Trip to New Hampshire and a crazy day with Rowan

 From left: Sarah, Rachel, and Mary.

 Caleb is holding our adorable cousin Travis, who we got to see in person for the first time.

We got home last night at around 11pm.  The ride home from New Hampshire was fun, but not as fun as it would have been if Caleb was there.  We left Saturday morning to bring Caleb up to Shiloh.  There is a Christian summer camp there, and he will be staying at the camp for a week.  Now that he's gone, it'll be the first time ever that I've been in our house without any boys... and for a week, too!  When we arrived at our Aunt Nancy's in New Hampshire, our cousins were already there.  They live in Maine.  Well, actually only a couple of our cousins were there, the rest of the family was on their way.  When they did arrive shortly after us, we all went to Hay Day Farm.  My cousin, Brion, works on his aunt's farm, and he let us have horse rides and we groomed the horse that we rode.  There were over 20 horses on the farm!!!  All of them were different.  A lot of them came over to the fence where we were watching them, and we fed them carrots.  It was a lot of fun being with all the horses!  After the visit to the farm, we brought Caleb and Dave over to cousin Brion's house, where they would spend the night, and we went back to Aunt Nancy's, where the rest of us would be sleeping.  I got a room of my own, so that was really nice.  Next morning my dad left to go pick up Caleb and Dave, go to church, and leave for Shiloh.  I didn't get a chance to say good-bye to Caleb! We spent our afternoon at our friend's, the Viehoffs, house.  We all had a nice time, and when Dad came back after the 4 hour drive we packed up and left for home that night.  When we left it was close to 9pm.  I love long, long car rides.  I love driving at night. I love passing through cities.  I love seeing lights from the city light up the night sky, and I love driving up on over passes and looking down.
It's cool when there's like 4 over passes on top of each other and you're on the highest one.  I love heights!
I would have been reading the whole drive home but I was getting really bad nausea.  I get it every time I try reading in the car but most times I ignore it and continue reading.

This is Bailey, Brion's dog.

All right, that pretty much wraps up what happened this weekend in New Hampshire!

I'll go back to last Thursday now and tell about when Rowan came over.

Rowan's on the left and I'm on the right.  We were taking X-ray photos of ourself on photo booth, a program on our computer.  We had a really fun time together.  We played Disney Trivia Pursuit with Caleb, then we played Scatergories and Apples to Apples.  When it started raining that afternoon, we decided to go for a walk around the cranberry bog.  Here's a picture of Caleb striking a funny pose...

That pretty much sums up what happened this past week. I've got to go say good morning to Phineas, our Guinea pig, now.  He misses Caleb.  : ) 

~ Lyddie 

Last Wednesday my family went on a field trip to the John Adams houses in Quincy.  It was a lot of fun and I rode a trolley for the first time ever! Here are some pictures!!  The last house he lived in (in photo behind us) was huge! It had 23 rooms!
On Wednesday night we also went over Josh's house to watch the Bruins hockey game.  I hate hockey, it's so boring.  It didn't get over till around 11pm, but I was very comfortable on the sofa.  ; )  Last night I Skyped, ( video chatted)  with my friend, Rowan.  She's still at Old Sturbidge Village doing an internship.  She called me, and we decided to video chat instead so we could see each other.  Her camera ended up not working so she could see me but I couldn't see her! We  had fun talking for an hour. : )  Yesterday Caleb had an interesting day with his friend.  He's already writing out what happened in story form.  When Caleb writes out his "adventures" it's bound to have a lot of exaggeration and sarcasm. But hey! That's Caleb for ya!  I've got errands to run today so I've got to go.  It's going to be a busy Saturday!

~ Lydia

Rainy Day Ramblings

Last night Caleb and I were up pretty late looking through old photos.  We had a lot of laughs!  We came to a realization that Caleb's the only one in this family that has changed.  And when I say change, I mean physical appearance change.  This is a picture of Sarah and I taken 4 years ago!  We still look like this now.  My brothers Josh and Dave still look like they did 4 years ago too.  Caleb is the only one that looks different, and we were having some good laughs over what he did look like when he was 11 or so.  Of course I will  put his picture up; I'm surprised he gave me his permission to do so.   : ) Oh, by the way Josh took this photo of Sarah and I. 

