Because...

...there is nothing else to post about, here are some leaves for your enjoyment to gaze upon. :D


And some grass.

And a shoe. Emily got it for her graduation, and no, you're not supposed to wear it. It's to put a pen and some paper in it. My aunt is the queen of bizzare and unusual gifts.

And finally, the strawberries. We got 27 pints of them, plus a bowl just for eating. I can't wait, next time we'll make jam! I think homemade strawberry jam is the best thing in the world!

Strawberry picking

I LOVE strawberries! I don't exactly love strawberry picking, but today wasn't too bad because it was warm with a breeze, so it wasn't unbearably hot, and the strawberries weren't sopping wet. We had the baby, so she came along for the fun. Actually she slept for most of the time.
Here she is in the car with her cool shades.
There was all of these really annoying long weeds in the rows that were always poking you in the face and getting in the way.

My bowl of strawberries. Isn't it beautiful? And I'm so proud of myself, I didn't eat one stawberry the whole time we were picking. It's like the Dorito slogan, "Betcha can't eat just one!" and then hardly any get put in your bowl. We got four big bowls of them and now we just have to wash (and eat) them.

Em's grad party

Although the forecast said it would be raining all day, it didn't rain a drop! So that was a good thing. It was actually warm!

Amber and Emily F. with the graduate.
Our hammock got put to good use.
Me and Nat.
Sarah and Teresa with the two babies, Victory and Emily.
Michelle and me.
Anna with our two second cousins Kasey and Katey. (Don't ask what Kasey is doing...)
Sarah and our second brother twice removed, Stephen. Okay not really, but you get the point.
Emily, Matt, and Annie.

Josiah brought fireworks, and they were awesome! And then we did sparklers, which I love. :) And now we have a bunch of food leftover, so guess what we'll be having for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next week??? Ha! It was really fun though, and I think that Em had a good time too, which is always a plus.

2 new additions

For father's day, the older girls got Dad a hammock! We used to have one, but then it broke, so we haven't had one in a couple years.

And we also got a pop-up camper! Emily, Anna, and I slept in it last week. It was pretty cold that night, but not too bad.


And just let me interject a very random thing here: if you have never had grilled pineapple on a burger, than do it! It is so delicious! We just tried that tonight, so good!

Lots of food

Dad and Mom went to Sam's Club yesterday and brought back some food. Actually a lot of food. No, this isn't how much we eat in a week, but Emily is having a graduation party this Saturday.
I'm pretty sure we won't run out of beans or salt potatoes, but you never know...
...and the other half.

Voice Recital

Sarah, Emily, and I had our voice recital last weekend. I wasn't really supposed to be in it, but Teresa couldn't make it and the girls had a trio they were supposed to sing, so I filled in for her. We sang first, and then my job for the rest of the recital was putting mics on everyone, it was pretty fun.
The pictures from this are pretty bad, but I'll post them anyway.
Singing "The Storm is Passing Over"
The whole group.

From Tarnished to New!

All week we have been Spring Cleaning, so one of my jobs was to polish the silver candle holders, and what a difference it made! Dosn't the one on the right look like new! That was after I had polished it. I was thinking about how Jesus finds us all tarnished and dusty, and then he takes us and polishes, and washes us clean from all the dirt and grime that is in our lives. I thought is was a cool analogy. :)

Dad day

This is how we played croquet for Father's Day yesterday:
The band: Teresa on guitar, me on violin, and Dad on...the rifle. (percussions maybe?) We sounded really good together.
And then we realized that the mallets made excellent weapons.

Yes, I wish I could do that.
All of Daddy's girls.

Cleaning

We've been spring cleaning around here. I think we're going to be done pretty soon, yeah! Anna and I organized our bookshelves downstairs, and then I had to leave somewhere, and when I came back, she had completely re-done everything! She had been bothered that some of the history books were mixed in with the science books. Oh well, I think I'll stick to mopping the floor. :P

Baby pics

Emily's new favorite hobby is pulling all of our records off of the stand. It was really funny! I don't let her do it anymore, but it was quite comical at first.

