Road Trip Home- Day 1

 August 8, 2020:

Today we left Vredenburgh and started our trip home. We took a detour to Selma and Montgomery to show the kids some of the most important places in the civil rights movement. Later we went to Auburn University and were able to get onto the football field. We were lucky because it was some sort of social distanced graduation and we were able to get right in and onto the field. After the stop at Auburn, we drove a few more hours and got a hotel in Greenville, SC.

'Bama Week 3

 August 8, 2020:

Our third and final week in Alabama was a lot more of the same and we loved it! Things that stand out as different from the usual report (though we did a lot of the same work as previous weeks) include finishing construction on the new dock, a second ride for the kids on the horses, skeet shooting, Molly landing a huge bass, trapping and killing a wild pig, and some painting. Molly was hard at work in her free time building boot jacks. She is very proud of her hard work and that there was no adult involvement. She plans to sell them when she gets home. The top highlight of the week was the shrimp boil that we had on our last night. We invited William and his family as well as Mike to thank them for everything over the past three weeks. We were the beneficiaries of a delicious and super southern meal. William has this giant cooking pot that you put water and cajun spices into. You bring it to a boil and add potatoes, corn on the cob, sausages and shrimp. When it is all cooked they dump it onto a big wooden board and we all stood around eating. You peel your shrimp and drop the shells into holes cut into the board. It was delicious and so memorable. William set up the skeet shooter that night and we all got to give it a try. The kids had trouble with the weight of the shotgun but Molly and Casey managed to nail a target. Our dock project was finished but unfortunately, we were short one can of stain so we didn't get to see it to 100% completion. We left town Saturday at lunchtime and are sad to see this adventure come to an end. 

'Bama Week 2

August 1, 2020: Our second week in Alabama has been great. We've been doing a lot of the same type of work. Our typical day goes like this; 6:30am wake up. Dressed, breakfast and then down to the barn. We meet William at 7:00am to feed the horses and the dogs. We bring all the horses in from the fields, get them sorted into their specific stall and then feed them. Then we head to the kennel to feed the dogs. These are the bird dogs which are English Pointers. We hose down the floor of their pen, then bring them each a bowl of food. Two or three get let out into the running pen each day for exercise. After that, we head to the dock to continue working on our big project. This week was phase two of the dock. We removed the old stairs and ramp leading from the road. We are building a much larger, sturdier dock area. This was harder work as we had to dig a lot of post holes in very rocky hard soil. We would work for hours, sweat a ton and not see as much progress, but by the end of the week, we got a lot done. The kids were helping a lot. Using power saws, measuring, carrying boards, and drilling. We work until noon, break for lunch for an hour and then work again until 3:00 or so. Other random jobs we've done this week include more mowing, weeding in the sunflower fields and giving the dogs baths. For fun this week James has had the girls in the woodshop. They are building boot removers. James and the kids rode the horses one day through the sunflower fields. They all had a blast. We went to visit one of the timber crews at work in the woods. They let James drive the tree cutter and let the kids ride along to cut down a few trees. One guy cuts them down, one drags them out of the woods, one grabs them and strips them of all their branches and then stacks them onto the truck. It was a wild, muddy ride into the woods. William also took us out on his boat on the Alabama River. The kids went tubing and waterskiing and we all went swimming. It was great because it has been very hot here.