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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Happy birthday to Andrew!!!

Andrew turns five today!!!
Happy birthday to a sweet little boy named Andrew :)!!!!!!
I wanted Andrew to be born on my birthday, September twelve, but he chose to come seventeen days late on, September thirty. Oh well, he was worth the longer wait if you ask me :).
Andrew likes Cowboys, cars and... fishing. He has never gone fishing before. And we don't know where he got it from. But he seriously wants to go fishing. With Daddy. In a boat. It is part of his prayers every night :)...
He loves his family, even though he has a lot of sisters, and he is excited about the new baby in April...
"Maybe it will be a boy... or maybe it will be a girl...
and THEN that will be a WHOLE LOT of sisters in
this house!!!" :) says Andrew to Emmi.
He is a sweet helper, helping without being asked quite often lately.
He is a goofy little boy, keeping us all laughing through out the day (and the younger girls will laugh at the least little face he makes at them!)...
And he is Andrew... the best little first brother we've ever had ;), or known :).
Happy Birthday Andrew!!!

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Today we will take a trip around my house...

~Tori thought that this would be a fun project for her to work on, and I thought that it was very well written. I told her that I would put it up on my blog when she was done (I did a post like this a couple years ago, but since then we've moved three miles down the road (and had to change our bread recipe to fit the different climate *three miles down the road*))~

"This will be fun won't it? We go in and we see the living room. The garage is there to the left. Beside it is a closet were we keep our coats and shoes, diaper bag and sometimes a car seat. As we pass the living room we see the stairs. Well we're already here so I'll take you up." "What is this?" you ask. "This is were all the children sleep. Andrew will leave soon. Maybe just a year from now. Well that's all the rooms up here so- Wait!" "What's the matter?" You say. "My six~year old sister wants me to show you the closet!" I take you in. "What's this? A cupboard?" You wonder, looking at the small door in the closet. "Oh that leads to the attic! Anyway, this is where we keep little ones toys they share. Okay we can go on now. Now we will go in to the kitchen." "What is this?" You ask. "That's the grinder that we make flour with." "Why do you have two?" You say. "Because one rolls oatmeal!" "Oh!" You nod. "We need a new table! We've had this one for- Ummm- seven and a half years!" "Wow!" You say. "Yes! Since I was almost three! I'm almost ten now!" "Wow !" You say. "Yep! But I still remember Daddy putting it together. My (now fourteen) year-old sister and me loved it when he was putting it together! We kept stopping getting ready for bed to watch him! The leg keeps falling off now! We lost a screw to hold it on too! Well this is our Landry room. And this is Mommy's and Daddy's room. Most of the time we do bible time in here. We also have movie nights in here. Well this is all in here. We can go in to the hall now... Well this is the library. We keep games, instruments, school and movies in here too. This is the 'craft room' were we keep stuff for-
crafts! Over there is the bathroom to the left. There's one in Mommy's room too. Well I think that's it! Thanks for coming!" "Bye!" "Bye!" ~Tori, age nine.

~Didn't she do a *great* job :)?~

I made Cinnamon muffins for breakfast today

And realized, how much Andrew has grow since I first made these muffins...

This was Andrew at ten months, the first
time I tried my hand at these muffins...
Now, today, at the age of five (minus six days)...
It's hard to believe how much bigger he is now...
Now Emmi is our little baby eating my muffins.
Treasure these times of busyness as you help your Mom with the littler children, girls. They grow up fast, but you can be making relationships that will last your entire life...
(The recipe for these muffins is here.)

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Turtles

We found a turtle outside today...
This one pulled his head in and shut himself
up in his shell as soon as I got to
him.
Sweet Emmi... :)!
Abbi was the one who found the turtle. She was so excited!

Andrew actually took a turn holding this one! (He is scared
of turtles, dogs, sheep, ducks, whatever- everything
except bugs! So this was shocking!)

Bethi-boo loves turtles!
Tori and the turtle :).
And just for a laugh... That is, she said, a smile...

Easy caramel

Making homemade caramel is so easy, and so good!!!!!!

Dipping Caramel
One can of sweetened condensed milk

Fill a 9 by 13 inch pan half way with water.
Pour milk in a 8 by 8 inch pan (or somewhere close to that size...)
Cover small pan with foil and place in the large pan.
Bake at 425°F for an hour.
Caramel will cling to a spoon and be slightly thick when done. Remove from oven CAREFULLY. The water will be hot!
Serve with apples, over ice cream, etc.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Apple picking pictures (post long, but mostly full of pictures...)

We went to Sky Top this time, and it was beautiful!!!








All the apples on the trees...

There were a lot of apples on the ground,
also, but they were so pretty!The apples there had such nice colors... They were so pretty!Emmi-Joy loves apples... cutie!They had a couple of animal pens there, too.The baby chickens were adorable!

Mommy and her family used to have a
peacock that lived around their house, but
this was the first time that we children had seen
one other than in pictures.

