Best Day of the Year

For those of you that do not know, August 16th is the best day of the year. Today we celebrated my birthday with helping a friend of Jen's pack their moving truck. This took nearly seven hours. I was very thankful that the Missionaries from our Church were able to reschedule another service project and come and help us instead. This was a great opportunity for our kids to learn about sacrifice and service, both of which are very important to myself and Jen. They saw that we gave up a special day to help others who were in need of help. Jen and the kids bought me wonderful presents for my birthday but just spending a beautiful Saturday with them was enough for me. The one present I really enjoyed receiving was my favorite cheese. It is Wensleydale cheese with cranberries imported from England. This is a special event cheese since it is $25.00/lb. I received other gifts which I hope will help me during the deer hunting season which is just right around the corner. This evening we decided as a family to go to the University and pick Cornelian cherries. Cornelian cherries used to be a common berry but not anymore. They come from a plant called Cornus mas (Cornelian Cherry Dogwood), and are in the Dogwood family. They are a tart berry and they make the best fruit drop cookies you ever ate. The kids help pick so we would have enough to make the jam needed for making the cookies. Yum yum! While we were at the University we took home up a 55 gallon plastic drum that a friend picked up for me so we can make a rain barrel from our downspout. I am very excited about this so we can be 'more green' with our gardening and reduce water costs. The best part of today was being to try out my new camera that I purchased for myself. It is a Sony DSLR which is a 14.2 MP camera and I have one 18-70 mm lens. The pictures that it takes are amazing. I have never had a high quality camera before and this camera is going to be fun that is if I can ever get it out of Jen's hands.

Sleeping, Painting and Riots

Yesterday we went to Target to buy the kids their school supplies and all we could find was a life-size 'Dan' doll. Actually, Dan fell asleep on the way to the store so I held onto him and took the cart to the pet isle and put a dog bed in the bottom of the cart and placed him in. We were able to get all of our shopping done and Dan had a wonderful nap. I did not buy the dog bed though. I was very proud of Becca today. Painting is one of her most favorite things to do in the whole world and she has become quite good. She painted onto a large picture we had of presidents of the U.S. or something like it and she painted within the lines and not crazy-like as she did when she was younger. Speaking of crazy. I found out today that there was a mini-riot on the WVU farm yesterday. It was caused by peaches. I went out to the farm to help sort and bag peaches and to make sure that I was able to purchase some. We start selling the peaches at 1 P.M. and people had already started to line up at 10:15 A.M. The WVU campus police came out to the farm to direct traffic because there were so many vehicles and then part way through the line the peaches ran out. The people that had been waiting that did not get any were quit mad and began screaming and making a big fuss (so I am told) and the police had to calm them down and send them on there way. Crazy. Again, all because of a bit of horticulture.

Ohio and Berries

This past week we met Jen's parents in Ohio at a campground. This was our first opportunity to camp with children and a dog. I highly recommend this experience to everyone. We stayed at Punderson State Park for two nights and there were thunderstorms each night with lightning that lights the night as if it were day. This is always enjoyable when you are staying in a tent in a campground. We had fun anyway, it was really nice during the day. Scooby had not really played with other dogs before and found it interesting to play with Duke (Jen's parent's dog). We celebrated Jen's and Lauren's (Jen's cousin) birthdays while we were there. It was nice having cake and ice cream at the campground. I think Dan enjoyed his smore more than the cake. One evening we went into Middlefield to go to Walmart and KFC and found that Middlefield is a strong Amish community. Part of Walmart's parking lot is for horse and buggy parking only. They even have a barn/shed for the horses to park in when it is hot (see pic). The KFC also had a buggy parking area with horse tethering as well but no barn. We also went to Kirtland, OH to visit LDS church historic sites. This was our third time visiting Kirtland and our first time being able to go through the temple. I took a picture of the kids at the steps of the temple and included the one I took 3 years ago for comparison. It is amazing how fast they grow. When we got back I had to pick berries to maintain a picking schedule for a local blueberry grower who was on vacation this past weekend. We picked berries on Saturday and yesterday (Monday). Yesterday we picked 40 pounds (42 quarts) of blueberries, 10 pounds of raspberries and a couple of pints of blackberries. Again, I really hate horticulture, it is such a horrible field of study.

Sometimes it is Hard to be a Professor

This past Thursday and Friday I had a 2 day meeting with a landscaping company out of MD. Their company covers from PA to GA and grosses about $ 70 million per year. The meeting was at the company president's house just outside of St Michaels, MD which is located on the Eastern Shore of MD on the Chesapeake Bay. On the way there I had to cross the Bay Bridge which I think is the longest bridge I have ever driven on. The bridge is 4.3 miles long and the driving surface is 200 feet up from the Bay. There is two bridges with 3 lanes on each bridge, it was pretty amazing (First 2 pics). I spent the night in a B&B called The Oaks which was built in 1748. The B&B is about a 30 minute boat ride from St Michaels. The cove where the B&B is located was full of jellyfish swimming in the water. The picture before the jellyfish shows the two boats that we were using the two days departing back to the president's house. There were three faculty that were at this meeting from WV (myself), MD and GA. We were picked up by boat each day in a speed boat (worth $60K) for our commute to our meeting. On the commute in on Friday morning there were crabbers all over the bay pulling in crabs, very interesting to see. We ate lunch at the Crab Claw in St Michaels. The restaurant is located right on the water and we tied our boats to the side, got out and ate. We ate a ton of steamed blue crabs. Eating crabs are worth it but a whole lot of work. We noticed at the next table over from us there was a couple with a parrot and the lady kept giving the bird crab legs to eat. I have now found a new vacation spot, St Michaels, MD. It was a very nice trip (and productive too). Sometimes it is hard to be a professor.