A Christmas tree with lights, and a new floor!

One of my favorite Christmas-time sights is our beautiful tree, lit and decorated, and decorated and DECORATED! Our poor tree has so many lovely ornaments, it looks like it might fall over! But we love it, and think it's perfect!

And we all love our angel, but because of a few technical difficulties, she leans forward! Maybe she'll fly this year! :)

Does anyone else have all their Christmas shopping done? I do! And what a relief, it's always so good to have that done.

Dear me, I've been so busy, but I really can't think of anything else to post! But we're doing our annual Christmas cookie baking with my aunt and my grandma, so I'll blog about that!

I hope everyone is having a blessed Christmas season!

~Emily

Christmas is Just Around the Corner!

Hooray! My favorite season is finally upon us. I love Christmas, and everything about it. The music, the decorating, the family and friends, the music, the cookies...I get excited just thinking about it!

My siblings couldn't WAIT to put up the Christmas tree, and today we finally got to do it. But then, (there's always a "but then" in good stories right?) when we went to put the lights on it, only one little string would work! :( Daddy did every thing he could think of, but they are just too old. So the tree part will have to wait until we can get more lights, but there's still the nativity scene and all the other fun stuff to put up!

We decorated every available surface while we listened to everyone's favorite Christmas songs. Let it Snow, and Jingle Bell Rock remain two of our favorites!:)

Whew, What a mess! Decorations, nativity scene pieces, dead strings of lights all over the place!

And then I spilled this sparkle stuff ALL over the floor, Oops. I was wearing socks, and by the time I finished vacuuming up the sparkle, I had found a new meaning for the term twinkle toes!:)

It made us all giggle, and we laughed about twinkle toes for quite awhile!:)

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and that you are all as excited for Christmas as we are!

With Love,

Emily

How Firm a Foundation

Verse 1.

How firm a foundation ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in his excellent word! What more can he say than to you he hath said, To you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?

Verse 4. (my favorite)

"When thro' fiery thy pathway shall lie, My grace a sufficient shall be thy supply. The flames shall not hurt thee I only design, thy dross to consume, and the gold to refine.

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms."

Last night, daddy took me up to Dave's, so I could finally get my new gun! I am so excited to finally have a hand gun again, it felt SO odd not to have one! (My other one is on consignment at Dave's) It was like... missing my right hand, and it was even worse when we'd go shooting!

This gun is will be my carry-gun when I'm 21, and in the meantime will be a target gun. It's also a "pretty gun" (Now we both have "pretty" guns Mrs. Weese!!:) It is a light, silvery lavender color, and I just LOVE the name.

It's called the Lavender Lady. Isn't that just so feminine? :) It's a .38 special, for my fellow gun ladies that read my blog, and hope the weather will be bearable so I can put at least one box of rounds through it on Sunday!

As I type, Eloise has been in her bed snoring like it was going out of fashion! She is so funny, and just now I called her name, look at that sleepy face!

Well I hope you're all having a lovely, windy Thursday!

Love,

Emily

Harvest Party Pictures

Here are some pictures of the harvest party we went to on Friday evening. We had such a wonderful time, and it was lots of fun to dress up in our historical costumes!

I'm sorry the pictures aren't all that great, but the lighting isn't very good for picture taking. :)

We took the pictures in groups according mostly to time period, and all of the ones from my time period I don't have yet, but when I get them I will post them!

From back row, to front row, left to right.

Colonial period:

Ali, Krista, Anna, Isabel, Lydia and Elizabeth

Regency Period:

Hannah and Jessica

All the guys just did a group picture, they were mostly cowboys, but Bradley was a revolutionary war general and there was a civil war costume here and there. And half of the young men weren't even in the picture!

Phil, Zachary, Bradley, Matthew, Isaac, Luke, Carson, Teddy and Joe.

Thank you so much Criss family for putting this FUN night together!

Happy November All!

~Emily Lauren

A Second Amendment Quote.

A strong body makes a strong mind. As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it also gives boldness, enterprise, and independance to the mind... Let your gun therefore, be the constant companion of you walks.

~Thomas Jefferson

(I'm not trying to copy you Susanna and Hannah,

but I stumbled upon this, and had to post it! :)

My, how the time does fly...

...In between blog posts I mean! :)

This morning I snuggled down in front of the fireplace with a heavy fleece blanket, to finish up my homework, and study for a test, and before I knew it Elsie and Eloise had decided that it looked like a comfy place to sleep! It was pretty cute, they snuggled up, and kept me VERY warm:)

BTW, anybody notice anything, hmm.. shall we say different? ;)

Have a blessed Monday all!

~Emily

I want it to be said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle, and planted a flower, where I thought a flower would grow.

~Abraham Lincoln

Hmm... what to post....

I think I'll do another of our family's favorite poems out of that same book, this one is really cute,

Mom said when I was just 7 or 8 years old I used to read this poem, and it was a favorite!

Do you carrot all for me?

**********************

Do you carrot all for me?

My heart beets for you,

with your turnip nose, and radish face,

You are a peach.

And if we cantalope,

Lettuce marry;

Weed make a swell pear.

~Anonymous

Isn't that the cutest thing? :)

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Love,

Emily

Homework oh, Homework...

After I got home from class today, I was thinking I would blog about my English class, and the dreaded homework I have, and I instantly remembered a poem I used to read when I was little, and it made me laugh out loud because of it's funny words, and I could only remember the first line!! Being the only other one in the room, I do believe Ali thought I had finally gone crazy! :)

I looked around for the poetry book it was in, and finally found it, it is very thrashed, frommany readings, and it's even book-marked as a favorite! I think we all loved this book as children:)

So I definitely don't feel this strongly about it, even though it's not my favorite thing to do! ;)

Homework Oh, homework! I hate you,

you stink, I wish I could wash you away in the sink!

