Thankful Thursday, on Saturday, again... week 55 :)

We've had an interesting week, to say the least! Peter's first birthday was on the 23d, and Daddy made it home to celebrate it with us, so that was a great blessing :). I'll have a post up, hopefully within the next few day, for his birthday pictures :).
Daddy had to leave the morning after Peter's big day, while we started getting ready for a family to come and look at our house that evening. We did lots of yard work (and I broke the fence, although it was repairable... that terrified me for a minute ;).), before we found out that they will be coming next week, instead. So, I finished up outside, then came inside to get cleaned up and make some granola bars, complete with chocolate chips ;). We visited some friends we hadn't seen for a few months the next morning, and we had a great time with them :). We then took a very interesting shopping trip, going without a list for the first time in so long that I can't even say when the last time was, along with many other interesting incidents along the way :P. After we got home, we worked some more on the fence, planted a bush, put away the groceries, and put the little ones down for quite time, which they greatly needed by this time :P. Tori and I played a few games during quiet time, but as soon as we were done, I promptly crashed just in time for the little ones quiet time to be over, haha. I started supper when I woke up, and got the bright idea (yep, another one) to make, not only a double recipe of the spaghetti sauce I was making, but also to cook up all the hamburger we bought that morning, and make a meal of creamy italian chicken, all at the same time, heeheehee. We then had a "furry creature" in our garage, which led me to doing a quick clean up of our inside fridge, so that I could put the meals I just made in here rather than our outside fridge, which we're not very thrilled at the idea of taking a trip to ;). We cleaned up the huge mess I made in the kitchen, got the little ones in bed, and sat down to watch a movie, during which Bethi woke up sick, which happened a total of five times that night, along with Abbi having a dream that terrified her. We ended up breaking into the granola bars I had made for emergency "we're ten minutes from your house, can we come look at it" calls, and worked in the garden again, which is growing weeds even faster than peas, and those were up in two days! It has been very interesting, slightly hectic, and very, very busy, haha!!!
But, despite one "calamity" after the other, there are still these, and many other, things to be thankful for (such as getting many laughs at the ridiculousness of the past few days ;).)...
~Big boy Peter, 1 year old :)!
~Abbi's great job learning the crochet chain stitch last week.
~That Daddy was able to make it home for several days over the weekend, not just Peter's birthday :).
~Daddy's help with my tatting. It is amazing how much he can help without knowing exactly how it works (and it is equally amazing how long it takes me to understand his suggestions, heeheehee :)...)
~Historical sights :).
~Picnics.
~Peter's delight in the lamb I knit him... too sweet!!!!
~Peter's little hands working on "working" with his new Melissa and Doug toolbox fill-and-spill :).
~Visits with friends.
~A beautiful yard.
~Lots of flowers around the house.
~That we own a steam cleaner.
~Fresh fruit cake.
~A shrinking to-do list, haha ;)...
~"Little laughables" (I've got a few to share sometime soon ;)...).
~Fun with little ones, watering plants, pulling weeds, reading books :).
~Meals sitting in the fridge to be pulled out when we're in a hurry.
~A clean house.
~And, (Daddy should find this especially impressive), I did not burn our grilled cheese sandwiches yesterday ;).
~Tori's help in counting a couple hundred books that we hope to sell soon, haha!
~That each day takes us closer to the day that we'll be in VA!

Sing unto the LORD, O ye saints of his, 

and give thanks at the 

remembrance of his holiness. 

                                       ~Psalm 30:4

Things of Spring....

The sun shines down, as one of Peter's little hands clings to me, the other clutching a plastic shovel. His tiny feet work so hard to walk for the first time in the grass with shoes on. A car drives slowly by, and I wonder if they may have been looking into our house. I can tell Daddy is wondering, too, and he asks me to shut the garage door. Peter and I then continue our trip around the yard, again, and again, and again. Daddy instructs Tori on how to plant her herbs. A butterfly lazily glides by us. Peter bends down to dig at the grass. I love how he gets so into all this "gardening stuff". I can hear the rest of my family laughing together at the garden beds. Emmi trots across the yard, and I smile to hear her little sigh, as she gives a look that only Emmi can. She comes to me and tells me "Today was such a good day for you to find a worm." She squeezes my neck, and I squeeze her back. She goes off to "help weed" again, and Peter decides that the grass looks fun to eat. Before he can put his plan to action, I stand him back up, and we start walking slowly back to the rest of the family, his hand still gripping mine. By the end of this day, as we do a family project once again, we will have planted a garden, enjoyed each other, learned some things, and laughed together often. All these things come from the hand of God. And I am truly blessed.

