Kelly's Visit

My sister Kelly and her son Eric visited last month from New York.
We always love to have them come out to "the farm".
We had a great week.
The kids are enjoying the swing with their cousin.

We had a fun evening playing put-put.

We bid farewell to the cool guys in glasses as they traveled to
Oshkosh, Wisconsin for the EAA Fly-In

We hung out with small mammals on the couch,
(the guinnea pig, not Eric.)

The UNREUNION

Although the "official" Nisbett Reunion was cancelled,
we still traveled down to Texas to attend the highly successful unreunion.
Saturday morning, the extremely competitive annual softball game was played.

Pictured is the winning team.
Our Congratulations to the Craig Nisbett Family, Friends and Relations.

They played fantastically (or else they wouldn't have beaten us ;-)
Next year, however, a different team will take the trophy back to its rightful place.

(Now can I have the rest of the pictures?)

Saturday working on the Porch

I still get goose bumps everytime I see this handsome dude..

Nate makes a great foreman

. . and when you look up. . . they drop on you.

Nate's and Amy's visit

Nate and Amy came back for a visit last week. We had a great time with them.

We embarked on an adventurous canoe trip, from which we returned pictureless
(with good reason. Cameras and rivers are not synergistic).
My favorite memory from the float trip was Nathanael (6) paddling the kayak a good portion of the way himself.
As we would pass other floaters, they would give him a round of applause and yell things like:
"Way to go little buddy!!" "You can beat 'em!"
Keith and I had Anna and Glory, several coolers, and Ginger, our golden retriever type dog in our canoe.
When passing groups, the females would sigh "Oooh, what a pretty baby," and the guys would comment, "Hey, nice dog."

On Saturday, the guys all worked hard putting the porch on the addition, then we cleaned up, ate dinner,
and tried to beat the sun going down to get family pictures
before Nate and Amy left at 8:00 pm for the 16 hour drive back to Pennsylvania.
The picture of Amy and Nate turned out great, but the family pics are harder.
Adam was using his 300mm lens with a self timer, so it was quite a run for him to get in the picture before it took.
But at least we are all preserved for posterity in the same photo now.
(I took the one of the kids and was hand holding a huge lens with a VERY slow shutter speed so they are blurrier than they are in real life)
(Although first thing in the morning, they pretty much look that blurry!)

Glory

Posted by Joel Nisbett:


It has come to my attention that Glory is becoming very "grown up". I started thinking about it a couple days ago when I was watching Snow White with her and she was sitting there on the floor with the remote, completely immersed into the movie. Then came the part with the "bad queen" and she immediately stopped it on her own and said, "Bad queen, Joel." Then, after stating her intentions, "Fas' forward", she played it again and then fast forwarded through the part with the bad queen. Of course, she was holding the remote backwards but it was working for her!

What's even worse than that is when she starts asking questions about God. It goes something like this:

"Where's Pappaw?"
"In heaven with Jesus."
"Where's Jesus?"
"At God's right hand."
"Why God's right hand?"
"Because God was happy because of what Jesus did."
"Why?"
"Because Jesus did a good thing."
"Jesus, God's right hand."
"Yup, Jesus is at God's right hand."
"Why God's right hand, Mom?"

There is also a different variation that goes something like this:

"Where's Jesus?"
"At God's right hand."
"Where's God?"
"In heaven."
"Where's Havalah?"
"In Indianapolis."

(Havalah Nail is Glory's special friend that had to move away.)

She can pretty much speak in complete sentences now, which means she doesn't have any trouble communicating. That's nice.

Ok, I'm done bragging about my little sister now.

Completed Duckstamp Entry

Here's a picture of the (almost) completed painting. I've got just a few detail things to do, and then I'll varnish it. I think it's my best painting yet, so I'm fairly happy with how it turned out. It's still not quite up to the quality of detail of some of the top Duckstamp artists, but I don't think it will look too bad next to them.

Prayer Request

Please pray for our dear, precious friend Amy Wilhoite. We have known her and her family for about 15 years and they are some of the best people on the face of the earth. Her story is beautifully chronicled on her blog: www.wilhoite.blogspot.com/

Working on the Roof

Mom's Favorite Crew Raising the Second Floor Walls

And the Enthusiastic Audience on the Ground

Glory

Nathanael

Anna

Joy

Glory tries out the new bathtub.

More Graffiti

A helpful clue for the Archeologist who might dig up our house in a thousand years or so.

Adam can't help putting a duck on everything.
One winter we had a six foot long snow decoy in the front yard.

Family Graffiti

We let them draw on the walls when it doesn't matter.
The four pictures go side by side in the house.
The boys were leaving messages for archeologists in the future who might rediscover our home.

Dinosaurs was originally spelled DinAsaurs.

John's 12th Birthday

Creativity with food

The Birthday boy

Can you guess what John enjoys?

The only thing better than one frozen chocolate birthday pie is ...
two!

A Very Tired Baby!!

Keith and I went out for a "date night", to gather information about porch options,
and the kids took this while we were gone.
Despite appearances, they actually do an excellent job caring for Glory.
They cleaned her up and put her to bed and she never woke up.

Additional Cousins' Trip 2007

Eliah, the next generation. Cousin 1-1

Reese's Candy at the Chocolate Factory

More Candy