Random Updates

My friend Kim told me that I was slacking by not updating my blog in over a month so I figured I'd throw some random updates out here. PaMac and Margie, I hope you are still reading this and haven't given up on me!

Shauna and I went blackberry picking at a lovely orchard this last weekend. My parents went along too. We had originally planned to go to a place where we could get both peaches and blackberries but we waited a little too long and the peaches were almost gone, so we chose a different spot. It was EXTREMELY hot, even though we got there at 9:00am.

Here is Shauna showing off one of the blackberries. They had an excellent crop and we got some really sweet blackberries. I picked about 3 pounds because Shauna got tired and wanted to quit. My parents picked about 8 pounds!!

Shauna is showing off the loot, but she is not happy here. She said it is way too hot and she's too sweaty to smile for the picture. It looks a little deceiving but there really was 3 pounds there. I got home and froze about 1/2 of them and we've been munching on them the rest of the week. I like to just eat them fresh. My parents froze all theirs because they prefer to make blackberry cobbler with them.

We've had a busy first month of summer because Ethan is playing 7-on-7. I think it's the high school coaches way of making football last year round! We've been to a tournament and have had weekly league games hosted by Ethan's school. Last night's game was interesting because my son's team got kicked out of it's own league for the night for fighting. There's a team they've played before that is always trash talking and this got a little carried away. I'm proud of Ethan that he wasn't involved in the fight and thought the whole thing was stupid - the way the other guys were acting. He's a firm believer in proving your better by showing it on the field instead of trash talking.

We've had to put a lot of money into Ethan's car the last couple of weeks. He had two tires blow out, so we bought him two other new tires so now he's riding on all 4 new ones. We also bought him a new gas tank because the other one was rusting out and causing problems with the fuel line. Up to now, he's been paying for repairs himself, but he ran out of money. He didn't ask for the help but we didn't want him to be too stressed about it. He's working so hard at his job at Kro.ger and I felt sorry for him! At this point, I think everything mechanical on the car has just about been replaced so it should be good transportation for him now.

Shauna is doing great on her swimming now. We have some awesome neighbors that are letting us come over to swim whenever we want and Shauna's lessons have paid off. This is the 3rd year we've done lessons for the summer but the first she's had such an awesome teacher! I love our new neighbors. I've been in the house 13 years and never had these great of neighbors! The only downside is we may become winos because they like to drink wine so much!