The Simple Scents of Life

We have been so busy, that taking the time to sit down and actually write a post hasn’t been able to be scheduled in. By the end of the day, we are so pooped; we don’t know what to do with ourselves. Let me see if I can give you a nice summary of our lives…

Saturday, (yes my busy-ness dates back to Saturday) we had the Bandy family over. Mr. Bandy and his sons helped with the build-out of our attic bedroom. The girls cooked two hearty meals for the workers. In the evening, while the parents were talking, we went down to the basement for some games. The only one that I think we played was telephone charades which we just learned. Anyway, we had blast, and the pictures are below.

Sunday, after church, the Evans family, Jeremy B. and Anna P. came over for a wonderful evening of dinner and fellowship. Right before the Evans departed; David P. came over and brought one of our missing family members, Caleb. We discussed trading Anna for Caleb, but I’m sure Anna was glad to get back to her family. If she had stayed, I’m not too sure she would have been pleased to find out that taking out the garbage would show up on her daily chores. That night ended with a rather interesting game of The Great Dalmuti, almost complete with costumes. We are still working on merchant and peon garb. We didn’t get too many photos that night, which was rather unfortunate.

Monday and yesterday were full of babysitting for a friend and running errands. Nothing too exciting happened, unless you have heard the Starbucks story…maybe another blog post.

Last night Ashton, Emil and Grace Bandy followed my dad home from the Patriarch meeting, and stayed the night at our house. Today, the Bandy gentlemen helped my dad once more in our attic room, while Grace and us gentlewomen went to do a few things in town. After lunch was done, some of the girls decided to go canoeing, which is usually a fine idea, but today the boat was full of water, and it was a bit nippy out, so they had a bit of trouble getting started. When I went out, they were trying to dump the water out of the boat, while it was still in the water. Accomplishing the opposite of their intent, more water than desired rushed in.

Can you guess what happened next? Well, the incredible strength of the McDonald girls, plus the help of Grace B. did it again! We hauled the boat out of the lake, dumped several bucket loads of water out, then tipped the boat over to make sure all of the water was out, slid the boat back into the water and they were ready to go! And of course, a Kodak moment like this did not get away from me…pictures are below. Ashton and Emil arrived on the dock shortly thereafter, and so two canoe groups went out, coming back thoroughly soaked, muddy, and we cannot forget, freezing…yuck.

Jessica then decided to drop our mop bucket into the lake. It began to fill with water and sink beneath the murky surface. Ashton attempted to save it with an oar, but it escaped. As we started to move the canoe over to get it, Emil used a long board and rescued the bucket from a terrible death. *Some pictures may be blurred for security reasons…ha-ha, not really, the un-named photographer just didn’t get it completely focused. :)

Tomorrow, we have some more errands to run, my Mom has a conference on Saturday, and church and our hymn sing are on Sunday. It’s a wonder that we have any time to breath…anybody out there want to join the family? ;-)