Thursday, July 3, 2014

Lake and Blueberries!

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We are headed to the lake for the third weekend in a row! That is quite unusual for us :) It has been so fun. The boys all LOVE it there. The water is perfect for little boys...we have a muddy beach where they like to watch, and catch, minnows. The water used to be clear but I think the all the runoff from the rain the last year has turned it brown. They couldn't care less. Zack LOVES it out there. He would wade around all day.

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We also have access to a boat and water trampoline that we like to go to. We take the boat for a 5 minute ride along the lake to a little bay. Before playing in the water we drive the boat all along the shore to scare away potential alligators (I put that in there for you, Mom). Zack wears his life jacket and likes to swim around in the water. It is pretty deep...maybe 15+ feet? The top foot or so is warm--like pee-warm. Under that the water is chilly, so we neither get too cold, nor too hot. I have no pictures of any of that because I am always in the water!! It feels so good on my big belly :)

This last trip we cruised around the lake, just our little family, while we ate a snack. It was delightful. William looks pretty sunburned here, and he was, but if I could just strip that towel off Trevor you would see his is way worse. He somehow made it a whole day without putting on sunscreen, and has been paying for it all week.
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While we were cruising, Samuel said, "If I had a lifetime supply of fuel, I would do this forever!"

Today we head down again for the 4th. I made lots of goodies--Mom's cakey brownies, chocolate chip zucchini cake, rice crispy bars, and red white and blue jello. The kids helped. :)

We have been putting up all kinds of produce lately. Last week we went blueberry picking! The pictures aren't great--we went at dusk after Wednesday night church. I though you'd like to see anyway :) It was absolutely delightful. Not too hot, not really buggy at all, and all the kids had a blast. I could hear them running up and down the rows, finding the best berries, racing to see who could get the most, or the biggest, or the sweetest. Zack flitted from one brother to another, eating and picking. Everyone was happy. Especially me.

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We bought 20+ pounds!! Everyone had an almost-full bucket (except Zack) and some of us may have had tummy aches from too many blueberries! Boy, warm blueberries straight off the bush may be the best thing ever. We froze bags and bags of them for smoothies. Last year we picked froze enough to last us almost all year long!

This week I also made another batch of pickles. We are experimenting with our recipe...trying to get the spices just right. I still have enough cucs in the fridge to do probably 3 more batches!! We also did 2 small batches of salsa. Can't seem to get the flavor we really want. I may just freeze the rest of the 20+ tomatoes sitting on my counter. The day I did salsa, I got rid of most of what was on the counter, and when I was done, Tim brought in as many more tomatoes fresh from the garden.

I found mangos on sale at Wal-mart. The sign said they were 88 cents, so I bought a couple. My receipt said they were 28 cents!!! So I went back and got more and cut them up and froze them for smoothies, too. I've also noticed it's peach season, so hopefully I'll get in on that after we get back from the lake.

Life is going well. A couple weeks ago Samuel had a raging case of hives from something he ate (?) He practically lived in the bathtub for 2 days, soaking in baking soda. He was covered in whelps. It got scary a couple times, but God brought us through. And then, sure enough, just like the hospital-phone-nurse said, after 3 days he was all better. And now Zack's head is almost completely healed from where he caught a frisky with it.

School is going good. Tim has started doing biblestudy with the boys in the morning, and I'm so glad. I know it is good for them to be taught by him, and good for him to have that focused time investing in them. It also takes one subject off my teaching plate. I love doing bible with them, and and glad Tim gets to, too.

Our heart-chart is still working pretty well. It works especially well the closer Saturday gets, when they see that they don't have as many hearts as they want. All day long it's, "What can I do for a heart?" They turn into real big helpers. However, sometimes I feel like if I hear them ask about hearts one more time I will scream. :) I'm sure the heart chart will come in handy as we are packing and loading up today!

Baby is doing good, I guess. Moving and hiccuping, and growing. I am almost 32 weeks, so just a couple more months to go. I'm not much of a plan-ahead person, even when it comes to babies, but I did buy a pack of itty bitty diapers the other day that I had a coupon for :)

I've got packing to do, so:

Happy 4th of July!

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