Nuggets Along the Trail: 6-30-11 Good-bye June

Thursday, June 30, 2011

6-30-11 Good-bye June

Yep, blink, just like that, it’s over. But it was a good one, chock full of nuggets along the trail and countless precious moments to remember. We are blessed indeed and praise our heavenly Father for once again bringing us safely this far. I’ll try to recap the week if I can remember that far back.

After a stormy rainy Sunday night, Monday morning was drizzly. It turned nice in the afternoon, but not hot. Gotta love that :)

Tuesday eight of us headed to Restmor for a nice singing with lots of help which is always very enjoyable. We came home to do piano lessons and a whole list of other tasks, but instead Dad surprised us by coming home for lunch! So the list didn’t get done, but that’s ok; we much prefer Dad surprises! Tuesday night was rough. After a late weekend, a late Monday night, and an early Tuesday so we could get to the library before Restmor, Ben had a headache. And this one was bad, an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10. It culminated when he puked twice, and finally, thankfully, he fell asleep, exhausted. About the time we’re wondering if something is really wrong, and if we should take him in for testing or something, we always come full circle back to the fact that when he is overtired he gets headaches, and the next morning he is fine. Which, THANKFULLY, once again Wednesday morning, HE WAS!!!! He came out of his darkened sound-proof (well the fan is a good white noise anyway) room Wednesday morning with his normal ornery grin, and oh boy, was I glad to see that! And he’s been fine ever since! And we’ve been doing much better at getting him to bed in good time, even if it is still light outside. Hopefully he’ll outgrow this odd malady, but until then, Dad & I have a serious charge to take better care of him and make sure he gets his sleep! [His head hurt so bad he was ready to give ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS so he would NEVER have to have a headache again.]

Wednesday I turned 42. I had a great morning home with the kids, and we had another great time at the creek (first time since May 12 this year!)(it’s been too cold!!). After that my day went downhill, as somehow I picked up a hideous headache after the creek fun ended :( NO FUN. The beautiful birthday cake from G’pa & G’ma Steiner, the delicious rolls from my dear friend, and numerous text, email, and postal birthday wishes made my day special, but boy that headache sure didn’t! After the Tylenol-nap-walk treatment, it went away somewhat, but the rest of the day I was still zapped of energy and just didn’t feel 100%. I strongly suspect it was related to my late Tuesday night (remember Ben was up?) and early mornings (always up around 5 or 5:30, don’t know why) plus the thunderstorm kept me up some on Sunday night - - anyway, after an early bedtime last night and an uninterrupted eight hours of sleep, I felt much better today - - praise the LORD!!!

And today was another beautiful day. The older kids (Tori, Jacob, Kate) did a lot of garden work, and I did inside work with the littles, and by 11:30 we were off to the creek again for another jolly good time with NO headache following. Dad & I went away for supper – and we thoroughly enjoyed our nonstop conversation with NO interruptions :) Oh how I love and delight in our children, but I love and delight in their Dad even MORE!! We weren’t out long, though because we also did some errands, the main one being some Sevin to spray on our trees which the Japanese beetles are literally destroying :( Nasty things.

Now some pictures that the kids didn’t use this week - - -

As long as he’s practicing I’m not too fussy about posture! :)

A few more px from Wednesday’s creek trip.

For size perspective, this cup is an Aldi 8 ounce yogurt cup.

Classic!

And just what are they looking at?

I was told it’s a HUGE catfish.

Obviously, HUGE is relative! :)

The beautiful white sands of Lake Michigan it is not, but I think the kids have just as much (more?) fun as they would there!

And beautiful clear blue waters of Florida it is not, but it’s cold and wet and we love it…dirty water and all. I’m glad God made dirt not to hurt!

Yeah, we’ll all be glad when the 4-wheeler is back from the shop…the mower isn’t quite as trustworthy. Can you find Jewel in the picture?

Redneck we are, no denial there!!!!!!!

Potatoes look beautiful in this patch – we finally figured out why. For years & years & years we’ve been dumping wood ashes from the wood-burner right in this area. And according to the internet (which as we all know is always right) - you guessed it – root crops thrive on soil that is fertilized with wood ash! Yay, us!!

LOTS of blossoms on the cantaloupe plants – and the black tarp is slowly disappearing – a GOOD thing!!

First yellow zucchini. Can hardly wait – shouldn’t be long now - - -

Gotta love the eighties look. I remember U. Jeff had shades just like this. Boy, was he cool.

Occasionally I let Sarah and Jewel take pictures (they take the # of their age); they took these next few shots – I don’t know who took what, but they both do a pretty good job for pipsqueaks!