A Month of Partying!
A Month of Partying!
Here are the 5 month compilations!
The Month started with Trulee's launch party for her new book....WICK! You can purchase it on Amazon and Kindle.
The kids and I spent all day Saturday helping her to set up, finish decorations, and just get everything together in time for the party. She had a pretty good turnout, and everything looked great! We ended the evening with a bonfire roasting marshmallows.
We spent that weekend in Bowling Green getting metal roofing off an old shed that once belonged to Sam's grandparents. The family is having everything torn down and the land flattened in preparation for selling it. It didn't take near as long as we feared, and I spent the downtime making banners and cutting 700 post cards twice into 1400 prayer cards.
And I spent almost every waking moment making decor and somehow in the middle of it, we still found some time for fun. On a walk to the mailbox, the kids and I found a baby box turtle in the driveway.
The kids tried to build a turtle shelter in the front, and Shelly the "Shell-o-saurus" (thank you, William for the wonderful name) spent the entire day with us. After escaping her pen for one to many times, the kids brought her inside where she lived in the cutting pool for a few hours. She crawled over our carpets and kitchen table before we finally convinced William it was probably best if he let her go because we weren't in the position to build her a turtle habitat.
For the party, I wanted 6 table center pieces which needed 28 tiny flags and 5 Mary's. Each image had to be printed, cut, glued, and put on skewers. Then I had to assemble the center piece bottoms, make several banners, table cloths (which included painting Earths in the center by hand), a banner for people to take pictures next to, and all the giveaway material (Bingo game card, map and country matching game, pictures of Mary, and flags). Entry tickets, game tickets, business cards...each had to be designed, printed, and cut. And I wanted a table showcasing our author (me, haha) and illustrator as well as the upcoming projects by GravissiMum. So again, design, print, cut to size. It. Was. Exhausting. Luckily, we made some new church friends who took the time out of their week to come over several evenings and days to help with all the party prep. I couldn't have done it without them!
The kids helped me make a banner to showcase there was a book event coming up, and we hung it up several days before so people would see it as they passed by downtown. I called several churches and asked them to put the flier advertising our event in their bulletin, made an announcement at church, and posted and re-posted on the GravissiMum Facebook page while also sharing it to my personal social channels.
I even invited Bishop John Stowe. I never heard back from him, but I did hear from my new illustrator who is a deacon in Lexington and has lots of connections. The new editor of the Crossroads works in the Bishop's office and was forwarded my email. So my new illustrator showed up with his camera to take pictures for the Diocese magazine.
The night before the party, we took the kids out to eat with Father Edwin and celebrate (mostly because I was exhausted and didn't want to make more dishes). And a super sweet family member paid for our dinner, so THANK YOU!
If you want to read about the actual day of the launch party, you can read about it here: link. In short, not a lot of people came, and I was SUPER BUMMED. Like embarrassingly few considering the camera guy showed up and had to wait like 20 mins for anyone else to show up so it wasn't just him wandering around our empty venue (blasting music, decorated cutely, with 12 dozen cookies baked mind you). I probably should have waited for another time given all the problems I'd been having, but I was highly motivated to get the book out there now that it was complete. And I wanted to celebrate all of our hard work. We did end up having three families come (and I really appreciate you all!), and the kids DID have fun. So that was worth it.
Despite the low turn out, I still have high hopes for the book AND for the business. Getting it off the ground is the hardest part, and if I want it to be a legit business, I have to treat it like a legit business every step of the way. Even if it means overdoing it a little in the beginning. We have plans to do a possible book signing in August at Benedictus in Lexington, so pray for us that all the obstacles I'm currently facing in real time find a way of working it out. Because this book deserves all the attention.
The kids and I celebrated the evening of the launch party with a Tony's Pizza pizza party out by the pool. After being on my feet all day, I was tired and wanting to relax in the cool water.
The very next week, I got to do a sing-a-read-a-long at Plaid Elephant's bookstore. The morning of, there was a flash flood warning! It was pouring down rain! When we got to the bookstore, the event leader hadn't come in because she didn't think a lot of people would come. They had the most they'd ever had there! By the time I read the book, sang it, and acted it out a couple times, she arrived to finish off the activities. It was a lot of fun! She loved Luke's shirt and asked to take a picture! We ended up selling 3 books, too!
