Belated and Latest

Happy Belated Fathers Day to a wonderful Daddy!! We love you, Dad!

Dad's favorite food :)

The latest news is that my little sis is in Canada. Joanna left on Saturday and she won't be coming home till August. She is going to be going to Northern Lights Family Camp for the first week, then staying the rest of the month with Jessica. She is then hitching a ride with Chris's parents to Indiana where she will be attending Still Waters Camp with all her friends. After Still Waters she is going home with a friend to PA for a week and then riding back with the next group of campers to Still Waters, which is the camp Jaylon, Justin and I are going to. We will pick her up there and bring her back home. Sounds like one trip!!! It was sad to see her go, but I am very jealous of all the places she gets to go, including staying with Jessica for a while. I know that she is having a blast, so that helps on the "missing" part. :)

Planting

Time for potatoes and tomatoes to go in the ground in the big garden!

"Many hands make light work"

Micah David thought he would taste the mulch and make sure it was good enough for the plants!

 The day we planted the tomatoes there were clouds in the sky making it cool and beautiful outside!

 Jared is pretty proud of his photography skills.

 Molly, Jack and Koda play ball while the guys work.

 Koda is getting really big! He's been a good dog while Joylin was gone but I think he'll be glad to have her back.

"Mmm I can't wait till these cantalope are ready to eat!"

In Honor of Our Blogger, Joylin!

I think it's time to recognize who has been doing the blogging all these years! As a blogger, it's easy to post pictures of everyone else and a little hard to find pictures of yourself that fit your description of "good enough", so we don't see nearly enough pictures of Joylin. Just to let you know how much we appreciate you, Joylin...

Joylin is a beautiful, fun, amazing and precious sister, daughter, aunt and friend!

Joylin can make ordinary moments extraordinary,

she has many different expressions,

she can cook (even though she'll tell you she's not good at it,)

has unique ideas,

poses with baking supplies ;),

LOVES her dog, Koda,

she works hard,

is an extremely talented person and can do most anything she makes up her mind to do, including scrapbooking, sewing, clothing designing, carpentry, and much much more,

and she can take a nap at almost any place. ;-) As you can tell, we are all so thankful she is a part of our family or life wouldn't be quite as fun. We love you, Joylin and hope you and Jaylon are having a wonderful time in PA!

Summertime Fun

Hello everyone! This is Jenny. I'm going to give this a try since Joylin is traveling abroad. Actually she is on her way to Pennsylvania with Jaylon. Gone to see " special someone." :) So here it goes....

Micah David likes to help his mommy do all kinds of things, including helping to scrub garden potatoes for supper.

In the process he likes to try to eat them!

Daddy has been hauling in loads of mulch, getting ready for planting corn and potatoes!

The boys are a big help in getting it all leveled out.

The tomato plants are going crazy in the garden! Looks like we'll have plenty of yummy tomatoes this year!

Mama's flock of chickens love the chard she treats them with.

Here is a dog that needed a standard poodle cut. Joylin had never done one of these before so I think the results...

...are AMAZING! I wonder who came up with this style of cut anyways!! :-D I mean take a look at that tail! Ok on to other things....

A cool picture from a baseball game we had this past week. Nice catch, Timothy!

My cutie wishing he was old enough to play ball. :)

Warm HOT weather calls for a dip into cool water. So up goes the pool!!

Joylin had these pictures picked out before she left and wanted me to post them. So there they are. For the next post though I have an interesting idea. Even though Joylin might not totally agree......

The Last Trek of Our Journey

After camp we went and stopped for a few hours at the Hammond's. They live across the border in Louisiana and the trees down there are like a jungle. I would seriously get lost if I were to leave the trail!!  

They live next to a swamp and just looking at it made shivers go up my back. I was just thinking of all the snakes, turtles, alligators, etc... Ok, it looked very creepy!

We had fun driving around! :)

The girls found the mud. Oh, boy!!

visiting

We went back to Texas and stayed at the Sampson's that night. As soon as we got there a few of us found beds and fell asleep. We were all pooped!!

We had a nice time there and left after breakfast the next morning.

We crossed over a bridge that went over a lake and we saw alligators swimming in the water as we passed. We found a spot to pull over along the road to see if we could see any closer up. We did see one, but he was out in the distance. They seemed to be everywhere!

I thought these cat tails were really pretty. 

The boys trying to get one to take home.

Still looking for gators.. with no more luck we hit the road again. We took our good old time on the way home and stayed at a hotel that night.

The next day we found the closest laundry mat and washed all of our clothes. We figured it would've been around 12 loads of laundry if we would've waited till we got home. It was really nice to have it all done!!!!

Laundry mats aren't all that exciting, so the boys had to come up with something!!:)

haha :)) lol

Folding and sorting...
 We hit the road again and got home that evening.

We thank the Lord for a safe trip to Texas and back. :)