Cat Pictures

Here are some new cat pictures:

 Sandy found a new spot to hide in.

Sandy doing a yoga DVD with me!

Roxy and Sandy hanging out in the chair together.

Braden's 3rd Birthday

Our friends Becca & Jason's son Braden turned 3 in July.  We really enjoy hanging out with their family and I really appreciate that they include us in both of their children's birthdays and celebrations.  Here are a few pictures from Braden's party:

Ruby's 85th Birthday Party

Chad's grandmother Ruby turned 85 this July and Chad's mom decided to have a surprise party for her at a restaurant.  Almost 60 people showed up!  I think she suspected something, but was still very surprised at how many people wanted to celebrate with her.  At the restaurant our group took up four huge tables!  Here are a few pictures from her party:

The High Cost of Cheap Food

A few weeks ago I was driving down Hwy 74 in Monroe, which I rarely ever do anymore.  I saw this truck and another one full of poor chickens on their way to the processing plant just outside Monroe.  I happened to have my camera with me, so when I was stopped at a red light I snapped this picture.  To me this perfectly illustrates the true cost of cheap food.  I think most people would like to ignore things like this and just pretend that this is not how most meat animals are treated.  But, this is the reality and if more people could see stuff like this then maybe they would realize that the "higher" prices of organic/free-range food is actually pretty fair.  I LOVE the fact that Chad and I have visisted the farm where we mainly buy our meat and eggs and we have seen the animals and the conditions for ourselves.  Farmers who are really trying to do things right don't mind people stopping by to visit - the farm we visited even said we could come back on chicken processing day if we wanted to see how they kill and process their meat chickens - try getting a tour of Tyson or Perdue's processing plants and see if anyone will let the general public in.  Like Joel Salatin and Michael Pollan say in Food Inc. and Omnivore's Dilemma cheap food isn't really cheap - it's just that the animals and farmers pay the true cost.

4th of July

The 4th of July has become one of my favorite holidays.  We've established a few traditions over the last few years and Harrisburg really does a great job with the festivities in the park, fireworks for 2 nights, and the parade.  One of our traditions is meeting some friends at the parade and this year we were able to ride our bikes to the parade from our house and that made for a MUCH quicker trip!  We also were able to walk to the park both nights from our friends Becca and Jason's new house, which meant we didn't have to find a parking spot and fight all the traffic after the fireworks.  We had cookouts both nights before the fireworks and just had a very nice long weekend.  Here are some pictures of everything we did:

First Night of Fireworks

4th of July Parade

Second Night of Fireworks

Bird refuge

One day when a thunderstorm blew in we noticed that a few birds were taking shelter in the tree in front of our house.  They were hanging on to the branches while the wind blew.  We also had a few come eat off the feeder during the storm - I guess the tree gave enough shelter to keep them out of the rain while they ate. 

You have to look closely - there are 3 birds in the tree.

This guy looks a little wet, but the food stayed dry during the storm.

2011 Garden Starting to Grow

Even though we got a pretty late start with our garden this year, things are starting to really grow.  We recently got our first few squash and zucchini too.  Here are a few pictures of our garden starting to take off...

Here are all the beds after Chad added the lattices.

A close up of one of the squash flowers.

Our okra bed - it gets the least sun, but we grew okra there last year.

We also have a bed at Chad's parents' house -

we're only growing corn and pie pumpkins there.

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!

May 2011 Vacation

My Mom usually comes to NC twice a year and this year she was here longer because she was helping my Grandmother recover from hip replacement surgery.  So, Chad & I went for a week long vacation at Wrightsville Beach to see my family.  While we were there we enjoyed the beach, visited the Wilmington Arboretum (which is beautiful and FREE), visited family, and Chad had the opportunity to explore some hunting property my family owns.  Here are some pictures from our trip:

These are all pictures at beautiful Wrighsville Beach.  The weather was so nice while we were there - the water was still pretty cold, but we did get in a few times!

These are pictures from the Wilmington Arboretum - it was so beautiful and totally FREE!

These last few are some random pictures that didn't really fit into the other slideshows.

11 Year Anniversary Trip

This year for our 11 year anniversary we decided to go to the NC mountains - particularly the Boone area.  I was born in Boone while my Dad was finishing college at Appalachian State University.  Our family used to go to the Boone/Blowing Rock area regularly when I was growing up, but I haven't been in a few years.  We stayed in West Jefferson, NC mostly because it was cheaper, but I'm so glad we did because the town was so nice!  It was small, but still had lots of good restaurants and shops and was only a short drive to Boone.  We really enjoyed our trip and plan to go back to West Jefferson again.  Here are some pictures from our trip:

Wherever we travel we always take pictures of local libraries.  Here are the libraries we visited in the NC mountains:

You can tell it's springtime!

I love having a tree in front of our house.  Not only does it give me a place to have a bird feeder, but it's nice to see the change in seasons through the tree.  I took this picture of the front of our house and you can see our tree is in full bloom now - so it'd definitely springtime!

Easter @ Verizon

For the past few years our church has had our Easter service at Verizon Wireless Ampitheatre so that we can have one service instead of multiple services.  This year was our 3rd year having Easter @ Verizon and each year it just gets better and better.  We have egg hunts and bounce houses set up for the kids to enjoy.  This year we added a mini concert by the band Need to Breathe and we also included a baptism during the service as well.  The weather was absolutely PERFECT this year too - sunny and warm with a nice breeze too.  I love our church so much and I'm so thankful that we can offer something like Easter @ Verizon for our community!  Here are some pictures from this year's Easter @ Verizon - including Chad going down one of the kids inflatable slides!

More cat pictures

Sandy & Roxy soaking up some sunshine.

A close up of Sandy in the sun.

This is Roxy's "give me a treat" look.

Sandy lounging around the house.

Goldfinches

I love watching the birds at our feeder.  Here are some pictures:

3 goldfinches all at once!

New Bookcase

When we were going to try to sell our house we packed up our 3 bookcases of books and some other things to try to de-clutter our house.  So, now that we're not going to try to sell our house we're revamping some things to make our house nicer.  We bought a new bookcase, so we had to weed 3 bookcases worth of books down to 1!  It was VERY hard and we are thinking of getting another smaller bookcase to keep more books in another room.  Anyway, here are some pictures of our new bookcase:

Full of books now!

Roxy wanted to be in the new bookcase picture too!