Little bits of news...

Nothing really important :).

Emilee has officially moved up into our bedroom! She is sleeping in my bed, and she is loving it so much (and so am I)!!! She is an awesome sleeper (so far), and Abbi has started to do a little better at the sleeping through the night thing herself.
We found our chrysalis had hatched yesterday morning sometime before nine o'clock...


It turned out to be a moth, but I have no idea what kind.
Oh, and look at what I found Abbi doing the other day (and Andrew is sitting there enjoying it with her)...


She is too cute... and she knows she is not suppose to have Mommy's computer... haha.
And I just have to add this one! Emmi has this really cute crinkly-eyed grin... and I caught the tail-end of it. Heehee!

Friday, September 16, 2011

More visiting and apple picking (pictures coming soon)!

We had a great time with our Grandparents and Aunts the other day :) ! Aunt Tessa was not able to make it to the apple orchard, but Grandpa, Grandma, and Aunt Amber were able to make it. Everyone had so much fun (and Andrew didn't miss the rain too much)!
After we were done picking apples, Grandma bought us some apple doughnuts. They were delicious!!! When we left the apple orchard, we went back to Grandpa and Grandma's. Aunt Tessa got home from work just a little while after, and Grandpa and Grandma Dixie came over for supper. We left at about 10:30. We had a great time, and we're thinking of making it a tradition :)!
Now we need to start use all these up before they go bad... applesauce, apple butter, apple pie, dried apples, fresh apples, whatever, we'll find something to do with them. Maybe we'll even roast a few! Or make caramel apples... or make some dipping caramel for a few... Yum!

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Oh my... TOO CUTE!!!!

For a couple years now I have been know as our family's muffin maker. Daddy loves my chocolate chip banana muffins, and I make them for breakfast every Friday. Look what Mommy and Daddy gave me for my birthday... I love it :)!!!


This is a necklace with a *muffin tin* charm and a *set of teaspoons* charm :)! And the teaspoons actually have measurement sizes etched out on them... LOVE IT!!!!


Chocolate chip banana muffins

1 and 3/4 cups flour
Half a cup chocolate chips
Half a teaspoon salt
Half a tablespoon cream of tartar
Roughly 1/4 a tablespoon of baking soda
Two bananas
1/3 cup melted butter
3/4 cup milk
1 egg

Preheat oven to 400°f. Oil muffin tins halfway up the side of muffin cups.
Mix the dry i
ngredients together. Mix wet ingredients together. Combine, mix until just moistened.
Pour into muffin tins, filling about 3/4 of the way.
Bake for about twenty minutes.
Makes about twelve muffins.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Apples by the dozens...

We picked a LOT of apples on the fifth! We didn't realize just how many until we started cutting, coring, skinning, and working with all of them!!!
We picked about a bushel of apples, and then Daddy went and bought about another bushel of apples already picked, as we didn't have time to pick more, due to the rain. Over the five days they were sitting on the counter, we'd used half a bag for versus things, but on Friday we decided it was time to get them taken care of.
On Friday we just peeled and sliced. We were going to cook the apples for apple butter in the crock pot, and the rest of the apples we dehydrated (dehydrated apples are the BEST!!!!!)
On Saturday we cooked up the apple butter, and cooked some apples on the stove to make apple sauce, and dehydrated some more apples (eighteen racks of dehydrated apples... Yummy.... :)).
Then we canned the apple sauce and some of the apple butter. We had never done this before, and it was so exciting to hear the jars "pop" as they sealed!!!!!!! We made a couple batches of pie filling and then we left about half a bag it the fridge for cooking/eating fresh.
And now we think we're going to go apple picking with Grandpa and Grandma tomorrow :)!!!!!!! Aunt Amber might go with us, but Aunt Tessa can't make it.... she will be home in time for supper, though, so we'll see her then :)! Andrew is still requesting that it rain tomorrow, haha :).


Dehydrated apples...


And our sealed canned goods...


Friday, September 9, 2011

Mommy and Daddy shared some news with us...

Sometime next April...
We're going to have another baby in the house!!!

We're so excited :)! It came as a total surprise. I mean, who thinks "Mommy is sending Tori and I out to check the mail together. She must be expecting!"? Even IF their Daddy is standing on the porch with his camera?
Now, before you get any of the meaning of all this, I'll have to explain a few things. First: with both Abbi and Emmi, Mommy got a newborn sized sample diaper in the mail just a few weeks before she found out she was expecting. So, we've joked the past year that if we get a newborn diaper in the mail, we're all going to think we're going to have another baby in the house soon.
Next, don't think we didn't SEE Daddy outside taking pictures. We saw him all right, but we thought that he was taking pictures of the heron that was in the retention pond beside our house- he does that every time he sees the bird. So, it was a big surprise when we saw that diaper in the mailbox :).
We're all so happy! Andrew, who told Mommy when Emmi was on the way "I want an Abbi like an Andrew" (read: I want a baby like a boy) was talking about the baby to Emmi (who he loves to pieces!) today, and he says: "Mommy is having a baby. And maybe it will be a boy!!! But, if it isn't, that will be a LOT of sisters in this house!!!" Love his way of putting things :)!
"Lo, Children are a heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward"
~ Psalm 127: 3

A little bit of this and that...

