Blackberry Picking Expedition

So, today we (Jessica, Annetta, Rachel-our-friend, Elizabeth-our-neighbor, and I) went blackberry picking.

To start off, this is a blackberry "sprig," as Rachel calls it. Isn't it picturesque?

Blackberry bushes have prickers, which are...prickery. It is painful when they come in contact with your body. This is useful information if you get out into the real world. So if you heard a chorus of ouches, that was us! Rachel kept getting berried buried in briers.

In fact, we were so loud that Reuben heard us and came to help. At least he claimed to be helping...we think he just ate and made faces:

We ended up picking 22 cups, which is a lot. It made 4 pies and one cobbler-thing (we ran out of pie crust). I sorted the berries...

and added the sugar, tapioca, and cornstarch.

Then, after Jessica and Rachel made the crusts, we filled them, added top crusts,

and decorated them with smiley faces.

Then, we had our neighbors up and ate them. The pies. (Why, what did you think I meant??)

Hungry yet? :)

(*Jessica, Rachel, and Annetta also contributed to this blog post.*)

Beginning of September

Yes. How is that for an original post title that sets your creative teeth on edge? (Maybe the reason your teeth are on edge is because you are noticing how dirty our vehicle window is in the above picture. Whatever.)

Grandpa has been doing second-cuttings of hay. I wanted to get pictures of the whole process, but just caught the last step. And then when I remembered that I wanted pictures, I raced outside.
We have end-of-the-summer flowers, such as goldenrod and asters, now.
Josh and Katrina are cute. This picture was taken at Jennifer's graduation party.

So that's a short update. Now my blog doesn't look so forlorn. And I am issuing a challenge to my fellow bloggers: take some pictures of your end-of-the-summer/fall-ish flora or fauna or weather and blog them :)

Jennifer's Senior Pictures

Congratulations as you graduate, Jennifer!

The Airshow

The Great Chautauqua Airshow was held this year from August 21-23. Like last year, my squadron helped out, mainly with parking and flight line. We bivouacked out on the airport hill. For those three days, we were doing Volunteer Service. We worked till our poor little feet hurt, and then worked some more. We worked in the rain and mud. We made it our Civic Duty to perform these acts with a minimum of sarcastic-comment-making towards the dweebs dear people we were parking. Why, we were practically Public Servants. (Freebie: that phrase is a very good attention-getter. People will be very impressed if you use that phrase about yourself, but you do have to use the proper tone.)

I arrived around noon on Friday, with my tent, air mattress, and overnight stuff. Cadets trickled in, and we set up our campsite, and tried to figure out what we were doing. (That last item was a futile, week-end-long effort, incidentally.) The gates opened around 1600 [Ed. note: This means 4:00 PM. JLS], and we were ready. We had a couple cadets down near the road, a cadet along the parking driveway, and a couple cadets in the pond field, parking people. With all disrespect, these people (for reasons unknown to us, because we had vests on and all they had to do was what we were telling them to do, so you would have though it was fairly simple) had relatively no clue what they were doing.

The people organizing the airshow took about 5 of the cadets (including the cadet commander, deputy cadet commander) for flight line, so yours truly inherited the rest of the cadets and the parking stuff. Parking an airshow with roughly 7 cadets is a logistical nightmare, and that is all I shall share with you on that. I had fun, though, and all my cadets had meals at regular intervals (which is a good thing.)

Friday, we managed to not have rain. (It was wet and dewy for PT in the morning though.) But on Saturday, in the afternoon, it let go and rained! We said to ourselves, "Selves, we frankly don't care about the five vehicles who will pull in during this deluge. We are going to go sit in the quansit hut with some other unfortunate drowned rats until it is over with." And so we did. It only lasted 15 minutes, and then we went back out to our posts and parked and unparked people.

It also rained Sunday morning, and Sunday afternoon. We once again got wet, but this time, we said to ourselves, "Selves, we frankly don't care that water is running down our backs -- it's not deluging, so we are going to stay out here and park cars. However, we are going to put our blouses back on to avoid severe hypothermic reactions to the rain and wind." And so we did.

Then Sunday evening, when it was all over at 1600 [Ed. note: this also means 4 PM], we packed up our stuff, loaded our soggy selves into our parents' vehicles, and went home and took showers.

Lydia

Lydia's twelfth birthday is today.

(Wait...did I say twelve?? *I* was just twelve, like last year! I mean to say she's nine again, I'm sure. Someone tell me she's nine, please?!)

Regardless of her current age, Lydia remains our "nine volt running on a twelve," as my dad puts it. This is a very true statement. It describes Lydia quite well. It has been use to describe her over the years, and rings true today still. Even though I don't know how much a volt is, I still concur fully with the statement...just...because.

