hey all (three of you that read this)! i have moved my blog to here. my very own .com! see you there!
i moved.
0
we are home! yesterday, my baby turned a year old. it is amazing how fast they grow. it seems like yesterday that we met her. we are thankful for this first year and can’t wait for what’s in store. it will be a big one! she’ll learn to walk (we’re so close!), and talk (already started), maybe grow some teeth, and much more. she is a joy and so much fun. i can’t help but think that she and her sister will be best friends. you know, when they learn to share. we celebrated her birthday with phillip’s family on sunday, mine on monday, and at the church bible study last night. i have officially hit my cake quota for the year. i haven’t loaded pictures from the camera yet so, you’ll have to wait for pictures. but i do have one that uncle danny sent to mimi (she had to share it!). enjoy! more to come!
we are currently in titusville, florida staying with our friends ken and kathy (remember from the picnic?). phillip is attending the ligonier conference in orlando. we left nc on tuesday around 9 am and got here around 11 pm. it is a 10 hour dive, but we stopped when we needed to and shopped a little. yesterday we took adeline to disney world. she had a ball and we took many pictures. i’ll share when we get back. when we leave here on saturday, we are heading to nashville. phillip is preaching on sunday and we are celebrating our baby’s 1st birthday. then on wednesday we head back home. we will be ready i think. til next time…..
this week has been crazy! i never have a week where i have something going on daily, but this week i have. on monday i had my hair touched up before we leave on our excursion, tuesday we met claire and baby nathan at the library to play, wednesday i volunteered at the pregnancy care center, yesterday beth and matthew came over and we bottled the wine then we had church, and today i took necho to the vet. see, it’s been crazy. now i have to think about packing and such. are you ready for picture overload?
anyway, on to december. at the beginning of december i gave claire a baby shower (with lots of help!). it was the first big snow that we had. the first of may big snows! it came fast and messy and this small town did not prepare the roads for it. i had a hard time getting home, but finally made it!
how cute is she?? i love claire, she has been such a blessing to my life!
then there’s the snow. i sat this sledding out, the pictures are grainy because i took them through the screen on the window! dave, suzanne, and alex came down to sled with phillip and adeline. the first of many times we did that!
then later there was christmas. obviously. we headed to nashville early in the week and headed back on christmas day. since it was on sunday we had to be back. it was a long trip full of lots of snow. adeline stayed in nashville with mimi and granddad so we only had ava. she was awesome on the trip back. i think she slept the whole time! we had said that unless she woke up we wouldn’t stop to feed her, so by the time we got home it had been like 8 or 9 hours since she had eaten. she must have a stomach of steel! she’s such a good baby! ironically i pitched a fit as we were leaving home because i thought that i forgot the camera. but phillip had put it in his bag. but i didn’t get it out the entire week, phillip took all of the christmas pictures. i slacked, so we don’t have pictures of anything but christmas at his grandparent’s house. oops!
look nashville had a white christmas!
sue sue and the kiddos
phillip’s grand- dad
adeline, madison, and sinbad (the dog)
looking all different directions. there must have been several cameras. can’t imagine why, they are all cute!
ava went to sleep on her sue sue
melissa
mimi
mimi and great grandmom
mimi and great grand- dad
dan carving the ham
this was too funny not to include
mark and uncle danny
babies! ava and ryan
these were sent from uncle danny:
these were sent from mimi and grand- dad:
how big does my girl look?!
cousins- 1 month apart
this was taken sometime between phillip’s birthday and our anniversary. before the living room was painted. gail made the quilt for phillip’s birthday. i thought the picture was sweet.
then when we got back, we painted the kitchen. since we were one child down we thought that we’d tackle the big project. phillip painted the living room before we left as a surprise so the kitchen was next. it’s orange and i think it turned out amazing!
a tradition. he hunted for a little while so i painted him a message!
he is so cute!
color on the walls!
we put a bible verse on the finished wall between the door and window
see how good the color looks with our super special mexico painting? i was pleased.
that’s the end. now we can get into 2011! closing in! woo- hoo!
so in november phillip got his hunt on. bow season started september 11th this year so since he had a bow, he started then. he also used a muzzle loader during muzzle loader season and a shotgun near the end (charles was kind enough to let him borrow the guns). so he got to hunt from the beginning. he has never been interested in hunting before now. but, he did really well. at thanksgiving, he had killed three deer. pretty good for a first time hunter huh? our friend charles taught him how to process the meat on his own (saving us tons of money!) so he did all of the processing and then we bagged it to freeze. adeline thinks that the meat is an exchange. we feed the deer corn and grapes and they give us meat. the last deer was a buck so we have a rack and a tail above our front door. i never thought that we would be deer head on the wall people, but i can deal with horns! charles has recently taught us how to smoke the meat to make jerky. it’s so good and so easy to make and besides the salt, i guess it’s pretty good for you. i didn’t get pictures of the slain deer until the last one. the first two were on charles’ property and the last one was in the field behind our house. so, dead deer picture to follow (that’s your warning!). then at the end of november, phillip had a birthday. he had been wanting a gun of his own so for birthday, anniversary, and christmas combined i got him a muzzle loader. uncle sam has recently gotten him a shotgun and a new bow. we should be good to go now in the weapons department! phillip also got into making omelettes and adeline playing in a laundry basket (like usual, remember the neighborhood hat?) decided that she was in a, “cocoon with a secret door”. how silly and creative is she? were getting closer to being caught up! bear with me!
