Our Summer fun

This summer we were very busy but had a lot of fun! We started out by finishing up our Little League season with Elijah pitching and playing any position on the field that they needed. He hurt his knee on the third game and had to sit out for almost two weeks of games but he was able to finish. He decided not to catch this year because he just got too hot. It was a good thing because after he hurt his knee he wouldn't have been able to anyway.





We stayed close to home for a while with Julia and Nicole working at the Lake on weekends it was hard to go anywhere. It turned out the Nicole was working 3 jobs!! Saffitickers on Monday and Friday, Perkins on tuesday and Wedneday, off on Thursday and the Lake on Saturday and Sunday! She has lost some weight though and definitely isn't bored!

We have a new addition to our family! Julia has a great new boyfriend! His name is Josh and we all hope that he stays around for a long time! They are both very happy and have made it over some bumps in the road and always keep on going. Thanks Josh for making her soooo happy! Elijah tried something new this summer. He was in his first ATV Mud Bog! They have them every month at the Rowlesburg Park. Josh helps with them and we told elijah that he could try it. Phil and he worked on his ATV and he entered it in August and Won!! His prize was $15! he was suprised he just wanted to have fun!
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Then last week we took a vacation to wheeling and the races at Charles Town. It was the week of the Garrett County Fair so Nicole couldn't go for the whole week so the rest of us went from Monday to Wednesday to wheeling and then Thursday and Friday to the races and the casino. On Monday while we were in Wheeling we were trying to find someting to do that first evening and Julia was looking through the phone book and found a tatoo parlor that also did piercings. She has been wanting to get her nose pierced and said that i should get mine done too. I told her to ask her dad and wouldn't you know it.....he said ok! So we both got our noses pierced! On the way down Elijah said that he wanted to get his ear pierced and he wanted his dad to do it too. Well another surprise he agreed to that too! They wouldn't do elijah's because of his age but when we got back to McHenry our local tatoo artist did his and elijah's ears! That evening elijah didn't want to leave it in but now he is ok with it. When he went back to school the girls said that he looked kind of like a pirate, but he didn't mind that. We have turned out to be a wild bunch haven't we! I only wish that I had remembered to take my camera with us. I took a few pictures with my new phone but they won't work either right now.


We had a good time but its hard to believe that summer is already over and the kids are back in school.! Julia is doing her classes online at home at least for the first semester to see how things go and I think it will be easier on everyone. Elijah is excited about his teacher and his first two days went really well. He is looking forward to Labor Day weekend and the next mud bog at Rowlesburg! I can't seem to upload any pictures tonight but I will try to add them in another day. I have some really good ones that I would like to put on so we'll see. I will try to update this a lot sooner this time. But you know how that goes I always say that. Hope you enjoy reading this!

Well thanks to Andy I was able to get some of the pictures that I wanted in tonight, but there are more. I think that I will just put them into a new post as soon as I get time. Hopefully it will work better!

Just Like an Old Fashioned Winter!!

Before all this snow started we got a new addition to our family. Elijah wanted to keep a puppy out of our last litter but we told him that they are too big and we couldn't feed another big dog but maybe later on we could get him a small dog to keep inside and play with Harley, Julia's miniature dachshund. Well......we heard about a miniature poodle that an elderly lady had here in town that she couldn't take care of anymore. Well they were just going to look at it but it came home with them!! He has turned out to be a great little dog and his name is Bear. He sleeps with Elijah every night and plays with harley when we have to leave. Here is Bear our new addition.

NOW FOR THE SNOW NEWS!!

This winter has been just like the old days! Snow, Snow, Snow!! It started right after Christmas and gave us a break for a flood and now back to snow! We started our winter fun building an igloo! Yes, you read that right an igloo! We all helped and it turned out really well but then it warmed up and melted but we had a lot of fun building it!

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We drove around the area and took some pictures of this first big snow. It was beautiful!! We drove to Terra Alta, Oakland and through Eglon. It was really something.