The rain continued that week, and the front yard turned into a pond again. The water went over the driveway at one point which has only happened about 3 times since we moved into this house in 2019.
We walked around with the kids for a bit looking at all the flooding and letting them play in the creeks.
Then we decided to bust out the kayak and canoe!
Father Edwin came later that afternoon and kayaked for his very first time.
You can watch a video of the fun by clicking on the photo. 
THEN the very next weekend was Luke's birthday party! Sam wanted to buy a slip-n-slide this year and forgo the splash pond at the bottom, but I convinced him to still do it! Unfortunately, he threw his back out a couple days before the party. Luckily, we had some good friends that came over the day of the party and helped me to make the pond. We left the slip-n-slide up for a few days for the kids to enjoy before we took it down so it wouldn't kill the grass.
The slip-n-slide was cool, but the cake was definitely one of the best parts!
Uncle Bear got Luke a fishing pole (and a worm digging kit!) for his bday, so of course the kids had to go up to the pond and fish after the party. Luke caught his very first fish!
Sam got Luke a science experiment book for his birthday, and William LOVED it, haha. He did a bunch of experiments with his friend Abigail including this one:
That weekend was also mine and Sam's 11th year wedding anniversary. To celebrate, I printed the pictures we took on our 10-year anniversary on canvas. If you haven't heard, Sam and I forgot to get pictures of just us during our wedding. We have like 2 photos. So for our 10-year, I really wanted to get some pictures in my wedding dress *if* I could fit. Bonus, I DID fit into it! BUT I was also newly pregnant with Hazel and trying not to tell people yet, so I had to hurry and get the pictures done before I couldn't fit in the dress anymore. I convinced my sister to take them at Shakertown at one of the spots we always hike to as a family. Fast forward to Christmas, and a friend from church had a painting in the Church auction OF THAT EXACT SAME PLACE! I put a bid on the painting and won it! So I've wanted to get our anniversary pictures printed ever since so we can frame his painting with our pictures. LOOOOOK!
I was a little teary-eyed opening the package.
In the middle of all of this chaos, Rylee had her last softball game. They made it to the finals, but didn't manage to beat the best team in the league. They had yet to be beat. However, in the last inning, our team did AWESOME. They had a great comeback and even managed to keep the Bears from scoring for a whole inning. It was a close game!
The boys had their last T-ball game on Luke's birthday. We celebrated the evening with Pippa, Pap Pap, and Fr. Edwin at La Fonda's.
Luckily, the blackberries, choke cherries, and plums decided to wait until after sports were over and after the birthday party was over before they were ready to be picked. The blackberries took about 2 hours every day to pick and after about two weeks of picking in between rain storms, I was blackberried out. My arms were also scratched to pieces.
Here's a view of one of our massive patches.
We now have blackberry jelly (the jam already sold out) for sale. $5/half-pint since I nearly scratched my arms to pieces and got covered with ticks. You're welcome, haha.
Choke cherries are TINY, and unfortunately, I don't think I picked enough (during the massive heat wave we had) to make any jelly.
The grapes are coming along, which in itself is a miracle seeing as how I haven't watered or done anything with them since I planted them three years ago.
I froze the blackberries as I picked them so I could make jelly when I had time. I ended up with between 5-6 gallons of wild blackberries.
Protip: even though you don't have to cook tomatoes before juicing them, you CANNOT grind frozen berries. Next time, I will warm them in a big pot before running them through the juicer.
With blackberries, I usually process them in two stages. The first stage is whatever comes out of the juicer. Some seeds will make it through along with some pulp. I make "jelly" out of this and call it Smooth Jam. Then, I take a portion and run it through a sheer curtain to get the juice. I let it strain in the fridge overnight and it STILL wasn't done late the next morning, so I had to spend about thirty minutes scraping the sides of the curtain and squeezing it through to get the rest of it out. We ended up with around twenty half-pint jars of jelly or a little over three batches. I did save some of the juice for myself to make Jugo de Mora (recipe below). Side note: if you are going to make blackberry juice, you need to drink it within a day or two. The fresh juice sours very quickly.
