Update on the House

It has been a loooong time since I have posted an udpdate on my parent's house and it's progress...there seemed to be such slow progress that I couldn't make myself post it.  As I was walking through the house today and taking pictures, I see that much progress has been made...there is still a long ways to go in a lot of areas, but these pictures show the progress...I am not good at doing the things I want with pictures, but hopefully you will get the idea.  These two pics are not the exact same angle, but show the progress...from everything being ripped out, framed in, and then insulated.

It seemed to take forever, but the roof finally made it on!  I've never been so excited to see shingles!

The roof FINALLY is all done!  Shingled and beautiful!

Here is the garage...the day after the fire and tonight.  Wow!  Still not fully sided but much improved!

I went in the basement tonight, which has had no work done on it at all...this ceiling fan is covered in mold, as are some of the walls, the furniture, some of the antiques.  It's a mess and is quite smelly.

The kitchen the day after the fire, and tonight.  Makes me tear up seeing it!

These two pics are taken from basically the same angle...drastic improvement, including new windows, roof, siding, and patio door.

I took this one a couple of weeks ago in the dining room when they were mudding the drywall and applying stain to all of the doors, but I can't get it to move earlier in the blog so it is out of order! HA!

It's hard to tell in the picture but some of the ceilings have been treated and paintd.  They look so nice. This is the hallway by the bedrooms.

There is still MUCH to do, but tonight I am not going to think of everything that still needs to be done and how much work is ahead...not only for the construction crew, but for all of us as we tackle the clean up.  Tonight I am going to look at how much has been accomplished and be grateful.

Successful 1st Day of School

Hard to believe, but the 1st day of school has come and gone already!  Today was the day that started the year for a new 3rd grader, 6th grader and soon to be pre-schooler.  I can't believe I'm old enough to have kids in those grades!  Whew!  Woke the boys up this morning and had them get ready right away so we could do some pictures before I had to leave to go to school (my 3rd day).  Here is Grant, all ready to start 3rd grade and very excited about it!

Brock, almost 12 years old and a 6th grader. Wow...hard to believe.

Kiara had to get in on the action too...it wasn't her 1st day of school but the first without her brothers at home with her!

My two handsome boys...brothers and buds!  So proud of these boys.

Mom and kiddos all ready to start the day (although Kiara still has her jammies on). 

Kiara posing for Grandma as they wait on the bus to come to pick up Grant.  Brock leaves earlier on a different bus since he goes to the Intermediate School.  Check out her pose and SHOES!

One last hug goodbye to her buddy Grant.  She will miss them every day....but now she has Grandma all to herself! HA! 

Both boys had terrific first days with no apprehension, nerves or fear!  We prayed together before I left for school and reminded each other that no matter where we are or with who...God stands with us and protects us!  Here's to a great school year!

Baptism Sunday

Today is the day that the Lord has made...Let us rejoice and be glad in it! This is true every day but there's just something about baptism Sunday to get you going.  This year even more so.  Last year Grant wanted to be baptized and we just weren't quite sure he was ready and understood, so we had him wait...so he has been waiting and waiting for this day to arrive...the day that he could show everyone that he wants to live for Jesus!  Woo hoo! Here he is before the service started.

Some people from church have a big pond and large yard area where this is held every year.  There were 20 people baptized today and it was so exciting to see Grant telling how he asked Jesus into his heart and agreeing that he wanted to live for Him.  Here he is giving his short testimony with our Pastor and two of the other younger kids to be baptized.

I think he was a little nervous being in front of the huge crowd...who wouldn't at age 9?...but he is shy anyway, so he was definitely out of his comfort zone.  One by one, each person went in the pond with our pastor and one of the elders to be "dunked".  Get ready Grant...

Washing away the sin and proclaiming the goodness of God in his life...

New in Christ!

I am so proud of him.  I'm proud of the young man he is growing into.  I'm proud that he knows Jesus and wants to serve Him.  I'm proud that even in his shyness he was able to show how he wants to live for Jesus!  We love you Grant and are so very proud to have witnessed you making this decision and be so excited about it.  God has great plans for you and we can't wait to see what they are!

Summertime Fun

I've been bad at blogging all the summer pictures, or at least worse than I had hoped to be.  (Sorry to our PA family.)  The part of summer that Grant's wrist was broken, he got kind of down about not being abl to do some things, so we decided to go mini-golfing to cheer him up.  We had fun and Kiara was a wild woman (why do we expect anything less?).

When we got to the last hole, the balls "disappear" into the hole.  All along the course, Kiara had been getting the balls out of the holes for us..so when she went to get this one, she was a bit confused!

They needed to clean out their final hole as the balls were backing up and she could see them all down there.  Here she is getting a better look!

Finished up...hot and sweaty!

We then decided to hook up the sprinkler in the backyard and wrap up Grant's wrist so he could join in the fun.

Again, wild woman has no fear and would juststand right in the flow of it.

More summer pics to come once they are uploaded.