A visit to Grandpa and Grandma's

Daddy had a business trip this week, from Tuesday to Friday. We've missed Daddy these last few days, and can't wait to see him tonight! We decided that we would go have a sleepover at our Grandparent's house. The plan was to get there on Tuesday morning, the day that Daddy was going to leave, and then leave Wednesday afternoon.
We woke up early on Tuesday morning, and got the car packed and everyone fed and dressed. Then we all got in the car and settled down to enjoy the two hour trip. Tori and I only went about halfway there before our Aunt Amber picked us to take us to go volunteer at a garden that she enjoys working at. She said that she volunteers about once a week. We had so much fun!!! After we were done with the weeding that we were put to work at, she took us to Baskin' Robins and then to the Music and Art store to find out how much it would be to replace a violin string. They told us it would be about three dollars to get the string, then a little bit more for them to replace it.
We headed to Grandpa and Grandma's to join the rest of the family. The little ones had had so much fun with Aunt Tessa. They had done a few crafts, played outside for a little bit, and read lots of stories! We visited for awhile, then Aunt Amber took Bethi, Tori, and I to get the violin re-strung. We had meant to do it earlier in the day, but we forgot to get the violin out of the van before we went to the gardens. It was so neat, because I learned so much just in those fifteen minutes! We were lucky. The lady who was working was really sweet. She informed us that our violin was full sized (I didn't even know that there was more then one size!) and showed us how to use the tuner and peg compound. After the violin was tuned, Aunt Amber took us to Baskin' Robins again, because Bethi hadn't went earlier. Aunt Amber loves Baskin Robins ;).
That night, we put the little ones to bed, and then Aunt Amber, Aunt Tessa, Mommy, Tori, and I (and, before we were done, Emmi and Abbi, who woke up in the middle of the night.) played games. First we played Deal, but since Mommy and I are the only ones who enjoyed that, we decided to play Scrabble instead of another game of Deal. It was 3:15 before we were in bed! We were laughing so much that night!!!

Just a little hodge-podge post...

We've been busy here keeping up with all the work and fun that comes from being a family of eight!
Our garden is coming along well. We have three little ears of corn on our four corn stalks that look promising, and we're already harvesting some of the squash and tomatoes from our summer garden. The tomatoes look so pretty sitting on the windowsill waiting to be used :).
Andrew hit a new level of boyish-ness the other day... Andrew has become the resident bug-catcher, and the other day he found that it was fun to chase girls with them, haha! He thought it was funny, but he was very nice and got rid of it quickly!
Last Sunday at church, Abbi was asked what her name was. She mumbled her name with her fingers in her mouth. This was repeated. The third time she was asked, Mommy said "Say 'Abbi' really loud." So Abbi looks up, takes her fingers out of her mouth and says (really loud)- "Abbi really loud!!!"
Last week we learned to be extra grateful for our air conditioning! The air conditioning went out early Saturday evening, and the house got up to 90 degrees, which was a lot hotter then our enjoyed 70 degrees! Daddy was able to get somebody out to fix it Sunday afternoon, and it took five minutes to fix. We're REALLY enjoying our cool house now!

A common buckeye butterfly with an interesting story

We had a family work night on May 23d. Tori mowed the lawn, Daddy got the edges of the yard with the weed eater and watered plants, Mommy and Bethi worked on cleaning the car, and Andrew, Abbi and I worked on preparing a bed for planting in. Emmi watched.
Tori called me to come pull up a plant with a Caterpillar on it so she could mow over that spot without killing him. I pulled up the plant, showed the Caterpillar to my helpers, and set him in the lettuce bed, thinking I would take him to the woods behind our house when we were done.
Daddy told me to leave him, he would be fine in the lettuce bed for now. We went inside.
The next day the Caterpillar was not on the Plantain plant it was the night before. No big deal, he moved to another one, I thought.
A few days later, Mommy asked me to get some Lettuce out of the garden so she could make a salad.
I bring her the lettuce. A few minutes later she gasps and starts talking about a Cocoon on her lettuce! She was really grossed out!
I put the Cocoon in a jar, and put the jar in our screened in porch (I love the screened in porch!!!). On Emmi's birthday I went out to check on it, and we had a Common Buckeye butterfly!
Then I started thinking...
I got out my butterfly book that had pictures of all stages of the Common Buckeye, and started some "detective" work...
It was my fault. (At least, it would be REALLY strange if it wasn't.) The Caterpillar that I put in the lettuce bed was a Common Buckeye Caterpillar... The cocoon that Mommy found on her lettuce was a Common Buckeye Butterfly... he must have spun a cocoon early the day after we found it, and I happened to bring in the lettuce he used as the base.
Always lots of excitement around here!

Our interesting garden.

Last March we put in our spring garden as a family project. Mid April, Daddy brought in some sweet peas. Now, we didn't plant sweet peas when we put in the garden! It seems that Daddy was carrying a open seed package, and dropped it! The seeds took root, so we enjoyed a snack of fresh, raw sweet peas. I had never overly-liked peas before, but these were soooo good!
A little while later he brought in some lettuce. Already? No, this was volunteer lettuce from the lettuce that had flowered in the beds last year! So, for awhile we were eating food that we didn't plant!
Finally we were able to eat the lettuce from our new spring bed. Then, Daddy brought in celery (We planted those last year, and their just now coming up!?). We're hoping to get broccoli, and we're pretty sure we'll get some onions, too. And blackberries. Those were there when we moved in, so we didn't plant those either. We did plant the blueberry bushes that are producing this year, though. The ones in the pots will give us berries at least... not sure about the ones in the ground though... even though those should be the strongest...
So, our garden this year is much better then we hoped... and MUCH, MUCH better then last year, since half of this years harvest will be from last years plantings, and this year we're not using the "cucumber" seeds that gave us cantaloupe...