The 5th of July with the Kiddos

This past weekend I guess you could say that Jonathan and I were pretty low key or uneventful. Jonathan was not feeling well at all last week, so this weekend was a much needed rest for the 2 of us. He is slowly starting to feel a bit normal, but it's very hard to ever feel fully rested when you work third shift.
We spent this afternoon at Dad and Carol's house for our 4th of July cookout with the family (only we celebrated on the 5th). It was a great day and VERY hot! We managed to find some shade to relax in while we rotated Corn Hole and Hillbilly Golf games.
This is Max and his Momma Betsy. Max is getting sooo big! He turns 2 next month.

And here is Master Zander waiting for his lunch and as you can see, he most always has a smile on his face. He turns 1 next month also, the day before Max's Birthday. They are 364 days apart!

Max with his new lawn mower. All the kids took there turn doing there share of the mowing and had fun. Hmmmm maybe we should remind them of this in about 15 years or so.

Max also has this thing for weed wacking. He will pick up one of his toys at random and hold it like a weed wacker and act like he is wacking away, complete with sound effects and a sweeping motion! LOL! This was completely hilarious and of course I did not have my camera with me.

I came out onto the back deck to see 3 of the kids attempting to figure out the Hillbilly Golf. This was pretty darn cute.

You can see above Jeremy who is turning 3 next month also and Abby who is 4.

Yes that's right folks, we had a 1, 2, 3 and a 4 year old all together in the same house.

This is one of my attempts to get the kids together for a picture.

Max, Zander and Abby here. Notice Abby trying to keep her baby brother on the couch. So cute.

And this one is Jeremy, Zander and Abby.

And this is the last and final attempt to get them all together.

"Great idea Aunt Sommer". Carol compared this to herding cats! LOL!!

Notice every one's expression. These will be pictures to laugh about later on down the road.

And this is Max and his daddy saying goodbye after a long hot day of playing with his cousins.

This was a great, much needed family day. As usual, the house was filled with madness and mayhem, but I wouldn't want it any other way.

Hopefully we get to do this in a few more weeks as all of these birthdays roll around.

Abe S. Yoder Sr. family reunion

This past weekend, I finally got to attend my very first Yoder reunion. The last one was only 3 weeks before Jonathan and I got married, which was not a good time for us to be traveling so far. I had to wait another 3 years before the next reunion would roll around, which meant I was more then eager to go this time. It was a weekend for all who attended to remember. It was a record year for attendance of at least 219 people on Saturday (this is only counting the people that signed the register).
Our weekend started on Thursday afternoon. I only worked a half day and then we were on he road by 130pm with Jonathan's parents. Since we needed to be in Chambersburg, PA early on Friday, we opted to only drive half way on Thursday and stayed the night in Washington , PA. We were up and out the door by 730am on friday and arrived in Chambersburg at 1130am. There we met Jonathan's Aunts, Uncles and Grandmother who had a nice chicken supper prepared for us all. Grandma had been wanting to cook us all supper for some time and this was the first opportunity she has had in a very long time. We also got to see her new apartment since she has relocated to Chambersburg. When supper and visiting was done, we hopped in the car and drove another 2 hours to Belleville, PA. For those who have followed my blog from the beginning, you know how much I just love going to Big Valley (where Belleville is located). Friday evening we went to the Mennonite High School for a bit of visiting and a "few snacks" with some of the Yoders already in town.
Saturday we arrived to the Home Farm at 9am. The home farm is the place where Jonathan's Great Grandfather, Abraham S Yoder Sr. and his wife lived and raised there 13 children. Jonathan's Grandfather , Abe Jr, was #5. I really cannot describe how AMAZING this day was without the pictures I have posted below:

This is a picture of only part of their garden facing the horse pasture. I have developed a great love of gardens lately and Belleville certainly has many beautiful gardens to drive by. As we were driving, it was all I could do to keep from jumping out of the car and run up to every ones door to ask about their garden. (I decided it was best to restrain myself)

This is a picture of the 2 houses on the property. Both houses are huge. The house closest in the picture is the main house. The house in the back is the grandparents house ( Dawdi Haus). A separate house where the Grandparents move into (sometimes straight from the main house) where they can be tended closely by there children and grandchildren.

