We went to Miller Farm yesterday. It was an afternoon we won’t forget any time soon! We have a new member of the household, too. : )

We stacked 550-600 bales of hay. They had one more wagon stuffed to the brim we didn’t get to. They MADE us stop for supper. : P Hey, haying is tiring!







Let me tell you, the dust was horrific when a bale would bust open.



I learned about sink holes and found out the tighter you pack the bales the less likely you are to create a sink hole. They are not fun to fall into when you’re carrying a bale or trying to get from one side of the barn to another to unplug or unjam the baler. Nope.





This was right inside the barn.

Vincent took charge of the skid loader to move stray hay and sawdust.



We had down time between unloading the hay (the truck broke) so we did some other cool(er) things besides haying.

This is a dairy farm so we helped milk! That was fun...





While we all helped with milking, Nathan was the most experienced at the end of the day. Since he still isn’t allowed to exert himself he turned into the ‘right hand man’ there in the milking department.





And, what farm would be complete with out puppy dogs…



….baby cows.. (yeah, er, calves)



One of the calves kissed Bonnie…I’ll let her blog that one! She had to let it kiss her a couple times to get the pic, my shutter finger was too sloow.

And...*drum roll*... they had chickens! Here is one taking refuge from the broiling heat under our bus.



And, here’s where the new member of the household comes in.

ISN’T IT CUTE!!!?



Daniel caught him they gave him/her to us. We're not sure what it's name will be for sure yet. It's being called 'chickie', and 'the bird' until we know it's a boy or girl. I voted to name it Alice, but Hannah over ruled me.



Anyway, we’re having way too much fun with it! :-D

All and all it was a fun and productive trip. I’m just glad it’s not everyday we hay. ; )

Nathan visited the doctor Monday and got a good report! He isn't losing weight and he is on the way back to 100%. Thank you all for your prayers and concern.

I would post pics of Vincent's party but I'm gonna be late for work....so I gotta go!

Happy 18th Birthday Vincent!




Thanks for all the hard work you do around here, on the bus and on the road. I thank God for your life and example. May God bless you with many more years and draw you closer to Him each day. Love you!

Y'all can wish him a happy birthday by leaving a comment here or at his xanga!

~

Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.

But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.

Psalm 1:1-3 NIV

For those who are looking for an update on our family's health staus, here's one. If you were hoping for a more 'day in the life' post you'll have to wait a little bit longer. :)

Nathan's got an appointment tomorrow morning. He insists he’s better. *ehem* The appointment was never made for Monday (last week) because his severe fevers had subsided. He does seem to be better, but still not back to 100%.

Dad is doing pretty bad. He looked awful at the concert last night and he was in a lot of pain. He lost 2 pounds last week. We thank all of your for your prayer, concern and support. (Thank you Carson family for your email, we read it in chuch this morning.)

And, he’s not exactly in our family but our friend Daniel was in a car accident this morning and he’s in the hospital. He’s got broken bones and other injuries. You won’t read this for a little while, but, we’re praying for you, Daniel.

We sang this song in church this morning. The words were so appropriate. I would post the words here, but they’re copyright as far as I know.

Another week as gone by….another week which is now in the past. We press forward to the goal, through trials, and in everything we give thanks.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:12-14 niv

I’m remembering the ‘other’ things I wanted to blog about!

I guess for those in the city this is a no big deal type thing but for our little town to have a BANK ROBBERY is pretty big news. :-P Yes, we had a bank robbery in little Orange. To my knowledge they have not caught the man with ’curly dark hair’ who made his escape heading north through the cemetery in our neighborhood.

And, of very recent happenings, there was a stabbing in our neighbor hood on the 16th. There were three persons involved, two doing the stabbing and one getting stabbed. I just looked at the paper and the perpetrators photos. It’s surreal when you actually recognize persons wanted!!! Anyway, the police were there at the house all night and they taped off the area until investigators arrived the next day.

__________________________________________________

I had a nice 23rd birthday. Thanks to everyone for leaving birthday notes!



Two cakes. :)



Reading a card from my grandparents…



Daniel warned me not to knock this gift around…



Wasn’t that a cute idea. ;-)
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I want to say life is totally lovely and I never feel bad about things that happen …but it wouldn’t be true. I’m learning to lean on Jesus more and more through rough times. I was reading Psalm 29 and I was greatly encouraged, my God is able to anything.

