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 […]
This is Emery’s special recipe that he discovered. We all devour and fight over it til it’s gone. Preheat oven to 375°F. In a large bowl place 4 teaspoons olive oil 1.5 tsp salt 1/4 tsp pepper 5 pounds winter squash, peeled, seeded, cut into 1-inch cubes (we prefer butternut, but can use any kind) […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
As many of you know, we’re taking a much anticipated (and much needed) vacation at the ocean in North Carolina. All ten Jonases love the ocean. We spend hours and hours in the water and on the sand. We do come into the house periodically to eat and sleep, but that’s about it. Due to Hurricane […]
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 […]
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 […]
The other day I got an email inviting the family to come swim at a local lake with some friends. The invite was last minute (the way I like them), so I told her we would try. I gathered the children together and made a big announcement that we could go swimming at the lake […]
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, […]
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 […]
I can’t believe Emery is 11. I (sorta) remember when he was born! Normally we wear a birthday crown on our birthday, but we couldn’t find it, so Emery wore this instead: Emery tried to pick Colter up instead of hugging him: He gave up: Not everyone gets […]
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 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 […]
We’ve been getting ready for something big for a while now – Mom says I’m not allowed to tell you yet, but soon.* That means that Dad has been making as much soap as possible. And do you know what that means? That means bagging all that soap. Mom always tells us that work can […]