A beautiful horse that Jonathan made friends with.

Cutting the fresh bread for the bean soup later for lunch.

Some of the women gathering to make the 250'ish Half Moon Pies. This is a pie crust rolled flat with apple butter spread over, folded in half and sealed. Kinda like a pie pocket. You can see some of them above that are already assembled. There were about 5-6 women working on these in the room.

Getting the Apple Pies ready to put in the Hearth by basting them with Buttermilk.

Lining up with the pies as they are putting them in the OLD outdoor oven one at a time. It seems i forgot to put in the pictures of the pies as they came out of the oven, but believe me when I tell you they were beautiful. It only took them about 5 minutes to cook in the oven since the oven was so hot. All of the pies were great accept for the one that got forgotten and stayed in a tad bit longer and ended up pretty dark and crisp.

They also put the Half Moon Pies in the Hearth oven also. These were also cooked quickly and came out just perfect.

This is a picture of the Amish Peanut butter that was made and the Smear Kase- a homemade spreadable cheese that tastes similar to Mozzarella cheese and is commonly spread on the Half Moon Pies. Both were DE-LISH!! I also forgot the pics of the Amish Bean soup which was yummy also. It wasn't at all what I expected but still very yummy. Also served was Lebanan Bologna and cheese tray with homemade rolls, Church Pickles, Olives, Apple Pie, Moon Pies...... Oh my! I miss it already.

This is a picture of the barn that we did most of the visiting/eating/singing in.

Auction Time! This year and the previous reunion, they did an auction fund raiser to apply to the reunion fund. These are items that the family donates, most are hand crafted or heirloom items from generations of family. Many books, crafts, baked goods, woodwork, quilts, afghans. Someone even donated a week at there vacation home in the mountains of Franklin, Tennessee. Furnished with a pool! Unfortunately we did not bring that kind of cash with us :(

Some of the money was also donated to the families of elder Yoder's that were in the hospital and could not make it to the reunion.
You can see above my crossed stitch Roly Poly Snowmen Coasters on the Auction block.

Below is the one auction item we bought. a 4 pack of Whoopie Pies!! we went crazy and bought them for $15.00. There were only 3 packs of Whoopie pies up for auction and we got the one that was ALL Chocolate! People got a good chuckle over the bidding war that ensued. I'm not sure who I was bidding against but I was determined to keep my hand up! Jonathan and I are savoring every morsel.

Man, I gotta learn how to make them myself! This will be one of my goals this summer....

Milking Time! This is a working dairy farm.

A brand new Calf just born sometime during this day with Momma standing by. Sadly, momma is whisked away shortly after giving birth and the calf becomes bottle/bucket fed.

Sigh........ such is farm life.

This is a picture of the fly over. I'm not sure if this was a family member or a neighbor doing this but it was sooo much fun. He did several fly overs dropping bags of candy for the kids. He ended up buzzing the barn with his last circle round.

This is a picture of the kids scrambling for the candy as it hit the ground. HEADS UP!

The last part of the evening was the talent show/ singing. Above is Jonathan's uncle Titus playing a hymn on his harmonica. He was Amazing!

I feel terrible on this one... I'm not sure who these people were but they were GREAT! They sang a great Folk style song that had everyone smiling.

Alumni from the BMS (Belleville Mennonite School) singing once again!

Jonathan's great Uncle Ben reciting a poem.

The Shetterly girls singing an Irish Blessing for us all just before we left for the evening.

The once quartet is now a trio. Jonathan's dad singing with his brothers, which is always a treat. We definitely missed Grandpa Abe.

