Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Last Friday...

I had intended to post this last night, but by the time all the pictures were loaded, I was too tired to write anything! SO, here it is now. :)

Right after supper Thursday evening, the Murphys and our family (except for Dad, who stayed home to do chores so we could go) headed for the Dagleys' place. Upon arrival, after giving and receiving hugs from friends, we set up our tents. It was decided that there would be a "Guys" tent and a "Girls" tent. Our tent was the guys tent:
And the Murphys' tent was for the girls. I actually ended up sleeping in a different "Girls" tent, as the Balyeat girls invited me to join them and some other girls in the big tent you can see in the background in the picture above. We had so many girls in there that we were really quite cozy warm! (Saturday night there were 14 of us in there! :) )



Mother quickly got ahold of James & Amandas' not-so-little-anymore baby, David... :)




The rest of the evening was spent in getting settled and welcoming new families as they arrived. It was especially fun to have so many new people come to Prairie Days this year! The Krahn family and Stevens family arrived that night and it was so wonderful to get to know them better over the next couple of days!!!






Friday morning, bright and early found a hungry group of people, eating pancakes that were freshly made over the campfire. Then a large percentage of that group headed for the hill, where a special area had been set up for a rifle range. Mother (and the rest of us, but especially her as she knows them best) was very happy to see the J. family when they arrived...




It was a cold, windy, wet day----similar to the weather we had during our Appleseed event last year. There was a great turnout even with the cloudiness though, with there being, I think, the largest amount of participants ever at a North Dakota Appleseed Shoot event! The Lord was merciful really, as the only time it really rained hard was when everyone was in the house, eating their lunch. :)




Even though the wind made it difficult to shoot accurately, I heard comments that people were glad they attended, as they learned a lot about correct shooting positions, breathing, and other things that would help them in their target practice at home.




Meanwhile, back in the Dagley park, other things were transpiring. Here's Charis Balyeat, working on arranging items in the Trading Post...






...and MaryAnna Balyeat, doing the same...









The trampoline was usually occupied during the entire weekend...



Here are some of "Our" shooters... (Mother, MichaelJon, Jacob, Hristiyan, and friend, Seth)







Andrew was asked by his good friend, Jonathan B. to help on the line, making sure safety rules were being followed and helping to adjust slings, scopes, etc....






Below in the red jackets are Jonathan on the left and Andrew on the right:




"You may proceed down the shooting range to retrieve your targets..."



Jacob and Hristiyan, coming back for another round of, um, practice...




The flags Jonathan hung high to wave in the never-ending wind...



The shooters took a quick break for the potluck noon meal, while Jonathan told part of the history lesson that's taught with each shoot...




What a nice thing it is that the Dagleys have a large house......





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After a quick down-pour (in which several people ran out to the range to make sure the rifles were covered), the "Shooters" returned to the range for the rest of the afternoon...


Chris S. helping Hristiyan get his "Natural point of aim"...


Meanwhile, those of us that were left behind spent a lot of time in the kitchen, washing dishes and sweeping/scrubbing the now-muddy floor. Then a couple young ladies and I transplanted flowers into pots and hauled them to the trading post and registration table to beautify the area. :)


Then Hannah Dagley wanted to show the farm and gardens to some of the girls who had never been there before, and Sarah (Hannahs' sister) and I also tagged along to see how the gardens were doing. We crossed this somewhat-wobbly bridge to get to the far gardens...





It was pretty nice outside at this point, but still windy.




The Dagleys have beautiful gardens!


One of the girls found a little turtle, so she took it back down to the park to show to her family...


Shortly before supper, Isaac K. did a demonstration of how to set traps... I missed quite a bit of it, as I was in the house assembling vegetable pizzas for supper, but I heard from others that the demo. was very informative and interesting---something that had never been talked about before at Prairie Days....





THEN, it was time for the SPELLING BEE! :) There were 2 teams, with quite a number of people of all ages in each team. Here Mr. Dagley is explaining the rules:


James Balyeat was the score-keeper for my team, and placed the "Tokens" around his hat as he counted them. :) FYI: We won.



That's all the pictures I have from Friday. Tonight, we looked through all the pictures that Mom took, and I'll/we'll probably be sharing some of those from time to time too....




After supper that night, there was a good discussion going about whether or not the Revolutionary War was biblical (IE: can war be backed by the Bible?), but I missed an hour of that too, as I was on for supper cleanup duties. Andrew did say he taped part of it though, so perhaps Dad and I can watch that sometime to see what we missed..... Then there was a hayride for anyone who didn't want to listen to the discussion, and that night there was singing around the campfire, and there were people playing volleyball for a while too.




That pretty much sums up Friday. Saturday could take a bit more doing! :)





I wanted to note here that it was lovely outside today! As I didn't have to go to work in town today (I have for the past 3 days), I worked in the garden and greenhouse most of the day. The guys hung some pipes up in the greenhouse so I could tie twine to them for the Hops vine and the watermelons and cucumbers to climb up on. They also got a big fan working and set it in there to move some air around now that the days are getting warmer. Mother was in Bismarck doing sessions most of the day. Dad and the boys got our small pickup, Half-Two running!!!! This evening, Dad and I hopped on his motorcycle and went out to check on the potatoes, onions and carrots we planted in the field (which are all coming up now). We also drove SE of our farm a ways to see if the road by the swamp is still underwater, which it is. When we got back to the farm, Mother was home, so we watched a "Highway to Heaven" episode, then looked at pictures, then had family prayer time and sat around a good while afterwards, just talking.......... It was a lovely day! Also, we've heard through the grape vine that a certain young cousin of ours, (his name starts with a H. and he was recently at our house) is hoping to come back to our farm in the next month or two when his grandparents visit other relatives in ND, as he wants to help with the farm work. Sounds fun!




So, until I have Saturdays' post ready, I shall say farewell. ~

2 comments:

Carra said...

Sounds like ya'll had a great time. Congratulations. It all looked like fun.
Hope ya'll have a great day, and blessings to you and your family.
Talk to you again soon.

Miss Linda said...

It sounds like you had so much fun! I truly enjoyed reading about all of your activities. I look forward to your next post, too!