A couple of videos

Easter 2009

Here are the pictures from our trip to the farm from this weekend. We saw horses and cows (which I don’t have pics of unfortunately) and chickens. We played on the trampoline, in the flower bed, and went fishing. We dyed eggs and had all sorts of fun at Granny and Papa’s House. I’ll update this album tomorrow (Sunday) hopefully, with pictures from the rest of our Easter festivities. See More Pictures Here!

chickens

smelling

bouncing

bunnies

touching

watching

smiling

traditions

eggs

basket

goodies

eggs

hunting

friends

cookie

Updated on Monday 4/13/09 – We didn’t get a picture of us all dressed up this year because we were running late before church, and Jonah spilled juice all over his outfit on the way home from church, so it all had to come off then. We did get some pictures of Jonah hunting Easter eggs at the party we went to last night. One of Jason’s co-workers had a Easter potluck dinner that we went to and I was really surprised how well Jonah did looking for the eggs outside (his first outdoors egg hunt) with all the other kids. In all the hub-bub of the day, we really didn’t have a good opportunity to give Jonah his Easter Basket, so we did that today when Jason got home from work.

In the future, I think we’ll give it to him on Easter Saturday morning. I’d rather make a distinct difference in what each of the different parts of Easter are about… like that the typical fun Easter Saturday traditions (dying eggs, eating candy, egg hunts, bunnies, chicks, and what not) are about celebrating the beginning of spring and not try to intertwine it with the religious aspects of Easter Sunday. I want Easter Sunday have its own traditions that are reverent and give thanks to our Savior and what He’s done for us… like dressing in our Sunday best, sharing meals with friends or family, and like how our church does this flower cross thing… where people bring fresh cut flowers to put in the wire mesh cross in the atrium all morning and by the end of the last service, the cross is fully covered in flowers. Jonah even put one in it this year! I feel like trying to make some sort of connection between rabbit handing out colored chicken eggs filled with candy and the crucifixion on the cross is just ridiculous and that the two should be separate from each other. So they happen on the same weekend, yes, but not the same day. I wish there was a good way to separate Christmas like that too. I think the fun family/cultural traditions are good to have, but I think kids need to learn what is “just a fun tradition” and what is “biblically relevant” for the different holidays. Anyway… that just became a really long rambling rant I guess. Congrats if you read this far and aren’t plucking your eyeballs out! hehe

Labor Day Weekend

It’s going to be a busy one, I won’t deny that! Here’s the run down of the extended weekend, and I’ll add whatever other details and pics after the fact, when we get back! 

Tonight our friend Brent is spending the night here so he can run a race around here in the morning. Then we’ll be headed off in the morning to go to my great aunt (mom’s mom’s sister) and her husband’s surprise 50th anniversary family cookout. Then we’ll stay at my grandparents’ house (the farm) on Saturday night, and travel down to Tyler to visit Jason’s mom and see his grandfather’s new place at the assisted living place. My sister is also turning 18 today, and is having her party tonight, so I’ll miss that unfortunately, but we’ll see them on Sunday and Monday too. Then head back here on Monday afternoon and just pass out from our weekend of travels and partying!

Pictures to come! (If I remember to take some!)

Edited on 9/1/08 to apologize for not taking any pictures…. I was a bit distracted with all that was going on. More to come on that later.

Canning for Dummies

So yeah. I seriously know nothing about being a gardener. It apparently helps to check the internet before just ASSUMING that all figs are the same. I was asking my grandmother what they were supposed to look like when they were ripe, and she said brownish, but if you can leave them until they turn purple, they’ll be REALLY good. Well, come to find out via Google, I have a completely different variety that is fully ripened at golden yellow. Unfortunately, I picked mine at golden yellow and let them continue to “ripen” until they started to turn brown. And after almost a week now, they HAVE turned brown and purple in some cases, only draw back is that they are now fuzzy. Yeah. Fuzzy. I’ve wasted over 2lbs of figs now because they got rotten! Stupid figs were already ripe when I picked them! *sigh* I just hope I have enough still out there that I can at least muster a FEW jars of fig preserves. I’ll let ya know how that goes. I’ve never canned anything in my life, even though I’ve got 2 sets of grandparents who do it and my parents even have. I got instructions on the general process from my grandmother tonight, over the phone, but I was really hoping to go up and visit her to learn how to do it first hand. Unfortunately, that trip to the farm was cancled when Nana passed away. I’m hoping I can get some time to go up there soon though. They’ve never even seen my little man walking and he’s been doing that for months now!