Ascribe to the LORD, O mighty ones,
ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.
Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;
worship the LORD in the splendor of his [a] holiness.
The voice of the LORD is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the LORD thunders over the mighty waters.
The voice of the LORD is powerful;
the voice of the LORD is majestic.
The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars;
the LORD breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon.
He makes Lebanon skip like a calf,
Sirion [b] like a young wild ox.
The voice of the LORD strikes
with flashes of lightning.
The voice of the LORD shakes the desert;
the LORD shakes the Desert of Kadesh.
The voice of the LORD twists the oaks [c]
and strips the forests bare.
And in his temple all cry, "Glory!"
The LORD sits [d] enthroned over the flood;
the LORD is enthroned as King forever.
The LORD gives strength to his people;
the LORD blesses his people with peace.

When you feel alone, when you feel like you’re weak, when everything feels like it’s out of your control, or you’ve spent a day or two weeping, remember, God is on your side if you continue to walk with Him. His strength WILL be your joy. If we really believe the Lord is the creator and truly know that our God is all powerful why don’t we trust Him to change what needs to be changed and fix what seems broken beyond repair?

Another verse which was given to me which gave me hope was Romans 8:37

No, in all these things we are more then conquerors through him who loved us.

Update for anyone who has been praying for my dad and brother: dad is about the same. He’s was a little discouraged the parasite therapy looks like a dead end, it’s very expensive. So keep praying we find something to help him or the Lord heals him. There was a rumor I heard at work that he was in the hospital. Thankfully he’s not there yet. Last time he had a severe bout he did go to the hospital and almost to the nursing home. PTL he didn’t have to go there.

Nathan…well, he hasn’t been getting the knock out fevers, PTL!, but he has had mini ones. He’s still losing weight, which is a concern. The doc said the results from the ultrasound, blood work, etc., all came back good. He came back borderline lyme disease, he’s going to test again in 4 months. But, he said, it could possibly be a virus. If he’s not improved by 90% by Monday he’s sending him to Boston. Nathan does not want to go. : P I kinda don’t blame him but we really need to find out what’s going on.

In other, more light hearted news, we’ve been picking lots of blueberries!



We try to only pick the blue ones. ; )

Mom’s been making cake and jam and all with them. Yummy. : )

I told you about the m&ms, weeell, I took a picture….ok, I know I’m crazy.



What happened to the red ones?!

And, we the prettiest color of gladiolas in our front yard the other day…Peter was kind enough to hold the black background for me. Thanks, Peter!



There seemed to be more I suppose to blog about but alas, I’m too tired to think about what I missed. :) I could just blog some other time! Now that is a thought. ;)

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Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. Ephesians 4:2-3 NIV

August 10th

*chug* silence *chug*

That was about all the bus did when Bonnie tried to start it this morning!

It was the batteries, and thankfully nothing worse. : ) Vincent was able to start it and we were on our way. Whee! We exit the driveway, turn right and the bus exhibits lower then normal power. As we’re slowing down and dad says ‘it’s not gonna make the hill.” (Can anyone say engine rebuild??! : ( ) Oops. I guess we’re limping on our way. : P The bus crawled and I do mean crawled to the crest of the hill. Daniel looked back and stated we were dripping something. Vincent scrambled out and his investigation said it was only water. That’s was encouraging! An oil leak would have made the day that much more interesting. : P

This trip is to Vermont and of course we had our share of twisty roads and beautiful mountains. It isn’t called the ‘green mountain’ state for nothing. The scenery was positively lovely!



The pictures don't do it justice.

I think I said this last time but, it must be outrageously beautiful in the fall. Too bad we’re going to miss being home in the month of October.

Now, getting lost in Vermont and getting lost on a narrow Vermont dirt road, with washouts, are two different things. We did the latter. The washout was thankfully not in the middle of the road and we did find a place to turn around. Yay! No pics here…you’ll just have to trust me.

We arrived at the Grange/camp area for the family reunion we were scheduled to sing at and parked in the tiny parking lot and ate with ‘the family.’ The concert went fine, amazingly. Vincent got whacked in the head twice by the stage curtain rope/pole. (See pic!) Lol. We threw in a few bluegrass standards, including St. Anne’s Reel. I need to learn a fiddle part for that, it’s a nice little tune.

