Nathan Early 16th Birthday

We can't always be on the mountain top.......

No, the picture does not need to be rotated.........it's me....and I am on top of the mountain. Bradbury Mountain in Maine a short drive from our home. We spent yesterday hiking and enjoying the last day before school and the fall craziness starts. While the older 2 boys and 2nd sons' girlfriend and my daughter were wondering off and hubby and baby son were exploring I took a minute to myself. It was nice to feel the heat of the sun since the breeze had a bit of a chill to it. Then everybody found me...............

We found a cove area in the rock and decided to do pictures. Hoping one comes out good enough for Christmas. We'll see..........

This next picture I think is a super sweet pic of 2nd son and his girl....

After the hike we let the kiddos play on the play ground for a bit. It was a good way to wear the kids out so they would get a good nights sleep for school. ( Although my oldest doesn't start school until tomorrow.)

Sunday evening 2nd son, daughter and baby boy decided to do an iron chef cook off in the kitchen.....here's what our entree looked like :

This was an egg burrito topped with salad and a salad on the side. Although my sweet little daughter forgot which one she had doused with hot sauce at the request of one of the judges ( her daddy) and I ended up with the hot sauce one. It was hot, but not bad.

Our Daughter won , I guess you could say be default. Our older 2 sons got a phone call about meeting some other friends at the park. So, the food the 2nd son made ended up being eaten by him. Since we were kind of tired of eggs by then we had baby boy make the dessert......

Now lets go back and see a picture of our lovely contestant and winner of the dinner portion of the competition.....

Clearly the boy won the dessert portion. Love making things fair :-).

Off to great the kids when they get home from their first day of school.....pics to follow.....

Half lazy Saturday

So I had made this nice list of things I was GOING to get done today. I was going to be proud of myself and feel accomplished! Ok, that is what I thought when I was writing out my list. Now it is a different story! Allen talked me into playing a Scrabble game with him...well, not one but 2!! We have a hand held electronic game. So I tried to sleep between turns. Then I got up early this morning to go to AWANA training at the Church. Super informative meeting. Learned a lot and I am so eager and looking forward to this years AWANA.

Hubby and Daughter went for a walk today......that was nice to see them spend time together. Girls NEED that from their Daddy's'!

Now, for some holidays we give our kids "coupons"...... stay up 30 mins past your bedtime, favorite dessert, extra bedtime story....and so on...... today after their walk, Tiffany decided to use her "build a sundae with Dad" coupon. It was so awesome to watch them interact....

Ugh.........I have been fighting a migraine for 2-3 days now! It is such a pain!!!!! I started feeling a bit better last night when I was making that list...maybe that is why I was so ambitious! Anyway.....it returned to it's "roaring" state. Any of you migraine sufferers know what I mean....you can get the meds to "calm it down" but then once they wear off it's BOOM! So, I took something STRONGER then I normally do......so that being said, if I happen to wonder off subject , bare with me, I'll get back to what I was trying to say....if not, just enjoy......

Ok, yes, back to my "productive/lazy" day. The hubby was meeting with some friends tonight up at Timmy's ( that's what we call Tim Hortons)........he NEEDED to go and do something more then have coffee but whatever, he is old enough to make his own mind up. I just hope he is enjoying himself. So before he left I asked for 10 mins so I could take a power nap on the couch.....I think it turned into more like 30. That was good though. I think my migraines are being fueled by staying up too late and trying to cram too much in the day. With the bits and pieces of cool weather we have been having , it has gotten me into a baking mood!!

My oldest son made some of the BEST blueberry muffins Thursday night....they were SUPER yum!!!

He has become quiet the cook! He has been working at a German restaurant and comes home with some of the yummiest ideas. And we get to taste his SUPER creations/concoctions.

Then the same evening I had made some yummy homemade bread. Basically out of necessity because son #2 likes to have toast all the time........Anyway.....it had been a while since I made homemade bread and we LOVED it all over again! Of course we HAD to break out the homemade strawberry jam..........

That red blob you see is the homemade jam. Again, it was good. Right now, while I am blogging, my dough is rising for the cinnamon buns(mini cinnis) for our high school Sunday school class. Tomorrow is step up day and we will be gaining new students.

Oh, and I also made sugar cookies for the local college students. Our church partners with this ministry thing to where they give the cookies to students. Someone took a survey and it seems that the one thing college students miss a lot is homemade cookies.

Well, it sounds as if everyone is back home from where they had gone......oldest son working at the restaurant, hubby out with the guys and son #2 went to the movies with his "girlfriend"...they "celebrated" their 6 month anniversary....hehehe....how cute!!!!!! Ah.....to be young again.....

the younger 2 have been in bed for some time and I am now feeling the STRONGER meds taking place so that means it is now time for me to take a 10 min nap and then get the mini cinnis done and then to bed!!!!

