What will be missed in GA

This is a picture of our wonderful apartment complex AND the amazing sunny, skies that we had most days! It was low 70's and so sunny this fall - LOVE that. Plus, living here was fantastic - big apartment, fitness room, pool - we were a bit spoiled :D.

My Kroger

We've seen the commercials for "insert name CVS" stores. Well this is Nadia's Kroger store. :) It was in walking distance and honestly someday gave me the only change to talk to other adults during the day! So, it was great! Plus Addie and I got to know the Starbucks employees there.

We'd swap stories of teething issues - she with her little puppy and me with my little daughter. Strangely they were extremely similar! hah! Saying goodbye to them was kinda sad! They seemed sad and would miss Addie. :) Addie always gave them a smile! :D

InFocus Church

Going to truly miss this! Tried to capture some of the Worship there our last Sunday morning. The worship and the teaching were fantastic and incredible! We learned so much and worshiped with fellow believers. It was so refreshing!
Plus the Bible Study I was in was fantastic! If anyone gets the chance to read Lineage of Grace by Francine Rivers - do it! Gives such a fresh account of 5 incredible woman in Christ's line.

Lastly - I miss miss the friends I made while down in GA. It was encouraging to get to know people and connect!

Onward to a new start in Michigan now! :D

Steed's Dairy Farm

Donut the pregnant cow :D

On Saturday we went to a Dairy Farm - but not just any dairy farm, Steed's Dairy Farm. (You can check out there page there.) One that had a huge PVC pipe slide, sand hills and a playground, large wooden boats and tractors for kids to play on, a gigantic rubber jumping pit and a petting zoo! Not to mention the pumpkin patch and horse drawn rides. It was fun. The cow was crazy! It was literally acting like a dog - craving attention of it's owner and wanting to be petted and loved. Funny.

 

Adalynn had so much fun looking at all the animals! She was uncertain of the huge cow, especially when the cow kept trying to lick her :).  We took Adalynn through it all. It is so much fun to watch her experience new things. What's funny though, with all they had there to do, she wanted to sit in the pumkin patch the whole time. That seemed to be her favorite spot. Hehe... she loves those pumpkins! It was fun going out as a family!

The Jersey Knit Fad

Yes, I too have fallen in love with the oh-so versatile Jersey Knit fabric. The silky feel of it, the way it lays on you and the stretch is all part of what makes this fabric so irresistable.

My daughter has fallen in love too.

I bought this beautiful eggplant purple piece of fabric when JoAnn's was having a sale. I wanted to make a skirt or possibly a simple dress. Adalynn has claimed it. She loves it. Honestly - she gets so excited when I pull it out. She loves crawling on it, laying her head on it, wrapping up in it. 

I swear she could play with this for 30+ minutes, which is quite a lot for a 9 month old! Whew! My daughter loves fabric just like me and her Grandma :).

I am glad that I'm passing down very valuable lessons to my child :D.

First the Germans; then the Greeks

So, it's been quite awhile since I last posted... oops!
Life has gotten the better of us and we have been busy. Adalynn has been so busy growing and learning and experiencing life! It tuckers me out just chasing her around :P.  hehe

This weekend was a fun one too! Fort Gordon celebrates Oktober Fest - basically a big fair/flea market with German beer and food! (so a very good time).

It was fun! Adalynn got to sit on a horse for the first time and experience hay and pumpkins and sauerkraut! Mmmm... good strong German/Pollock.

We took so many pictures in the hay :)

It is always such a blast taking Adalynn to new places! Just to see her reaction to everything is a hoot!
The following day we all went to the Greek Festival downtown. It was a lot smaller than the Greek Festival in Grand Rapids, but still fun.

Good Greek beer (not as good as the German)

There was dancing and music

Stephen did wait in a 20 minute line to get a gyro too, which was delicious! Plus we tasted the German potatoes and the Greek potatoes.

Winner -- *drumm rolllll*

The GERMAN potatoes (only because we never tasted Polish potatoes - that would've won :).

She's our princess! :D

Yes - I WILL be one of those moms that dresses my daughter up just to see how cute she looks in different items. It's fun!

I LOVE going to and doing things! This coming weekend is the Western Carolina State Fair! Hello animals for Adalynn to shriek over with glee! Stephen's not a huge "fair" fan, but we'll convince him it's fun - heck there's elephant ears and funnel cakes; who doesn't have fun with that kind of food!

Roadblocks Suck

Everyday we try to take a walk. The fresh air is good and the walking is beneficial! Plus we have met lots of interesting people on our walks, but that's not what our story is about.

