Fourth of July Festivities!

We drove to Richmond last night to see their spectacular firework display..... there were thousands of people everywhere, it was hard to find a place to park the car. Noah thought the show was pretty fascinating.

This week Caleb worked in Bardstown which is closer to my parents house by about an hour, we have been having a sleepover. On Tuesday we traveled to Lousiville which is just past Bardstown and visited with the Sparks girls, who we hadn't seen in a long time. Noah had his first trip to the zoo..... it was a little too hot for him to be impressed though.

more pictures from Mom's computer:-)

here is Daddy throwing his pot.... I think his talent for it is returning...methinks he should get a wheel!

Noah and Grampa get along fabulously!
here was our little booth..... we had fun...in the rain!
Noah Loves his stroller....
We all shared a marvelous piece of chocolate cake at Papalenos!
we went to a local potter's open house; Caleb and Dad

Tried their hand at the wheel..... I am hoping that we can have one in our "workshop" someday! (Caleb did an impressive job for the first try.)

well, Caleb is at HOBY for the week, and Noah and I are staying with Cali while my parents are in Connecticut:-) I thought I would upload some of the pictures that she has...(she takes more than I do!)

HOBY lasts until Sunday, two students from each high school district in KY are chosen.... it is a type of leadership summit.

whippersnapper

A lot of moms like to brag on their babies when they can walk early, or crawl, or sleep through the night all the time....I like to brag on my baby cause he can play the drum with alternating hands, and "sing" he can also carry on a conversations using hundreds of words (that we don't understand except for "momma" and "Daddy" and "Hi Daddy." he likes to carry on a conversation with the pastor....while he is preaching, we are going to have to work on that. I am also proud of him because we gave him a crayon and he conquered his first instinct "ooh, bright and colorful, must put in mouth now!" and learned how to scribble with it.

Summer is officially upon us, evidenced by the intense heat and muggy weather. Tonight we had a marvelous lighting storm, with rain and hail. Noah thought it was rather intense, but he seemed to enjoy it.

Caleb is starting a flooring job tomorrow morning which should last for a good part of the summer. The rest of the summer he plans to turn a nice collection of wood pieces to build up a good stock for art fairs and other selling possibilities. I will be at home with Noah except for the few weddings I have scheduled and a few other photo jobs. I am enjoying the peace and stillness of being at home all day long. Noah is changing so much every day, and I don't want to miss any of it.

The other pictures that I posted are of Caleb's metals project which was a hitch to attach the jogger to a bike; and some of my ceramics pieces from my ceramics class. I am postively addicted to working with clay and I wish I could do it on my back porch like Caleb turns wood, but that will have to wait until we have a little more space.

God is Good, All the Time! Happy Mother's day!

first of all......

happy mother's day:-)

I just spent a couple hours packaging roses for the mothers in the eco-village, it was fun:-) my friend Kendra helped me. I will deliver them tomorrow.... sometime:-)

the weather was beautiful today, we wandered around at the International festival, which was fun! saw a viking fight, and a buffalo and a Native American baby toss. :-)

the other day we bought a beautiful couch! What a blessing.....for 25 dollars and 50 cents....we just love it, it is so comfy! I will include a picture. I think God likes to bless us with things like this, it is a really expensive couch that someone decided they didn't want and donated to Goodwill..... just for us:-)

I thought I would include a picture of our lovely spring garden, we have way too much lettuce, so if you want some, feel free to stop in, we might even feed you dinner! :-) (This is our way of eating "LOCAL" :-) very local indeed!

Today I bade farewell to my friend Meg as she headed off to Europe for the summer. I was sad to see her go, I know she will have a marvelous time:-) but I have gotten used to having her around for the last several months. We have been spending a lot of time together planning our wedding photography business. So far we may have three weddings lined up for the summer, but only one definite. (Hopefully we will be more busy in the fall when Meg comes back.)

Life here at the Eco-village has been in full eco-spring mode. A couple weekends ago we had the Rain Barrel festival put on by Sustainable Berea. I got to help paint one of the rain barrels that was going to be put up for auction; along with the rest of the Chaplains that I work with:-) it was a lot of fun. We did our painting in an old abandoned house on property owned by our boss the college chaplain, Loretta.During the rain barrel festival Cali and I had a booth where we tried to sell baby slings and jewelry, (we sold lots of jewelry but only one baby sling.:-) and Kyle and Caleb had a both with woodworking.

