Home Sweet Home

                                                                         Over view of our Winter Trip:
1. We left Missouri Noveber 16, 2011
2. Arived in Alabama November 18, 2011
3.  We three children visited friends in Lousiana, arived November 20, 2011
3. November 19, 2011 Older brother goes to Arizona to get a job
3. November 20, 2011 Parents return to Missouri to tie up lose ends for the winter - things we hadn't had time to attend to before the funeral.
4. Mid December Mom, Dad, the baby, and the three of us head out to Arizona.

5. January 27, 2012 Older brother stays in Arizona and the rest of us head South back down to Lousiana.
6. Early February we leave Lousiana and go back to Alabama.
7. March 31, 2012 We arive home back in Missouri.

There has come an end to our travels. We have been back home since the last day of March, that's about two weeks. It is so good to be back home. Familiar places, familiar faces. :) So, First I'll start off with a compilation of some of my face book status's since we've been back. Beware, a very eclectic post awaits you. :)

March 30, 2012

On the road again, on the road again. The --------- are on the road again. Goin' back to their home again!
Yay! We've had a great time while traveling but I will be glad to get back to the land and our church. :)

 

March 31, 2012

Well we're almost there. We stopped at a hotel in Warrensburg (Oh the irony...) My brother may have a dentists appointment today and this is where the dentist is. We're ganna be back at our own place reaall soon. :)

April 1, 2012

It was so great to be back at our church again. Too see everybody again, to sing with them. Take communion in our own church again. :) I grinned the whole time during church. It is so good to be back. :) And my, how everyone has grown! It is a beautiful day. The sermon was great, next Sunday is Easter. :) yippee yippee I am so happy. :)

April 11, 2012
Easter was wonderful. :) Great fellowship, I took communion with my own church again, talked with friends. I played two of the songs for that Sunday. Immediately after church everyone packed up and we headed over to the ------ Winery for a celebration. Everyone brought dishes of food which ENTIRELY filled two long tables, and that is not counting the deserts! After the meal (it was scrumptious...) the young ladies cleaned up. The guys went out to shoot clay pigeons, the men talked, as did the women while they kept an eye on the little ones. After a while we cleared a place on the patio and got everything set up for some dancing. Dad got the music hooked up on the speakers through his computer. We did the Virginia Reel (of course) and the Gay Gordon. We tried some other dances but couldn't get those right. It was lots of fun. Children ran around playing games, older girls followed the toddlers around keeping them out of trouble, and it was just fun all the way around. What a wonderful way to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord. I could just feel the happiness, especially as we sang the songs during church. Oh it was great. :) Church started at 10 and our family got home at six o'clock (it was not a long drive) . That's eight hours of fellowship!

April 11, 2012
Good day today. It is so good to be back home. :)
Worked on trimming the blackberries today, washed the little camper from top to bottom. Oh, the weather was lovely today, even if it was a little on the cold side.
My brother did some more mowing with the tractor, my sister and I worked on raking up the dry grass from the last mowing. We use it on the compost pile and for ground cover in the garden

April 17, 2012
When we first got back home two weeks ago, it was a waxing moon. I wouldn't allow myself to look at the sky until the moon finished waxing and then finished waning. (new moon?) So a couple nights ago when the moon disappeared I looked at the stars for the first time with my glasses. When I looked up I took a sharp breath and held it for a moment. I turned around and around as I looked. The sky was b...lack, black, black and the stars were covering it. Like the ends of a crystal the stars shone, little tiny points, maybe the end of a needle. Little bright shining points, not fuzzy balls. I could see some stars that were not even there if I took my glasses off. It was breathtaking. It was glorious. It was awesome in the truest sense.
I got dizzy from it all. I could have looked all night, but it was cold, and my dog was squirming in my arms. My steps wavered as I made my way across the yard, my face still turned to the sky. I nearly ran into the door. I went inside.

Psalm 8:3-4 and the first and last verse of the psalm.
3 When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?
...Oh LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

I got the same feeling David did when he looked at the stars.
Did all of this start out as a clump of cells, a little blob floating around in space?

As you can tell, I am very happy to be back home. But now, let's get to the fun part. Here are the pictures!

The baby and I just chillin'. :)

The last Sunday we spent with Grandma we went on a picnic after church. That is Mobile Bay in the background.

Sitting on the dock

Our last night at Grandmas. This is the river she lives on.

The next day we started packing. Dad and my brother went and picked up the little U-Haul pull behind trailer thing. That made it oh so much more comfortable for the passengers. We started packing as soon as we got up in the morning and we left at 12:08 am the "next day". Yup, I think I have said it before, we are slow.

Packing disaster...

But, don't worry we left Grandmas house sparkling clean. Floors vacuumed and swept, bathrooms cleaned, mirrors wiped... but I suppose there were still some dishes left to be washed.

We did have a few traveling photos and pictures of our stay at the hotel but I can't find them so we will just skip to when we got back.

When we turned onto our road this feeling of expectation grew, and grew, and grew as we came closer to our forty acres. Around all the curves, we came gravel rocks flinging behind us, green fields and tall trees around us. And then we saw the bridge over our creek, and then we turned into the drive way. Home! I was stuck in the middle seat so I had to wait to get out. But then I was on the ground. There was the apple tree, the plum tree, the red sheds, the woods, our trailer, our water hill, the school bus on the side of the driveway, the pile of rubble where our house once stood, our grossly over grown blackberry bushes. But it was home, we were back! Big grin on my face. We did not take long however, before we started to work. I ran inside and got a quick change of clothes, we worked on unloading the truck, organizing the little red shed, and airing out the blankets and sheets and things. We were relieved to find no mice had moved in while we were gone although the roof did leak a little and damaged a few things.

And now for some pictures:

We decided to give the baby a bath out by the clothes line just for fun. Isn't he cute? It would have been a perfectly composed picture if it hadn't been for the trampoline, the tractor and the edge of the other bucket. It should have been just green grass, baby, and the clothes. Oh well, it is still a good picture. :)

It did not take us long after we got back to get in a visit to Great Grandma.

She was so happy to see us, saying how much we've grown. (I thought I was done growing!) She adores the baby. This picture is down at the dining hall. Everybody always goes to dinner an hour early.

I'm playing El-Shaddai. I really like this song. I was even brave enough to sing it. -gasp!- Yeah, I don't normally do that. I sang it really quiet too. Maybe next time I'll be louder...

While the rest of the family sat around and talked I played piano for them. Grandma likes to listen to me play and so do the other residents.
The next thing that happened was Easter, but I'll save that for a separate post. But here are some more pictures of what we've been doing around the farm since we've been back.

The guys work on the tractor..

Frying up some fries. ;) It has a really good flavor if their fried in a mixture of coconut oil and sunflower oil. We season them with garlic powder and salt.

 I was very glad to start up piano lessons again. :)

Beautiful plum tree. (Sung in a sing song voice)

Dad ad the baby play hang.

I remember playing this game when I was little. It was so much fun and I was so busy laughing that I would let go and fall onto the couch or bed.

We are studiously studying away. ;)

Okay and just three more pictures....

We older people totally underestimate how difficult it is to get up again.

What a lovely, lovely compost pile.

Our buck, Max.

If any body is wanting to buy a buck, this one is for sell! He is 75% Nubian 25% Alpine. His father was a full blood spotted Nubian. His mother a Alpine Nubian cross. My brother is putting up an add on Craigs List.