Visitors

We had visitors this past week. Two of Robert's aunts came all the way from East Tennessee just to visit us, and we thoroughly enjoyed it! Aunt Rosie cooked, Aunt Patsy cleaned, and they both spoiled the kids rotten!


Joey saw everyone else taking pictures, so he decided to build himself a camera out of legos. It was the real deal to him!

Aunt Patsy. She gave Daniel alot of helpful ideas for the garden.

Aunt Rosie cooking a monster pot of spaghetti for supper.


Patsy with Benny.

Rosie and R.G. share the same birthday...separated by just a few years!

They also told stories of their childhood growing up in East Tennessee in the 1940's. Stories that were good for our children to hear, like carrying buckets of water from the not-very-close creek every morning before school. They spent their early years as a family of ten in a two room house with a wood-burning stove, no running water and an outhouse.

The Aunts told of slaughtering their animals and using EVERYTHING that came of the animal. "Mama didn't waste nothin", Aunt Rosie told us. They made head cheese (ugggh) and all those other...um...delicacies that come from not wasting anything!

Aunt Rosie remembered bath night -- with the water being heated in a huge cast-iron kettle outside then being brought in by the bucketful to a big metal washtub inside.

Aunt Patsy helped Daniel in the garden, giving him some pointers on hoeing around the plants. They were very complimentary of our garden, but when Daniel asked how it compared to their childhood gardens in size, they both chuckled. Like most everyone else in a rural area back in the 40's, they grew a huge garden, and of course canned all their own vegetables.

The most interesting thing that I noticed about these conversations was that both Aunts spoke with fond memories of those days. They were certainly difficult times, no one would ever deny that, but it was just life, and life is often hard.

When I compare our lives today to those just 60 years earlier, I am taken aback by how much easier it is now. Even in our "unusual" living quarters, we have a pretty easy life...electricity, hot and cold running water, modern appliances, vehicles, internet, cell phones, cheap and plentiful food, and the list could go on.

I look around outside and realize that I live on the prettiest piece of land I could ever imagine. My kids get to work and run and play without worries of traffic or neighbors, we have the ability to raise our own food and hunt on our own land. We are so very blessed and so very happy. Our life might be a little harder that the average person's today, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. We are smack-dab in the middle of God's perfect will for our family and I wouldn't change that for anything.