A Year Late but Better than Never

Get ready for a lot of posts! I'm starting with some knitting I've done over the past few/several months.

These are the Snapdragon Flip-top Mittens designed by Ysolda Teague. I made these for my Aunt Betty for her birthday in January. I started these a couple weeks before Christmas.

And here is a beautiful and delicious cake I made a few weeks ago! It is Esther's Orange-Marmalade Layer Cake from Jan Karon's book Esther's Gift.

You can find the recipe at other online sites but I really enjoyed the book and recommend it if you get a chance to read it. The cake is not difficult to make but it does require some prep work and time to make. It is definitely worth it!

God Bless!

-Emily

Is it Spring yet?

Hi All!

It's been a long delay since my last post but I'm back and hope to be a more consistent blogger. This week in particular has been a difficult one for myself and my family: my Dad's father passed away Sunday night March 7th. He was a great man, a wonderful grandfather to me and he is greatly missed. I love you Grandad!!!

On a different note, Spring will be here in 7 days!!! Hubby and I are itching to get outside and enjoy the nature around us. We recently began talking about raising chickens. And yesterday we brought home 14 little chicks! They are so cute!!! They are doing great and I am very excited about taking care of them and about the fresh eggs we will be collecting in the future. Right now I'm just enjoying watching and petting these cute fluffy little balls of sunshine!

Happy Saturday!

God Bless!

-Emily

Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival Part 1

I've been temporarily absent from my blog but now I'm back! We've had so much going on that I just haven't had the time/opportunity to blog. I hope to post more regularly now.

My latest adventure was the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival which was wonderful!!! My mom and I drove up together on Friday. The drive was beautiful!



Mom spotted several rainbows along the way. Look closely and you can see 2 together. The drive to Maryland was quite nice weather-wise but the drive back left something to be desired.

The reason for our trip!!!I'll post more later!

GO TARHEELS!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am so proud to be a Tarheel! Last night we won the NCAA National Championship and it was so great to see such a great basketball team achieve what they had been striving for. Those guys are awesome! Congratulations UNC!!!

Reprieve from Winter

We got a little taste of Spring weather in the midst of winter and decided to take advantage of it.
We took the boys out to the river a few days ago and had a Great time! Murph loves the water! He's definitely got some Newfie in him. Hutch and Charlie are not quite as comfortable in the water as he is but they are coming around. See the big smile on Murphy's face in the picture below:

This is as deep as Charlie got in the water.

Here Murphy is fetching a stick.

We all left pretty wet and dirty (it was hard to escape the dogs when they shook the water off their coats) but we had a great time.

Christmas!

Christmas is wonderful! It's my favorite time of year. This is the first year out of the past 3 years that I've been in my hometown for Christmas Eve and Christmas. Christmas Eve was spent with my Dad's side of the family. We had crab legs and orange roughy...yummy! As you can see below Jason is loading the crab leg plate sky high. My aunt (pictured) and I were trying to discourage him from piling them even higher.

Here's the whole bunch of us gathered around for the feast! It was SOOOO GOOD!!!

We also played pool, opened gifts, and sat around and talked. Wish we did this more than once a year!

Mom is trying out her Christmas present. She sank one on the first try!

Jason and I spent Christmas morning at our house and celebrated together, enjoying a relaxing Christmas day. This was the first time we exchanged Christmas gifts since we've been married :-) We decided that we should do the same next year! I had no idea how good he is at picking gifts for me ;-) He picked out a beautiful pattern and the yarn to make it. I cast on immediately. I love it! I'll post a picture once I've gotten a little more done. We ate a late Christmas lunch with my mom's side of the family. It was another delicious meal (pot roast, potatoes and gravy, deviled eggs, etc. followed by rum cake and molasses stack cake). Yum! I didn't get a picture of that spread b/c I was too hungry :-) Trust me, it was good.

Lance and Jason are pictured below (too full to move after eating). This sight struck me as funny (they both have their cell phone/PDA's out).

I think this post has gotten a bit too lengthy so I'll just leave you with a teaser for the next post. It felt like a Spring day today so we took the dogs to the river. We all had a great time! I can't believe how warm it was. I'll post more pictures of our day at the river later.