Flowering Quince and Emma

Hey everybody! Happy March! Around here, it came in like an absolute lamb, contrary to the old saying. I can only remember about 2 years when it came in like a lion! :) We girls have been enjoying watching the 2009 version of Emma made by Masterpiece Theatre with Romola Garai as Emma. It is so good, for two reasons: First, because Romola Garai (who played in Amazing Grace) is the ideal Emma, and second, but equally as great, the costumes are much more modest than some Regency Era films I've seen! Anyway, we've been watching it through Youtube.


Daniel and I have finally gotten old enough to start "remembering" things that are now considered old. Last night, also on Youtube, we watched a Merry Melodies short film called "Farm Frolics" that we watched as super little kids. One of my earliest memories is being petrified by the weasel that sneaks up on the little chicks! It was alot of fun to watch something I "endured" as a two year old! :)


The Walkers are finally about to be able to move out here in a mobile home while they build their house! They hired someone to clear the old homesite of all the brush and old bushes and trees, which is forward motion indeed. But....I am feeling a bit melancholy. The reason? Well, normally I am not sentimental at all about animals, but... there were so many birds nesting in the brush, and many of them have figured in my Bramblewood Hedge series. I feel halfway as if I had murdered them! :( Silly I know, but the poor dears! I meant to rescue a really pretty bush I have admired for several years, but it was buried under some big cedar bushes and even Dad and the hired man couldn't retrieve it! But Mama, dear thing that she is, inspired by some truthfully Divine impulse, somehow got it in her head that the bush was a "flowering quince". Now, who in tarnation ever heard of a "flowering quince"? I hadn't! But lo and behold, she went online when we came back, and that lovely mysterious bush is a flowering quince! Yay! Mystery solved, and we can probably procure one for our enjoyment now that we know what it is! Thanks Mama! Well, Justin Wright generously left us his really nice volleyball net for the week, so I'm going to get off now and see if I can rustle up the others for a nice game! See ya'll later! :) -Rachel

Oh Phooey. What Should I Write About?

Hey! Church today was pretty fun, there was a new visitor! We always love to see new faces! This guy is from a family of 11 kids and came an hour and 45 minutes to come visit. Two of his brothers work for Scott Brown's ministry, so we felt slightly as if we were meeting someone famous. ;)
Okay. Have you ever watched anyone in a movie or somewhere else say something and think, "Wow! That was extremely ill-timed!"
I do it all the time! For instance, in Little Women, Jo has just refused Laurie, and is being comforted by Beth. Amy comes upstairs and asks what's wrong, listens with a rather blank countenance, and promptly says, "Aunt March is going to Europe." and then interrupts Jo's ecstasy by saying bluntly. "She's taking me."
Isn't that crazy? I know for a fact that if Sarah had just refused somebody, and Uncle Lon had told me he was taking me to France, I wouldn't spring that on her at that moment! I simply can't understand how anyone could be so tactless! :O
(If you haven't noticed, this is a very random post.)
So. I think Anna's blasted goat will go down in the history of "Goatdome" as the slowest in giving birth EVER!!!! She has been "having her kids in 12 hours" since we came home from the trip!!!
(Apparently the "for sure" signs that she'll give birth aren't that "for sure" because we have witnessed all of them days apart during the last week!) This deserves some sort of strange award. Maybe I should make one up: The Daisy Sophia Award: Bestowed upon the creature, human or otherwise who takes the longest in labor. (But I doubt any mother would welcome such an award! :) Whatever.
Vision Forum agains postponed their judging date for the story contest. I highly doubt I'll win anyway, so I am sort of forgetting about it, and will be pleasantly surprised if they come and dump a thousand dollars in my lap! :) Well, that's about all that's new around here! -Rachel

p.s. I'll get to Leanna's post soon enough! Oh! And Abigail, we decided to let you choose one too!

Waltzing With The Clothes Line and The Patience of Job

Hey guys! (this is Rachel) Okay. So I'm having a time judging this contest: Abigail got all but two correct, but didn't finish the quotes, and Leanna only got 3 right, but she did finish the quotes. Blast! Why can't this be easy? I guess, Leanna wins since she did do it all. So tell us something to post about and we will!
Here are the answers for those of you who couldn't figure it out:

1. "Knights and ladies, monks and pages...." (Little women. Jo is reading her story aloud, "...elves and flowergirls all mingled gaily in the dance. Pauline cried out in horror as her bridegroom's mask fell, disclosing not her lover Ferdinand, but the face of his sworn enemy: Count Antonio. `Revenge is mine,' quoth he! Continued in the following edition!"
2. "You're my brother from..." (Fireproof....another mother, but now we got the same father!")
3. "What's that?" "This, my friend is a pint!" ( The Fellowship of the Ring."They come in pints? I'm gettin' one!")
4. "I can out talk, out chaw, out drink, out fight, out dance, Yeah, out fight!...." (Davy Crockett and the River Pirates. "Anyone on the whole Missisip!"
5. "I think I'd like to be a nun. Wouldn't it be wonderful to...." (Anne of Avonlea. "be the bride of Heaven? But then, I'm not Catholic, so I'd hardly qualify for that position!")
6. "I'll settle your hash as soon as I get this premises.." (The Music Man, ".. off of my oldest girl!")

