Blogging friends

I've been blogging now for about 2 1/2 years. When I first started blogging, like many of the rest of you I did plenty of blog hopping and reading different blogs from all over.  Yeah--spent a lot of time that way!

As time went on I established my favorite ones.  Maybe there was some connection of people, maybe something we had in common, maybe it was because I stepped out of my comfort zone and commented on their blog & they responded to me, maybe it was those who commented on my blog.

Sometimes for some reason you just "feel" a connection with certain people causing you or them to reach out a little further than causal comments.

Those of you who are around me hear me in conversation refer to "My blogging friend from ___"  I find myself saying this quite a lot.  I feel very fortunate to have gotten "acquainted" with quite a few bloggers and consider them friends!  But, the truth is, other than my family and very few others that I actually do personally know;  I have never met any of the other of my blogging friends.

Until this weekend!!

Last week I got pretty close....if you remember I posted about meeting some of Alison's family.

When I made one of my "house tour" posts, Patty made the comment "we're coming to visit", and I responded that would be awesome,  and then she said "Seriously"!!  I still can hardly believe it.

They arrived Sat. afternoon, and we had some friends/family out for a potluck for supper that night.  The question was asked, "when did you meet"?  uhhh, TODAY!!

We joked about the fact that they were stopping by to meet us on their way home to TX after visiting in CO!
Really they were on a road trip and heading on east & south, but they did go out of their way to come see us!

 

Can you think of a more appropriate place to have our picture taken together than beside the computer?!




We had some family and friends over for a potluck on Sat. eve,

We spent some time inside eating...

My younger sister--and our friends aka big Opps, I MEANT older! "sistah" Cyndie & Dan

The middle sister--Gay and Patrick.  Yes, she's the one who makes those delightful comments, and is the mother of THIS delightful blogger, my niece

 And with my mom

On the porch eating;

Alisha & Ryan, Derek,  Becky & Paul & Leon at the end

On the steps eating....

My friend Shelley from HERE; with her delightful mischievous little grandson

Outside eating on the play set;

Gay's youngest, Jackson, & her oldest grandaughter Felicity, with Kaela in the middle.

In a tree eating;

 

Her Grandson Latham--

And outside under the trees in the cool breeze visiting, too full to move

and the sun went down on another day of country memories

Andy & Patty--we are so happy you came to meet us, and spent some time with us.  We so enjoyed having you as our our first guests in our country home, having you in our Sun. a.m. gathering, sharing you with our friends & family--both here and Sun. evening at Russ & Lanae's too.
We hope you have a wonderful & safe rest of your journey "home"!

Part 2 of the house tour

The dining room--

Some of the wood had to be repaired on the cupboard there & we haven't got it re-painted yet.




On thru the french doors into the living room. Yes, I painted these rooms the same color as I did my rooms in the other house last year. I loved the color, and wasn't ready to be done with it! (and I just realized that it's about exactly the color of my blog background!!)



The view thru the windows to the "front" porch is inviting. The windows are old. The glass is wavy. The tops of the windows are diamond panes, and really cool. Yes, my sister says they are very "cool" in the winter too!! :D


Back from the living room thru the dining room...


That's all for today--now would you like to join me for lunch with homemade strawberry pie? Yes, the whipping cream is "real" too!!



I love my dishes. I received a set of four of the cups and bowls for Mothers day to match the plates I'd gotten last year. Longaberger is one of my favorite things in life!

Keeping things real

Before we go any further on this house tour I'd like to assure you all that things are really quite "normal" at this house. If you read THIS (my dear nieces) blog, then you will understand my desire to clarify a few things. (grin!) She was too young to remember several of our moves that resulted in much the same state as hers, and I am still not too old to remember the complete chaos that I lived with and in for way too long. Moving is a chore. At least with a family. Our moves before children were relatively fast and simple. In fact our first move after we were married; from Wyo back to NE was accomplished in one trip in the back of a pickup. That was 33 years ago this summer. I don't WANT to remember how many trailer, van, pickup & car loads (and TIME) this move took us, and it was only 17 miles.

