wakeboarding....

John loves to wake board. Our friend Andy invited John and I over to the lake a couple Friday's ago to play in the water. We had lots of fun and I got a lot of great pictures.

I just wanted to post a few updates from my gardens. All my plants are doing really well.

(my first blossom on the Black eyed Susan's!

There are over a dozen healthy roses blooming on this one in this picture! (sorry about the dead ones, they were done blooming)

I really love gardening and I hope to get to fun new plants in the gardens again next year. Some changes I will make to the garden before next spring will be:

1) pull out all the plants and layer a sheet of the stuff that keeps the weeds out.

2) make it a little bigger so that I don't have to plant the plants so close to the edge of the grass.

3) I want to add a rock/stone border to make it easier on John when he mows.

I love the experiment of it all.

Summer time...

We have had a great summer. I haven't been cooking too much because we have been busy and grilling out a lot. Pretty boring I know. I do have a couple of recipes to show off later, but for now I wanted to share a couple of fun photos from this summer.

John and I were on one of our 'bookstore' dates when we stumbled across this.....
Mall Cops, hard at work.... (too funny)

We recently went to the drive-in to see a movie (pretty bad experience not deserving of its own blog post). This was a little while before they started the movie. (#29 complete, but I hope I get to redo this one and have a better go at it.)

Rachel and I have enjoyed spending a little time going to garage sales the past few weekends. It has also been very hot. This was after I mistakenly opened the fridge to get a water and realized how great it felt. I know, bad for the electric bill....

Last night we decided to give the dogs a bath. That was nothing short of entertaining for Jeff and Rachel, who took these pictures. Brinks was just nasty. John kept making terrible faces. And 'B' just kept shaking all over us! Too funny!

We see how John helps, he played most of the time while I scrubbed Spooky. She didn't mind the bath though because she loved the attention. (yes I decided to stand in the water for Spooky because she weights about 60 lbs. and I wanted to be close to her.)

I hope to get to blog some other fun stuff and recipes this week. Everyone have a great Wednesday night!

Happy Independence Day!

I hope everyone had a great and safe weekend. John and I had a busy and fun weekend celebrating Independence Day. Before we even got out of the driveway on Friday we were celebrating with authentic Mexican food... I know, not traditional burgers and stuff, we had that plenty over the weekend too but, while we were waiting to leave our house we raided Jesus and Rocio's food stash. They had fresh made tortillas that were still warm. They also had amazing cheese so we made little cheese tortillas. It was amazing. Over the course of the weekend we also had cheese stuffed peppers, cheesy gorditata's, and grilled cheese quesadilla's with home made guacamole. It was all delicious.


We then headed to the lake and played on the water and had fun with all our friends.
Kim & John playing on the water...

Kim realizing she could have used the rescue whistle when her and John broke down on the water.... Luckily someone towed them back...
Eventually we made our way to the grill for some more food. The guys were busy repairing the jet ski from an incident with a plastic bag and stick, I went ahead and started the grill. So I was the grill master. It got dark so Jesus let me borrow his snazzy headlamp. I look like a goofball.
from right: me, John, Rocio, & Crystal...
The next day we found our way to the water fast. Jesus joined us...

here is Kim, me, and Kim's friend Jamie...

Jeff was fishing with Jessie, Crystal and Mike's little girl...Then Jeff had to show her how to undo your line if it is stuck in the water... (insert laughter)

back to fishing, Jesus, Rob (Rachel's dad), Jeff and Jessie hanging out in the boat...

then the guys settled in for a game of horseshoes... Jeff has a serious face...

John has a solid throw with a follow through... (Rob, John, and Jeff) Rachel and Jeff took a little ride on the paddle boat...

Rachel's parents took a little tour of the lake. (Rob & Ruth)

we decided to go ahead and start dinner at a decent hour so we could get to the fireworks... Here I am again helping out with the grill....

Then a bunch of us took off on a boat ride to the fireworks...Kim snapped this shot of us at the fireworks show...

They were absolutely beautiful....

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some of the ladies enjoying the fireworks show... Sarah, Alana, Kim, Jamie....

Me and John...

This was Jesus and Rocio's first Independence Day celebration... They LOVED the fireworks display...

We were on two boats and waited for the boat traffic to clear before heading back to Andy's house....

We had a great weekend and got to rest up on a rainy day on Sunday... it was great to have friends and family come visit and spend such a fun time together....

Check back soon for a glimpse at our current house guests....

What most refer to as bowling....

So we discover Friday night after volunteering, that maybe we should stick to the Wii.

Here are some shots we took in the dark bowling alley....

John, showing off...

Me pretending that I'm good. I did get a couple strikes and spares...

Rachel and I had about the same luck throughout the night, but still had fun...

And one of the funniest parts of the night, captured on film... Jeff took a turn...

And you can see both his anguish and his lonely pin left standing....

We played 2 games. In the first game, John won, Rachel came in 2nd, Jeff and came in 3rd and only beat me by 2 points. In the second game, John won again, then Jeff in 2nd, and beat me by 3 points- I came in 3rd and Rachel came in 4th. It was fun even thought the floor was so slippery that we had to walk funny, which doesn't work in bowling. And the ball really did whatever it wanted as it approached the pins because of the floor. We had free tickets from when the guys donated blood, so it was worth it in the end.

Day 8 and 9 of our trip!

On our final 2 days of our trip we did a lot. On day 8 we drove from Syracuse to Buffalo. I was really excited about this part of the trip....

We went for.... WINGS!!!

Before...

After....

We stopped at none other than the Anchor Bar. Home of the original Buffalo Chicken Wing!!!

After lunch we took a hop and a skip over to Niagara Falls. We stayed state side for this visit.

I snapped a picture of this picture because it was amazing to see. It all started with a large chunk of ice that clogged up the water upstream. It is really cool to see a picture of this.

John and I checked out all parts of the falls. This is the American Falls...

American Falls...

This is a view of the Canadian side from the American Side... that is where John and I visited the last time we went...

We stood at the edge and you could feel the spray of water...

This is the Horseshoe Falls (the Canadian part of the falls.)

It is so cool to see the water just disappear.

It creates a beautiful color...

This is a picture of the stream rushing towards the falls.

And this little guy was in the park there. None of us had ever seen a black squirrel with a brown tail. It was so cool to see.

On our last day, before we drove all the way back to VA, we took a detour with the team. We got to go to Cooperstown, NY, to the Baseball Hall of Fame. John and I had never been there.

This is a picture of the scanned line-up card from the 1979 World Series game when John's dad was playing with the Pirates.

This is John standing in the Hall of Fame.

Here he is posing with a statue of Babe Ruth...

After the Hall of Fame we had to get on the road back home. I think there was some sort of Hot Air Balloon Festival in West VA/ VA, because we kept seeing balloons.

It was a pretty and sunny ride back. We made it home a safe and sound.

We hope to get to go to Canada again in a couple years. We were so blessed to get to go!