of us just get in every now and then! :)

 

Eden, Lydia, and Josiah...they are almost inseparable.  They have the most fights together, but they're also the ones who play together the most! :)

The swimming bunch!

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Our greenbeans have been producing abundantly this year!  We picked our second round of greenbeans this past Thursday and it took about 3 hours with 5 of us picking.  That should give you an idea of how many plants we have! :)  Lots of plants mean lots more yield (normally) but it also means more work.  We normally go for lots of plants because we've got enough workers to make it a little bit less "work." :-D

Nevertheless, picking greenbeans isn't the most fun job anyone could ask for...but we get it done!  After we pick them, we snap the ends off and then snap the greenbean in half (if it's big enough).

Here's a photo of the all the greenbeans from one picking:

We picked all these greenbeans last Thursday and snapped them all Friday morning.

It takes about 2 hours to snap them all, so we normally listen to a Jonathan Park or music C.D.

Hannah getting ready to "snap"! :)

Lexi working it!

Seth rocked Judah for a little bit and then he came and joined the snappin' party! :)

The Yellow Snapper Team!

After a hour or two of snapping greenbeans, this was our yield:

 One basket full and one box full! :)

Friday afternoon, Lexi's friend, Jaime, came over and we then canned 14 quarts of greenbeans.  Later Mama (with varied help) canned another 3 batches making a total of 35 quarts from one crop of greenbeans!!  

Counting both times we have picked green beans, we have canned a total of 56 jars full of greenbeans! :)  And more is yet to come. :)

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While we are on the topic of gardening, we'll talk about our potatoes!  Daddy, Lexi, and her friend, Jaime, unearthed the majority of our potatoes last Saturday.

Here's our bounty!

We still have one little garden of potatoes left...we'll get to those sometime. :)  Since we have so many potatoes we've been eating them at least once a day (or so it seems!).  We've had mashed potatoes, mashed potato casserole, potato "pancakes", fried potatoes, etc.  Yesterday we washed and chopped up some of the little potatoes.  This morning Mama canned 14 quarts of potatoes for this winter!  Meanwhile our laundry room has baskets of potatoes all over the floor! :)  [I can't end without a declaration of praise to Jesus for keeping the voles away from our potatoes...this year's crop is so much better than last year's!]

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Judah is getting so big! 

I love his deep, blue eyes...especially when he's drinking tea (or coconut milk) from his bottle.  He lays back in your arms and just stares at you, flapping his long eyelashes.  It's the sweetest thing ever!

 

He's such a happy baby (most of the time!)  He loves saying "Da da" and I know it warms Daddy's heart when he comes home; Judah will be in our arms, reaching out for Daddy while saying "Da da" and looking into Daddy's face. 

He's starting to figure out the stairs (right photo) but we've been teaching him no so we've haven't had much trouble with that! :)

On the crawl!

Judah is getting good at crawling and is quite a mobile little guy.  He loves to climb over anything and it's hard to find something that he can't crawl over! :)

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We did something we have never done before:  made butter!  It took about an hour of rolling a half-gallon jar of cream on the floor to get butter.  I personally thought the butter would never come but it did! 

Once the butter globules were nice and big we poured off the buttermilk and then washed the butter (weird, I know).

Butter in progress!

This was the end result:

A butter ball!

The picture doesn't do justice to just how yellow our butter was.  It almost looked like the inside of an egg yolk!

Speaking of milk and butter, we're getting real close to getting a cow!  We found a great one on Craigslist and are going to see it tonight.  If we like it, and everything works out, we will most likely have a cow within 2 months!!!!!!!!!!  (I'm more excited about what could come after the cow...a HORSE!!! :)

Daddy's going to build a shed for our prospective animals soon and then all we need are the animals!  It's so exciting!

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I'm not sure if I made it public on this blog, but I got a rose plant from a friend at church a few months ago.  It is a Climbing America rose and I love it so much!  Currently there are about 8 flowers on it and many more blooms!

Aren't they gorgeous?!  I love roses...maybe one day I'll have a HUGE rose garden.  I'd like to have some hydrangeas too, but we'll see. :)

So there's the update on the little stuff we've been doing.  People always ask what I've been doing and I always say "not much."  Everything we do doesn't enter my mind as "out of the norm" so I just think it's part of everyday life.  Thus it may sound like we have an extremely boring life, but that is far from true!  Life here is always interesting and always changing!  