So--without any more adieu I present just a tiny glimpse of REAL life--


The porch BEFORE. Unfortunately this was only one of the many times it was piled in, then put "away" before the next batch came in.


My downstairs bath/laundry room, and yes, it still looks this way. It was a little worse yesterday before I pulled a few things out for another organization project.


In the mean time, life must go on. Meals must appear, kids seem to think they still have to eat. I have cleaning jobs. I have school runs. I have chores to assign kids. Kids have piano lessons and strings concerts.

Kara's spring orchestra concert--This is the 5th graders (all K. public schools)





Sorry, no video's. I've misplaced my camera card, and the one I'm using is a 32 M. I get about 5 pictures at a time :P


Anyway, the days rush past. One melts into another, and it seems like it's taking a long time to get everything together but I stop and realize it's "only" the 5th of May, and we've really only had everything moved for 2 weeks.

I am encouraged when I hear "Wow mom, it looks like things are really coming together". Thank you son, I appreciate that!




And here's a picture I found on my camera when I was downloading this morning. A reminder to stop and enjoy the "simple things" The beauty in the middle of our hectic chaos.
Thank you for whoever grabbed my camera & captured the moment.

Welcome to our country home --part 1

Would you like a tour? We'll start with the main entry, which is technically the "back" of the house.


Entry--from the inside


What do we call this "room"? I don't really know! It's formerly the porch, now open to the kitchen. The floor is new -- I love it. I think it looks great, & it's low maintenance. Perfect.

We haven't had time to do the painting yet in these rooms. I'm thinking the colors will be pretty close to this tho, it just "feels right".


Here's my view from the inside looking out :)


Monday morning baking--I'll share if you come over!

To be continued.

Happy May day!

Dear friends;

The other day I made the comment that I woke up and realized I'd lost 2 months. Seems like I've totally lost March & April and now it's May. Already. Moving to our "new" place has been all consuming. We're not very organized or put together, but we're here, & we're in.

We've had our first "company-here for a meal", I did my first bread/cinnamon roll baking, I made my first ever strawberry pie, along with my first ever decent pie crust (which was a necessity after I burnt the nice boughten pre-made crust to a crisp) What's a girl to do when she has the filling all ready to go into the pie crust & ruins the crust at 9 p.m. at night, when you live in the country & the convenient small grocery store just 3 miles up the road in town closes when the sun goes down? You pull out pioneer woman's cookbook of course! I figured if there was anyone who could help me, she could and guess what! I did it. Not only that- the pie crust was totally easy & absolutely delicious! I'm hooked!

Today I've got my husband busy hanging stuff on my walls. I'm not above pounding nails--even two or three times to get something in the right place, but these are plaster walls. He's the painter & when I mess up his wall too badly with my impatience.....well, 'nough said!

I'm anxious to share pictures with you all, but again, that's going to have to wait a bit.
What I will share with you today is my niece's new-made-over blog. Not only does she have a great new look, but she's having a fun contest too! Check it out, and see what everyone is "clucking" about!

I'll be back soon--I'm still intending to give "our space" a new name and look! Happy May day(s) to you all!


Lovin' the country life

Anticipation--Happy memories

Since I keep getting asked to post pictures of where we're planning to move to, in between cleaning house & leaving the house for showings I finally looked up some pictures to post that would give you all an idea of what the place looked like.
These pictures were taken at our family reunion that my sister hosted July 4, 2007.
It was great to look back at these and remember this fun day. Since it still looks like winter around here right now and everything is pretty drab, it also was great to realize that soon things will look like this again.

It's going to be quite the change for us, even tho Leon grew up in the country, and I did until I was around 5, we've lived in towns all our married life. Our kids have loved spending time with their cousins in the country, and we are looking forward to our new adventure!