I got to hear many new hymns that night, one of which was God is Love. Everyone was singing in english and just when we thought the song was over, half of the crowd continued singing the song in German, 'Gott ist die Liebe". I think it brought a tear to most everyone that was unable to continue singing.

They ended up getting each family together representing each child of Abe Yoder Sr.

This is a picture of 4 generations of the Abe Yoder Jr Family that came to the reunion.

Hopefully I managed to get all my facts right with my story and I do apologize for any spelling errors. I do welcome any fact corrections as I am still learning about my new family.

WOW! what an amazing weekend. Due to a voted change, I now only have to wait another 2 more years for my next Yoder reunion!

Back up!!

After about a month and a half of being down from my blog, we are back up and running!
We were putting up with a sloooooow computer that wouldn't load any of our applications properly. I finally had enough yesterday and broke down and called Time Warner. I was certain they would give us a hard time and say they couldn't help us, but they didn't! As it turned out, our router was bad. They ran a few tests for us and told us how to fix it. Yay for Time Warner! They got the gold star for the month.
We have sooo much coming up this summer and hope to do a bit more blogging once things kick into gear.
At the moment we are spending time in the yard getting some new flowerbeds ready along with prepping the garden (Jonathan is at least). Jonathan usually does the early grunt work of prepping the garden, while I usually maintain it through the season: watering, weeding etc.(he helps sometimes too). This year we are planning to grow our usual Corn and with the extra 4 feet added this year, I am looking forward to trying my hand at Water Melon and Zucchini. If all goes well, we should have plenty to share.
I will keep everyone posted on our progress. Hoping to have pictures of the new flower beds just as soon as we get them filled and planted.

Lot's of love to all our family and friends :) We miss you all dearly and can't wait to share this exciting summer with you.

From Snow to Pre-Spring

This picture above is the first day of our snow storm on Friday 2/5/10. My work let us leave early that day and this picture was taken just after I got home.

And this is Saturday morning. A 5' drift on our front walk and nearly up against the garage door.

I am 5'3". This is how tall the drift was.

This is one of our neighbors across the street. He is standing ON TOP of the snow drift trying to dig his way to his front door.

And here is my snow man. Hard at work doing our driveway. Once he was done, he ventured out to many of our neighbors. He went out 3 different days and loved every minute of it. He even had to pull someone out of the ditch with his truck just across the road in this picture.

And this is Pepper the cat discovering snow for the first time. Eventually he started batting it back and forth and even managed a few good mouth fulls.

And now we flash forward to today. We had one very beautiful pre-spring weekend. The sun was out all weekend with warming temperatures. Today we stopped at DQ and headed down to the Englewood Reserve and take in a bit of nature and sunshine. Any other day this would not be an impressive picture, but today the scenery was quite uplifting. There was still ice on much of the water, but that certainly did not seem to bother any of the ducks and geese.

And here is the sunshine shot. Yes, the shine on our glasses is the sun. We sat for about half an hour on a park bench by the water just letting the warmth of the sun hit our faces. After dealing with a nearly depressing winter, it's hard to believe something so basic can be so rejuvenating and provide us with so much hope.

Yes God IS good.

Adorable pics

I was looking through some of our pictures in our camera, when I came across these adorable shots. These are just a few from when we got to babysit baby Zander again just a few weeks ago. He was a little bit bigger then the last time we had him and sooo much fun!
You can see above that Jonathan has nap time under control. Pepper the cat was insistent on maintaining his position.

We had The Gaither Gospel Hour playing on TV. I couldn't resist this shot as Zander stopped what he was doing and was focused on the TV.

Too CUTE!!!

Checking in on The Boys

We spent this afternoon visiting with Jonathan's parents for Sunday supper. Since we had all of this snow, we decided to take the camera to get some shots of the boys, Brownie and Blackie playing in the snow. This picture above is Brownie checking on us during Supper. Just making sure we saved him some left overs.

Brownie is surprisingly agreeable to this! He will take any attention he can get. He especially loves it if someone is scratching his belly.

