Cinderella

...forgot to take her dancing shoes off before washing the dishes.

La La La La Life Goes On

God is good. Life speeds along as fast as... *pause*...life.

 Last Lord's Day the ladies among us celebrated the newest Vaughn baby!

 Kaliste made this adorable cake.

All of the previous pictures Stephanie Talent graciously allowed me to share with y'all!

 Caroline and Jo Man

 The crowd in the Stouffer's living room. While we ladies were away, we left the men and children at the Lovett's. And what do we come back to find?

 A 3-story fort built out of couches, tables, and mattresses! This was as they were deconstructing it. :P

 Miss Elsie took this picture of Miss Hannah. :)

 Emma found this awesome bug last week.

 Elsie made some awesome play dough creations. Seth started school last week with the rest of us and he is such a good student! Mommy says he's the best yet. :P

 Emma and Willa cheerfully doing the chores!

 We made curried fruit this week- it was so good! We do a lot of substituting 'round here. This week I made chocolate chip cookies. Except we were out of chocolate chips. So I used cherries.
And we were out of butter. So I used oil.
And we were out of vanilla. So I used almond extract.

 And I added hot cocoa mix for good measure.
Lets just say they were... interesting. :P

We love this poem our friend once shared with us.
I didn't have potatoes, so I substituted rice.
I didn't have paprika, so I used another spice.
It called for tomato sauce, but I used tomato paste.
A whole can, not a half can- I don't believe in waste.
My friend gave me this recipe and said you couldn't beat it.
There must be something wrong with her- I couldn't even eat it!

 We also had the privilege to have the Botkins and Noors over for dessert this week.

 Mommy has us on a ridged schedule. We've been able to follow it for a whole week! :)

 We're getting on average 5 eggs a day from our 14 chickens!

 Saturday was Sweet Potato Harvest Day for those of us who didn't go into Nashville to shop for a month's supply of things we can't grow. Like mechanical pencils.

We headed down to the pretty much dead neglected garden and... I'm no expert...

 ... But I think we have a bug problem...

 All of our pumpkins, squash, zucchini, and cantaloupes were killed by bugs!

 But our sweet potatoes were untouched, despite being overwhelmed by weeds. We had a ton of fun harvesting them.

 Elsie took this picture. :)

 Seth absolutely LOVED digging for "treasures". He talked non-stop the entire time.

 Elsie on the other hand wasn't much into actually helping, but at one point she pulled up a vine and found a sweet potato on the other end. She was so tickled. "Olivia! *giggle* There's a vweet potato on this grass!" *giggle giggle snicker* "Take a pitcher of me wis it!"

 Emma was sweet potatoed out, but I was anxious to see how they tasted, so I made my first sweet potato casserole.

 I'm not sure I've ever made something so unhealthy and passed it off as dinner food.

Saturday was a full day. After sweet potato harvesting and cleaning the house and doing the laundry and preparing for the Lord's Day, we went on a "caper" on the way to the Lingo's for dinner.

 You see, several weeks ago a cement truck tipped over in some deep mud along our humble road. They got the truck out, but the cement in the big mixer bowl on the back dried too quickly. So its still there.

The opportunity of it was too much for Daddy's creative mind, so we blocked off the road (and made the Stouffers late)...

 ... and got to work.

 Making it into a crash-landed space craft. :) We need to go back and get better pictures- we were in a big hurry! 'Cause we didn't want to be late for a "Sweet Corn and Okra Cookout" at the Lingo's!

 The food was delish and the company even better.

 Its finally cool enough to have bonfires! We made s'mores and enjoyed the beautiful night.

And we totally forgot to get any pictures yesterday, and I'm wayyy over my computer time, so au revoir!

First Day Of School 2010

...successfully completed!

Last Week Before School Starts

This past week has been full... but relaxing at the same time. We start school next week, so this was our last week of "summer."

Emma recieved this cow cutting board for her birthday, and decided to break it in by using it to cut homemade marshmallows.

Seth and Elsie helped.

They got to stay up late. :)

Tuesday the ladies and children all toured the Frist museum where they had on display "The Golden Age of Couture" - a whole bunch of designer 1950's dresses. Our sewing brains were excited.

After the dresses we spent some time in the children's section since the little kids had been so good. And this is the only picture we got. :P

And on the way home I saw Brad Paisley. He passed us in his blue corvett on the highway. :)

Thursday evening, we went to the Town Fair with the Stouffers, Lovetts, and Lingos.

You could ride all the rides you wanted for $8.

Elsie road one ride, went on to the next, and then realized that she had lost her boot.

See it in the middle of the picture? It got stuck in the motorcycle.

We live in a town of 3000. About 1/15th of the town showed up this night. Which meant the 18 of us basically had the rides to ourselves. It was great. :)

We walked down and watched the horse races for a little bit. These guys were timing the races with their cell phones. It made us laugh. :)

Seth and Elsie couldn't be kept out of the fun house. They went through again and again.

The rides were fun enough to make you want to ride them, but tame enough that you could ride them over and over... so we did. :) That's Kenan and me above.

Willa and Abby.

Seth got a snowcone. ;)

4 days this week Emma and I went around the neighborhood milking cows. Okay, so Tuesday and Wednesday Emma helped milk the Lingo's cow, Daphney, and Thursday and Friday she helped milk the Harper's cow, Ellen. Wednesday I milked at the Lingo's. Yeah.... me. Even though it was on my list of things I never thought I'd do.

Still not sure why I tried to milk. :P

Today Emma was productive and picked peaches from our OWN peach tree, then made the following "Peach Pie"

While the cat and the dog lazed about on the deck. That big blue thing is a bouncy castle Daddy bought this week for $16. :) Speaking of weird things Daddy buys online, we recieved a hot pink garlic peeler in the mail today. It nearly topped the lighted ear wax pick in strangeness that was delievered a couple weeks ago. :P

This kid is so. cute. He took his first steps last week. *wipes tear*

Now, I should get brownie points for this. I'm posting about an event just hours after it happened. ;)
This evening Mrs. Lingo's parents invited some folks from church out for pizza at Snappy's.

And Seth and Elsie learned about PacMan.  Well worth 25 cents. :)

How blessed are the people who know the joyful sound!

O LORD, they walk in the light of Your countenance.

In Your name they rejoice all the day,

And by Your righteousness they are exalted.

~Psalm 89: 15-16