DID SOMEONE SAY BBQ

We went down to Augusta SC Saturday to meet with dad and Linda. They were doing one of their competitions there. It was only a 2 hour drive for us, so it wasn't that far from us. Chris wasn't able to go because he had to work. He missed out on a ton of fun. I wish he could have been there. We had so much fun. The smells of all 62 smoke grills where phenomenal. 15 miles left on our trip Leia says,"Mom I know were close I can smell it."

This is dad's smoker. He had started before 4 in the morning.

This is the back of their trailer. Their team name is ZZ-Que


There were 62 teams at the competition. And I knew dad would beat them all.

Dad and Linda working hard getting a box ready to turn in.

Dad unveiling the scrumptious melt in your mouth ribs. Sweet and spicy goodness that you couldn't get enough of. This is their turn in box.

This is a panorama picture of what as going on.The first one is of us waiting for the brisket to be done. Then dad pulls it out of the warmer. And this is a melt in your mouth brisket waiting to be cut.

Leia turned in 2 of their box's. She was on cloud 9 happy that she could help.

We got to eat what wasn't turned in. I knew dad would win for sure because they were awesome. We were waiting for the next turn in.It was very nice to sit, relax, and just catch up on what's happening in Indiana.

These were our badges. It says,"I smell like swine cook team."

I tried out new setting on Chris' camera It has a panoramic setting. I thought this was a cool picture. In the middle is their Brisket bites. Dad says that it's the burnt ends of the brisket that he smothers in sauce. There was nothing burnt about them. Man did they melt in your mouth. This was one of everybodies favorites.

Dad getting their brisket box ready. This was the last one of the day.

It wasn't all BBQ. They had a few rides. Leia did this one twice. She got very queasy and had to call it quits. She also did one of the jumpy castles and a huge slide.

They had a banjo band playing. It was nice,but so stinking hot waiting for the judges to call out who won.

I think dad and Linda did really well. Out of 62 teams they placed 17th. I think the judges taste buds were off because it was the best BBQ that I've ever had.Dad said a lot of "Big Dogs" were there.

We had a great time. I wish we could have stayed longer. We were having a wonderful day and they had fireworks later that night. But I knew we had a 2 hour drive ahead of us and that Chris would be waiting patiently for dinner.

Thanks for the great BBQ and a fabulous day.

garden

Pictures of our garden

This is one of my blackberry bushes. When we put the netting up it had plenty of head room. 2 weeks later it has grown so much it's pushing through the netting. My sunflower seeds that I planted are growing.
The row closest in this picture is our honeydew and farther back is our cantaloupe.



Another picture of the cantaloupe.



This is our watermelon. They are growing rapidly and now have runners.

My beans growing like crazy. I started these from seed.They are already climbing . My giant summer squash. It is so top heavy that during one of our storms it blew over. Luckily it wasn't damaged.

My tomato's are quickly outgrowing the garden. I have 5 small green cherry tomato's.I also have a few small buds on the pepper plants.

My blueberries and blackberries are doing well. Chris has pulled off almost 10 blackberries in the last few days.We are freezing them for now. I'll eventually make a blackberry pie out of them.

This is my hodge podge of plants. There's mint, lavender, lettuce, flowers, blackberries, rosemary, cilantro,and every herb that I could find in seed to plant. This is only one side of this herb bed. All of the above aren't pictured here. Also I have the majority of herbs and lettuce in their own containers so the mint wouldn't take control over all of the soil.

Chris

Chris received one of his top awards of his career. It was for all of his hard work and dedication in Korea.He volunteered a ton of hours while over there. We are proud of you .

Club House

Chris brought this giant box home from work so she could make a club house. They are decorating up making it look cute.
She loves it.Her and her friend Kendra have been playing house for the last few hours.

Kendra and Leia playing house.

Chris and Jean

Chris and Jean came down for a visit. We had so much fun we forgot the camera for most of it. Jean and I hit some wonderful yard sales while the boys left to do boy stuff. Then we hit a huge flee market. We saw a lot of interesting things. Anything from dirty toys, great looking plants, clothes, the farmers had veggies and fruit, antiques, tools, and stuff. You name it they had it.I wish it had been like the one in Ohio. It was about the same size, just a lot more junkie and dirty. But it was fun looking around. Later we met up with the guys and ate out at one of my favorite Mexican restaurants. We also hit the commissary so we could hit the case lot sale that was going on outside. It was a bummer that they had closed it right before we got there.So instead we bought a few things from the commissary so we could grill out later. After that we went to the hotel pool. It was FREEZING cold. I don't understand because we've had lots of high 90 temps around here. Must have been from all the rain we got last week. Anyway we had a fun time at the pool. That night we went to our house and had a nice dinner.

Then this morning we met up here at the house and we went to church.We were looking forward for the Chaplin's that we know to meet them. But we were surprised when we got there that all of them were gone on a military exercise. So things were done differently. It was still nice. They had a minister come in from a civilian church. He did really well and the band was fantastic like always. Chris and I are going to be volunteering at our church.We are going to be helping out with the kids Sunday school and bible study. That starts next Sunday. They were going to cancel the program if they couldn't get volunteers to help out. Leia loves Sunday school so much, we had to do something to help keep it going. It won't be every weekend, so we will still have some free time. We'll be rotating with other people. I think it will be good for Chris and I to get involved with our church.After church we went out to eat. It was nice to see them and we had a good time.
I think they look so much alike.You just have to picture my Chris with hair and a mustache.