 These were taken last week when Caleb went  to New York City with my dad and other brother Dave.  This is the Mets baseball stadium -$4.00 tickets. They also took the free ferry out to see Lady Liberty.

I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get to go.

I so want to go to Sampson's Island in Coutit soon!  I've never walked around the whole island and that is one of my goals this summer.  : ) It should take me a couple hours...  I'm planning on making dinner for the family tonight.  I'm thinking cube steak and potatoes.  I don't know how I'm going to cook the potatoes yet.  Here are my options.

1. Mashed
2. Fried
3. Scalloped
4. Baked 

Or I could make my special potato volcanoes! They are so good. I think I'll try baking them that way.  I'll  take a picture of them when they're done and put it up here on my blog so you can see for yourself what potato volcanoes are in case you haven't come across them before.  Speaking of cooking, When I was cooking my breakfast, things got a little smoky, so I put the hot frying pan out on the front steps to cool off.  After about 3 minutes I hear my mom call," Lyddie! The frying pan!" Ha-ha that's when I heard the noise too.  It was raining and the rain drops were sizzling on the hot, hot frying pan. : )    Right now I'm blogging, emailing my friend Rowan who is doing an internship at Old Sturbidge Village, listening to Sugarland, and switching back and forth from blogging to playing a game called Chocolate Course.  I'm pretty good at the game.  You have to be really quick with your hands!  Tonight Sarah and I are going to play a board game called Horse Sense.  It's all about horses, ( you probably gathered that it was about horses from the title. :) Anyway, it has questions about horse care etc. etc.  After I read a book I usually end up wanting to own the books really bad.  I would never buy a book new, ( unless the occasion called for it) so I keep a look out for the books I want at library book sales and places like that.  And what's so great about that?  God always provides the book I've been looking for!  That's what's so great!  Oh, another one of my goals this summer is to visit all the old book stores that I can.  There's this one used books store in Barnstable that has shelf after shelf of old books.  The book cases in the shop reach to the high beams of the ceiling!  The building is very old.  Built around the 1800's.  The floor boards creek, dust is in between the books, and you can easily get lost in the maze of book cases.  That's the kind of used book stores I like to visit,  just to look and browse.  I usually can't afford to buy books from places like that, ( even though they're used, there are also rare books, so that's what makes them so expensive.)   Ah, I could spend hours in places like that...  Especially on a rainy, dreary day.  That's the best time to go.  Think I've rambled on enough?  I think I have.  Once I start talking, ( typing : ) I find it hard to stop!  Besides I should start making dinner now.

Bye!

Signing off as,
~ Lydia The Rambler
Your love is ever before me, I love the house where you live, O Lord, the place where your glory dwells. My feet stand on level ground; in the great assembly I will praise the Lord. ~ Psalm 26:3,8,12 

Today at horse class I rode Geno bare back!  It was such fun!  He has a very comfortable back.

 On Saturday, Sarah and I spent our day with our oldest brother, Josh, at his apartment and we also went food shopping with him as well.  He treated us out to ice cream at Ben and Jerry's on Main Street Hyannis.
That evening at his apartment I made a pizza,  Josh grilled a fish, and I ate salmon for the first time ever!    I thought it was pretty good.  We had a great time with our brother.  : )

I have to wear elastics with my braces.  Recently, my Dr. has added two more elastics to my brackets so now I'm wearing four, hurtful elastics!  They are cutting up the inside of my cheeks, and worst of all, I am swallowing them constantly.  Apparently I'm suppose to wear them while I eat.  It's impossible to eat and wear my elastics,  and if I go for more than an hour with out them than it adds a whole month onto the time that my braces stay on!  I'm pretty sure the dentist just says that to scare me into wearing them.  It's not really working.   I know I shouldn't complain though.  It is a huge blessing to be able have them and I am thankful for the large amount of money my parents spent on them.

This is a story Sarah wrote for school.

My Train Ride
One day I was playing with my train when it said, "Hop on me!"  I looked around and looked at my train.  He said, "Come on! Are you going to come or not?" And so I went, and it was fun! 


I wish I could put a picture of her hand writing because it's so cute! : )

I don't really have anything else to write about at the moment, so I'll end now.

~ L
Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other. Galatians 5: 25-26