Adam & Tiffany's Wedding

Chad's good friend Adam from work got married this past weekend.  Since Chad was a groomsman we were able to be at both the rehearsal and the wedding ceremony.  Now I have never heard of this tradition, but Adam and Tiffany asked me to be the "stand in" for the bride during the rehearsal.  Apparently it's considered bad luck by some for the bride to participate in the wedding rehearsal.  It was very weird for me since I had never met anyone from either family before that night, but I wanted to do anything I could to help out Adam and Tiffany.  Here are some pictures from the rehearsal:

The wedding ceremony was very nice and everything went smoothly.  Tiffany looked beautiful in her dress and you could really tell that Adam and Tiffany are very much in love.  Here are some pictures from the wedding ceremony:

A Very Busy Saturday

We decided to have a yard sale with our friends Becca and Jason.  Since they had recently moved into a new house they had plenty of stuff put aside for a sale.  They also graciously offered their yard for the sale, which worked out as a great location.  The only bad thing was Chad and I made some really nice signs and they were stolen the day before the yard sale.  I think they stole them for the materials - Chad found some metal sign holders that we used, but they could be used for any sign, so I think that's why they were stolen.  Thankfully another family in the same neighborhood was also having a yard sale the same day and all their signs led past Becca and Jason's house, so we didn't have to make all new signs!  The sale went really well and we sold a lot of stuff and made a little extra money, so we were happy in the end!  Here are pictures from the yard sale:

Becca and Jason also had their daughter Katie's first birthday party the same day as our yard sale.  They were very brave to host both events in one day!  Thankfully Jason's Dad and Step-mother came for Katie's party, so they helped with both the yard sale and the birthday party.  Here are some pictures from Katie's first birthday party:



Cardinals

I love cardinals and I am always excited to see them at our bird feeder.  I was very excited to see this female cardinal come by our new feeder.  Hopefully since the base is bigger they will come by more often.  She's a little hard to see in these pictures because she was in a shadow.

Our Niece's Baptisms

Our nieces, Kathryn and Karissa, were both baptized Sunday June 5th.  We were so happy for them and very glad that we got to attend the service with most of Chad's family.  Here are some pictures from that day:

2011 Garden

We were very excited to start our garden this year!  We got a pretty late start because we were trying to find somewhere to get truly organic compost to re-fill our raised beds.  Last year we got all our soil and compost from a specialty garden store, but this year we just needed some compost to fill up the beds.  I recently read the book Animal Factory by David Kirby that talked about the environmental impacts of factory farming.  In that book he mentioned that a lot of commerical mulch and compost comes from the "chicken litter" left in commerical chicken houses after the chickens are gone.  This could be full of all kinds of bacteria, chemicals, etc.  So, thankfully we were able to buy all our compost for $20 from Hodges Farm, which is right down the road from us.  We know that this compost is from 100% grass fed cattle, so I feel great about supporting a local farm and knowing we got truly organic compost.  We also decided to expand our gardening and build a raised bed at Chad's parent's house.  We are only growing corn and pie pumpkins in our "second" garden.  In the one at our house we planted yellow squash, zucchini, lima beans, kidney beans, okra, cucumbers, and tomatoes.  We may plant some more in some containers at our house too.  Here are some pictures of the beginning of our 2011 garden:

New things at our house

Last year we were VERY fortunate that Chad's grandmother gave us an old chest freezer she didn't need anymore.  It was HUGE and harvest gold color, but it was free and we didn't care what it looked like as long as it worked.  We never came close to filling it, but we definitely took advantage of all that extra freezer space to buy more food when it was on sale and freeze it for later.  Unfortunately it died the week before we went on vacation this year.  Thankfully it happened before our trip and not while we were gone!  Also, Chad's parents graciously offered us space in their extra freezer so we could save all our food until we got a new freezer.  The day that our new freezer was to be delivered Chad took this picture of Roxy because it looks like she's guarding the freezer. 

Here is our new freezer!

Our new freezer come with these great movable baskets and organizers!

We also got a new birdfeeder - our old one was broken from bumping into the tree when it got windy.  As you can see the birds are already enjoying this new one!