Our Trip to Missouri

Yesterday we got back from a week in Missouri. That's why there hasn't been any blogging for a little while. We got to visit Tom's mom and his sister, Beth, and her family. It was a time of fun and work! The work part was Tom painting at his mom's house and Roxanne working on Betty's computer. Not sure whose job was more difficult! Unfortunately there was some sickness stuff too when we were gone. Gregory had a cold before we left and it lead to him throwing up frequently, Matthew and Beth were sick the day before we arrived and then Makayla and Mark got a little of it later when we were there and Betty wasn't feeling well either...I think everyone is feeling good now, so that's good. I also got to visit with my friend, Carla who lives in Springfield, so this was nice to catch up with her and see her new place where she is living.

While we were there we got to celebrate our brother-in-law, Rob's birthday as well as our niece, Makayla's first birthday. Beth made some VERY yummy food and a delicious Peanut Butter Pie. YUM! It was fun to watch Makayla open her presents and to see the cousins playing together. Matthew (who will be five in November) and Gregory got along great! Matthew loves attention and Gregory was very willing to laugh at his craziness. Mark is more timid but shared his toys with Gregory too. Unfortunately I forgot my camera so we have no pictures from our time together :-(

Here are a couple of pictures from our time with Betty...





Also on the way back we got a hotel with a swimming pool...it was a Super 8 hotel and it seemed more like a Holiday Inn Express or something so much nicer. Maybe it's because the hotel we got on the way to Missouri wasn't so nice. Anyways, our stay in Salina, KS was a very wonderful one. Gregory took a little while to enjoy the time in the swimming pool, even though this was like his third time in a pool. So I am hoping to start taking him more often to a pool so he can get more used to it and enjoy it more. Here's a photo of Tom and Gregory in the pool.

Garden Update

It's been a little while since I've given an garden update so here's a new one :-)

Our zucchini is doing awesome! I've made one chocolate zucchini cake so far and need to make some muffins and bread, maybe tomorrow, we'll see. I've also made a couple of side dishes with it too. I really like zucchini. I know it sometimes seems like it's the vegetable you can't get rid of, but I am glad we are getting quite a few from our plants. In fact, I've even shared some with our neighbor (along with some recipes). Below is a picture of Tom & Gregory with our HUGE zucchini from our garden!


The tomatoes are doing ok too...Gregory doesn't let us keep them around too long to come up with very many cherry or pear ones. He loves to eat the yellow and red ones fresh from the garden. Same with the peas...which are almost all done.

The carrots are getting bigger, I think we'll leave these in as long as we can because they are still too small for much.

We get a few pieces of lettuce whenever we need some and that is nice.

The pepper plants blossomed not too long ago again and now the peppers are looking pretty good, so I think we might get a couple of those finally too.

And lastly the cucumbers...I don't think we'll be getting any this year...the plants keep getting stepped on and just haven't grown very good here.

All in all, I am pretty pleased with what we're getting.

It's been too long

I know...It's been too long since I've blogged. It's so funny...I wish people were more consistent on their blogging, but then I hardly am. One of my dear friends who keeps up with me regularly gave me a gentle nudge that it had been a while. I hadn't realized how long it had been, so sorry about that. I'll try to do better :-)

I kind of do have an excuse for this past week at least...Gregory and I have both been sick with colds...so taking care of him and myself was about all I could handle.

The other things that have been consuming my time are a MOPS Steering meeting, church youth group stuff, and helping make spaghetti sauce.

Making spaghetti sauce was so much fun...a group of nine of us gals from MOPS got together to can spaghetti sauce, so we made it from scratch and then canned it. Wow, over 100 jars were made...I was only able to stay up until the 50 jar mark. It was WAY past Gregory's nap at that time...oh and Tom and I were going out on a date that night too. So there were 9 mom's and I think 9 kiddos too (Gregory was the youngest and the oldest was 4 I think)...so yeah crazy! Luckily they played outside most of the time and Gregory did pretty well despite all the love he was getting from the girls.

So I also just briefly mentioned Tom and I went out on a date too...we decided a while back, no matter how poor we get, we will always find money to get a babysitter every once in a while. So we had Lauren (from our youth group) come over and we were planning on going mini golfing in our mall after eating in the food court. Well, the mini golf place is no longer in business :-( So we ate in the food court and then just wandered around together - with no stroller :-) This was a nice time for us to just take time to be with one another. It was a nice time anyways.

So I don't have any pictures that go along with this post, but I can't resist sharing a couple of cute ones of Gregory.

Gregory loves to read books!


Here's just a cute picture from today...of course he wouldn't sit still for a perfect picture.