Our Last Graduation Party!

This past Saturday evening we threw a graduation party for our youngest child, daughter Emily. We waited until August to have the party as my parents were travelling abroad all summer and just returned home on Friday.  It was a fun party, it was great to see my parents again after a three month absence, and good to see all the family and friends who turned out to share in the celebration.  During the party a massive storm rolled in, the sky became as dark as night, the rain was torrential and horizontal coming from the north, the lights flickered on and off a few times but thankfully the power did not remain out. It was interesting riding out a big storm while the house was absolutely brimming with guests. Emily really wanted to have a bonfire at her party, for most of the summer we were in a drought and under a burn ban. A week before the party the burn ban was lifted and Emily was thrilled because now she could have a bonfire and s'mores.  It is ironic that initially we didn't think we could have a fire due to the drought, and ended up not having a fire because it was too wet after the torrential storm.  Anyway, we have s'more stuff hidden away for another day, I find if I don't hide those Hershey bars they just seem to disappear.
Emily did not want a traditional graduation cake, instead she picked out a Cinderella princess cake for her party. Dave cooked burgers, brats, and hotdogs for everyone, we had of course pictured a picnic type party with everyone outdoors enjoying the evening, playing horseshoe or corn hole, but it was not to be.  After the storm there was a most spectacular sunset, the sky simply glowed orange and was amazingly beautiful.
So here it is a new school year beginning and for the first time in about twenty four years I don't have to go school shopping, go to registration, or anything and you know what I love it!
Here are some pictures from the festivities

The cake.

My Mom with her great grandson Charlie.

Daughter Emily on the right with her good friend Katie on the left.

My Dad.

The amazing sunset, the camera simply does not do it justice.

Son Matt on the left, with a neighbor boy (all grown up now), and our nephew Eric, they were admiring the sunset.

My Mom and Charlie and my nieces Carly and Caitie

Beets, Carrots, Corn, Morning Coffee and The Day of the Triffids!!

Today has been very productive. I was up early with Dave and saw him off to work, I then left the house to drive to Grabill to meet another blogger at the Grabill Country Store for coffee. I pulled into the parking lot and there was only one other car parked, Rebecca got out of her car and walked towards mine and voila we had met in person.  We spent an enjoyable hour chatting about our lives, our children, our grandchildren, and our faith, I am sure we will get together again.  You can meet Rebecca in blog land by visiting her blog, she  maintains seven blogs!!, http://lifeandgodliness-rebecca.blogspot.com/ .  Funnily enough I found Rebecca's blog because she commented on Embers blog, http://kindredofthequietway.blogspot.com/ one day a few weeks ago, Ember lives in Hastings, England, and because of her blog I have now met someone who lives perhaps five miles away from me in NE Indiana!  Isn't that cool?!?!?!?

After coffee I returned home to can beets, carrots, prepare corn for freezing, and I had two loads of wash to hang out.  I hung the wash on the line, and then headed to the garden to pull up beets and carrots. I hauled the bounty back to the picnic table and sitting in the early morning shade of the locust tree I cut the tops and bottoms off of the beets and carrots and then hauled all of the waste to the chicken run, the girls were very excited to have goodies to scrounge around in.  Next stop the garden hose to spray down the veggies and remove as much dirt as possible and then off to the kitchen. My Dad loaned me a CD version of The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, I had listened to the first two disks and they were very good so I was anxious to listen to the rest of the story, and really enjoyed the story as I worked my day away in the kitchen. (Another book I really like by John Wyndham is Chocky). I put the beets on to boil and started to peel and slice carrots.  The carrots were soon in jars and ready for the pressure canner. While the carrots processed I drained the cooked beets and peeled them in readiness for canning. We like pickled beets, so I prepared a mixture of vinegar, sugar, water, cinnamon sticks, mustard seed, whole cloves and whole allspice, the beets were were brought to boil in the liquid and then put in jars to be hot water canned.  I ended up with 8 pints of carrots and 14 pints of pickled beets.
After a tidy up of the kitchen I headed outside to pick the rest of the corn in the first patch, the second patch will be ready in a week or so. Once the corn was picked and shucked I brought it into the kitchen to process.  Freezing corn is easy, blanch, cool, cut off the corn, bag up and freeze.
Our tomatoes are starting to ripen and I know that I will canning many jars of them in the next few weeks, our green beans are running late, but hopefully I will have some to can soon.
Here are some pictures from this morning.

