April Showers Bring May Madness

Ahhhhhh..... You smell that summer air? That means... Life is craaaaaazy again! Yeeeehaw.

A quick re-cap of the last five or six weeks up til now:

• A fabulous Doug Wilson 2-day conference at a CREC church in Nashville
• Olivia's first-go at being a wedding photographer (up in IL...)
• A big send-off party for Chris
• Liv on a road trip with Tricia Ann, Claire, and Kyle up to Six Flags in St. Louis
• Aaaannd then Daddy, Mama, Liv, and myself (Emma) right back up to St. Louis for the Family Economics Conference 
• A visit from Mema and Papap 
• Elsia's 6th birthday
• Getting a brand new tire on the truck
• Piggies being bought, lost, and chased. We're still attempting the ol' get-some-manure-from-the-Bradshaw's-pigs-and-play-pig-noises-off-the-porch-and-make-corn-trails-into-the-pen-and-dump-table-scraps-in-the-unuesd-chicken-tractors-as-traps method and just trying to pray it into working.  
• Fresh Modesty having its first-ever vendor booth at the Teach Them Diligently Conference!
• Meeting the wonderful Taylor family (the Blimey Cow folks) 
• Setting up the first test-run of our deer-fencing around the garden 
• Daddy and I gluing his scalp back together with super glue
• Me (Emma) getting to go to TIM HAWKINS LIVE with Mrs. Stouffer + Camille. Laughing painfully hard for two hours straight is always a memorable experience. :)
• Having the Vaughns over for some delightful fellowship
•  Getting 80 broiler chicks in the mail

And what's coming up:

• Mowing the near-jungle of grass for the third time 
• Planting sweet potatoes and strawberries that should have been in the ground 3 weeks ago
• Olivia heading up to Illinois (again...) with the Lovetts for Presbytery
• Finishing up a month of school in two weeks  
• Weeding the garden 
• Getting two more piggies to replace our rouge pork
• Possibly mowing the grass for a fourth time 
• Hanging out with friends both during the week and on the Lord's Day
• My birthday!
• A visit from Da and Popo in June
• Getting back to normal life... oh wait. This is normal life.

~Emma

June And July According To My iPhone

:D Long time no post, right? Life is just crazy these days. Thought y'all might like a quick glimpse of what we've been up to.

 Milk bubbles!

 Memorial Day we played volley ball! Well, some of us anyway.

 We were privileged to babysit some church friends a couple nights, and I think they had fun. ;)

 Elsie's moved upstairs! Josiah took her place in Seth's room, so she gets to sleep in the "big girls'" room.

 Josiah loves taking pictures with my phone. This night he wanted to do flashlight pictures. :P

 Same night with the lights on. :)

 Mowing the garden trying to find the plants. :P

 Emma has plans to be a mushroom farmer. So, she worked for a day drilling and plugging logs and hopefully in a year she will see the fruits of her labors. :) Seth helped for a while, and us girls did too... waxing logs until 11pm. :)

 The cows are just as happy as ever, despite no rain for several weeks.

 This dude's pretty happy too.

 We had to drill some post holes, and the kids had a blast playing in them.

 Done the gate! What's it for, you ask? Stay tuned.

 My first time getting the truck stuck! Only took 4 families and 4 vehicles to pull it out of the creek. :P

 At least Jo and I had fun, though, right?

 He was helping me make ice cream and it was taking too long for his liking. ;)

 The good sport.

 Hola!

 The gate was for these guys! Meet Piggly Giggly and Wiggly Jiggly.

 One night after getting the pigs, and about 10 hours before we had to pick Rachel (see below) up from the airport, I decided I wanted to paint our bedframes. So, out to the carport Willa and I carried the beds (two flights of stairs. :P) and painted the first coat before also giving Emma a haircut while we were out there. Next day I managed to get two more coats on before they got home from the airport. :)

 We were thrilled to have Rachel our cousin come for a visit for a little while! It's customary to take visitors to Cane Creek Market for ice cream. :)

 Willa's birthday, she woke up to this!

 Elsie tagged along for a grocery shopping day and we had such a fun time!

....and Seth's birthday was also this week! Hopefully more pictures to come, but I'm not making any promises. ;)

A Family Update

I used to list our family one by one and say what is going on with them. I haven't done a post like that  in a while, so I believe I shall now.

(Life is exhausting.)

Father and Mother are enjoying life's adventures. Daddy's health was poor for several months, but now he's doing much better. God had been good in allowing him to get his work done. He keeps us laughing constantly and is in the midst of scheming about a landscaping project right now. He's also Craigslist-shopping for some kind of large farm equipment... like a backhoe or tractor or something. Oh, and a new car for us. (Ours only has heat after you've been driving for 3 hours!)

Mommy has been a great teacher this school year. She's introduced us to new recipes, made trips to the laundromat (washer's broke!), kept the house clean, majorly multitasked while we were all working outside,  has been teaching a writing class, done loads of research on loads of subjects and is staying cheerful through it all! She has some organization projects up her sleeve- like conquering our monster of a basement and planning for Christmas decorations!

I (Olivia) have been enjoying every part of this never-ending busyness. I've been sewing (obbbviously...), cooking, and doing school. This is my senior year, so the urgency of getting my studies done has been setting in. :) I'm also so close to getting the SLR I've been saving for!

 Emma is a darling as always. Her cheerful, never-failing, Christ-glorifying countenance keeps the whole family going. Her singing skills have been getting better and better as she belts hymns out while she's doing dishes. Seth and Elsia are spoiled by her story-telling hobby. She started highschool this year, so her school load is also taking up most of her time. She's dreaming of a dairy cow and is the caretaker of the cat and dog.