Happy birthday, Lydia!

:)

(Lydia, during wiffleball at Jessica's graduation party.)

Encampment

This is a very condensed, pictorial record of encampment. Due to length constraints, I only included some (very few!) of the highlights. The photos were taken by Captain Hall, the PAO. (I did not take my camera with me.) All the pictures have me in them, to make them more interesting to the viewers :)

This first one is us marching...somewhere.

This one doesn't have me in it, but it is a full length shot of the rappelling tower. It was fifty feet high. That's tall.

Before we went up, the rappelling people checked our equipment. He is feeling my gloves, to make sure my fingers are all present and accounted for (I guess).

This is me telling him my last will...no, I'm probably asking him if he would like to go down with me. He didn't, so I went down by myself.
One of the nights we went to the base gym for some basketball and volleyball.

Leadership Reaction Course: This is us walking over to the first one.

The next series (the following 8) is of an obstacle where we had to get over the wall, be lowered on to the ropes, crawl across to the other side, and get a heavy box of 'ammunition' to the other side too. But we were not allowed to touch anything red, or fall in the water. It was one of those annoying situation where it's easier said than done.
Up...and over...

...and down on the ropes which swayed scarily.

"Hello, tadpoles!"

"I think I need some help..."

Safely across, and then it was the amazing jump/yank thing, where he made it safely to the other side, but we both fell down. But we made it safely across. Did I mention we got across?

yay...

This was 'exciting' KP. I have no idea what I'm doing. I think I'm sweeping underneath the toaster, though.

Formation before one of the meals. I love the reflections. I'm in the flight (group) farthest to the left, in the blue hats.

Drill
This was the dress blues inspection.
And this last is an extremely random picture of the barracks, which is where I slept.

I wrote a very long thing on what I did during encampment. It is so long that I decided not to blog it, but if anyone is interested, leave me a comment with your email address and I will send it. (I won't publish the comment, of course!)

The Long-Awaited Jessica's Graduation Post

The astute among you probably thought to yourselves, a couple weeks ago, "Self! Erika posted senior pictures of Jessica! Therefore, self, this means that Jessica graduated. Therefore, Jessica probably had a graduation party. And self, even better, this probably means that Erika is going to, at some point within the next 400 years, post a blog post about it." Well, astute folks, that time has come. You never thought four hundred years could go by so fast, did you?

We were very happy that our friend Peter was able to come up for the party. He helped us girls with decorating the tent with streamers.

We also set out food. Side not about the food: we still have hamburgers and hamburger buns left.

People began arriving shortly before 3 PM (I resisted the urge to say 1500...but this is, after all, Jessica's post, and she doesn't know 1500 from 0051.) We mingled and ate while waiting for the homeschool/teens group to come so we could play some active games.

(Jess and her cake, which was made by a lady in our church. Jessica likes the color purple...just thought I'd throw that out there.)

(the display table and its admirers)
Then we began games. The highlight was wiffleball, even though we played some other games. Here are some snapshots, some taken by me, and some taken by Elizabeth.
Peter was our scorekeeper/umpire/catcher.

We had several mini-powwows during the game, to figure out details such as rules and scores. I guess Elizabeth took this one, because I'm in it (second from left.) Jessica is third from right.

almost the whole field...
and the opposing team. I don't remember which team won, but I think it was them.

And there goes the ball!

Then we played a game called "Elbow Tag," which does not involve, as one would conclude based upon Reuben's mid-air location, emulating Tigger. Rather, it...involves elbows and tagging people. (I sense eye-rolling.)

And then when it was all over late that night, we were very tired.

I am back!

I just wanted to leave a quick update, saying that I am back and will be posting an enormous post shortly. Encampment was great, and by that I mean that it was not a negative experience. The staff was very friendly and helpful, and it was not as hard as I thought it would be. I did fly home Thursday morning (instead of Wednesday evening) because my flight was rebooked due to weather conditions Wednesday night. So I had a nice little adventure wherein I stayed at a random person's house Wednesday night and then hung out at the LGA airport a little longer than I was supposed to Thursday morning because they kept delaying my flight and changing my gates. Main parts of encampment would include rappelling (and I only screamed once. It was 50 feet tall.), tours to several military installations and bases, drill, an obstacle course, a leadership reaction course, drill, PT at 0500, the food (it was really good and I was able to eat with my flight for most of encampment), drill, classes, and drill, graduation, cleaning, drill, and drill. And I slept in until 10 Friday morning, and that felt really good :)

Stay tuned, and I will see if I can even steal beg some pictures from the academy PAO (I didn't take my camera with me).