Happy Birthday Mark! I love you and love doing this crazy, something new every day, never boring, life with you! May you have many more blessed, amazing trips around the sun 🥰
This past year has been full of new experiences! It’s hard to believe that just over 1 year ago North Carolina became our permanent home. If you follow our blog, you may have wondered why we haven’t posted in a very long time. So much has been happening and I am just going to try to summarize our activities as briefly as I can.
Mom Johnson visited from Oklahoma and she got to meet Leilalynn.
She spent some time at Leila’s house and also visited the NC Ballard Homestead.
We ran Kades Coffee truck for a week while Adri, Josh and Hannah went to Maine on vacation.
We planted a fall garden with lots of turnips, some bush beans, carrots, broccoli and cabbage. We’re still harvesting bell peppers from the summer!
We are preparing for cooler temps so our chimney has been inspected. A new chimney cap and new gas fireplace were installed.
Mark repaired our gutters, sanded and painted our porch railings and fixed the squeaky dryer.
Deer season opened up in October for muzzle loaders and Mark harvested his first Ballard Homestead deer. We canned, dehydrated, ground and froze venison.
We took another trip to see Leila, visited a pumpkin patch then babysat while Leila’s dad and mom went on a date for their 8th anniversary.
We travelled on to Syracuse, after visiting Leila, to spend some time with Mark’s folks. Upstate New York is nice in October- no snow and apple picking season is in full swing. Beak & Skiff apple orchards is a great place to enjoy some apple fritters so that’s exactly what we did.
Mark also helped replace a split rail fence at his parents’ place.
We are finally back at the Homestead and ready to do some fall harvesting and preserving.
So you see, we’ve been a little preoccupied. The upcoming weeks and final days of 2021 promise to be equally full and productive! Feeling thankful and blessed, we look forward to the future. We’ll try to keep posting on here from time to time. Next year will hopefully be the year we do some more RVing. We are excited about that. Check back if you want to see where the Ballards take Old Glory in 2022!