It's Snowing!!

This morning, we woke up to this peaceful scene of our first "big" snow this year! So far, we have only had dustings of snow and nothing really stuck to the ground. Today, we got about 1 1/2 inches! Eric wasted no time and immediately put on his boots and gloves for snowman making. Philip and I followed shortly, along with a curious Buddy who had never stepped in snow before. :) I, of course, had to grab the camera!!

This is my favorite path to walk on when it snows. It's so peaceful and quiet! You only hear the snow crunching under your feet. :) I love to see the white against the dark colors of the woods and the footprints of the deer that just walked by. A little further down the path, there is a line of evergreen trees that "bow" on both sides of the path when their branches are weighed down with snow and ice. :)


Here is Eric working on his snowman. The snow was perfect packing snow!

I thought this looked funny. :) Growing lettuce and spinach surrounded by snow! Look how green the lettuce is against the snow!

Buddy getting his first taste of snow

Don't you dare!!! You know, he chucked that snowball at my head as soon as I took this picture! Don't let that innocent face fool you. :)

Ta da! Eric and Philip's "ninja" snowman. :) He has a scarf tied around his head and a sword stuck in his back, I mean sheath. :) He looks like he's getting ready to karate-chop me!

I wanted to post a passage from Job that I was reminded of this morning in closing:

"God's voice thunders in marvelous ways;
He does great things beyond our understanding.
He says to the snow, 'Fall on the earth,'
and to the rain shower, 'Be a mighty downpour.'
So that all men He has made may know His work...
stop and consider His wonders."
(Job 37:5-7, 14) ~Alli

The Capitol

Today, Philip and I were invited to join Eli and his friend Daniel to tour the Capitol of Virginia! Eli is a Virginia Capitol Police Officer so he was able to give us the GRAND TOUR of the Capitol and the surrounding historical buildings. I had never visited the Capitol before (isn't that terrible? :), so I thoroughly enjoyed having a behind the scenes look!
Of course, before we left, the moms had to take a parting shot :) (from left to right: Eric, me, Philip, Eli, and Daniel).
Here we are walking downtown from the parking deck. I loved walking through downtown Richmond and seeing all of the old buildings and architecture. It was a perfect day for it too. :)
This was taken near the Capitol. The cathedrial-looking building in the distance is the Old City Hall.
From this spot, the distances from Richmond on the highways are measured. How neat is that?Here is a view of the Capitol from the street. Isn't it huge? We went in the underground passageway(the door to the right) that led to the Capitol itself. Philip was astonished when he saw the whole inside of the passageway was made of marble. :) There was a gift shop, cafeteria (where we ate lunch), and a gallery of various historical paintings.
Eli took us throughout the inside of the Capitol. This is a picture taken at the Capitol 's rotunda. A statue of George Washington stood right in the center and the busts of various presidents lined the walls.
This is a picture of the dome in the rotunda, although I have to say, this picture doesn't really do it justice. :) The archetecture was outstanding!
On the next floor, we saw paintings of all of Virginia's governors. Speaking of govenors, we caught a glimpse of our current governor, Governor Tim Kaine walking in the rotunda! I'm sorry to say, I didn't get my camera out in time. :)

Here is a picture of the Old Senate Chamber.

I thought this was the neatest part! Eli got us into the Senate of Virginia Chamber where we were able to sit in and listen to the senators of Virginia in session. How many times do you get to do that? It was neat to be able to actually see the senators that you hear about all of the time in action! I didn't take a picture while in session because I didn't want to get in trouble. :)
I was the annoying photographer on the tour. :) Thanks guys! Here, we are back outside in front of the Capitol building. We were able to go in the General Assembly Building where we saw the Senators' offices and the Old City Hall.

The Governor's Mansion

Here is another view of the Capitol building from the Governor's Mansion.

Our last stop: The Library of Virginia! Phil liked this place! This picture does not capture the millions of books that are all around! If you are looking for a book, this is the place to go! This library even has shelves of phone books from many years ago up until now. :)
And that was the end of our visit to the Capitol! Philip and I really enjoyed seeing the sights for the first time! I hope I got all of the facts right in my post, there was so much to take in! :) Thanks Eli for taking the time to show us around today, we had a great time! ~Alli

Grab Your Umbrella...