If only a bomb would explode you to bits.

Homework, Oh, homework! You're giving me fits!

Homework, Oh, homework! You're last on my list!

I simply can't see why you even exist,

If you just dissapeared, it would tickle me pink!

Homework Oh, homework, I hate you, you stink!

~Jack Prelutsky

Sweet Baby Lydian

Melissa came over today, so I FINALLY got to hold my precious niece, Lydian.

She is so tiny, and I could hold her aallllll day. She is so content to lay in your arms, and to be passed from person to person.

Grandma and Grandpa.

Auntie Samantha.

Uncle Brad.

Aunt Ali

I'm Back...

I know Summer is long gone, but then I had the excuse that fall started, and I got really busy:)

So I thought I would blog about a day trip we took about two weeks ago.

Dad had the day off on a Thursday a couple weeks ago, and they told us early on in the morning, that we were going on a mystery day trip, and to wear walking shoes, and to bring warm coats.

So we get into the car, and head down Chuckanut Drive, which is especially beautiful this time of year due to the beautiful red, orange and yellow trees all along the road.

And then mom and dad took us all to Larrabee State Park , where we had never been before.

We went down to the water first, and found lots of star fish, and climbed on the rocks, and just had fun exploring. You could get right down in the water, and there were star fish all over the place!
Purple ones, pinkish ones, orange ones and red ones...

There were some huge rock faces you could climb up, and the view got even better!

Mom and dad are so sweet:)

When we started to walk back up to the main park area we heard a train whistle, and dad told us to run up to the bridge we had walked under on the main trail, because the train would go right over our heads on the bridge! And sure enough, we got to the bridge and all stood underneath it and listened to the very loud train go right over our headsCAUTION: ADULTS ON THE PLAYGROUND!

While we were waiting for a couple people in the restroom, Brad and Ali started playing in the play ground, and then (I'm not sure how it happened..) but soon we were all being silly and playing on the playground, even mom and dad!

This is a game where you stand on a bar that you rock back and forth, and try to shake the other people off...

I fell off..:)

The park has an outdoor stage where they sometimes hold concerts and things

We had a WONDERFUL time there, and I can't wait until we can go again sometime.

Happy Fall Everyone!

Summer Vacation

Some close friends of ours invited us to join them for a week of vacation in Canada at Paradise Lake this summer. And so this entire last week we were up there with them, and we had such a wonderful time!

We stayed in beautiful log cabins right on the water front, and had so much fun swimming, fishing, and boating on the lake, that my parents decided that we are going to go back on our own next year for a week or two. So anyway here are some pictures for you to see.

WARNING: If any of you tend to go into cardiac arrest at the mere sight of "a big bug," then you might want to skip this post......

I could've taken pictures of the lake all day, it was so beautiful.

The floating dock was lots of fun, dad had us swim out the with life jackets the first time to see how we did, since we haven't been able to swim for so long, and then we were allowed to swim without them when we passed his test.Lots of cute little tadpoles

You had fair warning! These things are pretty common up there, and this particular one measured about 4 1/2 inches! I thought they were pretty cool, but needless to say, my poor mother did not! (she didn't know untill we got home that we had found one IN the cabin! :)

These sweet little chipmunks were all over the place, one even found its way into our cabin!

Lots of fishing was done by this handsome fisherman...

Summer!

My computer is being a pain, and won't let me move most of the pictures! So they're stuck at the top. But I'll label them, and then you can read about them. :P



Red Barn Lavender Farm

The smell of all this lavender was heavenly!

The farm had their own bee hives, and they sold their own lavender honey.

My gardens.

Blueberries for the freezer.

I hope you have all been having a GREAT summer, I know I have! I was reading a friends blog where they had a link to my blog, and it said the last time I had posted was 4 weeks ago!! So I thought I had better do good long post. :)

These last few weeks have been filled with gardening, canning, and flowers! All things that I love.

Thanks to Craigslist, I have found some very inexpensive ways to put up preserves for this winter.
we found a U-pick, organic blueberry "farm" out on the Hannegan road, where you pick what you want, and then pay what you think it's worth!

It's by donation, and they provide buckets for you to pick into, and plastic bags to take them home in! So we picked for 45 minutes, and brought home 3 gallons of berries! The bushes are just loaded.

Then I put an ad on Craigslist for sour canning cherries, and a lady off the BirchBay Lynden rd. said she had a tree that had tons on it, and that I was welcome to have as many as I wanted!

So dad and I went out and picked nine quarts of pie cherries!

(dad said he thought it was worth picking when he thought of the pies he would get out of it later!:)

It took me 2 1/2 hours just to PIT all those cherries! But like dad says, it will be worth it!

Some friends brought us a huge flat of great, big raspberries, so I made jam with those. (Ali's favorite:) And the Green Barn had apricots on sale, so I was able to make apricot jam too! Yummy!

But I think the highlight of all this, was the Red Barn Lavender Farm.

http://www.redbarnlavender.com/

It is located in Ferndale, on the Thorton rd, and I would recommend visiting this place to anyone! It is so beautiful out there, and the rows, and rows, and ROWS of lavender are absolutely spectacular! Mom and Ali and I went, and we were so impressed by the lovely gardens, and the sweet, friendly people there. They even have a place with picnic tables set up so you can bring a picnic lunch!

And for $5 bucks, you can bring home a giant bunch of lavender to dry, and then decorate with, or make sashets with!

Sweet peas are climbing all over my fence, I think they might be my favorite flower, but it's so had to pick!

So these are just a few of the things that have been keeping me busy, and keeping me from blogging! But I promise I'll blog more this fall, in between batches of cherry pies and blueberry scones! :)

Summer Blessings,

~Emily