My Family Came

It'd been 2 1/2 yrs since my parents had been able to make the trek to Ohio and I'm so glad that they finally pulled it off! We had the. best. visit. ever. It was oh so much fun!

Josh and Mom both had birthdays that week so we celebrated them with apple pie and cheesecake.

Dad is so great and I had a great long list of stuff that I wanted him to do, although Blake did tell me that I needed to not overwork him and let him have a vacation too. Well I mostly kept him hopping the whole. entire. time, but he kept saying he was totally enjoying himself! :)

He spent all of Monday working with Blake taking trees out of the back yard, he installed a new light in the dining room, and built me a pantry. They are all wonderful. The pantry is definitely most blissful. :)

Look, I mean how is this not wonderful??

I had him cut a little hole and there was nothing in there so he just kept cutting. I must admit there was a little part of me that hoped there was a treasure chest hidden in there at least!

 It looks like it's been there from the start.

The light went from this:

to this:

And then the trees behind the house... See? It was a jungle and we desired sunshine.

Fourteen or fifteen trees later, it looks like this. :)

 

We went bike riding on Sunday but some of us were so tired exhausted, that we almost didn't make it back! Elijah had tripped on something the second day they were here, and he ended up having to get seven stitches in his knee! (The story is fuzzy, the results were not.) Consequently bike riding was, at best, a challenge. He was not to be left home though and certainly put his whole effort into it. I just black taped his one good leg to the pedal; he covered at least ten one-legged miles!

We stopped to smell the flowers and getting back on the bike was just too much!

Mom and I hit all the thrift stores- she needs to come back and go yard-saling with me. We had so much fun at just the few Goodwills. Imagine the deals we could find in a day of yard sales!

All my brothers and my Dad

Man, I'm so glad that at least Josh lives here, but couldn't we at least like get rid of NY so that there would be a lot less travel time between here and there?? I'd like to see all these fun people a whole lot more often!!! 

Packing the truck to leave... good byes are sad!

Here's hoping that it won't be another 2+ yrs before you guys can come out again. That was fun!

Skipping Life

We did it! We actually skipped a whole weekend here and went a whole hour away- just us. We'd been starting to feel like this cow, barely keeping our heads out of the manure pit.

 Oh my, it was blissful!

Photo credits to Josh, who observed and photographed the poor cow this week. :)

 At 10:30 Friday night we left, got some supper and then a hotel, and happily slept till noon. Vacations. are. awesome.

Mostly we slept, but we also went to the beach - Lake Erie. I've lived here for almost five years and I had never been to Lake Erie before; we both agreed that we are definitely going again!

I found this rose floating on the water. I decided it was planted right there for me. :)

Did I mention that last weekend was blissfully wonderful??

"At least you have work"

...They said.
Yep, at least we have work.

After overhearing a very nice older gentleman in the grocery store complaining to someone else about how he has to work so hard to keep things going and support his family too and how the younger generation can't find jobs, I wanted to scream. 

I almost walked right over to the conversation and gave the man a list of people that I know personally who are hiring, so that his poor 22-year old grandson could find a job.

 I wanted to ask him if the real reason his poor grand-kids didn't have work was because they just would rather play video games. 

I wanted to tell him that perhaps if we would raise the next generation to work, some of the voids would be filled and then those who are working could relax a little and not have to put in 16-18 hr days. 

I wanted to tell him that the next generation is spending more time goofing off than learning valuable skills and so their highest work qualification is Mcdonalds. 

I wanted to tell him that searching for skilled laborers (or hey even ones who have a possibility of learning!) is a job all on it's own. 

I wanted to tell him that there is work for those who want work. 

But I didn't. 

So I'm telling you. 

There are jobs. 

Lots of them.  

But hey, at least we have work!