Easter

HAPPY EASTER!

This year the Gifford family participated in the "Forget the Frock, Feed an Orphan" challenge.  The challenge was to, instead of spending a bunch of money on your Easter frocks, use that money for something that matters!  So we didn't have fancy Easter duds, just our Feed the Orphan T-shirts.  As usual (for us), we had a bit of trouble getting all almost-seven of us to look at the camera and smile at the same time (with their eyes open and their hair not in their eyes). 

We started out the morning with our Easter baskets.  Kellen's:

 Wyatt's:

 

Elliott's:

And Cade's:

I think Cade was excited about his train.  ;-)

After we dug into our baskets, we enjoyed an awesome service at Park West Cultivate - where we were encouraged to "Break Out" from the chains that bind us.  We followed that up with our annual Easter egg hunt at Sean's parents' house.  As usual, it was serious business for the big boys.

 Elliott, a.k.a. Hollywood, preferred to take things a little more slowly. 

Once she got too many eggs, she convinced her brother to schlep her basket for her.

 

Cade figured out right away the object of the game - he loved picking up the eggs and putting them in his basket!

The kids all had a great time playing with their cousins.

Sweet lovin' cousins:

 

 I have to mention a few things about our Tshirts.  I wanted matching ones for all of us, but to get a style to fit all of our various sizes was tough.  So I ordered Elliott and Cade the smallest shirts I could get which would match ours, but they were still too big.

 

 

I was REALLY nervous about this, but I took a pair of scissors to their shirts, and cut them completely apart!  I gathered up Elliott's sleeves to make them look more girly, cut down the sides, and shortened it.  Here's her finished shirt laying on top of Cade's XS (obviously before I took his apart).  Big difference!

Cade's took even more work.  The neckline was WAY too big on him, so I had to cut off the ribbing band that goes around the neck.  

I cut a smaller neck hole and made one shoulder seam, and then left the other shoulder separated so that I could attach snaps for opening and closing the neck hole. 

Then I reattached the ribbing band, attached some snaps,  cut the sleeves, sides, and bottom hem way down, and put the whole thing back together.  They fit so much better after we were done!

I hope that you had an amazing day celebrating our Risen Saviour with your family, too!

a stay in the mountains

I've recently heard it said that the best days end with the dirtiest clothes.  By that measure (or any other), we had a GREAT time on our mini-vacation to the Cherokee, NC side of the Smoky Mountain National Park.  

We stayed on a little camping cabin right on the river.  It wasn't exactly roughing it - air conditioning, heat, full bath, fridge, stove, microwave, even a "master" bedroom with a pretty comfy queen size bed - definitely nicer than we expected.  

 

There was a sleeping loft with 3 mattresses, and a futon downstairs.  Roomy enough even for our crew!

  

And... there was even cable TV.  Although we really didn't spend much time watching it, of course.  The weather was BEAUTIFUL and there's so much to do on that side of the mountain!

 

Mostly, there was fishing.  Lots and lots of fishing. I don't have a lot of pictures of that, because fishing is for the bigger (quieter) boys.  They went all up and down the river trying different spots while Elliott, Cade and I stayed at the cabin.  But I did snap a few of them when they were right out behind the cabin.

 

 Elliott just loved running around on the bank - barefoot. Naturally.
  Her feet looked like this nearly every minute of our trip.

  Every night we made a campfire and (duh!) had s'mores.

 

 We did some hiking.

 

You can't see it in the picture, but twice on our hike we encountered literally hundreds of baby butterflies.  Elliott and Wyatt were trying to "catch" some.

 Kellen carried Cade for a bit...

 ...but Cade wouldn't stop pulling his hair!!  Stinker.

 So he ended up back on Daddy's back, and Kellen was stuck with the supply pack.  We also got to check out a couple historic buildings.  This grist mill was built in the 1880's and still functions.

I bought a sack of flour and a sack of cornmeal, each ground on this water-powered stone. Can't wait to make some bread and corn muffins from it!

 We also walked around an old farmstead.  We LOVED seeing all the old buildings that made up the homestead.  They had a building for literally everything.  Here is the main house.

 The meat house.

 The, well, you know.

 I was surprised to see there was an entire apple house - and it was really big!  Apples were an important part of their lives.

 The apple house.

 There was also a spring house, where gravity was used to run cold creek water over perishables, like crocks of milk and butter, to "refrigerate" them.  So clever!  There were several large corn cribs, a root cellar, a pig pen, chicken house, an unmarked building of some sort that we sort of figured served as a moonshine still.  I don't have pictures of all of it, but they were pretty similar in structure to the apple house. 

The barn was huge and so well made.

 There were dozens of pieces of the original farm equipment.  I think I was born in the wrong time - being here made me so wish I had a homestead like this one! 

We cooked at the cabin, partly on the stove top, partly on the fire, and partly on the grill.  My little darlin' helped mama shuck corn...

 Kellen found a lot of time for quiet river-side reading. 

 We also got to see some wildlife.  A park ranger told us about a spot where we would be likely to see elk at dusk, and he was right!  We saw four - one bull and three cows. 

 And we even saw a strutting tom turkey when we were on our way back to the cabin.  

He must have been doing something right - he convinced a couple lady turkeys to follow him across the street. 

We thoroughly enjoyed our quiet little getaway, and we will definitely be going back again!