This one is one of my favorites. Both dogs here now loving on Jonathan.

Hopefully this winter isn't too hard on Blackie. We are pretty certain this could be his last winter (of course we said this 2 years ago too). But he is living to be a ripe old man of 13 and showing his age. He now gets the extra special love and attention.

Let It Snow

We woke up this morning to find out first winter wonderland of the season. And of course I had to take a picture. Very happy this is happening on a Saturday and not on my work day. A great day to be looking out my window.

Jonathan's little helper........

This weekend, Jonathan decided put up a few lights on our outside fence. Before he could do that, he needed to test all of his light that were packed away in the attic. As you can see, Pepper the cat was only trying to be helpful.....as usual. He began batting at the lights, then the chewing and at one point he had his head inside the box sitting in front of him. What a goof ball!

As Jonathan was testing his lights, Pepper thought it would be a good time to look out at the neighbors. I caught him just before he jumped off.

So far, I have only seen him climb the tree once this year (but the season is still young). Sometimes he leans on some of the branches like he is ready to jump, be we seem to catch him with the squirt bottle before he does that. Jonathan found 1/2 of a glass icicle from the tree on the floor this morning. I thought I had heard him making some noise in the tree through the night. Suddenly the noise stopped and the cat went running. We woke up this morning and found the evidence. Needless to say, the cat went to hide under the bed as soon as he saw Jonathan with 1/2 an icicle in his hand.

As aggravating as this is, we still find ourselves laughing about it all. He is pretty stink'in cute when he falls asleep under the tree with the warm lights. We just hope the Christmas tree makes it until the end of the season.

Guys and their Guns

This year for Thanksgiving, we headed back down to Southern Indiana to Visit Jonathan's brother Steve and his family. It was a little smaller crowd from last year, but we all still had a good time. When we got there, We were pleased to find out that they were deep frying a turkey. It was the first fried turkey for both of us. It was mm mm good. Aside from the obvious danger of frying a turkey and the health risk, I am not sure why anyone would eat it any other way.
The guys decided they wanted to get some target practice in on Saturday just before we left. The above picture is Jonathan.

This is Steve.

and this is James.

I personally don't care for guns, I just let the guys have their fun.

All I can say is, I would never wanna break into their house.

Adventures in Babysitting

This past Friday, we had the pleasure of attending the wedding renewal service for my cousin Terrance and his wife Catrina. They were celebrating their 5th wedding anniversary and wanted to celebrate by renewing there vows. It was actually quite beautiful. They each wrote there own vows, which was a great chance for them to reflect on the past five years. This brought me and a few others to tears. It was a verbal commitment to God, themselves and the family that they are choosing to stay together through thick and thin.
On Saturday, while Terrance and Catrina where having a night away without there kids, Jonathan and I got to babysit 3 month old Alexzander (Zander). When Terrance initially asked me to do it, I jumped at the opportunity. I knew this would be a good time for us to practice our baby skills. I haven't babysat anything that small in about 8 years and certainly never overnight. Jonathan had a bit of experience from his niece and nephews from a while back. Due to his Reflux condition, which makes him fussy with extra spit up, I knew Zander would put us to the test. Fortunately, whatever Zander threw our way (pardon the pun), we were able to handle.

Above is Jonathan doing the 5pm feeding.

Some of you already know how good and comfortable my husband is around babies. I knew this too, but was still amazed at how good he was. Most men are very nervous and awkward around babies, but not Jonathan. He never hesitated one bit. He was even up with me for the 4 am feeding.

On the second try, we were finally able to get him to bed at 11pm. His swing is the only place that he will sleep and it must be moving at all times. He slept untill 345am and was up untill 6am, then slept until 945am.

This was a great experience fore both Jonathan and I as a couple. We worked as a team, effortlessly. I realize that when our time comes to start our family, it won't always be peaches and cream, but I feel totally confident that we can do this well, together.