The Importance of Free Wi-Fi

We love living in the country. There is only one problem – the lack of high speed internet. Right now we have satellite internet, which is better than dial-up. Most of the time. The biggest problem is when we have several days of stormy weather, like we’ve had. So what’s an entrepreneurial family with a thriving business  that requires […]

Flag Football

My camera keeps disappearing. And then I find all sorts of photos on the disk that I did not take. Recently I discovered this group of flag football photos. Brett is actually taking some really good photos. Unfortunately she takes hundreds of them to get those good shots. And guess who gets to sort through […]

Hiking

The day after Thanksgiving, we had a choice to make – go shopping for Black Friday sales  or… Go hiking in Sugar Creek Metro Park in Dayton, Ohio with my brother and his family. It was a very easy decision. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day spent with family.  It was a day that […]

Picking Apples

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that every year we go apple picking! We have gone every year that I can remember. We always have a lot of fun, as you can see in this post from 2010, and this post from 2007.  I could not find blog […]

Second Choice

A couple of weeks ago, the family went apple picking. When we got there, I took the little girls to the bathroom and Jim sent Colter to find out what kinds of apples were available for picking (fuji apples are our favorite ones to pick). Colter returned with the news that there were no more […]

Watermelon Football

We have a great garden in Indiana. One of the things that grow very well for us each year is watermelon. As much as we love our watermelons, I admit I was a little surprised when Jim decided to bring one of our homegrown watermelons with us on vacation to North Carolina. But I didn’t […]

Bringing in the Hay

Many of you remember Farmer Frazier, our 80+ year old neighbor who supplies us with our hay from his hay field. Normally, he just brings us one or two bales at a time, but this year, he decided to bring them all down at once. This took quite a lot of time and required the […]

Outside Exercise

The weather here has been gorgeous lately. (Nope, hurricane Irene didn’t reach us here in Indiana.) We’ve had hot days, cooler nights, and low humidity. We took advantage of the lovely weather to exercise outside. I thought you’d enjoy watching part of our “sprint 8” session. We basically sprint for 30 seconds then walk for […]

To The Ship!

On our recent trip to St. Louis, we had to stop at a rest stop. Whenever we stop, the children always run around and stretch their legs. If we’re in a parking lot, without a safe place to run, we just do 50 jumping jacks as a family. It’s usually quite a spectacle, and yes, […]

Swimming

My children adore swimming, but for some reason, we haven’t had a chance to swim once this summer. So we packed the children up… … and we rectified that today!             Jade kept coming up to me every 2 minutes and giving me the little hopeful look and saying, “Mom […]

Dyed Eggs

We haven’t dyed Easter eggs in a long time. But this year, Mom surprised us and bought eggs for us to dye.  Now, that might not sound like a big deal to some of you, but she didn’t buy just a couple of eggs.  She bought 8 dozen eggs!!  That was a dozen for each […]

The Circus Came to Town

The circus came to Charlestown this spring. The newspaper said you could watch the elephants put up the Big Tent, so we went to watch. You can imagine how disappointed the boys were to watch a bunch of guys running around setting up the poles and canvas. While we waited for the elephants to do […]

Boys Will Be Boys

Boys will be boys – they will turn straws into fangs: Boys will be boys – they will play in the mud: Boys will be boys –  they will wrestle anyone that will let them: Boys will be boys –  they will play football as much as they can: Boys will be boys – they […]