Gurosik's Berry Farm

When Jaren and I were on the last stretch of our move/drive here, we came across a bunch of fruit stands along the small highway in South Carolina. They had all kinds of fruits and veggies and I wanted to go back to get some. I looked on a great website that I love, www.pickyourown.org to find a place we might be able to go and pick our own berries and such. This website is great because you select your state and area you live in to find pick-your-own farms, apple orchards, pumpkin patches, farmer's markets, etc. so go check it out!

Anyway, I found this great berry farm that had strawberries to pick. Unfortunately, strawberry season came and went early this year so by the 1st Saturday in July, the only thing left to pick were flowers.



We went into the market though and they had lots of other things to buy such as blueberries, hybrid blackberries (mentioned in my last post), corn, tomatoes, watermelon, zucchini, and PEACHES! Yum yum yum! They also make strawberry nectar and sell it by the bottle or even make it into a slushy. We got samples and boy was that stuff sweet! Too sweet to drink more than the 2 Tbsp size sample we had.



This isn't a picture of anything significant. I just thought this field with all of the trees is pretty.



On the highway to the farm we came across some very lovely yet LARGE houses. I snapped a few pictures and figured I would post them but I the pictures don't do them justice.







Yes, I was snapping the pictures while driving by in the car...hence the car in the next lane. Even though we didn't end up picking strawberries, it was still a fun little adventure that got us out of our apartment. I need to go find some more yummy peaches. I could eat them everyday!

My First Berry Pie

I've seriously slacked in the last month on keeping up on my blog! For those who really care, I apologize. Anyway, Jaren and I have just been hanging out in our little apartment waiting until the day we can move into our house! We are getting ever closer to the day! Being here in this apartment with none of our stuff (including books and movies) and no projects we can work on really limits the amount of activities we can come up with. We are VERY bored here. It's a good thing this apartment complex has a pool! Jaren LOVES the water so much it's like I'm taking a kid to the pool the way he puts his goggles on and swims all over. If there are kids in the pool he just can't resist going over to make friends and play with them in the water. What a funny guy!

A few weeks ago we made a trip out to a berry farm and got some hybrid blackberries. I'll post pictures of our trip out there when I get the pictures off the other camera. These blackberries were huge! I froze some and made a blackberry pie with the rest (and some raspberries mixed in).



As you can see these three blackberries nearly cover my entire hand!






The finished product! So this wasn't exactly from scratch because I didn't have a pie tin or a pastry cutter (or blender) to make pie crust dough so I cheated and bought frozen pie crust. The filling didn't have quite enough sugar so it was pretty tart but with vanilla ice cream it was good. Next time I will make sure to add more sugar but the rest of it was great!

We love it here! Only occasionally is the heat too much. With the humidity it doesn't matter if it's 85° or 100° you will be dripping sweat if you are outside too long. I have an embarrassing yet funny story I will post about later. I have many more things to post and I promise they will get posted soon. I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying their summer!

The Big Move to Georgia

Considering the fact that the move happened a week and a half sooner than we anticipated (finding out 2 weeks before) I think all went pretty well. I had a lot less packing time than I thought but was able to get everything done. I was sad to leave friends in Wisconsin and my wonderful neighbors, but other than that I didn't have a second thought about leaving. We made the long, 12 hour drive from Sparta to Louisville, KY to stop and visit Jared and Jenny. Thank goodness we decided to stay a day before continuing our trip! We needed the break! It was really nice to see them again! Thanks for the french toast Jared! :)

Our second big day of traveling turned out to be a very long one even though the distance was a lot shorter than our first day. About an hour into our drive we come across a HUGE traffic jam. It was already getting hot at 10:00 am and as I discovered on the first day, the air conditioning was going out on our Tacoma. Jaren was driving the moving truck so he still had a nice cool cab. Anyway, the freeway had been closed down completely because of a huge accident. The police were having everyone exit the freeway and re-routing them down a country road for about 3 miles before getting back on. It added about 2 1/2 hours to our trip by the time we both got through. We came across 2 other accidents that we were close enough to when they happened that we were able to get through pretty quickly. I was trying not to melt in the car but we finally arrived at our apartment around 8:30 pm. I'm very grateful that our trip from Sparta to Augusta (driving through 8 states) was made in safety.