Sweet ( cinnamon ) dreams :-)

Summer Sweetness and all its' glory

My son just made the announcement to us all that today is the "official" last day of their summer vacation. Monday will not count as it is a holiday....according to him. So how is this last "official" day of summer vacation being spent? Well, the daughter is at a friends, the youngest son put together his first 2 models and the older two, typical ....video games, phone and computer.(too cold for the beach and we already took the pool down).

The hubby is off today and me...........well, I am just spending my time being nostalgic and in comptemplation. Why? Maybe it's the cloudy, overcast weather and the chill in the air? Or thinking that all my babies are growing up so fast! Then that led me to thinking about my Grandmother. Her mothers birthday is the 31st of this month. She would have been well over a 100. Wonder if she was thinking on the day of her babies birth what her babies life would be like.
How many children she would bring into this world and so forth. Honestly, I can say I don't remember thinking those thoughts when my children were born...too much going on I guess. :-)
I love history, especially when it is my families history.

I also have been thinking if my Grandmother got everything out of life she wanted. then of course that made me start thinking if I am getting everything out of life that I want.

I have decided to make a list of things that I REALLY want and things I want to do. I am curious to see how many times this list may change. have you seen the movie the Bucket List? I truly enjoyed it! Of course I bawled at the end! i am such a crier in movies!

Maybe I will share my list on here....maybe it will be too personal, I'll have to wait and see.

until then, here are the things we have been doing since I last posted....back in July! Crazy how much time lapses!

Now let me see if I can think back that far!! :-)

We celebrated my 2nd sons b-day...he's 14 now.....

My nephew William came from South Carolina. He was originally only visiting for 10 days until the airline cancelled his flight and bumped him out 2 more days.

We went to the beach while he was here, although he found the water much to chilly for him. we also did some mini-golfing, bowling and tubing on the boat too. Hope he had a good time.

During this time my Mother's cousin and her husband from Columbia, SC came to visit.( no pics from their visit as I had the digital camera...which I broke:-().

I was only here for one evening of their visit, I was on my way to Boston the next morning to a Women Of Faith Conference with some friends. ( which by the way was AWESOME!! AND I got to talk to Nicole C Mullen!!!).

We went shopping at some really nice places, ate at the California Pizza Kitchen and The Cheesecake Factory... ( do you need someTING?) Let's be serious, sometimes going out of town is all about the places you can eat at!! Especially if none of these places are near your home!

After coming back from Boston, my two older boys went off to boot camp again this year, but to work as staff not to be a cadet enlisted..or whatever you call them.

This was the second time we sent our older two boys off ....the first was with our church youth group for a week of learning and fun in Mass. By the way...the oldest son is going on a missions trip to Durban, South Africa in Feb of 09 I am excited and apprehensive all the same!

Hm..what else have we done this summer...........

Oh yes, hubby had a birthday! And we did LOTS of boating....until we broke the boat.....that has now turned into a project ;-0.

Then there was the GNO....girl's night out....at a baseball game...again, some places you go for the food ( fried dough and fries!!!!). (they were good going down...but eewwww NASTY later!!)

Look girls, there's our "friend" sitting behind us!! UGH!!!

remember I said I had broke the digital camera? Well, I took this picture without having a clue what I was getting! :-) Pretty good huh?

So we pretty much wrapped the summer up with a sailing excursion 2 weeks ago on a Sunday. My 2nd and 3rd child realized sailing is not their "thing". Although they do love them some power boating!! Not the rocking back and forth.

again......pictures taken with a broken digital...you can still take pics but can't see what you are taking them of. Do you know HOW many pics we took HOPING to get a good one ?:-)

so here's to summer.......looking forward to the next one until then....fair winds and following seas...

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!!!!

This is how we spent our 4th......
Hope yours was just as fun!

I am not a homemaker because I had too little ambition or education to make anything else of myself. No—I am a homemaker because God has given me the infinite honour of being a wife, and I delight in employing every ability that He has equipped me with in this glad career. I love being home. ~Lanier Ivester

Borrowed this qoute and I LOVE it! Hope you feel the same way about caring for your family. Somedays may seem overbearing, but God gives us just what we need huh? :-)

What we have been up to..........

Our oldest turned 16 with a party at the beach. We got him kayaking lessons.

The next child had his semi-formal dance at the school. Don't they look so cute??

HAVE to have some relaxing time thrown in there.......we took the boat out on the lake for a swim...rather they went for a swim, I read :-)

This is our daughter out for a swim....a little dark..........

So summer is upon us....yeah!! The weather hasn't been bad...a little warm here and there. We have our pool and a/c's to deal with it :-)

We went out and picked these........

and made some super yummy jam!!

We also are celebrating our 17th anniversary.