Hopefully the next time I update it'll be on the cow?!!

We'll see!

Til then, have a great day!

Kimber :)

Kings Fest 2011

"Then David and all Israel played music before God with all their might, with singing, on harps, on stringed instruments, on tambourines, on cymbals, and with trumpets."

1 Chronicles 13:8 

Hannah, K.K. and myself in the car on the way to K.D.

Last Friday we had the wonderful opportunity of going to Kings Dominion for Kings Fest!!  My cousins, Kaitlyn and Sarah, had spent the week with us and we were glad they could come along!  We woke up early Friday morning (like 6:30 A.M. :)  and got ready for a fun day!  Mama was going to join us at Kings Dominion later that day, so we had a nice big breakfast of cinnamon rolls and Daddy's scrumptious eggs! :) :)  After we ate, Daddy, Hannah, Alexis, my cousins Kaitlyn and Sarah, and myself loaded into the van.  We then drove to our local Food Lion and picked up 3 friends from church:  Annie, Kara, and Aaron.  Once they were settled, Daddy drove us the rest of the way to K.D.  Well, we actually stopped at the Burger King across the street from the park and met up with some other friends.  (Altogether we had about 11 people from our church - not counting ourselves - volunteering with us at Kings Fest! :) When everyone arrived that was supposed to arrive, we followed King Fest's volunteer coordinator (who is also a great friend of ours!) to the Employee Parking.  After getting our "special" tags labeled Limited Access we wound through the parking lots until we ended up by the Kings Wood Amphitheater.   We were inside Kings Dominion about 9:30 A.M.  (If you're wondering why we could get in the park so early...it was because we were volunteering that day! :)

Kingswood Amphitheater! :)

Side note:  I took my little camera with me to Kings Fest and had an interesting time playing with the features.  I concluded that the little one is nice but my big DSLR is definitely better. :)

Side note over. :)

The forecast for Doswell, VA was calling for scattered thunderstorms throughout the day, so I prayed for little rain (and no thunderstorms) a few days before Kings Fest.  The Lord answered my prayers...from 6 A.M. until about 5 P.M. :)  Perfect!  [More later on the rain...]

Anyways, once we were inside the park we found out we couldn't ride any rides until 10 A.M.  So we waited until 10 and then went to the nearest ride:  the Dominator!  Last year we didn't ride the Dominator, but I'm glad we did!  So. Much. Fun. :)  I loved the upside-down parts. :)

After the Dominator we decided to go to the Intimidator.  Yeah.  If any of you know what the Intimadator is like then you'll know what I mean.  For those of you who aren't familiar with what the Intimidator is like here's the online description: Intimidator™ 305, the tallest and fastest roller coaster of its type on the East Coast! Only the second Giga-coaster ever built in North America, the lift hill will stand a towering 305 feet at its highest peak; descend 300 feet at an 85 degree-angle and thunder along the track at speeds in excess of 90 miles per hour during its three minute race to the finish. 
Two of my cousins who had rode this coaster said they blacked out.  So, last year we didn't ride the Intimidator and I had no plans of going this year, but...I did. :)  I figured that if I could ride the Intimidator I could ride anything else, so I might as well find out what my limits were. :)

A few of our group dropped out of riding it (quite understandably).  Thankfully, the line wasn't too long so we got in the seats and made sure our restraints were on tight!  We definitely didn't want to fall out going down the 85 degree hill! :)  My partner on the Intimidator was Erin and it was lots of fun riding with her! :)  She started second-guessing whether or not she should've come on the ride as we went up the hill but after we went down she and I had our hands in the air and we screamed and smiled the whole way! :) 
The only word I think that fits describing the Intimidator is:  intense.  Very intense.  Once we finished going down the 90 degree angle, and rounded the turn, I started "graying out" (like I couldn't see anything but gray) but my vision was soon restored! :)  The rest of the ride wasn't as intimidating ;)
Now that I think about it, the ride was fine but once you got off the ride..then you felt really weird.  That weird feeling has made me question whether or not I'll go on it again but chances are, I will.