Beets tipped and topped.

My Handy Dandy "Cart", I use this old stroller to haul all kinds of things around!

Just the carrots were left to pick in this garden

Close up of a Zinnia

More Zinnia

Yummy, carrots, I wish I could put the aroma of them on  my blog, they smell so wonderfully good!

A deformed carrot, the size of  my fist, I left it outside.

The deformed carrot top was starting to flower, I had never seen a carrot flower before, it reminds me a little of Queen Anne's Lace.

A pile of beets and carrots ready for a quick hose off!

The girls eyeing their bounty!

A wonderful day to hang clothes out.

All clean and ready to go to the kitchen.

8 pints of carrots.

Corn getting a quick wash before blanching.

14 cans of pickled beets to add to the carrots.

Corn all ready for bagging and then off to the freezer.

The Joys of Gardening

Each year we plant several very large vegetable gardens, we have four going this year. Although it has been a challenging growing season as we are/were in a drought that has seen some relief in past few weeks the garden as survived. We are now moving into the busy time of harvesting and storing our garden bounty. It is so satisfying to be able to walk out to the garden and pick fresh items to prepare for supper, and when grandsons Henry and Patrick are along it is superbly enjoying as they have such a sense of wonder and adventure.
On Saturday evening the little boys walked out with me to feed the calves, on the way back we stopped off to check on the carrots, they appeared to be ready so I let the boys pull several out, they were so excited and amazed by the carrots. They each proudly carried a bundle of carrots to the house, Henry announced that the carrots smelled really good and he thinks that maybe he might like them now!  Patrick had already eaten a good part of one carrot, dirt and all, before we were in the house.  Henry was so proud of the first carrot he picked that he had to take it home with him, Patrick was more interested in eating the carrots.
The following day we had all of our family over for supper, the boys and I headed off to feed the calves and gather some items from the garden to go with dinner.  First stop the corn patch, oh what fun to run through the corn stalks, what fun to pull giant ears off of the plant. Next stop the tomatoes, early days yet, but could we find a nice ripe one, we could not. Okay off to the potato patch, Grandpa met us there with a shovel, we were going digging for gold, that is gold yukon potatoes, the absolute look of amazement on the children's faces as suddenly potatoes appeared, they were scrabbling in the dirt and the race was on to see how many potatoes they could put in the bucket.  We hauled our bounty over to the fire pit, shucked the corn, stopped by the chicken house so the boys could gather eggs and then headed to the house.
Dinner was great, we did a mixed grill, some chicken breasts, hamburgers, and italian sausage, we had boiled yukon gold potatoes, corn on the cob, salad, and fresh fruit salad, it was a wonderful summery meal made all the more enjoyable because we had produced some of the food ourselves.
I so enjoy keeping our gardens, they are a lot of work, but it is rewarding work.  Yesterday I spent several hours weeding, which sounds like a horrible chore, except I enjoy it.  I enjoy the solitude of garden, time alone with my own thoughts praying and talking with God, the sounds of birds, the whisper of leaves, the distant hum of a lawn mower, the joyful shouts of some children far off who sounded as if they might be swimming in a pond, and the satisfaction upon completing the chore that the gardens looked neat and tidy once more.

A Couple of Movies You Might Enjoy

Do you use Netflix?

I recently watched two movies on Netflix and really enjoyed them, they are both available on the streaming service.

