I'm not sure what the weather was like where you were today...but here in Southwest Ohio, we were blessed with a beautiful fall day with sunshine, a light breeze, and temperatures in the mid-50s low 60s. GORGEOUS!
The day started early (around 7:15) when we peeled ourselves out of bed to go to first service (sorry no pictures to show, let's just say we were quite tired). Our church, Oxford Bible Fellowship, is currently doing a series on Ephesians and this morning the message was about being redeemed, forgiven, and reconciled in Christ. Check out our pastors blog:
http://jeremyacarr.blogspot.com/ After service we went to our "young marrieds" class that we have been attending for about six or seven weeks and to say that we love it would be a complete understatement! As many of you know, marriage is very challenging...don't get me wrong, we do love marriage, but it isn't as easy as we thought. Our young marrieds class is a total blessing, there are about 15 married couples that come every week and we have gotten to know many of them really well. In the class, we are reading the book
Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas and have been learning a lot about marriage, both from the book and from the other couples in the class. Today we discussed, "The Cleansing of Marriage-How Marriage Exposes Our Sin"...something us newlyweds are learning about. I really liked this quote: "One of the best wedding gifts God gave you was a full length mirror called your spouse. Had there been a card attached, it would have said, 'here's to helping you discover what you're really like!'" -Gary and Betsy Ricucci The idea that God intends to use our marriage to expose our sin and to help us grow out of it is something that we both really like...sounds strange doesn't it?
After our class, we came home changed clothes, ate lunch and headed out to a farm in Hueston Woods State Park for their annual Apple butter Festival. We saw signs around Oxford this week and thought we would go and check it out. Here are a few pictures from our fun experience at the festival:
Above: Here is a barn that was filled with old tools, farming equipment, and other sorts of antiques-so neat!
Left: We stopped and listened to a man dressed in Civil War attire talk about the artillery used in the Civil War. We saw these two men shoot different guns to show which one had a better firing ability...the guy on the right won but I forget what the gun was called, sorry. :(
Right: After they shot the guns, they announced that they were going to be doing a demonstration with the canon seen in the picture. It was pretty cool, the three men along with about four others demonstrated the whole deal right down the saying the degree that they were going to be shooting towards. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the smoke after they fired the canon...it was kind of challenging to cover my ears and hold the camera at the same time...
After this, we then went and check out some other things around the festival including checking out the old barn, buying some kettle corn (YUM!), buying apple cider, and of course, some apple butter as well.
First floor of the barn, mostly old tools
Here Mark is checking out a machine that was used when harvesting corn.
YUMMY KETTLE CORN!!
This is an old building that was moved from Uptown Oxford to the farm. I don't remember what the building used to be, but one of the features of the building is something I loved having when I was growing up. Shown below:
For those of you who don't know what this is (or who haven't seen Harry Potter), this is a mail slot where the mailman delivers the mail and growing up, this is how we received our mail. It was always conveniently inside the door (on the floor) when we arrived home. It brings back a lot of memories when I would lay on the floor in our entryway with my backpack still on reading magazines or letters that came in the mail...(sigh).
YAY, here I am with our kettle corn, cider, and apple butter!
A park ranger
had an owl and a red-tailed Hawk with him. I'm not a huge bird fan, but they were pretty cool, especially since they were in cages most of the time. :)
After leaving the festival, we headed into the actual state park area to collect plant leaves for a botany project that Mark is working on...but don't tell anyone because I read on one of the sign postings under LAW A9.07.B15 (or something like that), that it is illegal to take animal, sand, plant, mineral, or any other kind of sample from the preserved area. So...then traveled back to campus right next to my Freshmen dorm to check out a Buckeye tree (Horse Chestnut Tree) and a bush that has ORANGE buckeyes it--I was so intrigued!
Right: Here I am collecting the orange buckeyes from the "Bottle Brush Buckeye".
I had no idea that this is what a buckeye comes out of! A little spikey, but so cool!
Right: The orange buckeyes from the bush-have you ever seen these??
After collecting a bazillion buckeyes, we decided to head to the grocery store and then home.
You can kind of see it, but I made a "free" fall decoration with a square glass vase that I filled with the orange and regular buckeyes, super-cute and so inexpensive! The two vases are sitting our coffee table-who would've thought?
This beautiful day ended with a delicious dinner, slow-cooked chicken served with rice-. (Thank you for the recipe, Barb!) We are loving living together, cooking together (more posts to come), and all-in-all being married. It definitely isn't easy-as-pie, but we are learning and are excited for many years to come.
I especially am excited for more late night conversations that result in loud giggling that wihtout-a-doubt wake the neighbors ...something every married couple should do every once in a while, even it is because your spouse forgets that turkeys have wishbones, not chickens. ILY! :)
We have been a little busy and we would love to post more... so hopefully October will be filled with a few more than September!