Love Week 2011

A few weeks back, our church had "Love Week", where we set a goal of hours serving/showing the community the love of Christ.  There were a variety of events scheduled as "church activities" but many didn't feed the needs of my family, with a 3 year old and me getting shots that week and being sore.  So, we came up with our own plan.  We did "little" things like bring in the neighbor's garbage cans, weeding at the park, picking up trash,etc.  The bigger thing that we did was to bake.  How does baking show the love of Christ?  Well, we made cookies, brownies and rice krispies (a lot of them) and then delivered them to a variety of people...from the youth group, to our neighbors, to Daddy's co-workers, to the construction crew at my parent's house.  This was the big one...to the construction crew.  We haven't been "in love" with this crew during this whole process.  That would be putting it mildly!  But, we talked about how showing the love of Christ isn't just for those that we love being around, but those that NEED the love of Christ.  So, the boys delivered the goodies to the crew on a Monday morning.  I think they were shocked at first and then appreciated it.  Something as simple as a container of goodies showed the love of Christ.  I think it has even helped OUR attitude towards them. Here we are making a mess in the kitchen!

Even Kiara got in on the action...she was really good at flipping stuff out of the bowl and being messy!

The kitchen got really messy but we had fun making stuff...mixing in God's love as we went!

And of course...we had to lick the beaters, right?  Yummo!

And Grant didn't think I would actually post this, so I will!  I think he enjoyed the brownie batter! Goofball!

The challenge from that week has been to continue to show the love of Christ wherever we are, whether it is "deserved" or not...after all...none of us DESERVE the love that Christ gives to us and yet He loves us anyway...oh that we could always be like that.

She May Look Like a Sweetie Pie...

Look at this face...Doesn't it look angelic?  Innocent? So incredibly sweet?  Well...she is...but she also can be a stinker.  She even called herself a stinker the other day.  So I have a story.  I have lots of stories of her naughtiness actually...biting a boy in the nursery and breaking the skin, hitting her brothers, running away from us...and the list goes on, but this particular instance...was especially angelic!

I  had to go to the doctor for poison ivy last week.  I only took Kiara with me.  I had to fill out some paperwork when I went because of a new computer system.  As I am filling it out, she goes to the play area of the waiting room and is playing so nicely.  In fact, I was feeling prideful at how sweet she was being.  Pride comes before the fall, right?  Well...I look up just in time to see a tiny little girl walking past Kiara.  Kiara reaches out and pushes her with both hands straight back and onto her bottom and then goes back to playing.  I was MORTIFIED!  I apologized to the mom, made sure the little girl was okay and then made Kiara apologize and come to sit by me in "time out".  I go back to working on the paperwork, while Kiara continually yells at me, "I not in time out!  I NOT in time out!  I not in TIME OUT!"   The entire waiting room was staring and probably thinking...that mother must not discipline her child at all.  I was so embarrassed!

But look how incredibly sweet she LOOKS!!!  When we got back into the patient room she switched into an angel again because it was a Mickey Mouse room and she was adorable jumping around naming the characters and entertaining the nurse and nurse practitioner.

Here is Kiara patting her "horsey".  She sits on the arm of the couch and pretends she is riding a horse, as she watched this a lot at the fair...she saw some of "her girls" lean down and pat their horses at the end of a class, so now she does that too.

If you notice...she has style too.  Cowboy boots and monkey pajamas.  She LOVES her boots.  She was sitting there chatting away with her pretend friends.  Sooo sweet!

Yep, she is a stinker, and ornery and sometimes makes me want to pull my hair out...but I love her to pieces and since she looks like a sweetie pie and actually behaves that way "sometimes"...even the naughtiness is cause to smile at times.  Love this girl and her spunk.  I'm in trouble in the teen years I think.

She has now started requesting me to take her picture...she loves being the model and then seeing the pictures.  We had her 3 year pictures taken today...oh my, she had fun and they turned out wonderfully... Love our little "sweetie pie"!

Back in Action

Last week was a BIG week for Grant!  He was able to get his cast off!  Hooray!  We counted down days, but tried to also remember that he may have to keep it on.  He got the cast cut off, re-xrayed, and then the doc gave us the great news that he could keep it off and have NO restrictions what-so-ever in his activities...Woo hoo!

Grant got to keep the cast (which smells quite lovely by now) and tried to trick the rest of the family into thinking he had to keep it on.  But was smiling too big to make it believable.  Here's Kiara trying out the cast to see what it felt like.  She thought she was pretty cool to be like Grant!

So...first on the list of things to do was SWIM! They swam for a couple of hours and then had to rest, because he had a baseball game that night.  He couldn't wait to get back out on the field and play.  We were nervous about how weak the wrist would be and that he would have a poor game, so we prepared him for that...Well...he played great and got 3 terrific hits and fielded some great plays as well.  In fact...so well that he earned the prize of taking home the game ball (his coach gives one each game).

Unfortunately I had to leave the game early for worship team and missed him getting the ball, but he was still all smiles when I got home to take his picture!

They lost the game, but Grant couldn't have been happier...he got to play instead of be the bat boy AND the game ball!  What a night!

The next morning I open up the paper to read it and this is what I found on the front page of the sports page...

We were shocked to see Grant right there hitting the ball!
Below the picture it even told that this was his first game back from a broken wrist.

We had another game tonight and he played really well again...we think he's just trying to make up for lost time in being gone for 5 weeks of baseball! Way to go Grant!  We're so proud of you!