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It's a quiet house!

Jeanne took Meshayla, Morgen, Kara & Kaela to Bird City convention on Wed. afternoon, as those kids didn't have school on Thurs & Friday. Relyssa left with Ryan for convention Fri. eve for the weekend, so Leon & I have had the house to ourselves. I spent most of the day Thurs & Fri playing catch up on the cleaning that I don't seem to accomplish when the kids are here, then we had a really fun dinner party here Fri. eve for my sister's birthday! Just 6 of us, & NO KIDS! What a novelty to happen at this house!
I talked to Dalayna today, and she said Jessi just started to crawl last week. I'm really getting anxious to see her again, they change so fast at that age. Sounds like I MAY have a chance to go up there next month. We're looking forward to seeing Kyrie & Trey again soon too. Kyrie's planning a visit to Grammie & Grampa's in Oct, so I'll try and post some new pictures!

I just finished what will probably be the last canning this year. 18 jars of grape jelly! This is my 2nd time doing grape, and last year I didn't have very good luck with it, so I'm hoping I did better this time! We didn't get much fruit this year. I bought peaches & froze & canned those, skipped on the jam as I still had some from last year. Our 2 cherry trees and 2 pear trees were loaded, but the birds & squirrels got every last one. Not even one left on the ground. We had a few apples on our "baby" trees, and more peaches on our tree than we've had for several years, but the same thing happened to those trees too. Others in this area have said the same thing happened to them this year. Evidently because of the horrendous ice storms that we had here, the food supplies for the squirrels were depleted. We always have a lot of birds, rabbits & squirrels in our yard, but never had this happen before. Not only that, but the mulberry tree was raided too, not that I cared quite so much about that... just saved from lots of stained faces, hands & shirts, not to mention the feet!
This spring we planted blueberry bushes, grapes & raspberry bushes. The raspberries & blueberries actually had a few berries. I have to try to keep them picked before the kids nab them tho. I love making jelly & jam but I need to learn a little more about growing the fruit, as I hate to have to go buy it.

I think I am very slow in getting the hang of this... if you could see how often I've had to re-do some of the pictures, you'd laugh! As it is the one with me & the babies still looks funny.... like you're looking in one of those crazy mirrors or something! I'm still convinced it's got to be easier than a web page tho.

Did you ever aspire to be on TV? Well, I didn't! However believe it or not, Luanne and I have actually made it, and didn't even have to go to Hollywood! Our local NTV station contacted me a while back wondering if we would be interested in doing some infomercials for them about our scrapbooking business. The Gal who was working on it had been looking at local websites to find businesses, and came on ours, so called us. She was impressed with our website (THANKS LYNISHA!!) and so we find ourselves at the TV station every Tues. a.m. with a new scrapbooking tip, technique or project. They are live on Tues mornings, then after that you can go to their website and watch the video. We were wondering why they didn't come up with this while we still had the store... we could have used the free advertising then for sure! However, hopefully it may help our now at home business. You can see us at http://www.nebraska.tv/ Then click on the the "good life" link, and on the left will be a list of the video's of the shows. The hardest thing is they are less than 5 min. long, and it's a huge challenge to show any "How-to's" in that time.

Life at our house, Fall 2007

Relyssa, 10th grade, Meshayla 7th grade, Morgen 4th grade, Kara 3rd grade & Kaela 1st grade, First day of School, August 17, 2007

This last year has seen alot of changes at our house! A year ago the Sun. a.m. meeting that has been at my Mom's and before that my Grandparents house for over 40 years was moved to our house when Mom went to Latvia to help out over there. After a couple months we realized that our upstairs living room was really too crowded, and things worked out to (start) finishing our downstairs family room for meeting. We love it! It's hard to believe we survived all those years without it.

We had hoped to celebrate our 30th anniversary at Christmas time with all the kids planning to be home. However best laid plans have a way of coming to naught, and due to the extreme weather we had with 2 severe ice storms in this area, all the kids did not make it home. So even tho we still celebrated our anniversary (early) with the ones that were here, the family picture we had planned had to be postponed

In January we welcomed our 2nd grandchild, Jessi Learah McKnight. I was so happy to be able to be there for her birth & to help a bit afterwards. In Feburary just 3 weeks later I got to guide baby Trey Elliot to his mothers arms in an incredible waterbirth at home. What an awesome experience and privilege to be there when your grandbabies come into the world!

At the end of April Luanne and I closed our down-town store, and moved our scrapbooking business to our homes. We are still doing scrapbooking for others, custom card work, and holding weekend scrap events. It's been quite an adjustment, and I wish I could say I get a whole lot more done now that I'm at home all day...(I can't!)

We finally got to do our family picture the end of May! Laura got to come home in May to get ready to go to Finland, and Jana had permission to come and spend a bit of time with her at home, so all the kids made arrangements to be here for Memorial day weekend, and we got our picture. I've taken many family pictures over the years any time we were all together, but seldom sent them around, and I figured as this one may be the last one for some time I'd better try and get it out to everyone!

The first of July found us facing a new experience as we sent Laura off to Finland to labor over there. Kind of hard to think about the possibility of not seeing her for 2-5 years, but she's been looking forward to this for a long time, and with today's technology, we're only a phone call away, although an 8 hr time difference makes it a little tricky! I need to get skype downloaded on my computer so I can call her, and not have to wait for her calls. July 4 we had a fun day at Luanne's with a Herndon Family reunion. Varrel & Sandi from AZ came to NE, and a few of our other Herndon Relatives were here. We had a great day with food & fun. The kids had worked for several months on doing a "Annie" performance, so that was the grand entertainment of the day. They did an awesome job.

Back to School in August found us facing another new experience! With Kaela starting school this year we have no kids home during the day for the first time in 29 1/2 years! WOW that really was an adjustment. You would think that I'd be jumping up and down with relief, but the truth is that I really did have a hard time seeing her go off to school, and probably more than any of my other kids since she's the "baby"!

We are just home from convention- York last week, Leon got Wed.-Fri afternoon, and the rest of us got it all. This week he went to Marysville for Wed.-Sat a.m. as he changed his schedule, so is now working Sat, Sun and Mon. nights. I'm kind of excited about the change, as often things come up on Friday nights we'd like to do, but he's always had to work. Monday evenings never seem as busy, so we'll see how it works out. He wanted to change it especially for conventions so he only had to take off one night instead of two. We are happy to hear Jana will be back in NE for this year, We'd love to be able to visit her in her field this time, as 4 years ago when she was there it never worked out, and that area is where my Mom grew up.