Tea at Jerris

Several months ago I was taking a walk across the road and decided to walk through a "newish" bunch of houses over there. It was in the fall and I was enjoying all the porch decorations and the nippy fall air. As I passed a big yellow house I noticed a little boy out watering a little tree in his yard. The child had on a pair of dress pants with a cotton button down shirt tucked neatly into his pants.

I noted the time on my watch. It was 9:00 am. Why wasn't the child in school? I stopped to speak with the boy and inquire of him why he was home in the middle of the morning. I already had a pretty good idea why he was. "I'm homeschooled," the boy answered. That was exactly what I thought.

Of course, me being me, I had to find out a little more. I mean, really, here is a homeschooling family across the road from me and I didn't even know it. Granted, I live at the end of cul-de-sac on the other side of the busy highway. Besides all that you have to go up the highway about 1/4 of a mile to get to the road that leads you back to the houses. But since I was on foot I was able to just cross the highway and take a footpath into the neighborhood where I had now found the little boy.

After talking a bit longer with the boy I found out that he was one of 12 children and that his mom was in the hospital having the 13th baby. When I got home I immediately called my girlfriend Kerri and told her about this family. Kerri was expecting her 10th baby at the time. As I explained the situation Kerri has a lightbulb moment and says, "Mrs Darling, I think that lady blogs. There is a lady that lives around here somewhere that is having her 13th baby. I go to her blog now and again from one of my friends blogs."

So Kerri, who blogs at Rambling The Old Paths directed me to a weblog called Trophy of God's Grace. She told me to look at the pics and see if I recognized the boy or the house in any of them. So I did that and sure enough, there it was, the same child I had seen outside. I left a comment on Jerri's blog, the writer of Trophy of Gods Grace and explained the story of how I had met her son and now my girlfriend and I would love to meet her when she had the time.

Well right at that time she was in the hospital but it wasn't to have the baby. It was to try to keep the baby from coming prematurely. She had a lot of complications and when she finally came home we set a date. That date got canceled because of sickness. She went on to have her baby boy and Kerri had a baby girl. Finally this past week we all got in touch with each other again and set the date for this Friday at Jerri's house.

So that is how it came to pass that Kerri and I had tea with Jerri and enjoyed a lovely visit at her big Amish table. It was a lovely afternoon of learning to know each other. Now Kerri is a friend of mine but I originally met her through blogging too. She came on my blog about three years ago and told me that she thinks we live not far from each other. So we started emailing and gave our true addresses and sure enough we live in the same town about four miles from each other. Over the years she and I have became very good friends. We tell each other everything, just like Ya Ya Sisterhood friends!

Yes, I did get some pics from the day. I knew you were waiting for them.
This is us from left to right: Jerri, me, and Kerri.

Now between the two of those ladies they have a total of 23 children. If you add my 3 there was a total of 26 kids between us. Out of all those kids here is a pic of the children that were actually at Jerri's today. Jerri's baby was upstairs sleeping at the time so he didn't get pictured.
Three of the girls and the baby are Kerri's, then there's Tink and Peter(Im guessing you wont have a problem picking them out) and the rest of those are Jerri's. By the way, do you want to know how big Peter is compared to his peers? Jerri's son, standing beside Peter there on the front row, far right, is a year older than Peter. That puts Peters size a little more in perspective for you! This is why I am watching Peters weight like a hawk. No, he's not fat but the potential is there. He is one big kid and yes, I know he's just adorably cute! Ahem!

And here are Kerri and Jerri visiting over tea and nursing their babies.

Thank you so much Jerri for the wonderful tea time visit and for inviting us all over. There's just nothing quite like women's friendships, now is there?