Summer Olympics

Busy Summer days, watching the Olympics at night. Watching the Fab 5 USA women gymnasts, and the flashback videos of when they were little girls, makes me tear up.  When our girls were young, they looooooved watching gymnastics.  They would take a boom box out to the side yard, and make up routines for their "floor exercise", doing cartwheels, flips, and dancing to their little heart's content. They would go over to the blueberry bushes and pop what they called their "power pills".  Love seeing Bela Karolyi tonight....His name was such a household word around here for so many years!  Watching the balance beam routines, remembering our girls doing their routines on a rickety picnic table bench....what I was thinking, letting them do that?!  Wow the grace of God...I don't remember any "Urgent Care" visits resulting.....

Sour Cherries

Sour cherries have such a narrow window of opportunity.  Wait for them to get ripe.....hurry and get them picked before the birds gobble them up.... Last weekend, I made a cherry clafouti at my parent's house, and then back at home, made sour cherry jam.  There's one jar earmarked especially for a certain brother-in-law.  There's a huge bag of  sour cherries in the freezer, that need to be made into my favorite.... dried sour cherries.  They are so yummy, I ration them.

Romantic Date Night....

Yesterday, Victoria was spending the night, and wanted to have a romantic dinner for Jim and I.  She wanted to "serve" us.  She made homemade tortillas for her first time, using my old tortilla press.  (When we lived in Savannah, I had purchased a book, that had a lot of back to basics cooking, (including making tortillas), and had talked it up to a college friend.  I asked her if she made tortillas, and she didn't, but her mom did.  One day she came into class  and surprised me with the press. She had brought an old one back from her mom's house, in Mexico.)   I used to make homemade tortillas with it a lot....but haven't in quite a while.  Last night,  we put on our favorite Lifescapes "Relax in Mexico" CD, lit some candles, and had a romantic dinner, complete with a senorita chaperone!

This Summer

Warm summer days, fragrant with the sweet aroma of fresh berries.  Belgian waffles swimming in raspberry jam.  Lush clover fields, buzzing with sweet little honeybees.  River parks brimming with the sounds of splashing children cooling off, and the smokey smell (and taste) of  barbequed chicken hot off the grill.  Corn and Crab Cakes  with homemade tartar sauce for a summer night supper.

We have been putting in long days of weed whacking, mowing, raking, pruning, planting and repairing areas, outdoors.  Inside, the kitchen walls have been painted, and the cupboards have all been removed and re-painted.  A broken cabinet face frame has been replaced.  Hardware has been stripped and re-done, and light fixtures taken down, and the finish changed. The upper shelves have been painted and re-"decorated".  There are still 2 more doors to build and install on the "baking center". And the floor still has to be stripped and re-polished.  Large, frosty, glasses of iced coffees, lemonade and peach iced tea have been refreshing  and refueling us.  For a while now, we've been feeling convicted about our time useage, and the stewardship of the things God has intrusted to our care.  We've been trying to re-prioritize our days and have been seeking His wisdom and desire for our lives.   We want to be "workmen that needeth not to be ashamed", both physically, and spiritually speaking. This has meant less computer and  TV time, and more time in the Word and "hand to the plow", so to speak..  We're reaping the benefits and being blessed!

Beulah Blusterbottom

We had a special guest MC at Jon's 50th birthday party.....
his 3rd grade teacher; Beulah Blusterbottom.  She is such a kick in the pants......



All of the little girls wanted to grow up to be just like her!!





The sad part of it, is that they accidently got busy playing and left the excess outfit at the playground.
Pam isn't sure where she'll ever get another outfit, as awful.  Guess I've been watching too much criminal investigations, on TV....I'm just hoping that the authorities haven't been called in to locate the missing body that belongs to the wig, glasses, and clothes.....

Cindy had commented on how much she liked the random red log cabin, quilt, I had made Ashi, so I decided to make her a baby quilt for her new little Raelynn.  She was doing her nursery in purple and pink.  I just did a simple random patch quilt that I called Plum Creek Patch.

The next week, for Jodie's little Kaylee, I did a fun, summery quilt.  Each flower was tied with embroidery floss, which reminded me of stamens.