First movie,Heavens Above, (1963) starring Peter Sellers.
A thought provoking comedy! Peter Sellers is cast as the Reverend Smallwood, a gentle soul who truly strives to live the gospel life and it causes all kinds of problems for him. This is an English movie, black and white, and although almost fifty years old the attitudes portrayed in the movie are still prevalent today. The only downside to the movie is the ending, it is a bit lame. Here is a link to the Amazon.com review:
http://www.amazon.com/Heavens-Above-Peter-Sellers/dp/B00007AJE7/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1343635127&sr=1-1&keywords=heavens+above


Second movie, Driftwood, (1947) starring Natalie Wood.
Another comedy, rather sweet, some funny dialogue. Natalie Wood plays a young orphan girl who has been raised in virtual isolation by her Great Gran Pappy, (we never hear what happened to her parents, or grandparents), a preacher.  The little girl knows the bible inside and out, when Great Gran Pappy dies she has to leave to go to Sodom and Gomorrah, which in reality is civilization. The little girl learns how to relate to others, and they learn from her. It is a nice movie and I would highly recommend it for a rainy afternoon when you don't have anything else to do.
 http://www.amazon.com/Driftwood-VHS-Ruth-Warrick/dp/0782009832/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1343635413&sr=1-1&keywords=driftwood+1947

So, Did You See The Olympic Opening Ceremony - What Did You Think?

WOW - I felt a bit baffled by the whole thing!  Our neighbor came down to eat a supper with us and then with a glass of homemade blueberry wine in hand we retired to the living room to watch the Olympic XXX Opening Ceremony. We missed probably the first fifteen minutes, and we started to watch as thousands of performers dressed in very drab/dreary period costume looked miserable as they rolled up turf, smoke stacks emerged from the floor, and depressed looking women kept pulling on large handles attached to some sort of cog wheel.  In the meantime a strange looking woman with long flowing locks played music with a look of extreme concentration on her face. No one appeared to be having a very good time. There was so much going on at all times it just looked confusing and murky. We found a bit boring, then it looked like Sgt. Pepper's Army marched through the middle of things, and another large trail of women suffragettes were marching around all that was going on. One gentleman in a top hat and tails with a cigar in his mouth kept appearing on camera as he stood around with a dozen or so other men similarly attired, but who he was I not sure. All of this was performed on a created grassy hill with a large tree at the top, we started referring to it as the giant compost hill! Once we moved through the working mans point of view of history through the industrial revolution we moved on to the next segment of the ceremony; a strange, nonsensical tribute to the NHS ( National Health Service), this included hundreds of giant hospital beds with supposedly ill children leaping up and down as if on a trampoline, and nurses dressed in period costume dancing around, the children then all settled down to sleep and close up shots showed loving nurses reading stories to the little dears. Then out of no where monsters appeared, enormous puppet monsters lurching all around, and then an ginormous baby appeared in the middle of the arena, and we are talking ginormous, way bigger than a school bus! Can you say BIZARRE.

Now for the parts that I really enjoyed, and that truly made up for the absurd parts described above. There was a great parody of the movie Chariots of Fire with Mr. Bean, it was funny and well done. Mr. Bean would have stolen the show, except for an even better stunt. A short film started to play starting off at Buckingham Palace, James Bond arrives to pick up the Queen, we get to see a few of her Corgi's running around (they kind of stole the moment they were so cute).  James Bond and the Queen fly off in the royal helicopter, we are treated to some magnificent aerial views of London, and then they are hovering over the Olympic Arena.  The classic James Bond music is booming away and suddenly it appears that the dear Queen is parachuting into the arena, we LOVED IT!!, and it appeared everyone there LOVED IT. The next shot was of the Queen with slightly windblown hair arriving with Prince Philip to sit in the royal box! I also really enjoyed all of the Mary Poppinses floating down over the hospital beds it was quite a vision to behold.
This was followed by a montage of British pop culture, it was enjoyable, clips of favorite pop music were played along with a montage video, included in the music, Queen, David Bowie, Eric Clapton, and many more, a little later a portion of Sweet Dreams by Annie Lennox, then a tribute to 80's rap music, (thankfully this was short and sweet).