Life has presented some roadblocks in the Linderman home. Roadblocks that don't exactly have a name, but are hindering us from moving forward the way we want to. I repeat - the way we WANT to. On my walk this morning with Addie we encountered literal roadblocks, not just in one area, but all the way down our walk.

We step outside and it's foggy, massive fog. Which, I'll admit is rather fun because we are literally walking through a cloud. It just means that I need to take extra precautions when walking down the road because the visibility isn't as good and I don't want to be hit nor do I want my baby girl to be hit.

As we leave our apartments there's trucks and workers and the oh-so-glorious, bright orange cones! We wave hello to the workers and keep walking (on the sidewalk of course). We encounter a white truck parked right on the sidewalk forcing us to walk the road a bit to get around, then we notice that signs are set up ON the sidewalk ahead of us informing other drivers of the construction ahead. So, I decided to cross the street entirely right there.

We walk, breathing in that wonderful fog and exhaust air (wondering if the benefits of the walk are really worth it). Mounds of dirt enter our site line, more trucks and workers. Massive work is being done, but we cannot cross the road again because we need to be on this side. So, we go back INTO the road and walk. One the the workers smiles and says 'hi" and asks us to be careful. Trucks are moving back and forth.

We do finally make it and, quite frankly I felt like I deserved a nice cup of coffee this morning so we stopped to get that before heading back.

All in all we did make it and we did get home safe and I did get my coffee. The way back is when it hit me. Life has these roadblocks. It sounds cheesy, like from a sermon or something, but bare with me. Life does. It presents obstacles because we live in a fallen world. Sometimes the smell, sometimes they make it hard to see, sometimes we need to completely change direction or the course we are on.

God doesn't try to make life difficult. Honestly, it's me who can make life more difficult. :P
One day we will be in the New Heaven and New Earth and it will be glorious! Until that day though, we need to face those roadblocks armed and ready.

So, that was my epiphany this morning... 

Saturday in Aiken

We had to check out Aiken, SC while living here in Augusta (since it's like 30 minutes away). Very cute town. Extremely similar to downtown Holland, MI - but smaller. It had cute shops and food places and the closest brewery around.

Amanda - doing her part!

There was a blood drive that Saturday too :). So, being the incredible woman that she is, Amanda decided to save some lives on her vacation. Plus she got a free hotdog! They tried to get us to buy the hotdogs too. They tried to get us the buy the hotdogs numerous times... I started to get annoyed actually. They were a wee bit to chipper about selling those hotdogs. :P

We went out to Betsy's Diner instead

Adalynn was hamming it up too. She did not want to sit the normal way, she wanted to straddle that highchair and eat that highchair. hehe

So, we didn't take a ton of pictures, but we got a lot in the restaurant. It was good too. We then proceeded to take Amanda to the army base and drive around and show her a few of the places. Nothing incredible, but she found some great things to buy for her three sons.

It was fun to just explore new places and show Amanda around our new town! Cannot express how much fun it was to have her there with us!

Columbia Country

We were so blessed to have my sister-in-law come and visit us! It was so uplifting to have family come and stay and be able to just chat and visit places around Augusta. It was also incredible to just get renewed energy with Adalynn and watch as Amanda (Sis-in-law) played new games with Addie. (Ones we still play today!)

Anyhoo, we tried to visit lots of places. One of which is the Columbia Country library and park behind. Amazing place!  

Oh, it is this beautiful!

In the library!

So, Addie is quite active. Never likes to sit still. She proved this when we entered the library and I took her out of the stroller. HAH, she was crawling everywhere! She was having so much fun! There were big windows she could pull herself up on, and toys and books and even little cubbie holes she could crawl in! It was so cute to watch.

Reading with her Auntie!

Yes, she is crawling up on things now

We even found out about a storytime they offer! YAY! Amanda was great with reading books to her as well! This library also has an incredible cafe area. It's like the perfect place for Adalynn and me! Coffee, books, activities... ahhh... :)

We lost her hat :P 

Swinging!

It was an incredible day! So much fun and Adalynn was so pooped out she zonked out! (Which is always nice. :D)

Literally... gorgeous! 

Labor Day Vacation

Um, 3 days or 3 months? 

At Wayah Bald

Our first family vacation and it's taken me a week to post about it. :) It was such a treat to go and visit our dear friends, Tom and Wendy! They live in North Carolina at the foothills of the Smokey mountains. The trip took us through rural GA into N.C. and it was so beautiful!Who knew that working at Susie's Cafe and meeting these incredible people would lead to this! :D Stephen and I enjoyed just sitting and visiting with them so much!