The next morning we had to unload the truck and return it. We headed over to the storage unit and proceeded to spend the next 4 hours unloading the truck and loading the storage shed. We were sweating from the time we got there at 9:00 am. I underestimated the humid Georgia heat! Wow! We had cloud cover a lot of the time so the sun wasn't beating on us directly which was a blessing but by the time we were done we were drenched in sweat. I mean DRENCHED! I had to get towels out for us to sit on in the car because it was like we had jumped in a pool with our clothes on. GROSS! You know it's bad when you sneeze and sweat goes flying off your face...or you sit on something and leave a wet spot where you were sitting. But we stayed hydrated and made it through without either of us becoming a heat casualty. When we move all of out stuff into our house in a month, I will definitely be calling on ward members to help us! It was almost too much for me. Thank goodness our apartment complex has a pool! Although, it's so hot here that the pool feels like it's filled with bath water...and it's not heated (except by the sun). It wasn't as refreshing as I had hoped but the weightless feeling was sure nice on our sore bodies. We then treated ourselves to our favorite Italian restaurant (Carrabba's) then came home and crashed. We went to our ward on Sunday where it just so happened that they were changing the Bishopric. There are lots of nice people and were are excited to be in a WARD again!

For the last of our update, Jaren has started work now and says he works with a bunch of nice old ladies. Even though our apartment is furnished, we still have several boxes of various things I am trying to get organized. Our truck is in the shop now getting fixed so I don't have a car. I need to go to the grocery store but that will have to wait until Jaren gets home and I can use the car. I am looking for jobs (boo). We finally got all of our money back from our bank account fraud (yeah!). We walked through the house again and realized we have a LOT more work than we thought. I'm really glad we have time to clean before we move in. We are both happy that we're here and excited for all of the things to do. We have lots of places to explore and those will be posted on our blog in the future. We hope you are all doing well and had a good Father's Day weekend. We'll continue to keep you updated and hopefully we'll get some pictures up of the area soon.

With love,
Jaren and Emily

Another update: Jaren came home and told me our total bill to fix our truck will be $2500. So much for fixing the house up to be livable in the next few months. I guess we'll have to suffer with cement floors a little longer than anticipated. That's just how it goes! When it rains, it pores!

What a mess!

Jaren and I start our move in a few days. We will try to make it to Georgia (18+ hrs drive without stops) by Friday night or Saturday. I'm hoping to have enough time to get everything unloaded into the storage unit, truck returned, settled into our furnished apartment, and make a grocery shopping trip before Sunday. We won't be able to close on our house until the beginning of August so we'll be staying in a "Corporate Apartment" where it's fully furnished including linens and housewares. Rent is pricey but it does include all utilities, even cable. It should only be for a month and a half if all goes well. Anyway, the whole packing process hasn't been too terrible or overwhelming, thank goodness. However, our place is a mess! I need to finish packing today and get the boxes organized so we can move around without tripping on things.

I thought I would include a few pictures. I know I never did post pictures once we got everything all decorated. This is my living room looking all pretty.





And this is a view near the entryway showing the dining room and living room.



This is what my living room looks like now.



Here's the dining room.



And all of the boxes between the two.



This certainly isn't all of the packing. It's scattered around the house right now. My goal is to finish all of the box packing today. Suitcase packing will be tomorrow along with the laundry and cleaning the entire house. So much fun.

I decided to throw this picture in as well. This was the brightest rainbow I have ever seen! It was even cooler when I first saw it because it was a FULL rainbow. I went for my good camera but found the battery was dead so I searched for our little one. By the time I found it and got the picture, half the rainbow was gone. This side was still pretty bright. Oh well.



Time to get back to work. I have a lot to do. I'll update our blog once we get to Georgia!

Farewell Wisconsin! I hope to never endure one of your winters again!