After all of this came the parade of athletes from all over the world, they moved at a fast pace and were accompanied with continual drumming by hundreds of drummers lining the track. At this point the giant compost hill came into it's own, as each team ended their walk they planted their flag into the hill, by the end of the parade the hill was covered in flags from countries all over the world and it was a fantastic way to display them all. Once all the athletes were gathered in the center of the arena we were treated to Sir. Paul McCartney at the piano playing/singing Hey Jude. It was great, there were many shots of the athletes standing arm in arm swaying to the music and singing along, and Sir. Paul really seemed to be enjoying himself, it was a wonderful, warm, fuzzy, way to end the parade of athletes.

The lighting of the Olympic torches was spectacular as 200 lit torches all soared upwards to form the cauldron, it was an amazing spectacle.  Then came the fireworks, they were breathtakingly wonderful, truly a feat of design and implementation, AWESOME, AMAZING, and HUGELY ENJOYABLE.

So did I like the ceremonies or hate them? Overall I really enjoyed the show,  some of it was weird, even a tad incomprehensible, but for the most part it was a lot of fun and did not take itself too seriously, and I think it will be one of the most memorable openings for many years to come.

!!!LET THE GAMES BEGIN!!!

Not Much Going On

July has been a relatively quite month. The last few weeks have brought rain, a lot of it, so our drought is somewhat relieved here in NE Indiana, in fact at noon today our county will lift the burn ban!  Emily is very happy that the burn ban will be lifted as we are celebrating her high school graduation on the evening of August 4 with a cookout and she really wants to have a bonfire and now she can!
Our garden has received the rain with relief, the plants look so much happier now they have warm, damp soil to grow in. The drought has taken its toll, our potato yield is minimal, we had peas but not many, our cabbages are very small as are our onions. We have eaten our first tomato, yummy, I cut it up and mixed it with egg salad it was delicious. We are enjoying cucumbers and corn on the cob from the garden. This weekend I will bring in all the corn from our first patch and get it blanched and put in the freezer. The beets are ready to come in, I like to pickle them, they are so good as an accompaniment to so many meals.  I planted carrots this year, they have grown and seem to be of a decent size, I am going to pull them this weekend, I will keep some fresh and may look at canning some, depends on how many I have. I love carrots, my favorite way to eat a carrot, RAW!  We have some cantaloupes on, a couple of watermelons growing and a few pumpkins.  The green peppers are on but small, probably because of the drought, and the green beans are running behind schedule, the plants look good, have many blossoms but no beans yet, usually I am finishing up canning green beans by now so I assume the drought stunted them?? The tomato plants look good, we did water them a lot, they are bushy and full of fruit, we will wade through them this weekend and pick all of the ripe ones.
Emily will be going to MEPS on August 6, this is the physical examination and the first real step to joining the military, she is planning to go into the Air Force, so if goes well on Aug 6/7 she will soon after find out when she will be leaving for basic training, she is very excited about her future as she should be.  Since our oldest son Matt already did the Air Force, served and has been out for a year now, we know the ropes and Emily has taken a lot of advice from Matt.  I imagine we will be taking another trip to San Antonio towards the end of the year for another basic training graduation!
Ben and some friends have rented student accommodations in Muncie, Indiana, they will be going to college, working part time, please pray that he finds a job in Muncie soon.  August 13 is the date they can begin living in their new home, we are gathering basic household items together so they can fend for themselves.
It would appear that by the end of the year Dave and I will be empty-nesters and so begins a new phase of our life :)

Oh, and be sure to check out Emily's blog, How the Cookie Crumbles, http://thoughtsfromemilyslife.blogspot.com/, I have a link to it in my blog list too.

