Someone's in the kitchen in Ptown

Mother's day our little family could be found picking strawberries in Pungo. I think the farmer's need to weigh us before and after we pick, since HokieGirl and I probably ate several pounds of berries between us! We picked almost $40 worth of berries! My mom took some and we gave some to my sister, but we had a table full of berries when we got home. I now have 14 12oz of strawberry sauce (it didn't gel into jam, so I'll reprocess it), and 4 quarts of actual jam. There are also about 4 quarts of capped berries in the freezer. That's a lot of berries, people!

In other news, things are winding down around here. For a family with no school-aged children, our lives sure follow the school year. Bible study has ended until September, and MOPS is winding down. HokieBoy will not have speech tomorrow because of SOLs, nor will he go the following week for Memorial Day. June 1st we go for his IEP, and I have no idea what happens next. I will say I am looking forward to not having real commitments for a little while.

We're leaving Ptown this week for a visit to Pburgh. We haven't been since January and snow. I think we are all really looking forward to a trip. Next month we'll go camping in West Virginia.

I have a visit to the OB Tuesday. Maybe we'll get to find out which gender Hokie-Baby-To-Be is and I can actually work on the name list. Maybe then I'll feel like knitting something special.

As I'm sitting here on the chair in the living room, I hear a very manly belch. I'm thinking to myself, "nice rip, HokieHubby," but he's not home today. As I peer over the top of the screen I here a sweet little giggle and HokieGirl's voice says, "excuse me!" She'll be burping the alphabet in no time.

Cottage in Ptown

Not much interesting on the knitting front. I started my February Lady and was totally not getting gauge. I decided to keep going without checking gauge, even though I knew it was working to be too big. Reckon that was knitter's denial, as I made it through a skein and a half before deciding to measure gauge. Now I have a small swatch going and hope to get going on actual knitting again soon.

Now for what has really been occupying my time these past few days. My cottage. We have gotten so much done in our yard! I think it's absolutely beautiful! I never thought that a few flowers could make me as happy as they do. I now totally understand my mother in law's interest in beautifying her home on the outside.

Also, HokieHubby installed not one, but two beautiful ceiling fans in our living room! Now we can actually spend time in the house even when it is hot outside! Hopefully, this means we'll be able to hold off on installing the window units for a little while.

Now that our yard is great and our living room is cool, our house is falling apart again. This time, there is no tree causing obvious damage. This time, it's small stuff that is causing major issues. There is apparently a small leak in the roof of our breakfast room that allows a bucket of water to fall onto our table. HokieHubby needs to go up onto the roof and investigate. Hopefully it will just be a quick patch job.

But that's really small potatoes compared to the broken sewer pipe under our house. For a couple of weeks now we've noticed a rather foul smell coming from under the house. HokieHubby opened up the crawl space and noticed some dampness under the shower that we were planning on removing anyway. He thought that maybe the water was from the shower. So we stopped using the downstairs shower and switched to the tub upstairs. Sure enough, it seemed to get a little better. For a little while. We decided to go ahead and rip out the shower and see if we could get a better look. Turns out the pipe that carries water from our kitchen sink/disposal, dishwasher, and clothes washer is broken.

Grr. HokieHubby is at his second home the hardware store to get items that will hopefully at least temporarily fix the issue. We'll see.