This was a dip your feet in only kind of pool or risk hypothermia.

We all ended up in the pool. After 30 minuets of slowly wading in , the shock of freezing cold got better. Leia swam like she was a fish. She loved it.

Next Saturday I'll be near Georgia to see dad and his BBQ. I hope everyone had a great weekend.

What a day...Is it Friday the 13th or April Fools Day?

Last week we covered our berries because we knew that any moment they would ripen and that the birds would get them before we would. We just walked around our garden and discovered these beauties ready to be picked. I am so excited that they're our first thing from the garden. So after snapping a few pictures, we ate them. The raspberries are fantastic and sweet. The blackberry, which I have about 100 of them ,are so lip puckering sour.I'm hoping my raspberries will do better. I only have about 5 of them on that bush.Go figure. The good ones come in limited supplies. The birds waiting for some goodies.




Chris and Jean are on their way down. They'll be here around 8 tonight.We're going to meet them at the hotel and go out to dinner. The guys are getting up early to go to the shooting range and Jean and I are going to hit some yard sales and hopefully a flee market or 2.

I'm hoping to find cotton there. I haven't forgotten. I've been keeping my eye out for some. I think it's the wrong season though. There's a field near by that has some left over from the last harvest. I want to go pick it but I'm sure it's extra dirty since it's been there laying on the ground for several months now.

Today has been a crazy day. Maintenance was out for the 3rd time to fix a leak in the Laundry room. Long story short I don't think the guy knew what he was doing. At first he found where it was leaking .The water was dripping off of the electrical component. The guy went to touch it and Chris said don't you think we need to turn of the electricity? The guy was like yeah good idea, So no electrocution there. Then the guy undid one of the hoses and went to drain it through a pipe. Well that wasn't working .Next he blew Nitrous into the pipe forgetting that he had undid the top pipe.When he did that all of the water started shooting out like a geyser flooding my laundry room and hallway. As I mentioned above Chris and Jean are on their way. You know me I have to have my house extra clean when I have company over. I was just shacking my head. It's so funny I could cry.My house is somewhat back to normal and as clean as it's going to get.

Then I have a certain neighbor that at first used to be my friend until all of the stuff that happened. You all know the one. Anyway there was a dead squirrel on the road near our house. Jens husband had accidental ran over it. At midnight when Chris got home it was still there. At 4:30 ish it wasn't.Abram went jogging around that time. Long story short he thought Chris took care of it and we thought vise versa. About noon I went outside to get something and discovered the dead squirrel thrown under my window covered up by grass. I can't prove that she did it but I can't think of anyone else who would do it. I am so mad about it. Chris went and confronted her about it. She didn't deny that she hadn't done it and told him sorry,after he told her whoever had done it is like a threat. She left shortly after he confronted her.He didn't accuse her of anything but the guilt was all over her face.

What is up with my neighborhood. I know it's petty but it just gets under my skin.What do you think about it???

A Field Trip to Willard Farm.

We went to Willard Farms Tuesday for a field trip. It's this amazing strawberry farm with so much stuff for the kids to do. Sweet sweet strawberries
We had fun picking strawberries. When we got home I divided them up and froze 2 zip lock bags of them . We ate the rest. They were yummy.



They had a store too. It was so fresh looking and clean. There were all kinds of fudge,candies,cookies,homemade icecream, etc as well as a diner ,a dieters nightmare.SO yes, I was really bad.I had a fantastic hamburger skipped the fries,but I had a small scoop of icecream.Then I bought a small piece of rocky road fudge. I split all of it so I wasn't too bad.(I spent extra time at the gym to make up for it though)


I want to ride.
This cool bouncy thing for the kids.

They had 2 slides built into the hill and all kinds of games for the kids. It was extra for the kids to do it.We would have done it, but it was fixing to storm. You can see the clouds above.

It was only 8 bucks to play so the pricing wasn't bad.

We were just worried about the storm.
I want to bring Chris here next time and Leia can play then.

This is Ethan. He had been jumping little puddles and eyed this one. I tried to stop him. I even hollered at Jen(thinking he might listen to her),but he was too determined. He jumped and I knew he would,So I had my camera ready.He almost made it. He missed by a few inches and got muddy. He was very proud of it.

Wendy My Friend.

This is my friend Wendy. I was so happy that she invited us over to see them before they left. School had been so hectic here and their lives were full of packing and schooling that we didn't have a chance to see them much.They invited some of their friends to the park for pizza. We had a good last day together.I will miss her and always think of her.The same way that I still think of my best friends in Arizona,Florida,Ohio, and Indiana.Some people make such huge impacts on your life that they will be in your heart forever.

We had our goodbye pizza party here at Memorial Park. They have a memorial here of the soldiers who have lost their lives from this base. There is a monument from each war.

This is Hannah,Leia's only true best friend at this base.She misses her so much.

The girls got to play for a few hours. I was very happy that they had one last time to get together before they left.






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On a different note.I got a letter from Operation Purple and Leia was put on a waiting list. So unless people back out ,she won't be going to summer camp.