This is a picture of a house on the way to Eglon at the top of Parks' Hill. This is always a bad place in the winter because it catches all the wind as you come down into town. As a matter of fact years ago when I was about 8 years old Dave and Sue and Rich were visiting us in Eglon and it started snowing and the drifts got so high that they fell in and they all had to stay because no one could get back home. That hasn't happened for a long time again.

We saw lots of beautiful scenery on our drives but none that were more beautiful than what we saw when we arrived back home.

After this snow it warmed up and rained for about 3 days!! That wasn't good! There was flooding everywhere! The river at Rowlesburg came up over Rt 72 at Felty Hill on one side of town and across Rt 72 on the way to Kingwood on the other side. Just like in "85 you had to come in over Sanders Hill even Salt Lick was closed for a while. They weren't the only ones who had trouble with high water it was over our bridge by about 8 inches and washed all the rock out from one corner! It left about a 6 - 8 inch drop at one corner. Since then it has sunk on the other end about 2 inches. We will have to redo it this Spring. I can't find the pictures I took of our bridge I think I deleted them from the camera before i downloaded them :-(.

The kids went back to school for almost two weeks then it started again! This time it started on Friday with a 3 hour early out and kept on coming!! Then 36" in less than 48 hours! Phil had to shovel all day Saturday to get us out. He finally got it down enough to get the van and truck out. We left the Van up there and it has been up there ever since! He was bringing the truck back down so we didn't have to walk every time we wanted to go to Mom and Dad's and when he came back across the bridge the two rear tires dropped off the end of the bridge and there he was! Daddy had to bring his tractor down and LIFT up the back of the truck and sit it back into the road and when he lifted the truck up his tractor tires started slipping toward the edge of the bridge! Mom was video taping and holding her breath that the tractor didn't slip any further! Julia and I were watching but we couldn't get too close because if he got started we didn't want to be in the way and it was sooo deep in the yard it was hard to get out of the way very fast. Here is the way it looked!

Pardon my attire I wasn't planning on having my picture taken when I went out!

It was very long day for Phil! We really do appreciate all he did and then on Sunday we were able to go to Oakland and get food for our Super Bowl Party. We have just been hanging out at Mom's and eating lots of good food, sled-riding, playing games and just having a good time. We didn't go up this evening Andy got sick today and Nicole already had the flu this week and we didn't want to take a chance on anyone else getting it so we stayed home. Daddy dug out his blower and blew the road down to almost the grass and then last night it came again!! We got about 15" by 3 pm today when Phil and I walked to the mailbox. Elizabeth's friend came up to Mom's to go sled-riding and didn't make it even half way up the road and had to leave it sitting in the road. We walked down and then when we were coming back up Daddy had taken the blower down to our house and was going to blow out her car and maybe get it out so she could go home. This is how it looked before last night's snow.

It's still snowing and blowing like crazy!! Elizabeth's friend is staying at Mom's tonight because it is too bad for her to go home and she just lives at the top of the mountain. Andy called Phil a while ago oh, about 8:15 and said that they had moved their friends' car into a hole they dug in the snow in Kirk's ( our neighbor) yard but that Phil may have trouble getting out to go to work because the snow was waist deep in the road in front of Mom's and Dad's again after he had blown it out this afternoon! Phil went up to make sure that he could get out later and it was light fluffy snow but once you go down our road there is no place to turn around so he went up to Deerwood to turn and just about got stuck going out onto Rt 50. When he came back down there was only a lane as wide as the truck going up that side of the road so he went to the fire hall and turned around again so that he could come up the other side that was wider. He said that Rt 50 is narrow and awful so he isn't looking forward to the drive to work at midnight. And listening to the scanner which Phil got working tonight roads are closed and bad even at Kingwood! Rt 7 is closed coming up the hill from Rt 72! The kids don't go back to school for the rest of the week and they were already getting Monday off for the teachers a work day so they won't go back till Tuesday next week if they have the roads open then! We are supposed to get 3-7 tonight, 1 - 3 tomorrow with winds gusting to a50 mph. We are in a state of emergency of course and in Maryland they are writing tickets for people on the road. We may not go anywhere yet tomorrow! It's beautiful up here and we won't forget this winter for a while!