Okay. Now for the remainder of this post. Have any of you all ever witnessed "The Clothesline Waltz"? It is a peculiar dance done by homemakers on a windy day. I participated in one today, and had a very handsome red and white checkered tablecloth as my partner! ;)
Here is how it works: You stand beside the clothesline, and gracefully lift an item from the basket. Despite being heavy, the item flaps around- this is the beginning of the dance. You side-step a bit to keep your skirt out of the way of the wet fabric. Then, gently lifting the item onto the line, you let go with one hand to grab a clothespin- this is where it gets difficult. The line blows forward, and you must lightly step backwards to avoid being slapped. Just as soon as you renew you grip after a quick spin around, (picking up the end that fell during the stiff breeze) the clothesline snaps backward. Then you must do three tip-toes steps forward, and jab the remaining pins onto the item. Voila! The waltz is complete. Now repeat 2 dozen more times. :)
So. The other half comes in here, though on a different subject.
For days now I have for some reason had a very, very trying time of things. Often I have thought that everything happening would test the patience of a Job. You know when something that you've done a million times won't work? For instance, on Wed. (I think?) I had cut out all the pieces to my Scottish attire I am attempting to make. Then my machine went rather haywire. That plan busted, I decided to still be productive, and make bread. Guess what? We terribly badly needed to go shopping, and had no sugar to put in the bread.
Then today, I have spent probably 2 hours total ripping out stitches I had put into the sewing project, because after fixing the machine, I had begun to sew, and between one thing and another, (including a relapse in the same problem) I had to take out the stitches I'd say.....7 or 8 times?) And then, to top it off, I was trying to print off my book for the test families, and had had Mama buy paper and notebooks, and the printer runs out of ink on only the second copy.
Now, there is a point to all this: Whenever I find things going crazily "wrong", I stop and realize that maybe the Lord doesn't want me doing that thing right then. I have no idea why He wouldn't wish me to be sewing today, but He does! And I have found ample opportunities this week to give up my plans, and a chance have a good attitude about it.
I think it is important to remember that each trial we fall into we should count all joy. Really, aren't you glad that Jesus gives us so many tests? It certainly is a good chance to look closer at our spiritual health: Are we really wanting His plan, even in the little things? Are we going to be donkeys and insist on doing things our way?
Anyway, just something to think about! Congratulations Leanna! :) -Rachel

Interrupted Movie Quotes

Okay. This is going to be a post that you all have to help with. I'll start 6 quotes from various movies, and you all must tell me which movies they are from, and try to finish them if possible:

1. "Knights, and ladies, monks and pages......"

2. "I'm your brother from....."

3. "What's that?" "This, my friend is a pint!".....

4. "I can out talk, out chaw, out drink, out fight, out dance,.. yeah, out fight! Out yell....."

5. "I think I'd like to be a nun-- wouldn't it be wonderful to...."

6. "I'll settle your hash as soon as I get this premises..."

Okay! There you go! Whoever can correctly guess and finish the most of these quotes, can tell us what to post about, as long as it isn't a movie, or pictures of ourselves ;) -Rachel and Sarah

I've Done Been Promoted! ;)

Hey guys! For those of you who don't know us personally, you may not have known that we have a family landscaping business: Solid Rock Lawn and Landscape LLC. We are all very active in the business, and for a long time Sarah and I have gone out weekly to maintain our contracts with Dad and Daniel, along with helping out on the bigger, higher-end jobs. You might say that our "specialty" is high-end work. We have the landscape contracts on several very nice homes, and Daniel has gotten to be quite an expert on a 15 foot ladder with a hedge-trimmer, trimming pyramidal holly bushes and making them come out nicely without a second look! :) Here are some pictures of jobs we have done:

This is a Starbucks we did some simple landscaping for

This is a job in the "Rah-ther" fashionable district of East Beach. This is the same home that we prepared for a city-wide garden tour! (That sounded so uppity! :) Doesn't Daniel look mysterious, slinking around on the side?

Here is a sod-job we did. Last one to race onto the emerald grass and flop down is a rotten egg!

This picture and the next are of a home that we landscaped toward the beginning of our business. It had nothing. Literally bare ground, and the big trees you see. It was total blank canvass basically. We put in the steel edging, all the landscaping, the rocks, etc. We are quite proud of this one! Here, we learned that planting 500 little pachysandra plants in the freezing rain and mud is no fun! (Were you there Matthew?) :)

So, as you can see, we do some good work as a family! I don't mean to sound stuck-up, but I don't think there is anything wrong in admiring a job well done! Okay. So last night Dad sat us down and presented a new business plan. From now on we are keeping hours: 9-5.

I am being taken off of regular "outdoor" work, and am appointed Office Manager. That means the office is my domain entirely. I am in charge of the billing each month, of keeping files in order and filing new items, of typing up proposals for Dad, entering new addresses of customers into the computer, keeping an eye on when we must renew contracts, stocking office supplies, printing off any number of things, balancing the business (and home) checking account, etc. Dad gave me the grand run-through this morning, and I am going to be working in here 1-2 hours a day.

Sarah is now our "Media Director" of sorts. She will be designing a website for our business, and will be in charge of doing things of a media sort.

Leah will take my place on the maintenance crew. Wow! So we are getting a bit more official here! I am excited about being able to take the administrative side off of Dad's shoulders. He was cute. This morning he was discussing how it can be confusing to keep track of when contracts need to be renewed, and I suggested, thinking he had thought of this and didn't want to do it this way, "We could write the date they expire on the calendar."

The look on his face was so cute, because the idea had never occurred to him! I think this will be a great practice for me in future life! Who knows! Whoever marries me may get a bonus expert bookkeeper! ;) Well, enjoy the pictures and I"ll see you later! -Rachel