Fun in Peoria

This past weekend we drove down to the Peoria area for the Presbytery meeting and ordination of Mr. Erber & Mr. Strand (elders at our church). Dad attended the meetings while we girls stayed back with the Degenhart family who graciously hosted us for the weekend. We had fun baking loads of goodies (namely, 2 pans of cookie bars, a rum cake, 2 chocolate chip cheesecakes, and 2 pans of brownies...YUM - no, we did NOT eat all of it ourselves though it was very tempting), cuddling baby Geneva (who is just as sweet as can be), smiling at Elisabeth and playing with Emilee and Hannah...

Here we are baking cookie bars (I'm taking the photo :-):




Elisabeth eating cookie dough...what a little stinker! By the way, she drew on her face so if you notice anything on her face out of the ordinary...that's why.

I don't have any pictures of taking care of the chickens or the kittens, or of anything else we did until Friday night.

Friday night was a dinner celebration/ball. Several of the young ladies dressed up in period attire including us (we are always looking for excuses to wear our historical finery!).

In the car on the way to the church:

Me & Hannah

Emilee & Tara

Joanna gets the credit for most of these photos...

The caller didn't say what the name of this dance was, other than "This is pretty much walking around to music." Okaaayy... anyway, it was like the Grand March if you're familiar with that. :-)

Lauren & Me

Everyone trying to look like they know what they're doing. LOL! Tara tells me they were not much better than clueless.

Elisabeth

Mom with Geneva

I also got to spend some time with my friend Lily whom I met at the Reformation Faire back in October.



Lily was wearing her grandmother's wedding dress from 1950-something (?)! Isn't it just lovely?!

She was also wearing an exquisite hat that she made herself (Emily, you will appreciate this...).

It was a fun and late evening (late evenings tend to be fun, don't they?). It was funny at one point because they announced that we would take a break from dancing for a few minutes before doing another one, and the musicians just played some music in the background. But then everyone started waltzing! Joanna leaned over and whispered to me, "I don't think this group knows how to take a break!" :-)

Lauren - Me - Joanna

Another funny thing - We got home late and by the time we were actually in bed it was past midnight. But we rarely have "sleepovers" so we chatted a little in the girls' room till Mom poked her head in and put an end to that. Emilee's alarm was set for 5:30 a.m. .... I'm laying in bed, it's still dark and the cell phone (which has the alarm) goes off and starts playing this "song" rather loudly, with flashing blue lights. It repeats it 3 or 4 times (enough to annoy you) and then shuts off. Tara and I were the only ones that heard it I think. About ten minutes pass. And it goes off again. Emilee was sound asleep because she didn't hear it till the third or fourth time! Finally she did and turned it off. I was already wide awake and we all figured we were not going to go to sleep, it was already at least 5:45 or 6:00 since the alarm had gone off for a while after 5:30, so we might as well talk till the adults got up. So we're chatting away, and it's not getting light out. We were wondering what time it was now and if it would be ok to get up so Emilee woke Hannah up (the keeper of the watch). Hannah checks her watch and murmurs, "It's 5:07." WHAT? Emilee checked the time on the cell phone which claimed it was past 6:00! She checked the atomic clock in Jeremy's room which confirmed the watch's accuracy. So that means that we probably got less than 4 hours of sleep! We knew were wouldn't go back to sleep so we got up and started breakfast. :-)
But I can tell you Tara and I crashed in the car on the way home!

Thank you, Degenharts for your hospitality!! We had a great time!

Recital!

This past Monday night, I (Tara) had the privilege of accompanying my friend, Emily, at her voice recital! She sang beautifully and I am glad to say that there were no mistakes! :-) The song we did was called Beau Soir, which is a French song by Debussy. I had such a fun time and wouldn't have missed it! It was also fun to see a few friends from our old church who performed as well.

Here we are practicing before the recital in the choir room.

Sokea and Kathryn were the official photographers. They both got new cameras for their birthdays (which are only five days apart) so they love to snap away!

Emily - a wee bit nervous.

Ah, yes! Those relived smiles at the end! :-)

I will try to post a video sometime soon!

Thanks so much, Emily, for asking me to do this with you! It was a lot of fun! Love you!

The Harvest Begins

Though we are still in the process of clearing the rest of the garden from weeds in order to plant, our asparagus patch has begun to yield! Asparagus may not be the preferred food to some tastebuds :-), but it is an enjoyed vegetable at our house!

We actually never had to plant the asparagus; it was a surprise blessing last year when we went out one day and discovered shoots of it popping out of the ground. Apparently it takes a few years from planting to produce, and so we had it the easy way - the previous owners did the planting and the waiting, and we just showed up and reaped the rewards!

And no, this is not a trick photo... it really is that big! I decided to measure it and it's a foot and a half long, and approximately one inch in diameter at the bottom! Now that's some asparagus!

Like Father, Like Daughter

"I don't know those people..."

Don't ask.

Believe it or not, I am updating our blog

Attention: This post is in honor of my dear friend Hannah DeLadurantey, who keeps me on my toes regarding the updating of this blog.

Hannah, just so you know, ALL of the photos below were taken with my NEW camera! (with the exception of the two of the scanned sketches) :-)

So here's what's been going on in the life of Kathryn Grace since the last post.

On the evening of the twentieth (of April) we were outside enjoying the weather, burning brush (with which we are ABUNDANTLY supplied) and doing a little garden clean-up.



Then Mom went up to the house to start dinner, and she called to me to "grab my camera and get up there quick." So I did, and up on the deck was a little bird, who must have crashed into our window. He was just stunned, so Mom flipped him right side up, and he just sat there. We looked him up in our bird book and he was a Ruby Crowned Kinglet. So I snapped away, and he let Mom hold him. Then she tried to give him to Tara, but he started to flutter and instead landed on her shirt and stayed there for a while!






Then on Sunday afternoon we relaxed outside on the hammock and I decided to draw our little feathered visitor. (If you are Emily or Wendy or any other talented artist reading this, please skip down to the next paragraph!).

By the way...if you notice a little spot on the printed picture - that's a little bird dropping. I guess they wanted to make it a little more realistic.

And then the other "excitement" is that our trees and other plants are just bursting with blossoms... resulting in a very "camera-happy" Kathryn... enjoy the photos (taken with my new camera, Hannah :-).










Thanks Hannah for reminding me to post! :-) Miss you tons!