Living here it seems like our awareness of current issues in the world have been heightened....this can be quite exhausting!

Sustainability is a catchy word around Berea; a lot of people have gardens, re-use their sink water, only flush their toilet once a day (yes, really!) I think sometimes Christians are afraid to show too much concern for our environment because of the whole "mother earth" type mentality that is often associated with such concern. Sometimes I wonder though if maybe we show too little concern, we are afterall supposed to be good stewards and cartakers of this earth that God has loaned to us.

Fair Trade is also a huge catch phrase around here. This is something I am more concerned about, some companies take advantage of farmers in the third world, as well as factory workers. They do not pay a living wage, but since the workers need some sort of money they have no other option but to work for meager wages and in unsanitary conditions, sometimes resulting in disease or cancer. This is especially a concern in coffee and tea industries, as well as sugar and clothing.

So, I have started to buy fair trade certified coffee, it is a little more expensive (appropriately) so we have had to drink a little less coffee. (which is good for us.)

A lot of my neighbors are really aware, and don't buy a lot of things if they aren't grown locally, or from certain companies that are known for mistreating their employees, or hiring undocumented employees that can't fight back when they are mistreated. They also won't shop at Wal-Mart for this reason because of how they handle their factories overseas.

It may be exhausting, but maybe this is something we should all look into a little more and be more aware of where our money is going. Maybe this is the essence of good stewardship, rather than getting the cheapest best "deal" possible.

okay, that is my two cents for the day.

:-) here are some pictures for fun....

Staci and Noah and I went out for coffee, and got stuck in the rain.....Noah thought the rain was amazing!

Check out my Slide Show!

3 years!

As I walked around in the 80 degree weather today I could hardly believe it was our 3rd anniversary! (remembering the frigid temperatures of three years ago, along with the ice, snow and wind!)

Time seems to be speeding up, and we are surprised by how fast it goes!

we spent our day going about our schedules, the house isn't clean:-( I had to go to a conflict resolution seminar that lasted until 8:30 tonight, and Noah has an eye infection....hardly anniversary material! But to our surprise walking back from the seminar we ran into our friends Matt and Meg outside in their garden, when we asked what they were up to they said "waiting to watch Noah so you guys can go out for your anniversary!" so we did:-) we drove to richmond and feasted on chocolate cake and finger foods at O'Charlies. It was quite lovely, we were able to remember different random things that happend on our wedding day, emotions that we had etc. It was a nice surpise.
This weekend Staci and Kyle are coming down for the "Rain Barrel Festival." I helped paint a rain barrel with the other student chaplains, which was fun. Kyle and Caleb, and Cali and I are going to have boothes with various things for sale. Caleb wants to finish up some bowls for the project. He has a new design that is really intriquing, it involves turning a sqare piece of wood and letting the edges curve down to create a stand. I will have to post a picture. :-)

Portrait Session

Our neighbor (Meg who Rachel has been cooking meals with) works at Portrait Innovations. She took some pictures of Noah for us last night. :-) hope you like them as much as we do!

Six Months!

Well, Noah is six months old now, and can do all the classic baby stuff.... crawl, roll around, sit up, play the drum, lift weights, and mamba dance!

As I write he is playing with the drum and Caleb's barbell at the same time. He is an immense joy:-) and we can't imagine our lives without him.

The weather has gotten nice again after some snow.... so we have been out and about, playing on the swings and crawling around in the grass.

Caleb took his boat out for a ride a week or so ago, and I know he is anxious to take Noah as soon as we can find him a baby life jacket.

Last night we went on a spur of the moment date in Lexington (very spur of the moment, we weren't expecting to go out, so we were in our leisurely Friday night sweats!) it was fun. Went to the dollar theater and saw the movie "Water Horse" about a little boy who finds a baby lochness monster. It was really good actually.....and Noah just thought the creature was the greatest thing. The whole theater was quiet except for Noah who kept on laughing his big belly laughs! We then went out for a hamburger, and Noah sat in his big boy high chair, we got him some apple sauce, which he liked (sort of.) we haven't been giving him much in the way of solids, I am afraid he is going to be rather picky.

For the past few weeks I have been getting together with a friend of mine, ( Meg, used to be a missionary midwife in the Phillipines) and cooking meals for the week. We each make three (times two) and then we have six meals of a very interesting variety to have throughout the week. This is interesting and fun, we have had very different meals lately, like lentil curry and adobo (a phillipino dish).