Willa loves to write. She's been writing on average half an hour a day for many, many months and has a natural gift for it. I'll try to get her permission to post some of her writings here- they are excellent! She takes care of Josiah the most out of all of us and always does it cheerfully. Right now she's dealing with a bout of poison ivy that's lasting longer than it should. She's our resident cookie-dough maker and fixes breakfast every morning. 

Seth is growing so fast! He's LOVING his first year of school. I was given a picture the other day that had numbers and letters written all over it with "Seth" signed in the corner.  He's a fantastic story teller. My favorite sight these days is to see him come bounding out of his room on a horse, with a bow and arrow slung around him, either a viking or cowboy hat on his head, singing "dun dun dunnn! da da da dadadada!" to his own theme music. He usually rides from his room straight out the front door to the deck. :)

(Photo credits to Elsie ;)

It seems that Elsia couldn't get any cuter if she tried. We love her curly locks and sweet smile. She says the funniest things. In one of their daily discussions on important matters, Emma was trying to explain to Elsia that there was a time when she didn't exist.  Emma: "There was a time when you weren't anywhere."
Seth: "She was in heaven!"
Emma: "No, she wasn't anywhere!"
Elsia: "Was I dead?"
Emma: "No, you have to be alive before you can be dead, and you weren't alive yet"
Elsia: "I was hiding." *little nod*
Emma: "No, you weren't anywhere"
Elsia: "I was hiding behind the calendar!"

We're pretty sure Elsie eats the most of anyone in our family. Last night at dinner she ate a bowl of soup, 3 pieces of corn bread, a grilled cheese, and several tablespoons of sour cream. :P She also loves to eat hard boiled eggs. ;)

This cutey pie is getting so big! Can you believe its less than a month before he's a YEAR old?? We squeeze him dozens of times a day and ask him if its possible. He's a walking maniac now and doesn't like to be held for long if there's something of interest to walk to! He says "Da!" whenever he sees Tinkerbell or another dog. His head's shaping up beautifully under his helmet and hopefully he only has a few more weeks till he no longer can be called "Captain Blue Helmet!" Keeping things out of his mouth is a 24/7 job.

God is good to us. We're all learning and growing in grace (hopefully!) and taking things one day at a time. We recently returned from a trip up north, so hopefully some pictures will be posted within a few weeks. ;)

In Which We Process Chickens

Caution: This post contains pictures of guts and chicken innards. You have my permission to stop reading now.

Last Saturday, Emma and I awoke in the middle of the night and went over to the Stouffers to help process (also known at butcher) chickens that Daniel had raised. It was quite the experience.

Processing chickens was on my "NEVER EVER DO or you will surely shrivel up and die" list. Wearing a denim jumper to pick in the garden and wearing tennis shoes with a denim skirt were also on that list. Guess what? I haven't shriveled up and died!

Yet.

Anyway, I ended up really enjoying the whole experience and thought you might like to see pictures, so that you know I'm not making this up. Camille has some great pictures here.

I won't go into detail about how its done, but know that it really isn't as gross as it sounds.

And that there weren't as many chicken jokes as I expected.

Everyone was so cheerful and totally silly! Made for a delightful 4 hour chore before the rest of the world was awake.

A breakfast break was taken around 7:30.

Most of us were still trying to wake up.

This is my, "I can't believe I've been touching chickens all morning" face.

Mrs. Stouffer made us some delicious french toast- with fresh eggs!

Chris's job was the bloodiest.

Then Chris would hand them to Tricia Ann who would scald them then hand them to Camille who would run them through the plucker then hand them to Daniel and Caleb who would de-gut them then they would hand them to me who would do detail work then hand them to Emma who would rinse them well and put them in the cooler, where Caroline would pick them up and package them. There. I just explained the whole process in one sentence. :)

Eventually we got behind in de-gutting, so I volunteered/was recruited into de-gutting as well. It involved chopping off the feet and head (I couldn't bring myself to do that part though), then cutting it open and sticking your hand in the warm space between the ribs and using your fingernails to scrape the organs from the cartilage and stuff. Caleb taught me how. The first time I stuck my hand in the chicken, I couldn't watch. So, yes, I de-gutted the chicken with my eyes closed. :P By my 6th or 7th chicken though, I wasn't as grossed out.

This picture looks really gross. No, unfortunately, we didn't have chicken smoothies with breakfast. Caroline made us fruit smoothies when we were finished. :)

Two heads and multiple feet are better than one.

So.... it was gross. But it was made enjoyable by sweet fellowship and willing attitudes of friends. I can't wait for the next chicken processing day!

Just kidding.

Elsia's Third Birthday

Sweet little Elsia turned 3 on Tuesday. She talked about it for weeks.
Willa made her a delicious birthday cake...

Strawberry cake, chocolate icing, and The Best Frosting I've Ever Had.

There are a lot of pictures here, but they were just too cute. She was such a ham during her birthday lunch!

She sang along with "Happy Birthday"

And had a dramatic, not-rushed blow out of the candles.

She did a little dance as she ate her cake, thoroughly enjoying it.

And then she got silly. Daddy was video taping and she was cracking herself up. She'd pose with the fork in her mouth, then laugh so hard she covered her mouth. :D

It went on for at least 6 minutes.

Seth was eager to bring out her gifts!

She was so excited to get "heels" in her dress up set! She really didn't care about anything else in there! They haven't been off her feet since.

Of course she tried on the whole set for the camera, though. :D

Yesterday morning I heard giggling out on the porch and went to investigate....

This is what I beheld. Too cute for words.

Tinkerbell made sure she was in the picture, too.

Enough kisses!

This cutey cracks me up. I'm so thankful she's in our lives!