A Birthday Dinner

On Saturday, we headed over to Nan and Bernie's home for dinner and to have a belated birthday celebration for Philip. Uncle Tony, Aunt Rhonda, and the kids were also there to join in the festivities. We had such a great time! Here is the birthday boy pictured with Eric, Sarah, Jack, Emily, and myself.

Silly picture. :)

After dinner, Philip, Eric, and I showed the kids how to make card houses. This creation was built by Jack, Sarah, and Eric after dinner. Passersby had to tip-toe to keep their masterpiece from collapsing. :)

After Nan's delicious meal, we were stuffed full! However, we were not too full for some birthday cake of course. :) After the 19 candles were blown out, we all enjoyed Uncle's wonderful chocolate cake that he made! There were so many candles, several eyes were watering from all of the smoke. :) We hope you had a wonderful birthday Phil! ~Alli

Happy Birthday Philip!

Happy 19th birthday Phil! You're growing up too quickly! For his birthday dinner, we ate at his all-time favorite restaurant...Red Lobster. After his seafood feast, Mom and Dad surprised him by having the whole Red Lobster staff sing "Happy Birthday" to him when dessert was brought out. How embarrassing...but fun!

We love you!!!!

Trip To Papa's House

This weekend, Tony and I took a mini vacation to see my dad in Southeast Georgia! We had a wonderful time visiting with him and helping out with his new Ice House business.

Here you see a picture of Tony, Papa, and my brother Bobby standing next to one of his newest machines. The ice houses will give you 20lbs of bulk ice for your cooler for a $1.25! I don't know about were you come from but here in Virginia we pay $3.99 for a bag. He is doing a great business providing ice at such a reasonable price. (They didn't all have incoming calls at once, I just made them pose that way :)

As you can see, the ice house is pretty big. It has an ice maker inside that is constantly making ice. Down in southeast Ga, it gets pretty hot so demand is high.
Here is dad and Sheri standing next to their grape arbor! Beautiful this time of year. Moments before this shot was taken, a fawn ran by us. We were all very excited to witness such a cute visitor.
Later that evening we all gathered for a wonderful dinner at a local seafood restaurant. Scallops and oysters anyone? Delicious. We had a great time that evening. This particular restaurant has a hole in the middle of the table with a trash can under it ready for your crab or oyster shells. We were all impressed with this and may try it on one of our outdoor tables. On the way home we stopped by Cracker Barrel for food and prizes for the kids. Can you guess what I bought for Alli? Yes, you guessed it. Everyone needs a pair of waxed lips :)

Thanks to Papa, Sheri and Bobby for all of the fun times!~Julie

Cuc's Anyone?

Today the boy's got some entrepreneurial experience. We picked probably 30 cucumbers out of our garden this morning. So we got to thinking....hmmm....maybe others would enjoy some of our cuc's. So with lemonade in hand, we set up our first little farmers stand. Needless to say, no one stopped, but they get an A+ for the experience. ~Julie

A Trip To The Thrift Store

Today Mom, Meredith, and I decided to hit a tiny thrift store in Farmville, VA after working in the Pregnancy Center this morning. When we pulled in the parking lot, we noticed an absolutely wonderful sign that stated a brown bag sale for clothing. Any clothing item that could fit in a grocery-sized paper bag was ours for only $5! We immediately hopped out of the van and started rummaging through the racks! Even if we saw name brand items that weren't our sizes, we threw them in the bag to sell on eBay.

The cashier said that in order to cram as many clothes in as we could, we needed to roll each item into a little ball. I think they were pretty eager to get rid of some things! After a while, she even said we could put shoes in our bag too. Our poor little brown bag was piled high and bulging at the seams! Meredith and I counted 45 thrift items when we got home. Several of the shoes and other clothing items we kept for ourselves, but the rest is going on eBay. We figured that we spend about 11 cents on every piece. What a blessing! I love thrifting! :) ~Alli

Black Bean Chowder

Ever since last Tuesday, I have been feeling a little "under the weather" with a tremendous craving for soup. :) Mom's homemade chicken and rice soup is always an automatic comforting food to me when I'm sick so I have been eating that all week! Along with chicken soup, I have also been craving another one of our favorites for lunch today : Black Bean Chowder.

We found this great recipe a few weeks ago from the Girotti's blog. It is absolutely fantastic and requires very little prep work. This recipe to us has a little Mexican feel to it with seasonings of cumin and chili powder. We doubled the ingredients this time so that we will be able to eat it for dinner tonight and have leftovers for tomorrow's lunch. We have this meal very often in our house because it's so cheap, fast, and easy make! Please check out the recipe found here on the Girotti's blog...you will love it! ~Alli

Canning Day

One of the joys of having a garden is being able to enjoy it. Today, we decided to harvest our beets and pickle them. I do love canning, although it is hard work and takes forever! Here, Philip, Eric, and I are plucking up our row of beets for canning.


Finished! Eric looks like he's in pain, but the funny face is really from the heavy load. :)
After we picked our beets, we brought them over to the picnic table, washed them, and sliced off the excess stems. Mom then boiled the beets in our big pot until they were tender and ready to peel!

Once the beets were peeled and sliced, Eric and I stuffed them into hot canning jars. Our hands were beet red. :)

We then poured the brine over the sliced beets, removed the air bubbles, screwed on the lids, and set them in the canning pot to be processed.

"Pop!", "pop!"

Ah, the sound of a good canning day! Since we had some leftover brine, we decided to squeeze in a few jars of pickles as well. :) ~Alli