Canning Day

Because of the heat and drought this year, our fruit trees did not produce.  But we still wanted to can and replenish some of our stores.  In September we ordered in bushels of plums, pears, peaches, and apples and were blessed by help from Hannah and Lily for the canning of them.  It was a great day of fellowship too!

 Shenandoah was excited to be able to help too!!

The kitchen

 Sorting the plums

Poking the plums 

 During a break, Lily did art with the younger ones

and...

 ...Hannah and I crocheted

 Back to peeling again!

 Mommy

 Seth and Sayer were our faithful peeling haulers - out to the compost!

 Lily reading to the boys

 Hannah reading to the girls

The counter at the end of the day!  Many hands do make light work!!!

The next morning, I finished off the canning with plum jam!!

A Visit From Friends...

We were blessed by a visit from the Dales'!!!  They show miniature horses and were on their way to Tulsa for the national horse show this year (I think I got that right! :)  Mr. Dales had to stay home to care for their animals, but it was great to visit with the rest of them.  We went to the same church when we lived in Arizona and had not seen each other in 12 years!!  Thankfully we've stayed in touch and I was so excited to be able to see my dear friend, Lisa, again!!!  Here are some pictures from the fun day and 1/2 that we got to spend with them.

 Anna, Lisa, Mrs. Dales, and Jesi

 Lisa showed us how to trim Hercules' hoofs - what a blessing!

 He needed it very badly!

 Pearly decided to watch too :)

 Sayer and Lisa playing tick tack toe

 Shenandoah, Jesi, and Seth

 The kids had fun looking at all of the pictures of their horses!

 Fellowship 

(I think Seth was trying to be funny :)

 Daddy did our brief for the week

 The Dales got to experience it too

 Loaded up!

 Seth and Anna

 We all went to the Post Office!!  I don't think the mail lady felt too invaded!! :)

 Mrs. Dales and Mommy

 We had to introduce them to Cherry Berry!!

 The Harris' joined us as well

 Jesi, Lisa, and Shenandoah

 Joshua and Daddy

 Fellowship

 More fellowship

 Singing hymns

 Lisa played for us!

 Anna and Sabrina

 Shenandoah still wasn't to sure about Dandy their dog!

 But she pet her right before they left!

 As always, time went by too fast because we were having fun.
It was great to see you all again and catch up on a ton of visiting!!!  Thank you for coming!!!

Just for fun, here are a few extra pictures!  As you can see, most of them are from quite a
few years ago (when we lived in Phoenix)!
(I'm sorry the quality isn't better than it is, but I really wanted to post them! :)

 Anna, Savannah, Jessie, and Lisa
(I don't remember where we were! :)

 Lisa, Sabrina, and Savannah
Bowling on my 7th birthday!

Lisa and Savannah then...

...Lisa and Savannah now! 

Lisa, thank you for staying in touch!!  You're such a blessing and encouragement to me and I'm so thankful for you!!  God bless you my friend!!

Lily's Birthday!

We celebrated Lily's birthday the beginning of September which was a lot of fun!!  Here are a few pictures from our evening celebration.

 Happy Birthday Lily!!!

 The younger ones drew her pictures

 One of our favorite things to do  - a hymn sing!

 A birthday prayer

 Fellowship around the table

 We forgot to get a picture before the younger ones went to bed.  Daddy was feeling a little under the weather, so he said he wouldn't breathe on us!! :)

Lily, Hannah and Joshua

Cochran Chronicles...

...wouldn't you say it's about time?! :)

Greetings to everyone!!!  We hope everyone has had a wonderful fall and are all ready for winter.  Can you believe it is already that time again?!  

Did everyone have a nice Thanksgiving last week?  We certainly did.  God is so good and we have so much to be thankful for!!  We had a very relaxing couple of days as a family which was so nice - I don't remember the last time we had two days in a row like that!!  

Well, I'm sure I don't have to tell you (as you've probably already figured out :) that I have about 3 months of blog posts to catch up on.  I just have one thing to say - that's a lot of posts!!!  So if anyone is still out there after this blog laying dormant for so long :), I hope you'll enjoy all of the catching up!  I decided that there were too many good memories to miss posting about them so even though they're a little old, I'm going to post them anyway and hopefully give you a good idea of life in the Cochran home over the past few months.

Before I go any further though, I'd like to tell you probably one of the biggest pieces of news around here right now:  daddy is going to Germany in January.  But that is not all - as long as nothing changes, it looks like we will all be going to Germany as well!!  We are so thankful to be able to be with daddy!!  You can imagine all the preparations we have underway right now - life has certainly been just a little crazy around here.  It's amazing all of the planning that goes into something like this.  More on that later...

So I will leave you with a whole string of scheduled posts (scheduled in case I forget to get on and post some each day! :) starting in September where I last left off.  

Blessings to all!

~Savannah (for all the rest!)