Its almost 5 a.m. and I have been awake for 3 hours. I have been missing Earl so much lately. It seems so many things have happened that remind me of him and everything that we would do together. As far as I know not to many people read my blog, so I decided to VENT on here.
The last dog that Earl and I owned in NY died this week and while I was burying her. I couldn't help thinking that it was Earl's job to take care of this part.
The girls start homeschool this week. Earl would have been teasing them and getting their dander up and Beth would have been teasing him that he still had to work.
Please don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have Earl back to be in pain for any reason, its just all my dreams included him and his dreams. And lately I just don't know what to do now that my dream has died. I never dreamed that the loneliness would be this horrible. I try very hard to be upbeat for our girls because they need to be happy and remember their Daddy with laughter not tears. I was thinking the other day about how when you walk down memory lane and tell stories your husband backs you up and helps you remember the details.
My brother came and got Earls guns to hunt with them this fall, Earl was hoping to get a deer this year. And he wanted to teach the girls how to hunt, especially rabbits. He thought that Sammi would be the best hunter and he didn't know about Suzy yet. Our last hunting trip consisted of me trying to push the stroller through the brush while he's 100 yards down the trail hollering for help with the dog. I wound up calling my brother and his friend to come helps us. We didn't get the dog till 2 days later.
Those that say "it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all", should try it. THough I wouldn't give up my memories at all. I just wish we could have made more of them.
Enough venting, its not helping, but I do love my Early and I miss him terribly.

Pretending that they aren't playing in the sand

The guys fixing the tarp on the roof at Vermontville.

Veiws when we left Monday morning.

The girls first time picking anything at an orchard.

At Cabella's Safari exhibit.

Sammi in "Woodsville" You had to be at camp to know what I'm talking about haha.

Its very hard to get Sammi to look at the camera haha

We have had a wonderful 12 days of vacation so far. Camp meeting was good with 2 wonderful evangelist. Decisions made, friendships renewed, wisdom gained. We are still Vacationing, but I am looking forward to coming home. Will post pictures later.

Happy Birthday my Love,

We miss you very much.

We went to a reinactment down in Point Pleasant, at Fort Randolph. The girls got to feel how heavy the bed roll was. The actor told us that in the 1700's they called it a "budget" and that the hunters would take them everywhere. The actor thought that is where the saying "Don't live beyond your budget" came from. Because they would have all their stuff rolled up in their budget.

Suzy enjoying the day at the reinactment

Sammi was helping me plant strawberries. She got more dirt on her than in the planter :).

I took myself out to celebrate Mother's Day this was the girls hamming it up.

I took the girls picture in the grass, Suzy cried and cried she was afraid of the grass

April 29th, 2010

Happy 5th Birthday

Samantha Mae-Gwyn Bickford

Sammi Sidecar

Goodbye my Love,

Born June 30, 1957 Died April 4, 2010

And my heart went with him.

Suzy's birthday cake made by my friend April

Suzy and I at the Wildhorse

Sammi and me. Sammi loves this resturant only because it is full of cowboy and horse decoration

Beth and me. She was worried that she would fall in the wishing well. Sammi kept asking for quarters instead of pennies to throw in. Needless to say that DIDN'T happen. Earl hates the food at this place but I like it so once a year he takes me and suffers through it.

I finally went for a regular check up after 3 years. I figured seeing my OB/GYN counts a little right? But yesterday my Dr told me that he was diagnosing me with diabetes and slightly high cholestorol. For those of you who are in the medical field my A1c was 7.5 and my bad cholestorol was 126. But the good news is that the Dr thinks with diet change and weight loss I could in 6 months be taken off my meds. So here I go into the holiday season with no choice of the matter of diet.

We had Indian Summer on Thurs.-Sun down here. So on Sat we went to Old Mans Cave, Conkels Hollow that is "stroller" accessible. It was beautiful, we even saw a 4 point buck in the woods. Here are some pictures from that day. I didn't post my favorite one yet, because it is being used.....

We are asking everyone for their prayers right now will give reasons at a later date. Thanks

Well no new pictures because no camera. We are busy getting ready for the new school year. Suzy is busy trying new fruits and vegetables, Sammi is busy asking if each passing school bus is her bus and Beth ignores me when I tease her that school starts next week. Earl is busy working what hours he can get.
Last night Sammi fell asleep at 8:30 and Suzy at 9:15. So Beth and I decided to watch a Veggie tale show when Beth opened the cabinet and bent over to pick her movie she banged her head into the corner of the door, now she has a beautiful bruise on her forehead.
We attended the birthday party of one of the kids friends on Saturday. The kids had a blast catching crawdads and minnows. I am afraid that I am one of those Mom's that doesn't freak out when the girls are near water. It could be because I played in the creek growing up and without my Mom telling me I respected the water. (It could also be because I was near by watching like a hawk haha).

I had promised some pictures from our vacation. We have been so busy since we came back that I haven't had the patience to wait on blogger to load them up. SInce we have been home we have gone to 3 VBS, 1 Peenview Quartet concert, 2 Dr appt, 1 fun fest, MANY yard sales haha, and now we are trying to get ready for school. Sammi goes to headstart on Sept 8th and Beth starts back to school the 24th. I am still on my diet (yikes), so far I have lost 17.8 lbs and yes the point whatevers count haha. Around 13 more and I will have lost all of my Suzy weight.

We are at (what we we refer to as ) the duck park. This was the little tykes playground. Beth and the boys let Sammi have a FEW minutes to play and explore the wooden train. Then we were off to the big kids playground.