Today we had a surprise baby shower for the Donahue family after fellowship! They are expecting their first girl so we all got to pull out the pinks and frilly fun that only a baby girl can bring!

Mom and I were in charge of bringing a batch of pink cupcakes.

Church was at the Kilpatrick's home today, and Mrs. Kilpatrick and her daughter Hannah did such a beautiful job with the decorations for the shower! The table was set with pink candles, flowers, a pink tablecloth, and winding silver beads. It looked very elegant. Mrs. Donahue was certainly surprised when she walked in this morning to a room decorated in her honor!

The young ladies' end of the table

During lunch, we played cute baby games. First we had to hold a little Easter egg full of ice, and the lady that had her "water break" first won. :) Then we were all given diaper pins to wear and whoever crossed their legs got theirs taken away (since pregnant ladies usually are unable to cross their legs:). After lunch, we joined the men and played some other hilarious games.

This looks rather interesting, doesn't it? For this game, everyone had to try to draw a baby on the back of a plate...on their heads without looking! This game was my favorite. :)

Mrs. Donahue then chose which picture she thought looked the most like a baby.

Philip won with this drawing! We also played a game where we each had a word taped to our backs that had to do with child birth. We had to then go around and ask each other questions about our word, and the first person to guess their word won. Meredith won this one! Yay!

Looking at each other's wedding pictures

After games, Mrs. Donahue got to open presents for baby Mary Elizabeth! Hannah came up with a great idea for a gift basket, and Meredith and I helped her get items and put it all together.

This afghan was crocheted by Micah and is so beautiful! She did a wonderful job! I love the edges of it...they look like lace. Micah, I need you to teach me how to crochet so beautifully! :)

Here is the little project I've been working on this past week. I made a little Regency dress for Mary Elizabeth using a pattern from Sense and Sensibility. I had so much fun making it, and I hope she will enjoy wearing it!

Well, after that part, my camera ran out of batteries! Arg! Well, Mrs. Donahue received many beautiful dresses, frilly clothes, blankets, toys, and baby necessities for her new little one, and all of the ladies got to "ooh" and "ahh" over all of the adorable girly things. We had such a wonderful time today and hope the Donahue family was as blessed with this shower as we were blessed giving it! ~Alli

Christmas 2007

The Trents are back online from our holiday break! We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas spent with family and friends. We had a wonderful holiday, and we are still stuffed full from all of those Christmas goodies! On Christmas Eve, Nan, Bernie, Aunt Rhonda, Uncle Tony, and cousins Sarah, Jack, and Emily came out to our house for a Christmas Eve dinner.
Here we are waiting for everyone to arrive.

Once everyone had arrived, the festivities began. Punch was served, snacks were snacked on, and everyone just had a great time!
On the menu: Oysters Rockefeller, Aunt's lasagna, salad, and rolls. You have not lived until you have tried Oysters Rockefeller. I myself am not a big fan of oysters cooked by themselves, but I could eat my weight in these (as a matter of fact, I think I did!). Here, the tin foil cups are ready to be filled with oysters, a horseradish/spinach mixture, topped with breadcrumbs, cheese, and bacon. Nan is the best Rockefeller maker! I'm trying to learn the recipe so I can pass it on like she has to us!

While dinner was cooking, Emily enjoyed the little snowy village.


Ever since we had purchased our spinning tree, we have begun a new Christmas tradition with the kids. Before our Christmas Eve get-together, Mom buys little toys and candy and fills a little bag for each kid with their names on them. She hides them in the tree, and when they come over, they each take turns finding their gift bag. In this picture, Mom is playing "one potato, two potato, three potato, four..." with Sarah, Jack, Emily, and Eric to see who gets to find theirs first. They couldn't wait for after dinner to find their bags, so the grown ups gave them the "Ok". :)



Trays and trays of oysters kept coming one after another! I ate 12 oysters! Can you believe it? Once you start, there's NO stopping!

After dinner, there was a flurry of presents being opened! Amidst all of the excitement, Bud-lo found a spot to rest right in the middle of the action. We had a wonderful time!

On Christmas Day, we woke up at 6am to open presents. I was going to take pictures, but it was too early! We had our traditional breakfast casserole, cinnamon rolls, and orange juice for breakfast.