this is the meat from deer #2 the doe, i didn’t get pictures from deer #1 the button buck. he was a baby and it was sad but he tasted awesome!
deer #3 the buck
the hunter and the hunted
a man and his bow
pretty good aim!
a near perfect omelette
the “cocoon with the secret door”
the rack/ tail combo. adeline calls these wings. you can’t see it, but there are six points!
until next season, this is all of his hunting trophies! happy thursday!
so, i’m taking a slight detour from playing catch up. i am so addicted to the food network and the cooking channel. the payoff has been fun since i’m full of new ideas. i’ve been learning about compound butter and i must say that it’s delicious and so fun to use! this week, i’ve picked out several new recipes that we’re trying. i get into ruts and fix the same things over and over again so we needed some new staples. so far we’ve had italian sausage rigatoni (so easy and so good, easy enough to put your own spin on), and white bean chicken chili (this was easy but kinda pricey to make. but we got several servings out of it so it all balanced out) with cheddar and scallion bread (this was a compound butter, i used white bread and didn’t put scallion in because i didn’t have any. and i also made half a recipe and stored the butter so we could have fresh bread nightly). coming up i’m making bacon and blue cheese stuffed chicken breasts (i hate blue cheese so we’re trying it with muenster) with creamy roasted broccoli and butterscotch and black pepper baby carrots. we’re also trying paula deen’s cheesy enchilada soup (couldn’t find a link) and lime chicken. so we’re eating well and i’m having fun too! can i say that i love cooking? i do. a lot. here’s some new pictures to keep you from too much boredom reading this. happy wednesday!
on the phone
the ava puppy
happy girl
okay, so i found more fall pictures. we’ll start november next but i had to share these. we were driving past the red tree in virginia on the way to tennessee on adeline’s birthday and turned around for a picture. the first ones are from our yard. i love the fall here!
so, at the end of october (on adeline’s birthday) we headed to nashville en route to grenada, mississippi. phillip’s friend andrew (from seminary) was being ordained into the pastorate and asked phillip to preach his ordination sermon, which rocked (you’ll have to click “sermons” on the left bar. it was 10/25/10, click it to listen). i am not an “amen” type of girl but i almost jumped up a few times. it was that good. on the way out of nashville we stopped and picked up our friend jeremy who rode with us just to catch up and hang out. that’s a pretty cool friend, huh? jeremy was in the youth group at faith presbyterian (where we got married)Â when phillip led it, and then in the college group before we left for seminary. on this trip, we tried to get him to move to nc with us. we like him that much. we drove there, hung out a bit and ate, phillip preached, and we drove back. it was a 11 hour round trip but completely worth it. the girls stayed with mimi and granddad so they didn’t have to suffer that long in the car.
on the way we saw: a rainbow, the best sign ever, the weirdest combination of food for a restaurant (i think), and a dude looking too smooth to be pumping gas
the service: (andrew is on the left)
after grenada, was halloween. phillip got the biggest pumpkin that i’ve ever seen (about 200 lbs!) at the farmer’s market and started making plans for it. he always makes a reformation day kind of pumpkin and then something for adeline. this started in seminary and hasn’t been a yearly tradition but i think that since we’re settled now it will be. he even put a video on you tube so, check it out for an explanation. in seminary his pumpkin was written/ carved in greek and last year’s was luther nailing the 95 theses on the door at wittenberg. he gets creative y’all and i just watch.
broken arm
last year’s pumpkins
and ahahahahahah fish (for phillip). this is pinecone, she got really mad when i took her picture
that’s all of october. it was on our nashville trip that adeline broke her arm and i learned that kids are tough. when we got back we got “pinecone” the fish for adeline as a birthday present. she picked out her fish and named “her” before we even left the store. we had given her the choice between a fish, a gecko, or an iguana. but she chose a blue betta. pinecone lives in our room for now, just so she won’t become a land dweller. she’s spunky and always trying to attack when you look at her. i like her personality! is that weird? a fish that has personality? anyway, yay for a month down from playing catch up!
saturday edition here. i just spent time with mrs. dot jones (love her!) getting ready for tomorrow’s church dinner. but, sadly i left phillip painting all alone. last night i made chocolate croissants, can we say slap your mama good (sorry mom)? holy cow y’all, that is love in bread. how can you go wrong with bread wrapped chocolate, topped with powdered sugar? wow! moving on, i gave a total of four baths yesterday. five if you count changing the fish water. every time i get the peanut butter out adeline tells me that “teeter ban” and tinkerbell are friends. cute. she also says that she has a “ticker” in her throat when she coughs. i caught ava waving the other day hand open/ close style. she is now “cruising on the furniture and gets pretty upset when she gets to the end of the couch. she is almost saying night- night to where anyone can understand and she also says “dog”. i think that’s all for today. my mind is a little jumbled as you can tell, and this is my outlet. thanks for listening to the rambling! i also took a really cute picture this morning but you’ll have to wait until i upload it!
on adeline’s third birthday we headed to nashville, en route to mississippi (next post). we celebrated adeline’s birthday on her actual day with driving (lucky girl) and then cupcakes with mimi and grand-dad after dinner.
then in the next couple of days we got together with the family and celebrated with cake (an ice cream one, as requested) and presents!
it was chaos, and ava slept through it all.
happy birthday adeline!
there it was. it was the year of the princess. and yes that was a dvd player complete with a snow white dvd cued to the singing dwarves. thanks everyone! i thanked you before but thanks again months later!
birds on a wire. 