I ended up taking the pulp and the seeds and forming them into balls that I then put into my dehydrator. The idea was to use them as "seed bombs" to encourage a patch of wild blackberries to grow in certain places or to hang up in trees for birds to eat from (like a bird seed ornament). I tried storing the original ones in a ziplock bag (not closed...I was afraid I hadn't dehydrated them all the way and they would mold), and they ended up molding. So I had to dehydrate them *again* and then put them into airtight containers.
I clearly didn't turn them often enough in the dehydrator as they are very not round, haha. And who knows if anyone will want them, but I found it amusing!
We've been trying to stay on top of mowing, but Sam's had to fix up the mowers. Honestly, I'm not sure if it was the bush hog or the finish mower or both. I tried to help by mowing my 7 lots while he focused on the fields. The kids usually fight to go with me. Unfortunately, the mower can't hold everyone. I usually take the youngest ones so that they aren't getting into trouble while we are mowing.
I load everyone up on bugspray, sunscreen, hats, and hearing protection. Mena's eardrum busted from an ear infection before this picture (and the kids have dropped the last two pairs of headphones meaning I ran over them with the mower), so I had to use swimming earplugs for the baby. But that ended up working out well because she couldn't tug it off or it adjust while we were riding.
This was right before I broke the riding mower running over a piece of metal in the ground that *I knew* was there but kept forgetting about. And then much to Sam's happiness....I did it again right after he fixed it. So we currently don't have a working mower while we wait on the parts to come in.
One evening after mowing, Sam came in with a present for Will. He found this moth in the field dead! We can't wait to frame it. Interestingly, the neighbors found THE EXACT SAME MOTH still alive in a tree in their backyard.
William has been slowly adding to his bug collection even though I'm in charge of actually pinning them. So basically, he keeps bringing me dead bugs (we have a pile on the mantel, haha). So far the only bug he has killed was the dragon fly which he ninja chopped out of the air somehow without damaging it. #skills.
Our chickens have been rapidly dying out, and we ended up getting rid of the last of them because we don't have time to fix their coop right now. The kids were sad, but we promised them we would get some back either next year or the next once we get the coop finished. Sam has a few game cams out trying to figure out what's been eating the chickens, and we've had several visitors in the "pool house". Racoons, ground hogs, and even a giant toad! They all like to mess with Sam, though, haha.
We spent a lot of time during the heat wave going to the pool. Don't let Haze's frown fool you. She actually really loves the water.
Mena is going through a clingy phase where she won't let go of me for even one second in the pool. Not quite sure why.
The weekend after Luke's party we had Kelcey's bday party on Friday night (pool party at Rachel's parents' house), rained all day Saturday, and then Friday we had Maverick's birthday party (pool party at Nene's house) and Church had a pool party at Anderson Dean. The older two kids (and Pap Pap) had a blast going down the big water slide. The lifeguard was nice enough to catch William every time.
We finished off the evening going to Divine's Corn Maze to watch their fireworks. We all climbed on top of the car roof to watch!
And as always...here are some cute pictures!
I've never had a chewing kid, but I SWEAR she puts everything in her mouth. You can't hold her without her trying to chew/gnaw/suck on your shoulders/arms/fingers. It's kind of cute and kind of exhausting! Good thing she's cute:)
Receta de Jugo de Mora de Costa Rica (Costa Rican Blackberry Juice Recipe)
2 cups of blackberry juice
1/2 cup of sugar (we ended up adding more to taste because our blackberries were sour)
1 liter of water
Combine everything into a pitcher and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Then add several cups of ice. Refrigerate immediately and drink within 2 days or the juice will be too sour and start to ferment.
Pax Domini cum spirito tuo temper sit,
Torey, Sam, Rylee, William, Luke, Mena & Hazel
The social madness:
Etsy shop: MinIsland Farm
Youtube: MinIsland Farm
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