Wednesday, October 31, 2007

HALLOWEEN PARTY

Yesterday we hosted our 10th annual homeschool halloween party. We had a turnout of around 100 people!!!!

We had the perfect weather. The food was plentiful and delicious. There was games, hayrides, hikes, relaxing, visiting, and lots of eating.

Thank you to everyone who joined us and made it such a great day!
















Wednesday, October 24, 2007

LOTS MORE PICS

Well, here they are. It was hard to stop myself from adding even more, but I tried to pick the highlights.



Here Billy is trying a new method of climbing a tree that he learned on a show we love called "Man vs Wild". It seems to have worked great for him!




On this night we grilled meat over the fire along with potato packets. Leave it to our family not to rely on hamburgers and hot dogs. We grilled 3 different kinds of steak, chicken breasts, pork, venison steaks, and a venison chop. Oh and some hot dogs too!










We got a visit on rainy Friday from Nana and our cousin, Father Bill. It was so fun having them visit and enjoy a meal with us, even if we had to huddle under the porch roof to stay out of the rain.



Nathan and his whittling injury. Luckily, no stitches. He was back to whittling in no time!










We celebrated Susanne's birthday while we were there. My mom made an absolutely delicious pumpkin roll for the birthday cake. YUMMY!!!! Happy birthday Susanne!











I hope you enjoyed sharing my vacation memories with me. I am so blessed to be able to spend weekends like these enjoying the beautiful outdoors with my loved ones!

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

HOME AGAIN

On Sunday we came back from a family camping trip. We were gone for 4 days. Doug and I went with our boys, my parents, my sister and her family, and my brother and his family. There were 16 of us all together. We went to a lake in the mountains about 2 1/2 hours north of our home. We had an amazing time!! The color of the leaves was breathtaking.

The weather was...well interesting I guess. We expected very cold weather going at this time of year. We haven't really had a typical fall though, so we didn't get what we expected. The first day and night was warm and muggy. The second day was warm and rainy. The second night we had torrential downpours (leave it to us to break the drought with a camping trip!!) The third day and night was perfect. Sunny, breezy, and crisp.

We stayed busy with hiking, canoeing, eating, hunting, fishing, eating, climbing trees, whittling, eating, and playing with the fire.

We already have plans to return in the spring to celebrate 5 of our family's birthdays and Mother's Day. I can't wait!!!!

I took over 200 pictures and every one of them turned out great. I figured no one but me would want to look at that many, so I whittled down to 30. Unfortunately, blogger is having trouble loading pictures today and stopped me at 10. So, here's the start of the pictures and I'll try again tomorrow to load the rest.













Tuesday, October 16, 2007

THE CLOTHESLINE

Confession time...I love hanging our clothes out on the line! I have done this for a long time. At times I've done it out of necessity because we were without a dryer. One time for 2 years. Currently, our dryer is broken and has been broken for a couple of months. Even when we do have a dryer though, I prefer hanging the clothes out.

My Nana thinks it's a ridiculous thing to hang your clothes out in this day and age when it's not necessary. She thinks I should be conserving my energy for more important things, like making Doug happy! Doug loves Nana!!!!

Many years ago, before we lived here on our farm, we lived in a city neighborhood. All of our backyards were visible to each other all down the block. It was often a competition to see who would have their clothes out first in the morning. It was fun!

A friend of mine from a message board that I'm on, Cathy, says that she likes to pray for her family while she hangs out their clothes. I love this idea! What a wonderful way to spend my mornings. Praying for my family, out in the fresh air, conserving energy, making our clothes last longer.

I have had many different clothes lines, but have always wanted one like I see on the Amish farms. One with a pulley going way up high. One Christmas a couple of years ago Doug put together a gift of the pulleys, a really long clothes line and the clips to hold the lines together. It was an awesome present. I had tears in my eyes I was so happy. I think Sarah thinks I'm a little pathetic!!

This year, I decided that it would work better to have the line even longer and much higher. Andrew came to the rescue and climbed the chosen tree with his climbing tree stand really, really high. Doug bought a new line that is 200ft long! Andrew attached the pulley way up in the tree and Doug fixed the line to the pole by the house.










I love my new clothes line. Yesterday I really tested it with 4 loads of laundry. I even had a load of towels up there.


The only problem was that I ran out of pins. That's okay. The socks dried anyway just fine.