family fun*

Saturday morning was pretty low key. We spent most of the morning enjoying family and watching the baby girl. I made pancakes for breakfast (which was closer to brunch than breakfast time) and then we just took it easy for a little while.

Madelyn got in to Gigi's Coke Zero. It was pretty comical. I think Madelyn is going to think that "no" means, "wait a minute while Mommy gets her camera and takes a picture". I couldn't help myself though. She pulled one out and put it straight to her mouth. She's a genius. Ha!
Gigi and Papa mailed Madelyn a swing after seeing how much she loved the ones at the park and Papa and Luke hung it on the downstairs porch. I know that we will be spending many of our mornings out there from now on.
Papa, Gigi and Aunt Kenda watched her swing in it for the first time.
She really enjoys swinging. It will be so nice to have one at the house now!
Thank you Gigi and Papa!
I am pretty sure that Madelyn is going to be Papa's little buddy. She cracks up at all his silly noises that he makes and loves to play with him.

That afternoon was round 2 of canning (more correctly "jarring" in our case). This time Kenda and Glenna took a shot at it with me. We made strawberry jam, more blackberry jam and more pickled okra.
I have really enjoyed the process and it has been surprisingly easy...especially the pickled okra.

Check out all the goods! That's only about half of the finished product from two days of work!
I am starting to think this won't be much of a "blog blitz" after all. It's nearly 2am (yawn) and I have only narrowed it down to 53 pictures from all of the Fourth of July festivities that took place yesterday. I am not good at narrowing anything down. I am sure there are 18 typos considering I keep nodding off between sentences. To bed I go. Blog blitz...holiday weekend edition...to be continued!

and the blog blitz begins

I haven't really blogged in a few days. I debated just posting a bunch of pictures and skimping on the words. Then I thought I would regret it later. After thinking about all the events of the last five days, I thought maybe I would recount it all in words and skimp on the pictures. Then I knew I would regret that later. So instead of skimping on or the other, I'm up late and in it for the long haul. More than likely I will spend a couple of hours choosing what 15-25 pictures out of a few hundred from the weekend to upload along with which stories to share over the course of probably three or four blogs!

So the blog blitz begins now! Go team, go! (Excuse my moment of extreme cheesiness...sometimes it just comes so naturally.)

Friday night Madelyn spent the evening with Luke at the house while I went to Girl's Night Out at my sister's church.
She works for the Women's Ministry there and did such an awesome job with the event. It was part of a HUGE celebration that they did for the Fourth of July. She has been talking about it since before she left for Egypt over a year ago!

These little drink pouches, all 1,400, that she and some volunteers made looked so cute on all the tables!
Rach and Grandma before everything got started.
I think I heard Chonda Pierce at a Women of Faith Conference, but I could be wrong. If so, it was not as memorable as Friday night. She had me laughing so hard that my side hurt about half way through. If you ever have a chance to hear her speak...go.
Some of the girls from the youth group, Megan and Samantha, and their mom came too and sat with us.
Mom, Rhonda (Marlo's Mom), me, Marlo and Grandma (wrapped in a blanket because it was 38 degrees in the conference center) stopped for a picture.
Good job on the event Rachel! It was a perfect girl's night out.

Blog blitz round two up next :)

Happy Fourth Of July

feeling a litle domestic

Just because I am feeling festive, here's a sneak peek of my table. I made the table runner. But that's not why I am feeling so domestic.I am feeling domestic because yesterday my Grandma and I had a little fun in the kitchen. My Grandmother-in-law (Luke's Grandma Joyce) got me a subscription to Paula Deen's magazine for Christmas two years ago (and I love it) and in this month's issue there was a section on "preserving summer". So many recipes for jams, jellies, pickles and more.

I have never made home made jam before so I thought I would give it a shot. Many thanks to my mom for supplying the goods.

Just getting started. First up, blackberry jam. I actually think we made the raspberry jam first but I don't know that I got any good pictures of that "in process".

Madelyn pretty much just played at our feet the entire time. She is so good. I am seriously fearful of #2 (if there is a #2) simply because of how awesome #1 is. I have been told that means we are due for a wild one!

Grandma kept checking the recipe to make sure that I was telling her right. Don't let her sweet little granny looks fool you, she is witty and sassy. Ha! (She really is the sweetest lady that you will ever encounter, but that doesn't mean she isn't a jokester-just ask my mom how she made fun of me stuttering yesterday.)

At one point it looked as though everything was about to boil over.

Grandma got it under control though.

Thanks to the little kit my mom bought for us, it was super easy to pour in to the jars.

For some reason I was really anxious while they were boiling to ensure a good seal. I kept thinking one of them was going to burst open at any moment.

Next up on our attempts to preserve summer, pickled okra.

The finished product.

I put one of the jars of raspberry jam in the fridge last night and Luke and I enjoyed it on an english muffin this morning. It was tasty. The hubby even said so! I'd call that a success.

wednesday

Wednesday was pretty quiet around here. Minus the crazy nine month old baby girl that likes to use her lungs. Other than that, it was quiet. We spent the morning at home and then the afternoon with Grandma at my parent's house.We spent the majority of the day keeping an eye on Hurricane Alex since it appeared to be headed straight for Luke's parents. (Thankfully it was not as terrible as it could have been and they are doing great!)

Madelyn adores MeeMaw Fee. They have played together non stop. My Grandma will say, "Come here Madelyn. Come to MeeMaw." and she crawls right on over.

Right as I was taking this picture she told Madelyn to, "wave to Mommy" and she did!!

I was so thankful that my mom and Grandma watched Madelyn for me so that I could go to Wednesday night church and not worry about her being cranky on the 30 minute drive home.

She had so much fun with them.

Not sure what is going on here, but it made me laugh.

She is always at MeeMaw's feet.

Aunt Rach stopped by and thought it would be fun to put MK in her old doll carriage.

Apparently she enjoyed it.

Lately Madelyn has been wrestling all of her stuffed animals and dolls about like this...

We are going to have to work on being gentle and loving the animals or I'm afraid she will end up being the play date bully when she gets older.

Poor Curious George took a good beating.

riding along in my automobile

Tuesday I didn't even stop to take pictures until the little one was in the bath tub and getting ready to wind down for the evening. By then it was raining pretty hard. Once Madelyn had her pj's on her first stop was the back door. She loves to look out the back door...especially when it is raining.I have a joke with Rachel that she always gets Madelyn wound up right before bed. It's only funny because it's the truth. Tuesday was no exception. Madelyn + pj's + sleepy eyes = cue for Aunt Rach to make her giggle like crazy. It's always too cute to get mad, but I usually pretend to be.

Aunt Rach gave Maddie her first ride in her Radio Flyer toy. It converts from a walker to a stroller to a ride ON toy, but Aunt Rach is pretty creative and decided Maddie needed a ride IN it.

She loved it of course (she loves just about everything Aunt Rach does).

It didn't stop her sleepy little self from snoozing either!

In fact, after MeeMaw gave MK her bottle, she was out. She even slept for 13.5 hours!