Blueberry Time!

It's prime season for blueberries, and our favorite fruit to pick!  They taste best right off the shrub - sweet and warmed by the sun.  But, they're delicious all week long, too, and keep well frozen.  We pick enough to store for a year to eat raw, top on our oatmeal, or add to waffles and muffins!

Flipping Houses

With the downturn in the economy, one area that's promising is home sales.  We decided to invest a little into the house flipping business to supplement our income.  It doesn't make a lot on the small scale we're doing, but we take pride in working hard since it's our own business.  Here are some before & after pictures.  The house went on the market yesterday.

The day we bought it foreclosed.  Broken fence, roof & siding stains, faded shutters, poor landscaping and lots of weeds in the yard.

After fixing up and putting on the market.  Pressure washed outside, roof, fixed & stained fence, painted door & shutters, repainted mailbox, mulched, updated landscaping, and now a beautiful lawn.










You can't tell from this "before" picture, but the wood floor didn't go all the way to the walls.  There was poor transition from one flooring to the other, and lots of blemishes in the walls that were "covered" up.









Sanded walls, fresh paint, added baseboard quarter-round and other transition pieces, repainted/stained trim, and added some decoration.

Before picture of kitchen.

We didn't do much here except a lot of cleaning and scrubbing the cabinets & counter tops, then added a few decorations.

My camera phone took a much darker picture of the "before" shot, but again, just lots little touch ups needed and of course, cleaning!

After shot of the kitchen, all cleaned and disinfected!













This last set is of the master bath.  It was difficult to get the whole bathroom in one picture, but when we bought the house, there were lots of stains in the bathtub, shower, and toilet, with "winterized" stickers all over everything.  A thorough cleaning job, some flowers, new towels & toilet paper holder made a huge difference.

Texas Trip

We started our summer vacation at Grandma Linda's house in Dallas.  We loved her pool, the awesome food, and Grampa Mike!

After 3 relaxing days, it's off to the San Gabriel farm.  On the way, we stop for kolaches and pepper puppies, our favorite tradition.




We also passed by a local farmer selling yellow watermelon.  So, anyone who knows my daughter knows we had to stop.  We were only at the farm for 4 days, so that meant 4 watermelons to purchase.









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We caught lots of fish over the 4 days, everyone caught at least one.  Although we only reeled in bass up to a pound, we lost several much larger that flipped off the hook.  It was great to see fish active again in the lake.







Our big project was to "trim" the cactus.  Well, it was so overgrown and brown that we decided to chop it back to the bare stump.  Our philosophy was that if it grows back, it will be nice & green again.  If it dies, we'll pull it up and plant something a little less prickly to prune.  The kids & I are still having to tweeze out splinters 2 weeks later.

before

after

Then, off to the Shiner farm to see our cousins and Grandma TC.  Our oldest saw a huge zucchini in the garden, so we made zucchini bread.  The little one had fun chasing the chickens and playing in the pool.  I didn't get a picture of the J&J twin cousins, but they were always together on the zip line, swimming, or having airsoft wars.

























When it was time to leave, we did everything we could think of to delay our departure so we could see "Mr. Turtle", but we had to be in Austin by 2pm and time was running out.  So, we said our good-byes, locked up the animals, and headed off to Austin for one last family visit.

Now, there's a saying in the capitol to "Keep Austin Weird", and we understood why after a wonderful tour from my sister.  We started with the famous food trailers, drove by container box housing units, and finished at the Cathedral of Junk.  This place is made of junk stored over the years into a large pile in someone's backyard.  It's been carefully piled with themes, colors, and steps so people can climb to the top.




With our final cousin stop over, we ended with lots of hugs, kisses, & giggles.  Until next visit, bye Texas!

German Visitors

Our relatives from Weseke, Germany came to visit the US in May.  We were so excited that Marc & Eva decided to include South Carolina in their 3-week tour!  There is only one Mueggenborg family in this state, so we wanted to show them some neat things the Southeast has to offer.






Right away our little one took to Eva.  She was quickly labeled her "BFF" and held in high esteem compared to the rest of us.  Everywhere Eva went, our little one was stuck to her side holding her hand.

After a morning of homemade waffles, we gave them a tour of our downtown Greenville.  There was an art festival going on and the weather was perfect.  We made them try a sample of "shrimp & grits", the official food of SC, and some sweet tea.









The older kids wanted to take them down to the river and climb the boulders.

After downtown, we took a quick drive by Eric's work and my office, then headed home to relax.    As Marc & Eva enjoyed some quiet time in the back yard, our little one decided to join them.

The next day was rainy, but that didn't stop us from touring a local cavern, enjoying a nice picnic, and hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains.







Back at home, the little one used her German counting skills as she counted each swing before being thrown on the couch....eins, zwei, drei, vier...

I had one day vacation from work where I could take them somewhere neat without the kids.  Given the choice among (1) Atlanta's CNN studio, World of Coke, and the Georgia Aquarium, (2) Charlotte's NASCAR museum, Carowinds, and Discovery Place, or (3) white water rafting down the Chatooga River, they wanted to go rafting!  We went down several Class III and Class IV rapids, and two Class V rapids on a 7-hour excursion.

Before heading off to Oklahoma and Colorado, we wanted to give them one more American experience.  We grilled hamburgers for dinner then took them to a semi-professional baseball game.  


We miss you Marc & Eva, and thanks for coming to South Carolina!  We'd love to have you visit us again, and look forward to seeing you in Germany during June/July 2014!

High School Spring Formal

Our oldest had her first high school semi-formal dance. Since the new high school only has grades 9-10, they steered clear of calling it a "prom".  So instead, it was a spring formal.














She went to the dance with the captain of their cross country team.  They both share a love for running and seemed to get along well.

They first had dinner at a friend's house, which was a beautiful plan.  Most of the other students that wanted to go out somewhere faced a 1 hr wait.

After the dance, several of her closest friends stopped by our neighborhood clubhouse for an after-party.  We had about 12 kids, so a nice group.  The most difficult part as a parent was having to stay up that late to chaperone.  The party finally closed around 12:30am.

We forgot to get a group picture while everyone was there, but here's the last 9 to leave....

Greenville Goodwill Mud Run

This weekend our oldest had her first (and second) mud run race!  A two day event, the mud run is a 3.5 mile obstacle course designed in Marine Corps boot camp tradition.  The race is run by teams of four and features over 30 obstacles, including climbing walls, cargo nets, low crawls, rope bridges, swings, stream runs and a giant mud pit!  Fortunately for her, she got to do it on both days!

On Saturday, she went in place of Daddy (he just had surgery). Although the youngest on the team, she definitely wasn't the slowest. The guys helped her over the walls while she set the fast pace for them to follow. Their finishing time: 45 minutes!

On Sunday, she did the run with three of her soccer friends. This second time was a bit harder for her because there were no guys to lift her up and over the obstacles.  Instead, she was the one lifting everyone else. They struggled on a few barriers, but with great teamwork, they eventually overcame it.  Their finishing time: 1 hour 7 minutes!

Team Name: Girlilla Muchachas