After the Intimidator we went on the Flight of Fear and then met up with Mama and Aunt Megan.  Then some of us went and rode the Anaconda and then got in line for the Volcano.  It took about 1 hour to get from the end of the line to the actual ride but it was so much fun! :)

It was around 1:30 when we got off the Volcano, so we decided to return to the Amphitheater early (we had to be back by 2 P.M.).  We then met with Mr. and Mrs. Glass and figured out who was going to be working in what booth, what shift, etc.
Once that was done Daddy (and the other men :) went to get our lunch coolers for us ladies. :)  Then we unloaded everything and ate lunch!

Aunt Megan eating lunch.

Our lunch consisted of cheese and crackers (with an option of salami), sandwhiches, chips, carrots, blueberries, granola, nuts, cucumbers, and cookies!  (We definitely do not suffer for lack of good food! :)

 This was our lunch table! :)

I would try and tell you who everyone is, but that would be too difficult. :)

Dowy (a.k.a. Mr. Jon), Erin (my Intimidator coaster partner), and Annie (Erin's sister) enjoying lunch at another table nearby! :)

When our delicious lunch was finished, everyone went to the booth they were assigned to and prepared to be "briefed".  After everyone had a slight idea of what they were doing I went around and took photos of them!  (I was assigned to the second shift, so I was free to do what I wanted.)

Hannah and my cousin, Kaitlyn, volunteered at Manic Drive's booth.

Now truth be known, I had never, ever heard of Manic Drive.  I didn't even know such a band was going to be there on Friday! :)

Kara and Annie worked the RED booth.

Mrs. Nigro and her son, Aaron, served in Anthem Light's tent.

Mr. and Mrs. Etheredge (and soon to be baby Grace) were in Tenth Avenue North's booth.

Erin and Dowy (as well as Mr. and Mrs. Madison - not pictured) sold in the Newboys tent.

Annie and Mama talking.

Annie, Mama, and Aunt Megan were supposed to be serving in Chris Tomlin's booth.  BUT, Chris Tomlin's merchandise didn't get there so they had no booth to work! :)

Since no help was needed elsewhere, we went back into the park and rode more rides. :-D

Daniel Madison, Alexis, and my cousin, Sarah, got to pass out flyers when the gates first opened.  When they were done with that, they had nothing else to do so they joined us in the park!

After we rode a few rides (again!), we went back to the Amphitheater.  Mama and Aunt Megan got ready to leave for home (they couldn't leave their little ones for too long!) and Hannah decided to go with them.  Since Hannah was leaving I got to work with Kaitlyn at Manic Drive's booth! :)  About 30 minutes after they left, it started raining.  It was very convenient to be under a booth while watching everyone else get soaked! :)  

As the bands played, the rain would sometimes stop and then start up again.  I kept praying that the thunderstorms would stay away so the concert wouldn't be canceled...and they did (for the most part)!

When the first shift was over, K.K. and I transferred over to the Newsboys tent and relieved the first shifters.  

A little while later, the rain started pouring like crazy!!  I mean, big, huge drops of rain...everywhere!  It was a complete downpour and anyone not under a booth got soaked to the bone!  (Fortunately, I escaped! :)  The concert was paused for a little while but eventually the rain let up a little and the concert continued.

We had people come up to our booth and ask if we sold pants...everyone wanted to get out of their wet clothes! :)  The rain made selling T-shirts very easy! :)

Newboys was the second-to-last music group for the night.  It was lots of fun singing some of the songs they played.  Once their time was over, our booth was really busy!  Everyone (it seemed) wanted the CD's for the special, sale price of $10 for 2!

This is the only photo I took of the Amphitheatre after dark...I was too scared of getting my camera wet. :)

The last act of the night was Chris Tomlin...I loved singing his songs! :)

As business slowed down and people eventually stopped coming over, we counted T-shirts and took inventory.  When everything was wrapped up in plastic wrap, we went backstage and helped pack the Newsboys stuff.  (Yep, we saw the Newboys R.V.!  It was kind of neat...thankfully the rain was only drip-dropping so we didn't get too wet! :)

When everything was packed up and put where it needed to be, we waited for the concert to end.  Soon Daddy reappeared and we said goodbye to Mrs. Glass (the volunteer coordinator) and headed towards the van.  We dropped Daniel Madison off at his home first, then Kara and finally Annie.  It was a long drive home...the only thing I could think of was getting out of my damp, sweaty clothes...yuck!

We did arrive home safely (around 12 A.M. :) after a very fun day of roller coasters, selling merchandise, and great Christian music!

Kimber :)