We had a picnic at the park so we put Danielle and Suzy in my stroller, when Vicki and I saw them we laughed and laughed. Vicki said it looked like Danielle was climbing up Suzy. Maybe they were trying to escape the stroller hahaha

One morning when we were getting ready to go. With 6 kids it took an hour to get ready to drive 5 minutes down the road. I would like to say that the 2 youngest took the most time to get ready for. I told Vicki today that she needed me for a maid and the she should buy the other side of her house and we would move there. haha She was looking for her cell phone while we were talking on it, I suggested she look at her ear for it. Ah the joys of being a mother that has not had enough sleep in the last year.

We got to take the kids to a park called Knoble's. It was fun until the 3 kids in this picture wanted to go on the big Ferris Wheel and Vicki said that I should go with them. Have I mentioned that I am afraid of heights. In fact anyone who went on our mountain hike about 9 years ago would know that. I got to this point in the hike up the mountain that you had to climb a TELEPHONE POLE ladder and to your left was nothing but a beautiful view. I did not go all the way up I didn't even get to the top of the mountain. SO I guess you could say that instead of 46'r or 49'r I am a 1/2'r. Anyway we survived the Ferris wheel and the kids had fun.

We had a wonderful time at the 4th celebration. We are blessed to get to be in the parade every year. Not only do the kids love it but we miss out on all of the candy being thrown, haha. We have 'Rutlands Famous Roast Beef" that people LOVE so much that they paid $3.50 a sandwich for this year. Or you could buy it by the tub for $20, this way you get more meat and it seems to last longer. I know men that have a contest to see how many sandwiches they can eat, in the numbers of 15 - 20 every year.

Our church had 2 floats this year, one for VBS and one for "What Does Independence mean to Me" theme of the parade this year. Beth was on the VBS and Sammi on the other one. We know that one of them won 2nd place we just don't know yet because no one was there when they announced the trophies. Sammi got to sit in a little fire truck and ring the bell. I on the other hand walked the parade route handing out bottles of cold water. That was my exercise for the day.

I helped to paint the background for this float and had a blast. It took all day Wed, even through church. We are going to use this for a background in VBS July 20-24.

This is how Suzy watched the fireworks. Ours were at 11:00 that night. It made getting up for church difficult. Our SS teacher said that she appreciated those who made the effort to leave their house and come to church. I told her it wasn't leaving the house that was hard but the bed. haha.

One of the blogs that I like to read often is The Mennobrarian so today while I was reading her blog I was asked to tell 7 things you might not know about me. Seeing that usually only family and my friends read this I'll try not to bore you with stuff you know.

1.I was proposed to 2 times before my husband asked me.

2. A dream of mine is to swim with sharks in a cage.

3.I never made homemade cookies until I was 17 and Joyce M. showed me how.

4. My fingers on my right hand can't hold up 3 fingers with the thumb holding the pinky(like the boy scout pledge salute) don't know why.

5.I've never done a cart wheel, tried to but ran into a tree and broke my Mickey Mouse watch.

6. I pulled out all my baby teeth except for my wisdom teeth, no one helped me. Though my GrandPa Dean tried except he smoked and his fingers tasted horrible. haha

7.My dream is to have enough land to have a small cabin that missionaries, pastors and those who need to get away can come for free and don't have to interact with my family but they can if they want too.

This was harder than I thought. Hope you enjoyed.

The girls and I went fishing at my brothers Sammi's first time. He also had caught a coon the night before and I was very concerned with Sammi trying to touch the creature. Usually I am not a worrier when it comes to things like that, but I wasn't sure that she understood that it was a wild animal. I was glad when Donny took it away.

We went on our first hike with Suzy to our favorite place to walk. Except someone had brought horses when it was wet and made it hard to push the stroller up the hill with DEEP hoof prints. but we managed anyway. Suzy loves looking at the trees when in her stroller. Everytime I grunted to get her over the hoof prints she would smile at me. Like I was doing the noises for her entertainment. Sammi was good until we got to the top of the hill then she wanted to go home, without going back down the hill. Huh? Sammi got 2 ticks on her in fact when I saw the first tick it was just biting into her neck so I picked it off. Can I comment here that 10 years ago I would have gotten out tweezers and tried NOT to touch the bug. Now I just pick them off and go on, what a difference 3 kids make. (By the way I have no idea what I did to make the letters blue and underlined in this portion and therefore have no idea how to fix it)

This is the hill that I pushed the stroller up!

This is what we climbed the hill to see.

We also celebrated Father's Day by going to McDonalds. haha

Beth took Suzy down her first slide.

Earl just wanted to eat in the air conditioning but sat outside with us.

On Sat. the girls went to a birthday party at a gymnastics/tumblers business and loved it. I made the girls wear pants because I knew that it would be a show for all if not, then one lady came and said that whe put shorts on under neath her little girls skirt. Never thought about that haha. Sammi loved the foam pit, Beth loved the rings (which made her arms very sore the next day) What I would have loved the most was someone telling me not to walk on the edge of the trampolines because I fell through with just one leg and laid there praying for the rapture to take place, while everyone is asking "Are you OK" I really wanted to answer "No I just shoved my dignity down a 4 foot hole"

I took a couple of pictures of Suzy today trying to get one of her smiling. The pictures don't do justice to the beauty of her smile and how her whole face lights up when she smiles. Suzy smiles more than any of our girls.

My camera is acting up again. But here are a couple of pictures that we took last night.

This little lane is where the girls and I walk to go visit the cows and donkeys.

Beth took this picture. I thought it would be cute to get Suzy peeking over my shoulder. Suzy was a little grumpy last night but goes through fases like that. The other

day Earl came in laughing. He said that Suzy was asleep in her swing with her hands folded on her tummy, her mouth open, tongue hanging out and that it reminded him of Gana when she was having a good nap.

Here are some pictures from Suzy's dedication and our church's Baby Day. This is the last year that Sammi is considered a baby/toddler, next year she will be recognized with the rest of the children.