new name for miller girl #4!

not eleanor! angie and matt decided to call their fourth daughter, elles. like ellis island. elles angela miller. lissy for short. i visted her on saturday with jack and my dad. elles is sweet. can't wait to see her again. angie is doing ok. she is still in pain from her c-section. she is still in the hospital. hope she can get the help she needs to take care of the 4 girls in the next weeks. pray for them. thank you.

baby girl miller #4

my sister, angie, had her baby today sometime around noon. it was her 4th c-section. the baby girl was 7 lbs. 14 oz. and 20 1/2 inches. she has thick, dark, wavy hair. angie says that explains the heartburn. the tentative name is eleanor angela. jack, my dad and i are going down to see the miller's tomorrow. i can't wait! this is my 5th neice. think of the great slumber parties i can have some day! will post photos as soon as possible.

my little helpers

hello lily, isabelle, ava, and sterling. cousin molly is sorry she hasn't posted a photo of your visit yet. i have been trying to catch up on blogging all the fun and interesting stuff that has been happeing lately. i promise to either post more photos or e-mail you some. ok? it was great spending so much time with you and your mom and dad. i am praying that you can move back to MN SOON!!!!!!!!!

1st photo: jack pushing his buddy ava; 2nd photo: belle, bri and lily helping me snap beans under the willow tree.

my dahlia

this is one of my dahlias. gorgeous. the plants are a bit rangey. they needed to be tied to some support and i never got to it. the flowers, though, are a wonder. i have white, red, and this wine/white mix.

my veggie garden

i have a lovely veggie garden. i have green/yellow/puple beans, cucumbers, leaf lettuce, spinach and carrots. i am hoping to have pumpkins, broccoli and cauliflower. i love the purple beans. alas, their color turns green when you cook them. i have 10 bags of beans in the freezer so far. i hope that the produce i get offsets the cost of seed!

this old farm show days '08

i am so proud. my husband took a pile of junk garden tractor and restored it to this lovely state. this is a 1969 simplicity land lord garden tractor. it is pretty buff, i don't know if it comes across so tough in the photo... but it is! it also has a snowblower that attaches and dan says you can also get a cultivator for it! that would be great for future gardens. when dan got this (for free) it was rusty and ugly. he sandblasted, primed, painted, got new parts, and even machined a few parts for it. he is amazing. he creates.

there is a neat little place in brainerd, MN called "this old farm". it adjoins "paul bunyanland". every fall t.o.f. has a "show days". they run the machinery and staff the buildings that are usually just for looks. i bought popcorn and a rootbeer float for us in the sweet shoppe. we saw men threshing barley. we watched men make planks in the sawmill, nails in the black smith building, and shingles in... what? a shingle shack?:) there was also a tractor pull (good clean red-neck fun), and a tractor parade. mostly it was regular tractors, but there were a few garden tractors. too bad jack's hat slipped down. for dinner we partook of a pig roast. yum! now dan has another garden tractor to restore. maybe next year i'll be in the parade!

of how silly of me. i forgot to mention that we were also interviewed for the local news that day! they showed a short segment of dan's interview, but i was there. looking like a scared rabbit and squinting into the sun. it is hilarious. we videotaped the newscast. so come on over and see me looking like a moron. oh, and dan sounds like kermit the frog.:)

top photo: sawill; middle photo: pastor skog, dan, jack; bottom photo: dan & jack in tractor parade

road trip -- star wars exhibit

well, this post gets a lot of tags. photo, yes. nora, yes. DUMB STUFF I DO? yes!!! oh, i made such a mess of this one. nora (super awesome friend from pcc) and i planned to meet at the Science Museum of MN to see the Star Wars Exhibit. we were so excited. well, i was horribly late. i got lost and my phone needed a top-up. disaster. well, we both tried to keep a stiff upper lip (love that brit expression), but things continued to trip us up. nora's kid didn't like his lunch. there was a ton of people in the exhibit so it was hard to do any of the activites... oh yes, and we both had our toddlers along.:) bless their little hearts. they were good little boys. jack sat very nicely for the robot theatre with c-3po. they liked the wampa from hoth. maybe they thought he was a teddy bear? with a hunk of fake bloody meat?:) i think i might bring jack back there someday... like when he is 10. at least i got jack a cool souvenir tee shirt.

note: that is THE landspeeder from star wars episode 3. cool.