Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

Weekend Coffee Share

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia this Friday the 13th. How you doing? The forsythia bushes & some of the fruit trees are blooming. I spent the week with Grands while their parents went on a spring break getaway. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & we'll talk about our themed days & how the camper transformation is going. I've got unpacking & laundry to do then I'm going to the opening baseball ceremonies this weekend. 

Moma, Me, Sister - Read Across America 
with Dr. Suess. We take our homeschool
day themes maybe a bit too serious.

The youngest Grands explore
in the garden.

Messy Monday - Hotdog roast & catching tadpoles. Our pond has failed to hold water. It's still on our to-do list to line it with some Georgia red clay. For now, it's the perfect place where tadpoles can thrive. 

Sometimes at Nana & Pa's
house you have to cook your
own food.

About a trillion tadpoles
 were caught.

Topsy Turvy Tuesday - Grand's birthday, desserts for every meal, meet the parents for lunch & an adventure outing. Desserts included birthday cake for breakfast, cinnamon roll for lunch, ice cream for snack & peach parfaits for supper. 

Elk crossing in the national park. The Grands
had never seen elk. It was a learning
opportunity of all sorts - How do you spell
elk, why is that one wearing a collar...

  

One cinnamon roll was enough to feed
the whole table. 

  

Snow tubing inside
where the temperature
is 65 to 70 degrees
year round.

Animals to pet, feed & hold at the zoo. 

   

Ice cream before I head back
home with Grands.

Happy 8th Birthday to Grand Jemma.

Wacky Wednesday - Hat Day. Trail walk, playground, picnic, space presentation & local history tour.

We got our hats on heading
to the picnic area.

 

Stars & planets for lunch.

We found lots of sweet gum balls
along the trail & saw some squirrels.
Dandelions were popped up everywhere. 

  

We walked to the river, skipped 
rocks then Sister took the oldest
ones to a couple of local historical
sites pertaining to the first settlers
of the area.

Thankful Thursday - Cooked a turkey, cleaned bedrooms & studied for Bible drills.

Grands prepped the turkey.

  

The turkey cooked up beautifully, though it 
wasn't done in time for lunch as planned.
Starving Grands got chicken bites
quickly cooked in the air fryer instead.

The parents brought home donuts in loving
memory of Baby Grand's birthday & the
cat's birthdays.

  

Daughter always has the most beautiful
centerpieces on the dining table.

Happy 2nd Birthday to Grand Aisley,
forever a part of our family
story.

It's a pretty blue color. It has rock lights 
underneath & speakers of some kind.
It even has a ceiling fan. Yay!

Kevin cleaned out the enclosed trailer, bought a side-by-side & already hauled it home while I was away. He wanted to get a side-by-side 1st, so he can build the camper around where the side-by-side will travel in the trailer.

Pear tree blooms. We've had a nice
warm spell. A cold front is moving in
 Monday with temperatures dropping
below freezing that will probably
kill the fruit buds.

These are some of the things that's has been going on in my neck of the woods, how has your week been?

Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

Weekend Coffee Share

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia this Friday morning. Time is passing so quickly it seems. I can't believe it's already March, can you? Baseball season has started & we have 2 birthdays this month. How you doing? I know it's been a while since I've shared. I've been assisting Daughter with Daycare & Homeschool a couple days a week. Kevin has been hunting, building bird houses & getting the boat & poles ready to go fishing. We put up deer, wild hog & squirrels in the freezer. He didn't get a bear this past hunting season. He saw several just like last year, but they were Moma's with cubs & you can't take those. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & we'll talk about spring & some projects we've started, then I'm heading out to Grands birthday party this weekend. Rain is forecasted for every day next week & warm temperatures up to 70s. That will surely get the grass to growing. We've seen several already out mowing. 

Signs of spring are starting to show up in our parts & we're hankering to go camping. We've been talking for a while now & looking to upgrade our little teardrop camper to something bigger so Grands can come along camping with us 1 or 2 at a time. We finally came to an agreement on a camper that we're going with. It's going to be a project. We're going to transform our enclosed trailer into a camper. Kevin has been talking about wanting to do it ever since he got the trailer. We have ideas of what we want to go where. Kevin is currently storing his farm market sale stuff in the trailer. Looks like a clean out & finding another place to store these items is going to be the 1st step of the process, so we can start with an empty trailer.

The dining table & bed
will go in the middle & back.

The kitchen will go in the front.

  

A window over here & a
window over there.

Kevin saw a blue bird on the feeder, so he built a few more houses to put up. Daughter gave us an amazing birdfeeder for Christmas. It takes pictures of the birds & sends to my phone. The feeder can also take videos or be watched live. 