We've been busy the last couple of weeks! We've arrived at our family's "birthday season", which has six (out of our soon to be nine birthdays in the family) birthdays in five weeks, and Daddy was able to take a bit of time off of work these past couple weeks, and we used the time for some things that we'd been planning for a while. We went to visit Granny, Grandpa and Grandma, Gramma and Papa Nate, we went to pick apples and went to the South Carolina state museum (and we only got half way through the war room before we had to leave, so we're still planing on going back there), and the zoo. We had three birthdays in a one week span, and started helping with church clean up! We've had a lot of fun!
Oh, and the "Fool-proof blanket" that I was going to make for Abbi's birthday, as stated in this post?
I made it alright, but I called these things fool proof too soon :)! Although I have made both a single-piece tag blanket and a double-sided tag blanket, and had no trouble, this one was different! I didn't know that there was more than one kind of fleece, so I just picked up a cute piece of fleece that had a cute frog print on it. Well, it seems that the fleece I picked up was not what I usually use (I think I picked up "pill fleece", I'm not sure what I usually use) and it didn't work the same! When I was working with it, the backside of the blanket, which was out of the stuff that I usually use, worked fine, but with the pill fleece, some of the tags were pulling apart in my hand as I was tying the blanket! It was still cute, and once it was done you couldn't tell that some of the tags were shorter than others, but it was much more work than I was anticipating. I didn't mind it though, when Abbi took to it as soon as she unwrapped it. It has finely stopped losing fuzz left and right, and Abbi loves it :). Frogs are a big thing at our house, because we live right beside a retention pond, and the frogs that live in it like to sit on our windows at night, and Abbi loves them! She wants to hold every one that is at her level (Andrew, on the other hand, likes to enjoy them from a distance!).
Also, Daddy was weeding the garden the other day and found a chrysalis, which we are now... raising? I don't know what you would call it, as we're doing no work for it, but we are keeping it in a loosely covered jar. Last time Daddy brought some thing in from weeding it was a caterpillar that turned out to be a Tersa Sphinx, which has never been reported as seen in our area before, so we're excited to see what this one will be!

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Visiting and apple picking!

On the fifth we went to see Gramma and Papa Nate. I found out about an hour down the road that I forgot my camera. I do it quite often, but I wish I would remember... although with Daddy's new lens (that thing has to be at least a foot long when he has it all the way out...) we hardly miss it. Gramma has lots of fish, and two dogs, and then our family has six children... The younger ones were squealing over the fish and running from the dogs, and the dogs were running after the children! It was quite entertaining to watch, heehee :)!
We were a bit worried, because we were planning on going apple picking sometime during the day, but it kept rain off and on. Finally we thought that it was stopped for good. We said goodbye, got in the van, and went to pick apples! We get there, get our bags, and head out to the orchard to start picking. We had two bags, and filled the first one quite quickly. Then we started on the second bag... and start feeling raindrops. In sixty seconds it is pouring! Daddy, who is carrying the camera, decides to go put the camera in the car and bring back an umbrella. The rest of us try to fill the second bag from the trees we're standing under. As soon as Daddy is out of sight, the rain picks up! Mommy decides that we are going to start back for the car, as the trees are no longer offering any shelter! We got to the car, and Daddy went in to buy a couple of bags of picked and washed apples, for a treat on the way home. It was quite funny, and everybody loved it! Everybody, especially Abbi, wanted to do it again (and Andrew wants to do it on a rainy day!!!) :)!

Saturday, September 3, 2011

No need for toys...

During our trip to Granny's, Andrew, Emmi, and Abbi spent some of their time doing this...

"May I have a ride, Brother?"

"Here you go!"

Starting...

Going...

"Ummm... Andrew? You left me!!!"
"Let's try it again."... "I'm back here!!!"
"Maybe Abbi can do it."
"This isn't working... maybe if we both pull it at the
same time...
Why isn't this working?!!!"
"I have no idea..."


Haha :). Based on a true story, although words are changed somewhat. Emmi can't talk yet, after all :).

Pictures from a visit to Granny's


Tori-girl

Bethi making an "egg breakfast"- out of rocks!!!

Andrew, making (using Andrew's
words) a "big rock collect" :).

Abbi the... is it girl, or tree? Haha!!!

Emmi Joy...

Abbi blowing bubbles all by
herself for the first time
.

And my absolute favorite... Heeheehee!!!
Abbi played hard... the younger four all took
naps on the way home!!! This was Abbi's first ride in her
new "big girl booster seat". She was so excited!!!