Family, Fun and Fried Chicken

Lyndsey, Emily and Sutton, a few of my Texas cousins were visiting last week.  We had a big old Hoosier feast at the farm on Friday complete with Grandma Esta-style fried chicken, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes and gravy, spinach salad and persimmon pudding. 

 

Between Evangeline, Cale and Sutton there was some serious cuteness going on.  Mom patted Cale's bottom until he fell asleep for the worlds longest nap, Evangeline just trotted around helping out with various things, and Sutton was all over the place on his new found walking legs.  

 

The day lilies have completely taken over the landscape and the view from Zach and Candice's porch is simply perfection.  

 

Kyle had to work and couldn't be with us this day, but happy belated Father's Day to all the Dads in my life. 

 

"Old man take a look at my life, I'm a lot like you......"

 

Evangeline sure does love this little dude.....she's not too sure about the crying and fussing though.....

 

Finally, we got to go to our first band concert of the year.  With the rain and our travels we've missed several.  We plan to attend as many as we can.  It's a perfect way to end a summer night. 

The lightning bugs have been absolutely incredible this year.  I've been up many a night during the wee hours and have see their splendor down in our woods.  I don't see how anyone could look upon the perfection of nature and deny a divine Creator.  It's all a miracle.



The Sweet Days of Summer

Monday was our annual berry picking/jam making day.  The crop could not have been better.  We only had to travel down a few yards in one row before we had our boxes filled to the brim with delicious strawberries.  Evangeline was really into it this year.  Her excitement was not to be contained.  "Mom, look at this one!",  " I found a whole orchard over here!",  "Grandma, look at my box!"  After we picked all the berries we could handle we stopped at their little market for some ice cream.  We spent the rest of the day making some mouthwatering jalapeno/strawberry jam, over 20 jars I believe.  Grandma can check "canning a batch all by herself" off of her summer bucket list.  She's got it down. 

 

My apologies to the man who's rear-end is sticking up in the background :) 

 

I have such fond memories of picking blackberries and raspberries at the farm with Grandma Esta and Zachary.  We would pick them for breakfast.  Grandma would put some in a bowl for each of us and add some milk and sugar on top.  When an ant would scamper out of our berries we would call her attention to it, she would remove the ant and reply, "oh, that's not going to hurt anything".   After seeing she had not a shadow of disgust about this, us city kids finished out breakfast without batting an eye.  

 

Maybe Evangeline will look back someday at her berry picking days with her Mommy and Grandma and smile too. 

A Girl's World

The softball season has come to an end.  We are all sad to see it go.  It was a lot of fun.  Evangeline did a great job at this sport.   Her last two games were awesome.  She hit every ball from a pitch.  Kyle did a great job practicing with her at home.   She's learned a lot. 



 

 

Evangeline was invited to the most girly birthday party I've ever seen or heard of.  It was for Chloe Landrus and it was held at Club Tabby.  What is Club Tabby you ask?  It's a place where they've taken every single thing little girls love and rolled it all in to one place at the mall.   The party started with picking out the perfect dress to wear while they had your nails, hair and makeup done in their own kid-sized spa area.  They could pick from 4 different looks.  They all went with the "rainbow rockstar".   After that is was a parade around the mall to show off their new style.  Then it was back to Club Tabby for some freeze dancing, games, cake and presents at the "party palace".  The girls were loving ever minute of it.    

 

We met Amy for dinner after the party and Evangeline got a lot of comments, complements and questions, which she gladly indulged.   She couldn't wait to get home to show her dad!  

 

And here are a few for your nightmares...... This is what happens when a 5 year old is sent home with a goody bag of real makeup.  Yikes!!  

Disney World

Us Hutsons just returned from a JAM PACKED week of Disney magic with Wayne and Karen and the Hwangs.  The phrase "I'm going to need a vacation from my vacation" never rang truer.  We had such an amazing time and it was worth every pregnant, exhausted, hot and sweaty, swollen ankle moment of it. 

 

*You can read all about our trip in the separate book I made exclusively about our Disney vacation.  (It's the book with the word "vacation" spelled wrong right smack on the cover, which is classic Adrienne.)