Hello there! I hope you all enjoyed a Very Merry Christmas this December! I thought I had better get on here and share some pictures since it has been all of five months since I have posted! {For that you have my deepest apologies...}
A little more than a week ago, we made our traditional gingerbread houses! Well, that is, most of us went traditional.... Beth saw a new idea on Pinterest and decided to try it - a teepee! It turned out very cute, complete with an open fire and some plastic Indian figures. Maybe next year we should bring out the cowboys too. =P
Two weeks ago all we girls from church got together for a Christmas party that Amber hosted! We had a great time of fellowship and games around egg nog and delicious food!
This was the church's Christmas dinner. We used only light from lanterns and the fireplace! We had great evening and sang Christmas carols a cappella. (For those of you who have experienced the acoustic effects in the church basement, you know how awesome that sounds!)
Another tidbit of news around here .... Andrew and Melinda got a puppy! A little chocolate lab who they dubbed Toffee.
He is adorable!!
Toffee and Bear get along quite well, though it took us a few days to figure out that all the growling was playful, and Bear wasn't going to bite Toffee's head off!
They love to frolic and carry on and chase each other, but despite the size difference, I'm not sure who gets the raw end of the deal!
We are all currently enjoying the break from school! Bethany and Daniel will start back up on Monday, and I get into my second semester of college next Wednesday. All has been going well, but busy as always. =)
We are hoping for some more winter-like weather in the near future. Somehow it doesn't feel like Christmas when it is 75 degrees outside and we're running the AC! We have also been getting buckets of rain, leaving the yard a muddy mess. Not a very festive scenery.... Dreary as the weather may be, however, we can rejoice in the gift of eternal life and the blessing of a New Year!
Several days ago, we got back from a week-long vacation in northern Maine, where we stayed with some dear friends... well, almost more like family! We kids call them "Grammy and Pappy Washburn". It's a trip we had been tentatively planning for almost a year. We hadn't seen the Washburns since Melinda's wedding, and their lodge on Upper Dobsis Lake has to be the most beautiful and peaceful place on earth!
{At the Maine Welcome Center.. You could smell the pines the minute we left the car. Delicious.}
Our little signs in the back car windows =P
Unfortunately, this was the only moose we saw all week...
LOL
We stopped for breakfast in southern Maine to visit with this dear couple, old friends who we hadn't seen in many, many years.
Almost to our final destination... the Washburn's "Cedar Wood Lodge" is seven and a half miles back this dirt road...
Forty-five minutes to the nearest only grocery store in town, house run by a generator, no internet, no cell phone reception.
Inconvenience? Yes.
Awesome? Absolutely!!
We got up most of the mornings to watch the sunrise with Pappy Washburn (who is always up to watch it). We'd sip our coffee, listen to his stories, watch the rays peep over ridge, and snap dozens of pictures.
One morning, the loon and her baby came out and paraded across the sunbean on the water several times. It was picture perfect!
{the whole family}
We enjoyed watching and listening to the loons all week:
We fished every day. Pappy Washburn allowed us full use of the canoes, rowboats, and motorboat tied to the dock.
Success is sweet!
Daniel got the biggest catch of the week with a small-mouthed bass that was just under five pounds.
He kept saying, "That's the biggest fish I've ever caught!!"
We drove this four-wheeler around the dirt roads surrounding the lake.
Mom and Grammy Washburn
Nate and Andrew played "Taps" before bed. {notice Daniel.. lol}
We roasted marshmellows and sang around the bonfire
Saturday, we had a traditional New England meal -- bean-hole beans and red hot dogs. Delicious. Bean-hole beans are baked for about 10 hours (??... if I remember correctly) in a cast iron kettle buried in a hole of coals. And they are the best beans you will ever taste!
Digging them out Friday night
Time to taste-test! Yum!
It was very sad to leave. The Washburns kept trying to talk us into staying another week. We told them it was now their turn to come down here! =)
A lot of memories are in this special place with it's special people. A place you can hardly to describe to those who have never seen it. You just have to be there...
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