Ok. Here’s a group picture of the reunion goers right after the concert.



We ate with them at supper time and ice cream social, afterward.

Paul, the man who was responsible for inviting us showed us his power point presentation of when he was in the service. He was there when they tested 29 A bombs and two H bombs. He said he was face down in the sand, his eyes closed, head cupped in his elbow and when the bomb went off he could actually SEE the bone structure in his elbow. Powerful stuff! He also used to clean radiation off the planes after they came in. Yikes. He hasn’t died from cancer (obviously) but all the other guys who were with him have.


August 12th

I’m starting out with 8 m&ms. Actually, I had more than that when I started. Oops. Make that 7, I just ate another one. We got this bargain, $1 for a large bag and well, we’re eating them. What ELSE are you suppose to do with them?? I shouldn’t tell you how many bags we bought. : ) Let’s just say we could possibly grow to the size of houses if we’re not careful. ; ) I only have 6 left now… anyway…uh, I’m suppose to be telling about our adventure!! *resist the urge to eat another m&m*

Well, first we had to make it out of the drive way of the reunion site. It wasn’t all that breathtaking, we didn’t get stuck or anything. LOL, I sound a little disappointed but I’m not sad about this. Really!



So we’re out of the drive way and back on the ‘road’. It’s really just dirt and rocks graded and thankfully not very dusty.

We hang a left at the top of the hill and *down to 5* we cross over the highway, the one we want to be on. We start traveling down hill and we see water. Then, we see a bridge COVERED with water. Oh. Sweet.



We thought it very strange no one warned us about this! I joked that you’re suppose to float over….haha. (There was actually TRUTH to this statement!)

No place was found to turn around so we backed up….



….over the highway and back to original road. So we get on a PAVED road (three cheers for paved roads) and the GPS says “when possible make a legal U turn.” Meaning, we’re headed in the opposite direction of where we want to be Noooo. We won’t go back!!!! LOL. So we turned around and got on a new road, this one is called ’Old Post Road.’ *only 4 left* It started out ok, it was dirt but it was graded and not too muddy.



Isn’t that mist cool??

After about a mile and a half we see..



Ahhh!

We had a delegation assess the area…



Uh. Nope we’re not going on.



At this point we don’t care how much the GPS thinks this is the right way.

We backed up about quarter mile, if even and backed up in a drive way, turned around, and headed straight out of the area. : P It’s pretty interesting, since the GPS said we had 16 miles to our destination even after all that driving down Old Post Road. Plan C was implemented, go back to the town and find the main highway! So, yeah, don’t look for short cuts in Vermont if you have a bus, it’s not worth it.

Oh, and on top of this we were late getting to the concert this morning. Hurrying up is good for us once in while. : )



We were pleasantly surprised to see our former pastor and his family who traveled up from Massachusetts! They didn’t come exclusively for us but they did get up EARLY to make it for the service. Thanks guys for the encouragement!

One thing we found out, which helped us solve the water covered bridge mystery, is that we had found the ‘floating bridge!’ Woohoo…check out the link at Bonnie's site….so, no wonder there weren’t any signs. The weight limit was 6 tons so we were defiantly not going over it, anyway.

I still have 4 m&ms left. :D *gobbles them all up* There. :)

We’re headed over to the Old Brick church for one more concert. Nathan is in the bunk across from me with a fever and chills. He seems to be getting them like clock work now, 3:30-7:30pm. The doc is going to change antibiotics when we get home. Thanks for all your prayers for us!

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August 13th

We are...back!



That was the sign out front of the Old Brick church. It was nice to be back. The ice cream was great, too. :)

The sad part about the concert was Nathan missed it. There was no way he would have been able to play. The poor guy. So, we needed a bass player and Peter was able to fill in on that with Matthew playing the mandolin for him. We only had one song without the bass, No, Not One and it was so ugh…..LOL. I considered putting the fiddle down and switching midway through the song but I started thinking how embarrassing it would have been if I couldn’t play it. It was in the key of G but, still. Chicken me.

So Matthew did a tremendous job filling in for Peter on When The Roll is Called Up Yonder. GREAT job Matthew!

So, we hung out after and ate ice cream and we got a few pictures of our friends who came back. Gluttons for punishment. ; )



And we had a nice time talking with the Christians….