Making windsocks out of jugs
was a homeschool project.

The Carolina Wren is a frequent
visitor to the bird feeder.

These 2 rockers for the porch
are ready to be painted green
to match the other 2 rockers
already on the porch. 

These are some of the things that's been going on in my neck of the woods, how has your week been?

Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

Weekend Coffee Share

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia. How you doing this 39th week of 2024? I got the pansies planted. They are doing good. I got into an ant's nest while digging around in the dirt. I got bit a million times before I realized what was going on. I stopped by the farm stand to get a couple of pumpkins for the baby shower. The place was really decorated up for fall & Halloween. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & I'll tell you about Hurricane Helene barreling through our place this Friday morning...

Watching live updates of Hurricane Helene
as she approaches land & moves toward
our area. 

*  We were woken up this morning about 5:30 am by the roaring winds off of Hurricane Helene as she was passing through. She went more east of us than weather forecasters were predicting. We never lost power. The lights flickered a few times, just enough to upset the time on the digital clocks. We had some heavier items blow over outside, the bench overlooking the creek & one of the heavier lawn chairs near the firepit area. The refrigerator on the tractor shed porch blew over onto the jeep. The corner of the refrigerator put a crease in the side vinyl window of the jeep top but thankfully didn't punch a hole completely through it. There doesn't seem to be many tree limbs or twigs that'll need to be picked up. The pond filled up with water & there is overflow. We'll see how long the water stays in the pond. Maybe the weight of the water will patch the leakage. 

The creek is still rising 
from runoff. We parked
my car & Kevin's truck
beside the house just
in case those big trees
went down. 

 

I had thoughts of grabbing my tube
& floating around while the water is up.
 It was drizzling rain, so I decided it best
to continue on with my morning walk.

* Some other happenings:

Lots of big nice pumpkins to choose
from at the farm stand.

I spy with my little eyes,
something black coming
out of the chicken house.

A little something for
Daughter & Grand Twins,
maternity tops for Daughter
& an apple snack for the
babies.

  

Happy Birthday to Sister Sharon,
celebrating with birthday cake,
presents, balloons & silly hats.

These are some of the things that's been going on in my neck of the woods, how has your week been?

Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

 

Weekend Coffee Share

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia. How you doing this 38th week of 2024? This week I did a little painting. I've been busy the past couple of weeks hanging out with Grands & Great Grand & loving every moment of it. I worked in the garden & orchard quite a bit, putting the last bits of goodness in the freezer & pulling up stalks & weeds. I've got flowers to plant. Most the marigolds dried up. I don't know if we forgot to water them till it was too late or what. Anyway, Kevin brought home some pansies from the farm stand that I wanted. I'll replace the marigolds in attempts to have the flower bed in front of the house last a little longer with annuals. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & we'll talk about some of the flowers that are blooming before I head out this weekend to Grand's football game, I'm hopeful to get to see Grand Twins in 3D/4D ultrasound pictures, then off to the lake fishing with Kevin. It's supposed to be a nice fall weekend, though Kevin says it's going to be too hot & too many leaves still on the trees for him to go bear hunting just yet.

We saw asters in bloom
while out jeep riding.

 

The perennial begonias Moma
gave me back in the spring are
doing good. Actually, she sent
the plants to Kevin for the new
flower gardens he was making
at the pond area. He built &
 planted, it's my job to take care
of the plants, dead heading & such.

*  This week's visit to Granny & Sister's was painting & a cookout. Next week I'm planning for us to celebrate Sister's birthday with presents, balloons & silly hats along with reading the book Happy Birthday Thomas!.

Making a ghost.

  

Making little spiders & big spiders.

Our completed projects & the cute jack-o-lantern
shirts I got the Grands. We're ready for Halloween.

Sister cooked us up some burgers, trying out her new grill for the 1st time.
The burgers smelled so good cooking. It was a perfect beautiful fall day to
have a picnic, until... the yellow jackets showed up. We moved inside to
finish eating our lunch.

*  I love this memory from 10 years

ago & I share it every time it pops up:

What would you do to get free doughnuts from
Krispy-Cream? We dressed up like pirates.
September 19th, Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Grand gets bragging rights for
catching the biggest fish this
summer. The girls ruled this
  fishing trip. I caught the 
other 3 fish.

*  Some other happenings:

Grand & Girlfriend participating in
"Anything but a backpack" Day.

   

We've been hauling rocks to place
around the spring. The pond still isn't 
holding water. We're still hopeful the
leak will fix itself.

  

Kevin's strawberry runners planted 
for taking root. He'll be taking the
plants to the farm sale coming up
in a couple weeks.

These are some of the things that's been going on in my neck of the woods, how has your week been?