I'm not sure what kind of face she's making here. She's talking a lot now, in her own language of course.


SMILE!!!

Confused Weather

We went to a picnic at a lake yesterday afternoon and had every kind of weather except snow. It was sprinkling on our way there, but by the time we got out of the car it had cleared up and was pleasantly warm. Some of us went out on the boat and then came back to eat. Just when everyone had gotten their food and were sitting down to eat it, it began to rain. It wasn't so bad since someone had rented a pavilion, but it just kept raining harder and harder. It was coming in at an angle and the wind was blowing really hard, and it was raining really hard, and it was thundering really loudly. Everyone was getting soaked and food was flying off plates, and there really wasn't anywhere to sit where it would be dry. It rained for at least a good fifteen minutes before I was freezing, so I ran the few feet to our car and was soaked by the time I got in. I got my sweater and my beach towel and ran back to eat my soggy hamburger...yeah, not appealing.

The rain was just letting up when I heard another crack, but it wasn't thunder, it was the lovely sound of a car smashing into another car, and that other car happened to be Sarah's Honda that was parked right by the pavilion. There was obviously a turn in the road and you're supposed to be going 5mph, but this car didn't turn, and it wasn't going 5mph, and it back-ended Sarah's car. The car that hit Sarah's was all smashed up in front, but amazingly Sarah's only had a couple of scratches! It was in park and skidded several feet across the grass when it was hit, but didn't hit into anything else. And no one was hurt, except the first car. So that was interesting.

And then it got really hot and we I played frisbee and volley ball and then went tubing. The water was cold, but it felt so good! So that was my interesting day yesterday.

Party!!!!!

Last night we went to Olivia's graduation party! It was so much fun. We did not leave till around 11:30 pm so we did not get home till around 12:30 am. I was so tired. I slept in today untill 12:30 pm! So I slept for like twelve hours! I woke up and figured out that Ab and I had not eaten a meal for 24 hours, beacuse we had just had smoothies for dinner since it was so hot! We were famished! It was kind of funny. It is also my brother's birthday today!

Finding vanilla...

It's always interesting when you bake and don't know where any of the ingredient are. Today Anna and I went to Betsy's house (baby Emily's mom) to babysit instead of her bringing her here. Betsy left a list of things to do just in case we got bored while Emily was sleeping, and one of the things was to make a dessert. I reverted to chocolate chip cookies since I didn't think I could go wrong with those. I got the butter out to soften found the flour, sugar, salt, eggs, everything...except the vanilla extract. I searched high and lo, in every cupboard, on every shelf. They had about five different almond extracts, and orange extract and a few others, but no vanilla. How can you not have vanilla? I even went down into the scary basement and looked through the freezer down there, but no vanilla extract.

I decided I'd use almond since they had an abundance of that, and then I saw that it also called for walnuts. And no, I couldn't find those either. I though we could live without the walnuts, and we'd see how the almond worked out.

Betsy happened to come home early while I was still in the midst of making the cookies, and found me both. The vanilla was in a dish soap bottle in the way back of a cupboard, and the walnuts were in the upstairs freezer!
The cookies actually turned out pretty good, besides the fact that I burned the first batch...

Randomness

We finished planting the garden. We are trying a few new things this year peas, and hot peppers. It will be fun to see how they grow in our garden. We have been babysitting for a few weeks now, it has really been a great experience, I love her so much. Well I am kind of rambling, so I guess I will bid you goodbye!

I love the sun

Riddle

How many men does it take to water down a baseball field???

Before and After

Scary mug shots of the 'before'.

And after!

Chief's game

Teresa and Sarah sang the national anthem for a Syracuse Chief's game (AAA division) yesterday, it was really fun. They lost, which was sad, and almost didn't score at all! One guy got a home run in the ninth inning, so at least they got one point. The other team got three points.
"Oh say, can you see?"

Mom got popcorn and it came in a plastic hat thing, so when we had eaten all of the popcorn I put it on my head. Yes, a little nasty, but I think I'll live...
Emily and Anna. (In case you didn't know)