Thanks all for coming, we enjoyed it!

We should be arriving home shortly and I’ll have to set aside some time to uploading pics and proof reading everything one more time before skipping off to work….

Have a great week everyone!

~

Children's children are a crown to the aged, and parents are the pride of their children. Proverbs 17:6 NIV

You may think this looks like a pile of rags but it’s the results of hours and hours of cutting and piecing, thank you very much. :) I have 150 blocks made, plus, 54 blocks sewn already…so that leaves me with 236 to make. Plus, I have to square up each block in the stack down to 5 inches. But, at the rate I worked today I should have it all done sometime next week. I doubt I’ll be able to keep up the pace, but you never know.

We’re headed to Vermont tomorrow for the weekend. I’ll see what I can do about pics and such. We canceled our concert this afternoon in NH due to possible rain.

Health update for all concerned and praying: Dad has a new sore spot in his knee, which is making him walk horribly. Nathan has been on antibiotics since Monday but is still running a fever. Oh and Dad is decided not to weigh in today since he said he 'felt light.' Thanks for your prayers. I feel like we're under attack, and on more than one front.

We have some gladiolas outside that bloomed but I feel positively uninspired to photograph them or else you might have seen a picture of them here. Sorry. :-(
Hope you all had a lovely day and you enjoy the weekend!.
~

Whoever slanders his neighbor in secret, him will I put to silence; whoever has haughty eyes and a proud heart, him will I not endure.
Psalm 101:5 NIV

Bonnie has relived me of some of my ’reporting’ duty! She did a fine job, too. :)

We did three concert this past weekend. It was tons of fun! We stayed with our good friends the Bartletts on Crystal Lake. (After we got past the weeds and ’grass’ growing on the floor of the lake it was really nice. : ) ) Some of us got quite sun burned as we swam, kayaked, rode the jet ski and water skied….I’m not complaining because it was sooo much fun. :D

Before I got much further let me explain that the B’s are related to Lynn and Jonathan. (See tagged folks at the end of this post.)

Hannah really got into the fishing thing…yes, she really caught that.



You should have seen the one that got away. ;)

Eww. Hannah, don’t kiss it (or give it mouth to mouth resuscitation)!




We did some relaxing….



Ahh. This is the life.



Mr. Ed gave us a ride around the lake…it was so pretty. :)



The jet skiing was FABULOUS. :D I do mean it was super fun….I never thought I’d be saying speeding across a lake at 46 miles an hour was my cup of tea especially if I was driving :pleased:, but it certainly was exhilarating and I wouldn’t mind doing that again. I probably won’t be looking up jet ski accidents on youtube anytime soon. :P



Daniel enjoyed being frog man and diving for clams etc…



He was so cute. Wait. He still is cute. :) On Sunday night I got comments about how cute and expressive he was and that he would be the comedian of the family. LOL. I think we have a few of those already.

My lovely mom. :)



Does anyone recognize this guy? He’s ‘fixing’ his hair here…



And then comes his serious pose as the deep lake creature who has very long green hair, or, maybe it's just Vincent?




Our friends and us.



Thanks again for having us! And, thanks for all the cool movie clips you took of us singing and playing. We’ll have to get few uploaded and blogged sometime. : ) Bonnie would know how to do that better than I.

In other news….

UPDATE ON NATHAN

It appears he has a very bad infection, bladder or urinary tract. The doc called us this evening (never a good sign if they have to call you. :P) and put him on antibiotics and wants an ultra scan of his kidneys. Thanks for all your prayers for us and our health issues.

Dad is still about the same. He seemed to be a good spirits this morning but he’s still not getting much better it seems. Thanks for all your prayers.

And, before I forget, Izzy kindly included me in when she tagged 5 people for “Bloggers for Positive Global Change”




I get to in turn tag five more people. Last time I did a tag I so melted and didn’t finish the project so this time I’m tagging everyone right away…if I leave you out it’s not because I don’t like your blog, btw.

Bonnie - my sister. ; )

Lynn - she gives us a peak at life in country.

Bethany - one of the talented Wissmann family who has inspiring photos and stories.


Jonathan - a GO-RON-PAUL! kinda guy :D


Patrick - he’s a good guy with good thoughts!


But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."
James 4:5-7