Later that afternoon, we headed on over to Granny and Papa's house for Christmas dinner. I forgot my camera! The smells of roast and hash brown casserole welcomed us when we got there, and I was put in charge of making sauteed broccoli and rolls. After we had all stuffed ourselves full once more, we exchanged gifts. Afterward, Granny had us all play the Christmas gift exchange game with gag gifts that she had bought! I was stuck with a rooster alarm clock that crows rather loudly! Eric won huge dog slippers where you stick your foot through the dog's mouth, Philip won a singing squirrel, Mom was stuck with blinking reindeer antlers and fake teeth :), and Dad won a shirt with a funny saying on it. It was very interesting!

All in all we had a fabulous Christmas! I can't believe it has already passed and tomorrow begins the New Year! Are y'all staying up? I didn't make it last year but I am going to try harder! Tonight we are having snacks and are going to play some board games while we wait for the ball to drop. Have a great night everyone, and we'll see you next year! :) ~Alli

A Year-End Recap

I came across this fun meme over at Dappled Things! What you do is you post the first line from the first post of each month for the year 2007 to see what all you've been up to this past year! Since we didn't have our blog in January or February of this year, we will just start with March. :) Here we go...

March: Welcome to our blog!

April: Character is formed under a great variety of influences.

May: Well it's not winter, but we thought we would give this new recipe a try. :)

June: I took this quiz and found out that I am Elinor Dashwood of Sense & Sensibility!

July: One of the joys of having a garden is being able to enjoy it.

August: Last month, Meredith and I were asked by the ladies in our church to be in charge of planning and catering a baby shower for the lovely Mrs. Prueitt!

September: A trip to the farm in pictures...

October: Our bags are packed! Today, Mom and I are leaving for our weekend getaway to Tennessee!

November: Well Kim over at Life in a Shoe is having ANOTHER Vision Forum Giveaway!

December: It has been twenty-two days already, and they are still growing!

Wow! This has been quite an interesting year for the Trent family. :) If anyone else would like to do the end-year recap, consider yourself tagged! Please leave a link under this post because I'd like to read it if you do. :) Have a wonderful weekend everyone! ~Alli

Monday Fun!

Today, Meredith and I travelled to the Pregnancy Support Center in a neighboring county to help out! We hadn't been in a couple of weeks so it was a real treat to get to go with her, just the two of us. We arrived and found a huge bag of baby clothes that needed hanging and some other items that needed to be placed in our "Little Blessings Boutique" store. We had a great time of laughing and freezing in the shed and quickly finished while we could still feel our fingers!

Afterwards, Mere and I drove over to the storage units that hold all of our extra supplies, clothes, and diapers for the store. We needed to pick up some wipes, and Meredith wanted to see inside the sheds that were completely cleaned about a month ago by some very helpful volunteers! It's absolutely amazing what they did to our poor little storage units! They were packed full of stuff, and if you wanted anything, you had to dig!

This picture was taken a few months ago, and you can see just how stuffed the units were. This is only one of them.
This is what they look like now! Amazing! What a blessing it was to have the help of those volunteers!
They truly worked a miracle, and we are so thankful for the commitment and service that they gave to the Pregnancy Center! We can actually find things now!

Whenever we go to the Center, we love sewing afterward. Although most of our time was spent talking, we managed to get a lot accomplished today!Our quilt is coming along quite nicely and we only have four more squares to sew! I can't believe it. :) Today we put together one square, and got another one cut out to work on during the week. We had set a goal when we first started to have our quilts finished by Christmas, but we decided to move our deadline to next Christmas. :)

Meredith had a fabulous idea to lay out what we had sewn so far just to see what our quilts would look like! This is Mere's! I think the colors that she chose are beautiful! Her outer border is going to be the white fabric that has light blue flowers on it, and I think it's going to look fantastic! I can't wait to see it all finished! Thanks for coming over today Mere!

This is a picture of mine. :) I thought at first it was going to look WAY too pink, but it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be! My outer border is going to be the floral pattern that you see in my quilt. I can't wait to finish it and be able to enjoy it! We only have one more row to sew and then we get to put it all together at last! I can't wait!

Well, that was my day so far! Now I must go and study for the final exam I have to take for my Biblical Wisdom course through Telos on Thursday. How exciting! I always get nervous with tests! Oh well, off to hit the books! ~Alli

(This is our 100th post by the way! To celebrate, we are going to be having a giveaway! Stay tuned... :)