On Saturday Tom and Wendy took us up one of the local mountains, Wayah Bald, to look at the view!

There is an observation tower built and it was incredible! You walk through a little path to get here and as the path clears there's this stone structure that emerges and then the VIEW.

So incredible! Of course, Stephen saw the stones and immediately thought he could climb them! hehe ... he needs a son :)

The amazing, breathtaking view!

Of course, we wanted to feed Addie before heading down.

It was about an hour drive up the mountain. We passed the Appalachian trail on the way too! (well, part of it :D) The trip up the mountain was great! Addie slept most of it and with the help of Dramamine the winding and curving road was fun and not nauseating! hehe  We also were taken to the local shooting range. It was nice! in the side of a mountain with a cute little outhouse. (Am I the only one that would label an outhouse as 'cute'?)

Men and Guns... Sheesh :P

We had fun taking Adalynn around the top of the mountain and explore all the sites and textures and smells (the outhouses up top were a wee bit smelly... WHEW). 

New textures!

Addie was so curious about touching everything. It was cute :D

The trip down the mountain was challenging, Addie was up and let us knew that she felt her ears popping! yikes! :)

Then we fed ourselves! Mmmm

After we were taking to a great restaurant! We ate outside and Addie was beyond cute the whole time. Laughing and playing, and bascially drawing Wendy's attention most of the time, as well as most other customers. :)

It did start to downpour while there! The restaurant had to put down some of the sides so we wouldn't get soaked. The rain felt good though! Cool us off! :D 

We had such a marvelous time.Thank you Tom and Wendy for letting us bombard your home with ourselves and our ever moving 7 month old!

Friday Night Project

Stuffed Tag Balls

I saw a semi-tutorial on Pinterest for this. It didn't really say much, you can check it out HERE. I figured out the rest as I went along. These were fairly simple to make as well. Which is fun! I cut them out while watching "House Hunters International" and then sewed them up while catching up on an episode of "Bones"! :D

They were fun to make. I may still add some 'crinkle' sounds to the stuffing to make it even MORE appealing. Poor Stephen wanted to watch a movie together and here I am just hunched over my fabric and ribbons saying, "Just want to cut them out. Just want to sew them up."  hehe

He was very understanding and when he saw the end product knew why I was so excited to finish them. Plus, I have a habit of starting something or cutting out a pattern and then never finishing. My mom can attest to that. I think she still has a few items in her sewing room that I cut out and never finished. HAH

She JUST woke up.

So, Addie literally just woke up and I was to excited. As you can tell, she isn't quite sure what to do. hehe.  Plus she is major teething, so nothing seems to make her happy except Tylenol and Blueberries.
It's fun to turn just scrap pieces of fabric and ribbon into something fun for my daughter! 

Her little fingers on the ribbon. LOVE

Ezekiel House

Built in 1797

Augusta was quite the town back in the 1800's. Located on the Savannah River was a huge part of that. It's sad that the town is falling apart now. So much history here. During the Civil War there was a gun powder manufacturer here in town.  The chimney from that place is still here!
We thought it was haunted (rumors of it being haunted), but when we asked the tour guide she explained how they had mistaken this house for another house and that it isn't. It was still cool and we learned a lot about the time period and tobacco farming - VERY labor intensive. WOW!

The house built over 100 years ago!

Sitting on the back porch

What was neat was that the stairs to the upstairs bedrooms were outside because Mr. Harris brought merchants down and had them stay at his house for free. There was two rooms set aside for them!

Crib...

So, who knew that they babies stayed in their crib until they were 3 or 4. Woa! Sad at the same time because the life expectancy was so short and they lost so many kids. :(  So they kept the babies close until they were older.

Love this mirror!

Loved this mirror. Has 13 knobs on it for the 13 colonies and has an Eagle on top to represent the united states. What's crazy, is I visited a furniture consignment later that day and found a mirror JUST like this painted blue. HAH! I kinda wanted to get it too :D

Addie enjoyed the tour as well.

It was cute cause she was jibber jabbering away while the tour guide was talking. The house is supported by the history museum here in town and the lady who gave the tour was so knowledgeable!

The Pallor

The Kitchen

It was fun! So interesting how old houses always have such an 'old' smell to them :P
Note the picture above the fireplace - a little child - a BOY. Dressed in a little white dress with a blue sash. Evidently this was very British and so some American's did this as well. They know it's a boy because the child's hair was cut short, there is a drum in the picture and he is wearing a blue sash.  :D Another interesting tidbit!

Loved the house though and loved the tour! AND when I had to use the restroom, I had to go out to the building that use to be the old kitchen. HAH! :) 

Southern History....