Ward Picnic

Trudy was over the ward day activities. We met at the park with the other ward and the Bishoprics did the cooking of hamburgers and hot dogs. The rest of the meal was pot luck.
As you will see they put the right person in charge because Trudy has some neat ideas. I thought it went a lot better than the year before. Actually I think Trudy is the activities chairperson of the ward.

Dad and I left early, but they were starting to play softball, and they had played basketball and etc.


Baxter pretty wet from filling up balloons and just having fun with the hose.








Ceci filling up water balloons .

Gramps just relaxing

The sponge contest, to see which team could fill their sponges pass them over their heads and then the last person in line squeeze what was left in the sponge to empty an pail.

Then the teams had to turn around and pass the empty sponge back to the person in front of the line to refill the sponge and pass it over head back.

Stevie's team won. They filled the empty bucket up first after passing the sponge to everyone on their team.

Trudy and Steve lined the kids up with pardners so they could throw the water balloons to each other. Sounds fun but what happened is the kids would rather have a water fight.

You can see that the water balloon catch turned into a water war. The kids loved it.

After the water fight then Trudy started handed out bubbles. It was a great hit with all ages of kids. The breeze was just right and there were bubbles all over. I wasn't going to go but I'm glad I did. I had a great time and the food was great.!!!!!!

beehive in a bottle

As little Stevie is telling her brothers, Grandma has a beehive in a jar.

I went to the Amish market for natural honey. I was going to buy just a plain jar of honey but I asked if this was raw honey because I wanted it for my allergies. The Amish fellow told me that the beekeeper told him it was better for allergies with the honeycomb in it. It was raw honey, so I bought it, took it home and explained to Zane, Noah and Stevie about the honeycomb and now Stevie thinks I have a beehive in my jar. Noah and Stevie chewed the honeycomb but Zane wouldn't touch it. Grandpa, Noah and Stevie could swallow their honeycomb but I can't. Stevie wanted a peanut butter and honey sandwich without the hive. Grandchildren are so cute.

Our weekend

This week-end has been great. Steve and Trudy went for their yearly vacation and the kids are here with us. Baxter and Ceci slept at their house but Zane, Noah and Stevie slept here. I had Zane and Noah home sick Friday so Stevie stayed home also much to the dismay of the two older ones. I used to lose weight tending the grandchildren but this time I've picked up three pounds. It must be because I made banana bread out of Trudy's overripe bananas and then made the Wacky cake yesterday. Playing card games and watching 3 Harry Potter videos isn't good exercise. Then Ceci and I watched Gone With the Wind all afternoon yesterday. Zane is feeling better today but Grandpa is under the weather so we aren't going to church today. We missed a baptism yesterday also. I forgot how much food it takes to feed 5 growing children. I would have to get a couple of jobs to pay for it.

This is really good cake. I decided to try the wacky cake Lora put on the recipe site

it is soooooooooo easy to do. Almost sinful and it is gooooooood!!!!!!!!

How to pick dewberries

This is for the George Youngs and their wild blackberries known as dewberries. CLICK HERE
Trudy, Baxter, Grandpa and I picked these lucious little berries the first year we were here in Maryland and put up jam and made a cobbler. We were scratched, and had ticks on us but it was worth it. Didn't think about snakes, hornets and etc. Need to find a good patch that is closer. hehe

Our Garden

As you can see we are gardening again. Trudy and I went shopping for plants Saturday and today Dad fixed up the rows for the tomatoes

I took these pictures when Tina came today to go shopping for plants at the Amish and Minninite stores. When she saw the level she started to giggle so I went in and got the camera.

We are going to put cages around the tomatoes when the ground dries out.

Newspaper Seed Pots

Starting seeds

Well, I don't have enough to do so two Saturdays ago, April 26th, I made some pots out of newspaper and started some seeds. They are doing great. You can almost see them grow.
Last week Steve tilled the garden and now Grandpa and I need to plant our Red sweet corn, plus some white, and white and yellow sweet corn and these plants. I have some sweet potatoes coming in the middle of this month. Hopefully we will get some tomatoes and other plants that we like.

These are Burpee's Early Hybrid Crenshaw

These are Cucumbers

These are Eight Ball zucchini. Hopefully they will do better than the regular Zucchini. The regular zucchini die after they put on two or three fruits.

The starting of a new leaf on the Zucchini