Wow…Rachel’s cross country season is OVER, and Cameron most likely has just one more cross country race in his high school career. I SO love watching my kids run! They’ve really made me proud this year (well, every year, of course)!
RACHEL
don’t know HOW she can smile after running like that!
see Ronnie and Ethan there cheering her on?
GREAT JOB RACHEL!!
CAMERON
Yes. I know. He needs a haircut!
sprinting to the finish…
I’m PROUD of you guys!
that jazz band thing was WAY last winter. I have no idea while it just now posted. I’m REALLY confused…LOL Maybe it published itself to remind me to post something newer than AUGUST!
Saturday morning found most of us up and moving before we REALLY wanted to, for a trip to our high school for State Jazz Band festival. Our kids performed at 9:20. They were GREAT! They have missed SO many practices due to bad weather…so for the amount of time they had to practice, I was quite impressed!
Rachel, Katelyn, Cameron and Karly…the back row kept things together! :-)
Rachel, Katelyn and Cameron
Rachel and Katelyn play their improv duet…may were they GOOD!!!
Cameron and one of his solos. You rock, Cameron!
Cameron’s solo…he only practiced a couple of days due to his early morning class…but he did AWESOME!
Cameron and one of his best friends, Justin. Oh, the things those two think of…in fact…right now…I think they are thinking…”OK, when we are done here, let’s go to Justin’s house and make mashed potatoes with chocolate milk!” ‘cause that is what they did later that day. They made instant potatoes, and used chocolate milk instead of the milk AND the water!! Ewwwwwwwwww!!!!
Julie and I don’t even ASK them what they are doing any more!
Thanks for playing in the band, guys. We really enjoyed hearing you play!
Ron and I were blessed beyond belief to be able to attend the National Youth Gathering in New Orleans with a group of our youth from church. The weather was HOT, hot, HOT, but the gathering was just amazing. Our kids were awesome, we attended some super Bible Studies, workshops and mass events.
Our family group for the week.
The kids, after a 17 or so hour bus ride!
The girls relaxed by the fountain and cooled off while waiting for Pastor to bring their bookbags :)
This was the point where Ron was saying “Wow…I’m glad there are only 15 of us!”
Sunday’s servant event…clean up at a theraputic horse farm.
We ate jambalaya and cajun potatoes
and gumbo (and alligator, but no one got a picture of that one :-)
Martha and I made a no sew blanket.
That was given away within MINUTES of completion, to a mom who lives in the 9th ward, for her 8 year old daughter in her new room! How cool is THAT? 
No words for this one…
every night we gathered in Martha’s HUGE room for a “debriefing” of our day and to go over everyone’s plans for the next day. One of the highlights of each day!
Nephew Nathan (traveled with our group) Nephew Aaron (traveled with his Indiana group) and Cameron got to meet up.
We fought a crowd of 25,000 going into and out of the Stadium each evening!
Rachel got to meet up with the Indiana cousins (and girlfriend :) for a few moments, too!
The view from our seats.
Our kids got to help hand out boom whackers. Yeah…25,000 people with boom whackers. Interesting…
We always tried to keep our eyes on the guy in the Indiana Jones hat! Helped us keep track of him in the crowd!
We got to ride the cable car
and shop in the French Market!
And got to go for a riverboat ride.
and pose with the locals, before heading on the bus toward home!
This is what came in yesterday! Pico de Gallo here we come!!!
Of course, I won’t use ALL of the jalapenos in this batch. That might be a BIT hot, even for my heat lovin’ family!
Besides throwing them into some yummy pico, our favorite thing to do with these jalapeno peppers is to slice them in half and stuff them with a mixture of cream cheese, bacon bits, onion powder and garlic powder and then grill them til the bottoms are blackened and nicely roasted. YUMMMM. We’ve eaten oodles of those this year, and from the looks of the pepper plants…we’ll be grilling some more up soon!
I LOVE alliteration and although these to words don’t LOOK like they would – um- alliterate? – I think they sound fun together :-)
It is HOT outside today. I mean…HOT! And humid. Like you step outside and hit a wall of heat and your glasses steam up and you kind of wilt and instantly are soaked with sweat kind of hot and humid. AND I LOVE IT! (especially when I return to my air conditioned house, LOL) I just LOVE summer and the heat and humidity. I’m just so happy.
And so is my hibiscus. It is definitely getting the hot, humid, wet, tropical weather these days. And it shows!
I picked this hibiscus tree up at Sam’s Club this spring. It hung out in my bathroom for a while, ‘cause the temperature outside wouldn’t stay above 50. I worried about it for a while, because all the flowers bloomed and then fell off and it was just this plain tree. But when I moved it outside and it got LOTS of rain and now the heat…well..just LOOK at what it has done! SEVEN beautiful blooms on it!
And speaking of HEAT….
we are sure hoping these babies produce some! LOOK at what came out of my GARDEN today! Aren’t they beautiful???? We are hoping for lots more off of our 8 jalapeno plants :) But we are thrilled with this beginning!
Ahhhh…summertime. I am SO happy!!
