What you do in your house is worth as much as if you did it up in heaven for our Lord God. We should accustom ourselves to think of our position and work as sacred and well-pleasing to God, not on account of the position and work, but on account of the word and faith from which the obedience and the work flow. ~ Martin Luther

Monday, July 18, 2005

Bachelor Parties and Blueberries......

We are back home, after another fun weekend at the Newman ‘Ranch’. Matt was supposed to go to Canada on Friday and Saturday with the Pastor in order to do a rotational visit of other congregations…unfortunately, we have lost his birth certificate. I have always been very particular about putting those items in the “important documents’ folder and keeping them together-so I am not sure how this has happened. Not only is HIS missing but, so are ours-along with all of our soc. security cards. I have no idea how to go about replacing them-this has headache written all over it! I am going to look again and again in the next few days-hoping for a miraculous appearance-saving me all the inevitable frustrations. Urgh!

Because Matt couldn’t go to Canada-he was able to attend his older bro’s bachelor party…Nathan is getting married the weekend before our anniversary, on August 13th. The guys spent all afternoon golfing and then came back and had an all-guy BBQ and played horseshoes. I wanted to crash the party so BAD! ;-) I didn’t see him until 10:00 that evening. A fun time was had by all.

Instead of crashing the party, I was a good girl and went blueberry picking with Julie Ann (Nathan’s fiancé). Now, Matt’s parents’ house is prime location for bears-we have seen SEVERAL in the last year. In fact, Gary told us last week he had seen the biggest one he had ever seen in the front yard that day. Blueberry patches are great feeding grounds for bears…and so I was a bit nervous at going out alone, so I was thankful when Julie wanted to go too. It was great fun, and no bears were spotted. About 10 minutes into our trek, the sky opened up and downpoured for about 25 minutes.
We were already soaked to the bone and our containers were nearly empty-so we decided to go ahead and keep going. Our clothes were literally dripping as we walked-but we filled our containers half full-each of us gathering about a gallon worth. Thankfully, Linda wanted Corynn to stay home with her so she could spend time with her. I had picked some blueberries last week and we had been eating them plain or on cereal and I even put some in pancakes along with walnuts…Matt LOVED those! I hope to freeze some of these, and I would like to make some blueberry preserves with them. We shall see!

The blueberry bushes we were on take up acres and acres of land. The owners of the land do nothing to them except let them get overgrown. I sometimes wonder if they even know they are there! It is quite a hike going through the bushes as there are no paths, you inevitably get scratched up and such, but it is worth it. It is nice of them to share their ‘burden’ with us, but it is SAD to see such potential just go to waste. That blueberry patch could be so productive! They could have be benefited by harvesting the mass fruit, by beautifying their land, and could even make MONEY on it! Tis a shame when people don’t see the value in something as great as that! Of course, if they WOULD take proper care of it, then we wouldn’t be able to trudge through their land to get free blueberries, now would we?!?!

Today I am trying to get laundry in order, this house in order, etc. etc. etc. It has been so hot I don’t feel like doing a thing. I have to cook a meal for a lady in our church who has been having a rough time lately. She has diabetes and has had to have her finger removed due to infection. She is very sad and needs to be cheered up. I am going to make her and her hubby a chicken pot pie I think…that seems to be a meal that travels well, reheats well, and doesn’t use sugar.
I also am going to put some more things on EBAY this week…the other day at a Relay for Life yard sale I filled a shopping bag for $2.00 of anything there. I got a maternity blazer (brand: A pea in the pod) that was BRAND new and put it in the bag. The tag was still on it and had a price of $300.00. It is my size-but it is worth much more to me sold. ;-) Hopefully, this will be a ticket item that I will actually make money on!
Driving on the dirt roads this past weekend really got our car pretty dirty-so Corynn and I just might have a backyard car wash to get cooled off-uh, I mean….to clean up the car!

That’s the scoop. Nothing profound to talk about. Hope everyone has a great day!

2 comments:

Rebecca said...

Hey Hillary! You posted a comment on my blog-neato! ;-)

It is so funny that you said that, because while I was writing it, I thought about putting in a link for that very book, but forgot to before I sent it! We just returned that book to Candor library after borrowing it for a month! Great minds think alike I suppose! :-)

Abigail said...

Not to seek great mind stature...but the combination of bears and blueberries made me think of Little Sal, too, especially because it's one of Millie's favorite books.

Some days she answers only to the name Little Sal, reminding me if I call her Millie, while carting around her "yittle tin pail," a blue plastic bucket John's mom gave her for Easter. She'll climb up her self-titled "Blueberry Hill" (my legs when I'm sprawled out on the floor). When we went strawberry picking a few weeks ago, I heard her forcefully throw berries in her pail while distinctly saying, "tuplink!"

And people think children aren't influenced by what they read (or watch)....