Christmas 09

We started out our Christmas Season this year by cutting down our own tree. We went to the tree farm in Oakland and cut a beautiful long-needled white pine. We haven't had one for several years and we were all excited to find one. The last 3 years we have cut our own tree and it has become the favorite thing for the kids to do. I decided to use a picture of the tree in the dark so that you could see the lights. Isn't it pretty?

Our girls and their pets. The pets are soooo spoiled it's ridiculous!! They do look happy don't they?

The kids each got the thing they really wanted for Christmas this year. Elijah got an Ipod but the picture of him opening it was too blurry to use but he really liked that shirt that he has in this picture. Julia got a video camera and Nicole got a touch Ipod and they were all very excited! Phil got a couply funny gifts but I don't think that he would appreciate it much if I put his picture on the blog so you will have to ask him about his gifts.

Harley got her own stocking with a present that she opened herself! Then with her Christmas outfit on she sat contently in her bed and chewed it!

We hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!!

Our Washington Vacation

We started out Yesterday about noon and had to make some stops in Oakland and Finally got on our way about 1:00 after we stopped and fed Ingrid's fish. We arrived at our hotel in Largo, MD about 5:00. We are staying at the Radisson and it is really nice! We got a rollaway bed so that nobody had to sleep on the floor but we had to rearrange the furniture to get it to fit! We had to move the sofa bed sideways so that it and the rollaway could be side by side.

We moved the furniture back before we left this morning so they could clean. Today we went to the Zoo and Arlington Nat. Cemetary. It was sooo hot! We had a good time. The first thing that was exciting for the kids was the metro. Julia got pretty nervous when she realized that it was underground mostly and we didn't even tell her until later that it went underwater too! She did fine after we got started. The exit at the Zoo was exciting because of the giant escalator ride as you will see...

It took us over 2 minutes to go down this one! The picture below is of the inside of the metro station while we waited for the next train.

The first thing we did today was go to the zoo. Elijah took a lot of the pictures here today and he got some good ones! I will post some of the best ones under this post. It was a long walk and we didn't miss much of the zoo. The kids loved the misters! It was hot and that cool water really felt good! The animals weren't the only ones who needed cooled down! The pandas were sooo beautiful! We almost didn't see them because they were outside. Just as we went to the end of the hallway we saw where they were watching them on cameras and realized the mother was just coming back inside and we ran back just in time to get this picture and video! How cool!!

We were also able to see the new baby gorilla. She was just born in July and was soo cute! She was hiding in the back of the cage with Mamma but then she got up on moms back and mom brought her right up to the window in front of us. It was like she knew we wanted to see her baby.

My favorite animal at the zoo...the elephants! I wish they would have been doing some tricks with them when we were there but I just love to watch them. They are so graceful for as big as they are.

They look kinda sad but they are really magnificent!

I had to get a picture of our group one time at

the zoo. They weren't real happy with me

taking it in here because we were inside the

elephant house and OOOH! the smell!

I had to take it fast!

Here are some of our other favorite animals from our trip.

This guy got a bigger picture because he was huge! as wide as the door he was going out through! I thought he was amazing. Just a little bigger than elijah's turtles! At least I hope his don't get this big! We'll have to move out and let them have the house !

I have soo many more pictures that I could put on here but it is getting late and I'm starting to make mistakes in my typing and it is taking forever for me to get the spelling right! I'll stop for now. The next part will start with Arlington National Cemetary. That was something too!

School's Out!

This year of school is over and everyone is glad! Yes even me! I don't have to fight with kids who want to sleep in and try to make it to the bus! Here is a collection of pictures from the end of school. I only have them of Elijah because Julia didn't really have any activities for us to attend.

This year Elijah was in the recorder class in school next year he can be in Band and maybe Chorus if they have one.

There was also field day. Elijah got first place in the balloon toss and third place in the hoop shoot. I took Ingrid with me and she enjoyed playing on the playground for a little while. Her favorite was the slide. We told her we would take her up to play sometime this summer when there weren't so many other kids on the slide. We are going to have to do it soon because every time we go to one of Elijah's games we don't take her down because we don't want to miss it and she has been very patient!

