Texas Trip

Our family enjoyed a brief weekend get away to Texas a few weeks ago.
Mom's (Tisha) Uncle Bob was getting married, and we had the pleasure of attending!
Although our time was short, it was wonderful to spend it with our family! (immediate and extended!)

View from our hotel.


On Friday night after the rehearsal, we all went out to dinner at a pizza place.
It also had an arcade room with different games, bowling, etc.

Caroline, Susanna and I went on the Carousel!


Eric, Caroline, and Miles did the Bumper Cars!


On Saturday, we spent the morning at an amazing store called "IKEA"
Since it was a Swedish based store, we felt literally "Right at Home" since Lindsborg is "Little Sweden"
Aside from lots of home decor and other fun things that were very low-priced, they also had a tasty restaurant, where we all ate for $20!!



Here we are standing in front of Stockholm!


Yummy ice cream cones!


Miles and Zach waiting for the wedding to begin!


Paige and Susanna!


The wedding couple!


After the wedding, we went out to a Mexican place,
right across from our hotel, to eat.
They made fresh Guacamole while we hungrily watched!


Ride 'em Cowgirl! All throughout dinner, Susanna
kept asking to go ride the horse! We usually don't
ride them, but Susanna loved it!


On Sunday, we attended a church that seated 3000 people!
The service was excellent, and we enjoyed worship there.

Cherry Pickin'

A few weeks ago a friend from church, who happens to be our neighbor, invited us over to pick cherries off his laden tree. We took him up on his offer, and went over in the cool of the morning to pick some juicy red cherries. The boys weren't able to come-But, the rest of us enjoyed our time and there weren't even any bugs!
Earlier this week, we had a big storm with lots of wind. Another of our neighbors lost quite a few branches, and there was even a tree that uprooted! They also had a cherry tree with lots of fruit still on it.......They don't even like cherries that much, so we were also able to get some cherries from them! We've frozen 10 bags or so of pitted cherries, made cherry soup (see pic) and cherry limeades! YUMMY! We actually have a cherry tree-5 feet tall and we got a whopping 1 cherry from it this year. It was hard to split 7 ways, but we managed.
When we got all these cherries, we saw how good the Lord was and how He provided for us since we don't have a flourishing tree yet!


The BIG tree!





Each branch had many clusters of cherries!



Yummy!











Look, Elizabeth! It's CUUTE!



Cherry Soup (Maus (spelling?) is the German word for it)
It is basically like cherry pie filling.

WWII Airplane Showing

Last Friday, our family had the privilege to go and view 3 WWII Airplanes at the Salina Airport. Because it cost $12.00 per person to go inside the airplanes, we opted to just look on the outside.
It was such a wonderful experience to see them close up, and it demonstrated to us the importance of a war pilot's job and experience!

Miles and our cousin Zach

Miles attempting to "hold" the airplane!

Our family





B-24 collage (click to enlarge)


B-17 collage (click to enlarge)

Summer Projects---

We have been so busy with our summer schedule,
it has been hard to do any blogging.
I've been collecting pictures, though!
Enjoy looking through what we've occupied our days with for the past few weeks!

About a month ago, we painted our porch-The paint has been peeling for awhile, and was getting pretty bad. After 3 days of hard work, we finally finished!
Before


After


Elizabeth painting-I'm standing on the rail!


The guys and Susanna


The boys used some black plastic and water to make a slipper-slide!
What a great way to cool off!








Behind our house, there is a low spot where water collects when it rains.
Eric got a plastic raft from a friend-And with our pet duck, Fluffy-the 3 children went "rafting" in the 15 inch water!! It was quite a sight!





We've started to get some our garden produce! This morning Mom, Miles and I went out and dug 3 rows of potatoes. We've also got 40-50 bulbs of garlic, a bucketful of onions, and some beets. Our lettuce, Swiss chard, and Kale have already died out, but we got a lot from them!





Wheat Harvest is almost over in our part of Kansas! Miles and Eric got a chance to go out and ride in the combines though!




That's all for now!!! Have a safe and FUN 4th of July!

One stormy Saturday afternoon.......

This Saturday afternoon was spent at the Stucky Family reunion. (The Stucky's are Mom's side of the family)
It was held in Inman, KS at their local park. Once everybody had gathered, we shared a meal of sloppy joes, chips, potato salad, baked beans, fruit and relishes with a variety of appetizing cookies for dessert.
Everyone chatted while the wind started to come up. It had been 95 degrees when we got there and was 69 degrees when we left. In past years it has been sunny and hot. Today it was cool and windy.
The kids enjoyed a rollicking game of water balloons and water guns after dinner.
We all packed up around 7:30 when it started to sprinkle outside. Almost all of the Stucky clan was there, including part of the Alabama group!! We missed a few but enjoyed all that could make it. Isn't family a blessing!

The laden food table....Yum!

The Fabulous Fourth!

America, America, God shed His grace on thee! And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea!

After a yummy jelly coffeecake early Friday morning, Elizabeth left for work. She has been working for the past three years for a man who sells fireworks. (See picture)
The rest of the family got ready for the day. Around 4:00 p.m. our friends came over to celebrate. After enjoying a dinner of hamburgers, baked beans, and potato salad, with homemade ice cream and brownies for dessert, the kids were ready to start shooting fireworks. They had already went and bought some from Elizabeth's work. What a variety!
Everybody got to choose which ones they wanted!

Elizabeth got back home from work around 8:30 p.m....with 2 more bags of fireworks!
Were those kids ever excited! We ended our night around 10:30 but around town fireworks continued to go off, which made it a little hard to sleep.

But, we all had a wonderful day celebrating our independence!

Those sunny days of summer

Susanna and Elizabeth had a wonderful time of splashing in the sun on Sunday afternoon.
Caroline recently bought Susanna a "ducky" pool from the local thrift shop.
She has been kind of scared of that big yellow thing, but yesterday we filled it with some water and got in! Susanna cried a little at first but she finally got used to it and even sat down!
As you can see in the pictures we were a little of a tight fit! But otherwise it was a terrific time enjoying the beautiful outdoors!


In this picture Susanna has to close her eyes because the sun was so bright!


Elizabeth and Susanna in the ducky.....Miles got to be our photographer!

Beckman Biking

The Beckman Biking Adventure, Sunday, June 8, 2008.

Here is the pedal by pedal report.....

Two summers ago the city of Lindsborg made the Valkommen Trail. We children have been up and down the whole trail many times, but Mom has only gone a few, and Dad had never gone. So, we all geared up to go last night. The sky was overcast with limited humidity which made the early evening ride much more desirable. Dad rode with Susanna behind him. Mom rode Eric's bike. Caroline, Miles and I rode on our own bikes while Eric rode an extra bike we have on hand. The Trail is 2.5 miles round trip. Once you have gone about a three-fourths of a mile or so, their is a "fork" in the trail. We usually go left because of the bridge. When you go on the left side you can cross over the Smoky Valley River via a bridge. After going on the bridge you can circle around, cross over another bridge and get back on the trail. So, we started heading back towards home. On the way we stopped at the sno cone shop. "Tropical Sno" is a local favorite all summer long! The flavor of the week was "Melonberry." Dad was brave enough to try it. Miles chose "Jayhawk", Caroline got "Swede", Eric got "Cherry Limeade" and I got "Mountain Splash Berry". Dad shared with Susanna. Mom decided to have a taste of each one!! After our refreshing treat, we biked directly home since the mosquitoes were seemingly attracted to our sticky fingers!

It was a memorable time spent together and a wonderful ending to our weekend!