Sitting at the picnic table beneath two maple trees with the breezes blowing feels a bit cool. Pretty sweet for midsummer. Wayne and I just got done unloading three loads of hay. Seems with it being Saturday night, Colleen and Brian had better things to do with their friends. Karah, Emily, and Jolisa had other jobs to finish. Jesse flexed his seven-year-old muscles and helped me unload the bales. He was, well, not exactly in the way, but I practiced my patience with him being on the wagon.
The landscape is so lush and green with the vegetation growing like crazy. Our minds often travel back to the intense heat and drought of last year. Definitely a year we won’t forget. Through God’s grace we survived.
On June 29, at 1:30 in the morning, our family, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, settled ourselves into a 12-passenger van with a family friend as our driver, and we started on an 800-mile trek to northeastern Oklahoma. We had plans to spend time with my sister Freda’s family for close to a week.
Ordering our breakfast at Cracker Barrel was a trip in itself. Our four youngest hardly ever eat at a restaurant for breakfast, and they had a bit of a time deciding what they wanted. We pulled it off with nary a hitch, enjoyed the delicious food, steered them past all those enticing gadgets in the lobby, and soon we were on our way again.
In the afternoon we enjoyed a short stop at the Precious Moments Chapel* in Carthage, Missouri, marveling at Sam Butcher’s talents.
We arrived at Enos and Freda’s house around 4:00 in the afternoon, ready to stretch our limbs and get some exercise.
We enjoyed an awesome week devouring many a s’more and grilled pineapple and bananas. We talked, laughed, and did just about all that goes with being at a sister’s house with a fun family like she has. We had heated discussions on the amount of sugar in a 12-ounce can of pop, amongst many other things.
On Sunday we went to their church. Throughout the week we visited in many friends’ homes. We went shopping a bit, went to the Tulsa Zoo, rented a swimming pool for an afternoon, and did laundry three times. The days were a gorgeous 80 degrees, the nights a cool 50 degrees, with absolutely no humidity. Those temps are almost unheard-of for Oklahoma at that time of year.
All too soon it was time to head back home again. We came home safe and sound on Friday night, July 5, around 9:00.
You should have seen Jacob when we opened the van doors! He would have crawled into the van had we let him. It was nice to be welcomed home.
Reality hit us straight-on the next morning. There were mounds of laundry to wash, green beans to can, a garden that needed attention after a week of neglect. It was back to the grind, and that felt good too. We can only vacation so long. No matter how much fun we had, our normal home setting is still the best. This is where we belong.
We’ve been busy as usual, with more deadlines than normal. The next two weeks we have weddings that we are involved in, and then we have a wedding every other week until sometime in October. Seven weddings that I am to help cook for. These are highly anticipated events for our family. Colleen is server in several of these weddings, so we have been busy making new dresses for her and also for me as people involved wear certain colors… colors the bride picks out for us.
Jesse needs a pair of pants to match his Sunday suit coat, plus several pair for school. My baby is in first grade. I have to admit he is not a baby anymore. At age seven, his brain is ready and in dire need of academic stimulation. I can tell it is high time for him to begin with his formal education. He is a builder, making many paper airplanes, canoes, taking apart any old toy tractor or equipment and rebuilding it into something different. He always is looking for something to take apart. Sometimes he took things apart his mom and sisters weren’t too happy about.
I am having a hard time getting to the sewing machine this time of the year. I have ordered four bushels of peaches to can. Too bad they don’t come to the door already in cans. I also froze a lot of peaches in single-serving containers for the children to put into their lunches.
This summer when we picked the black raspberries, I didn’t have time to process them so I stuck them in the freezer. Last week I organized the freezer and decided I might as well process them now. I made 13 pints of jelly and 9 quarts of pie filling. It can be such a purple mess, but once I sink my teeth into a piece of homemade bread slathered with black raspberry jelly I quickly forget about the purple mess.
I also canned chicken bits and broth last week. I cooked 40 pounds of chicken for that. That’ll make us some good chicken and biscuits or chicken and noodles. It is such a grand satisfaction and convenience to have those foods in the basement. We are so richly blessed.