This May we had a flood!! It wasn't as bad as the one several years ago when the "Old Dam" flooded but it was over the bridge. It washed out under one end but at least we can still use it. We did have to fix the fence where the horse and llamas go to the creek to drink. It washed a large log down there and I think it was one that had been causing a dam under the bridge because now the water is about the same depth on both sides. The kids enjoyed the flood and hoped to have a "high water" day and get out of school or have a delay but that didn't happen. It never hurts to try!

The last entry for tonight is Awards Day. Elijah didn't get straight A's this year but he did get all A's and B's and that is great ! He did get an award for History because he knew the most about the Civil War. He is still reading about it over the summer for the summer reading challenge. Ask him a question about it sometime. I bet he can answer it! This is a picture of his teacher Mrs. Teets. He really enjoyed being in her class this year. He will miss her next year but at least he can see her at lunch and in the hallways.

I will be adding more to my blog soon but it is getting late and we have to get up early to go to the stockyard for the junk sale and then the animals then one of us has to take Nicole to the dentist in Accident, then go back home and go to our last regularly scheduled little league game! The Nelson's will take Nicole home for us. Thanks so much guys!! Take care everyone !!

Our Winter School Activities

We had a bad scare on Thanksgiving Day that we were afraid would change all of our winter school activities! Elijah began having tightness in his chest along with bad pain and then problems breathing! We rushed to the ER and found that he had a tear in his windpipe allowing air to go out into the chest cavity causing pain similar to that of a heart attack! We were all very scared for a few hours and he ended up staying overnight. He had to stay out of gym class for the next week until we saw the specialist. He gave him the ok to play ball the week before practices started!! Boy was he glad! We all were! trying to keep Elijah quiet is a major accomplishment!!
Then he started with youth league games and had no problems! He went on to play Grasshopper Basketball which ended in April. He was very proud of his uniform. They are made just like the Aurora High School uniforms from way back. These next pictures show him in his warm-up shirt, the red shirt which ones for home games and the white shirt for away games.

Then he started with youth league games and had no problems! He went on to play Grasshopper Basketball which ended in April. He was very proud of his uniform. They are made just like the Aurora High School uniforms from way back. These next pictures show him in his warm-up shirt, the red shirt which ones for home games and the white shirt for away games.

He does look rather proud doesn't he! He feels good too! That helps us too! He has done a great job!

Now for some action! Watch for # 25, I wasn't able to get him when he made any baskets but in one of these you can see him really get into the game. He really had fun and they worked their way up to fourth place by the tournaments. This team made it farther than any team their age in the last 7 years! Their coach was very proud of them. They each got a trophy as well as a team trophy to leave at school. Here we go !

They had a great season and I have a feeling we will be doing this again next year!
Here is our 3-5th grade team. Good Job Guys!

Our first Baseball Casualty!

On tuesday last week Elijah was making his first play running into home plate from third. He was really moving determined to make it in safe...he ran...he slid and Boom! He hit the catchers chin guard and here is what happened.....

After school he said he was sooo tired of telling his story about what happened so I had to take another picture because it had changed again.

It was a long game for him. He couldn't catch because his helmet hit to close to his eye. He is the team catcher this year and is doing a great job!! They don't have a back up catcher but after this happened they have been trying some others. They did have a replacement but he really doesn't like to catch. One of the other players, our pitcher, tried at practice and told Elijah. "Boy you make it look easy behind the plate but it isn't!" I told him that was a big compliment. Elijah tried his hand at pitching but he said "that isn't where I belong I'll stick to catching!" The season goes till after the 4th of July then we are out of sports till November. It's busy but I still miss it when it is over! If they get a trophy I'll try to put a picture on later on. His eye is still pretty dark but he's ready for the next game on Tuesday. This team is pretty good and we play on their field at Reedsville. They haven't won any yet but the last game they played really well. If they keep it up they can start winning. So keep your fingers crossed and cheer them on from wherever you are I'm sure they'll feel it!