June Happenings and Wise Words To Live By and a Recipe

Wow can you believe that June is over and we already a week into July?  We had a busy June, Emily turned 19 on the 6/14, and Amber was 26 on the 6/26.  We had a family reunion in mid June with Dave's, mother's side of the family, and last Saturday we had a family/friends party at our house.
Indiana is in a drought, our part of the state is now classified as  "extreme drought".  We did get a little rain on June 30, but not in a way that we wanted, the storm blew in with 90 mile an hour winds and did a huge amount of damage throughout our county and left 118,000 customers without electricity.  Amber was over at our house visiting with our three grandsons, and Dave was at home. We sat in the family room and watched the storm clouds roll in, the sky got darker and darker and almost had a greenish color to it, and then an extremely strong wind hit the house, we all leaped up, grabbed a child and rushed to the basement, we were no sooner down the stairs when the power went out.  As our basement is a walkout we were able to watch the storm, the neighbors wooden swing set toppled, a bale of straw picked up and blew across their yard, branches ripped out of the tree by our barn, the rain came down horizontally and thunder and lightning were non-stop.  Once the weather calmed down a bit I went upstairs to look out out front of our property, I was saddened to see that one of our huge pine trees at the end of the driveway had snapped in half.  We were very thankful that our house was not damaged and we were all okay.
Once the storm rolled through the temperatures started to heat up, and for the past week we have had highs in the very upper nineties and low hundreds, it is extremely hot.  We were without power for about 78 hours,   we were hooked up early, there are still about 800 people without power and they are now in their eighth day.  Most people were without power for five days.  On Thursday evening another violent storm rolled through and knocked out power to almost 30,000 customers, the linemen have really had their work cut out for them.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we celebrated two birthdays this month. Emily turned 19, she wanted chocolate chip cheesecake for her birthday cake and hamburgers, asparagus, and hollandaise sauce for dinner.  Amber turned 26, she wanted strawberry cake and mexican food.  We had a fun time celebrating both birthdays.  On June 30 we had a big family/friends party at our house, our son Matt, and son-in-love Brad grilled chicken for everyone, they did an awesome job as everyone raved about the chicken.  I fixed 10lbs of potato salad, baked beans, veggies and dip, layer salad, coleslaw, creamy cucumber salad, a large pan of banana pudding, a yellow cake with chocolate frosting and monster cookies, we had plenty to eat and not a whole lot left over so we guesstimated about right.  We did not have power, thankfully I had baked the cake and cookies before the power went off.  I was able to prepare the rest of the food and am always glad for my gas stove when the power goes out.  Without power we have no running water, so we had to buy water for cooking and drinking, and haul large buckets of water from our son Matt's house. Thankfully we have a generator so we were able to keep our freezers and refrigerator running along with a couple of other things, everyone was understanding of the situation and enjoyed the party.
On July 4 the temperature was around 100, no one wanted to go outside. Dave slow cooked short ribs on the grill, they were mighty fine and took 3 hours to cook to perfection and about 10 minutes to consume :).  Because of the drought there is a burn ban in place and a firework ban, Fort Wayne had their annual display but most communities opted to not do a firework display this year.  Of course it would not be July 4th if someone didn't find the Nathans Hot Dog Eating Contest on TV, broadcast live from Coney Island.  I must say it is a most revolting event, in fact I was getting so grossed out I couldn't watch. The winner was Joey Chestnut who managed to consume and astounding 68 hotdogs in 10 minutes, YIKES!
Can you believe that our newest grandson Charlie will be six weeks old tomorrow. He has filled out so nicely and is such a well behaved, contented little fellow, he is starting to smile :)
Last week I was in a local Amish store picking up some sewing notions and I noticed a coloring book picture hanging on the wall behind the counter.  The picture was carefully colored and hung with pride and had an excellent message, "A Hard Job is Many Easy Jobs Left Undone", how true is that.  I think they are  words to live by, and as we know it usually does not pay to procrastinate.
Today I made bologna salad, something I make a few times a year, grandson Henry had fun turning the crank on the meat grinder and stuck with it to grind 2lbs of bologna.

Bologna Salad

2lbs of bologna (ground)

4 hard boiled eggs (chopped)

2 T pickle relish

Mayonnaise to combine

Directions:

Grind the bologna, stir in the chopped boiled eggs and pickle relish, then add mayonnaise and stir until everything is blended.  Makes very nice sandwiches, store in the refrigerator.

Emily with the chocolate chip cheesecake

Amber with the strawberry cake

Branches down by the barn

Our poor pine tree

The top half of the tree lying in the road.

One of gardens, notice everything is leaning eastward after  the wind

Henry the master of the meat grinder.