Bean Tragedy Turns Out Okay

It was a sad day in the Stutzman house last Friday. After numerous emails to my gardening guru, Sue, it was determined my beans have blight or something else that have made them inedible. Bummer!!! I was looking forward to canning some beans and eating them in the winter. However, my cousin Darrell has traded his old ways for some new found, earth friendly ordeals. You see, Darrell tills our tiny little garden for us with his tractor. He also planted corn for us this year at his house in his enormous garden. He has quite the spread. Darrell also had the 1 place prize winning beans at the Carroll County Fair. Yep, I typed that right...prize winning beans, onions, and potatoes too! Read about it here. So what would this tragedy stricken cousin do? Steal some prize winning beans! Thanks Darrell and Steph.

My horrible beans!!!

Yuck! They were pretty much empty on the inside except for the beans.

Here is Darrell's spread. Nice!!!!!!!!!!!

Darrell's beans canned

160 ears of corn from Darrell's too.

My corn assembly line. It only took an entire day to pick, shuck, boil, cut, bag, and freeze.

Vacation Fun

We left for vacation on July 8. Darrell and Steph took Rocky for us and from what I hear, he really enjoyed the freedom at the Shafer's house. The rest of us headed for Raleigh, North Carolina. We drove about 8 hours and the kids did wonderful in the car. We stayed Thursday night and Friday night with Craig's friends from college, Mike and Selena. Thanks for having us guys!!! Saturday afternoon we left Raleigh to head to Ocean Isle, North Carolina. It was only a 3 hour drive from Raleigh. We arrived at our beach house to meet Craig's parents, brother Bob and family, and brother Keith and family. We were able to spend a week at the beach eating lots of food, playing in the water, sitting on the porch, and kicking the guys but at Guesstures. The following Saturday we headed out and made a pit stop at Fort Bragg, North Carolina where Bob is currently stationed. We got to spend another night with cousins and get a tour of the base. After that stay, I appreciate those who serve even more. We headed back to Ohio Sunday morning and made it home in about 8 hours. Thanks to Alison's wonderful photography skills I have about 800 pictures of the beach, so I tried to narrow it down to my very, very, very, very favorite pictures.

We were able to celebrate Luke's 4th birthday at the beach.

Luke's Dad played with his new toys. Luke is really into Star Wars, so he got a bunch of Star Wars toys and Ironman stuff too!

Uncle Bob is the slowest eater ever! Every night we would have the dishes cleaned up from 16 people and left overs put away before Bob was close to done. He had to dig his second helpings out of the fridge if he wanted any. The time in the picture above was 6:40. He started eating at 5:40. This was the fastest he ate all week because we started a pool to see who could pick the time he would be done. Ironically, his wife picked 6:45. He knows who to keep happy. (I picked 7:00 and wasn't even close)

Poor Craig had to do actual work while we were there.

We played a friendly game of charades, boys vs. girls. The boys tried every angle to cheat us out of a victory, but the ladies prevailed. Just for the record gangsta is just another way to pronounce gangster.

There's another picture right after this, where Grandma Peggy, but not kids, is on her butt. Apparently a 'big' wave came in. I didn't put it up here for the world to see. Love ya- Grandma

All the kids from the top: Caitlyn, James, Riley, Mira, Luke, Peyton, Brooke, and Mallory

The fresh air, sun, and water really wore Mallory out.

So, we had to take a lot of naps.

This is my favorite picture. Grandpa Rob took it.

The End!!!

FUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

We have the best jobs ever.

FUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN Lots of relaxing!

Lots of time to paint toe nails.

Lots of time to celebrate birthdays.

Lots of time to have camp-outs in the living room. (PS- this camp-out had to be moved to each child's respective bedroom because they were still awake at 11 pm.

Lots of corn eating. I finally found someone who can keep up with me at eating corn. Luke ate four pieces of corn in this sitting.

Lots of time for strawberry picking. We did this a few weeks ago and it was a little too late in the season. There were a lot of dirty strawberries (that's what we called the rotten ones). Luke was done within the first 5 minutes of picking, but I tortured him and made him wait over an hour. We/I picked 10 quarts! They will be really good this winter.

PS- Sorry Craig hasn't had the most fun this summer. He spends most of his time with his laptop and his grad classes. One downfall of teaching. You have to keep learning. What do these people expect?

Water

Inflatable pool full of dad's hot air.
I was three years old splashin' everywhere.
And so began my love affair with water!

Brad Paisley ~ Water

Sometimes we hillbillies put Johnson's baby wash in the pool to make it fun and bubbly and to kill two birds with one stone. It's their bath. Yep that's right. Don't act like you never did it with your kids!!!!!!!!!!

They were throwing water balloons at each other.