Amish Country

Last Wednesday we went to Amish Country as a field trip. It really is a beautiful place. The Amish believe that if a picture is taken of them that we are taking their souls away. I asked one of the Amish ladies if I could take a picture of her pumpkins. I said, I want to be respectful and I know that we should not take pictures of any people, but I wondered if we could take pictures of the land and stuff. She very politely said no and thanked me for asking.

However, I did get a few pictures from far away of some of the beautiful scenery and blew them up to show here.

I'm actually struggling right now in posting these. I myself do not believe it is wrong to take pictures, but am I doing something sinful by knowingly taking pictures of people and their property that have requested not to be photographed for religious purposes?


I find the pictures beautiful and peaceful, why not share what God has created? I will share the pictures, but I hope I am not sinning by doing so.


We took two horse and carriages around 10 miles of the Amish country. This was the group behind us (allowed to take this shot.)

We passed by an Amish school house. The kids were running around playing outside. I think they only go to school until they are 14 and then the boys work outside in the fields and the girls tend to all the duties at home.

This little girl was on the porch while her Mom hung out the clothes to dry.


Back at the place that offered the wagon rides, I took this picture of the boys on the swing.
As I was taking their picture I saw a horse and buggy coming down the street. I put the camera down by my side and took a picture upside down, but I got it.

So where is Ashley? Today she called it Emily day. She clung to Emily everywhere she went. Emily came home with us and went to church with us in the evening. She was helping us choreograph a little ballet for a going away party Sunday. Ashley couldn't have been more happy. I was a little worried Emily would not like her hanging on her all day, but I asked her several times and she said she was fine with it.

After the wagon ride we went to a very tiny park nearby to have a picnic lunch. This shooting range was set up. I thought it was a neat place to get some pictures.

Mommy's girl

Mason carried this big stick around with him that he found.

And it had to be in every picture of him.

My little Aussie who only smiled because Miss Emily was making faces at him behind me.

My beautiful children!

He IS a Nut!

Have you met my husband?

Just stuff

A couple of Sundays ago we went to Red Robin. It was the first time that the kids and I had ever been there. It was YUMMY! We were going to see a movie and I was afraid my leftover food would go bad in the car. The waitress was awesome! She offered to keep it in the refrigerator until after the movie. That was way cool!

We saw the movie Ponyo. It was a very cute Japanese animated movie, very well done. I really liked the movie, but I did have a problem with it though.

Everyone in the movie seems to be OK with leaving 5 or 6 year olds by themselves. The 2 young characters are left alone in a huge storm. The Mom doesn't come back the next morning so the brave young boy goes out to find her. Then at the end of the movie the little boy has to pledge that he will always love this girl/fish so that she will become human forever. Why couldn't the writer just make them be 18? It would be more believable then. But that's not what it is all about, so phooey on believability.

Here are a few miscellaneous pictures.

At Daddy's work, Ashley is writing a check. Ashley writes it for the security guard at Greg's work. I think she wrote it for $1000. Then Mason wrote one to her for $100. And good ol' Aussie, who didn't understand why he was writing her a check, wrote it out for one penny. LOL (now if only those checks were cashable)

Here is Mason with some yummy and I mean YUMMY corn! In school on Friday, the kids shucked the corn and snapped some green beans. I didn't cook the green beans well enough, but the corn was delicious!

Ashley LOVES Sprite! She is my spritely little girl, but don't dare call her little! Or you will hear... "I'M NOT LITTLE!" extremely loud that it will ring in your ears for days.

So why is it that Aussie will let the other 2 take his picture and not me? Both pictures of him close up on here were taken either by Ashley or Mason.

And here is Ashley and Daddy. Oh how sweet! I don't want to admit that I think she looks kind of like him in this picture.

Aussie's letter to Ashley

This is SO funny! It is one that I will keep to laugh at in the future!

The boys like to sleep in Ashley's room every now and then. Ashley sometimes likes them to stay and sometimes she doesn't. You never know how her mood will be.

Here is a letter Aussie wrote to Ashley and put it on her bed after she was asleep. Check out the faces he drew. Ashley has an evil grin and Aussie is off sad and crying.

I'll translate below:

Ashley, don't be rude to your guests.
Especially if you be rude to your bed customers because they might go to their room and wish that they were back with you. Aussie

July 30th- The Beach

I am slowly putting up the pictures from our vacation. This July 30th. We went to the beach and the kids had a blast! They really wanted to come back.

At this beach they have this fountain area where you can have fun or wash off the sand before going to you car. It is really nice. Mason was a little hesitant in running through the water. He really doesn't like to get his face wet. But after I encouraged strongly one time, he really got into it.

I love this picture of the boys pulling Daddy into the water.

We played in the sand. Aussie and I were making a really cool castle with a nice moat but the tide came up and destroyed it. So then we just started making big humps of sand as fast as we could before the tide would come.

Mommaneze- a new language

This made me laugh this morning.

Aussie said," No wonder Moms and kids can not understand each other because Moms speak Mommaneze."

Chinese Class and American Girl Party

Today Aussie had his first class in Chinese for the year. He was very excited to learn that he moved up to grade level 2. Gramma bought this cute Chinese outfit for Aussie for his birthday. He proudly wore it today to class. Several people were impressed and commented on it. Now the tennis shoes were not my idea, but Daddy told him to put them on so he could run around in the gym during that time at school.



Daddy takes Aussie to Chinese class on Saturdays and I keep the other 2. Today I dropped Ashley off at a birthday party and Mason and I hooked up with Daddy and Aussie for lunch at Chic-Fil-A.





The birthday party that Ashley went to was an American Girl party. The invitation said you could dress up if you wanted to. Ashley was TOTALLY into that! She picked Samantha. She picked out her clothes and everything had to be almost exact. Then she said, I will need a long dark wig with curls. HA! Sorry baby girl, I'm not buying a wig.

Some of the girls didn't dress up, so as you can see here and in the group picture above they pretended to be dogs.

After the party Abby came to play at our house for a little while. They play so well together. It's really convenient that her Mom cleans their church and their church is about 4 minutes from our house. Really we could probably do this more often.

And I don't want to leave out my Mason! He was pretty bored today. Ashley had something to do and Aussie had something to do and he didn't have anyone to play with. But he was very excited to find his Pokemon "Bedew" in the back of the car. He had been looking for it for a few days.