Before & After

Indie went to the groomer today. It had been since the beginning of March and she was looking pretty woolly. Here are the pics:

Before...
After...

I want to be...

They other day the kids were watching "Mighty Machines" on Netflix through the Tivo. They love that show. This one was about firetrucks. I came in to see what they were watching and Isabella declared, "When I grow up I want to be a fireman!" Then Zach chimed in, "Yeah! When I grow up, I want to be a fire TRUCK!"

Liza later told me that her brother Noel also wanted to be a fire truck when he grew up, so it must be genetic. :-)

Fun at the park

Our PT Cruiser had been acting up for quite a while, overheating if we were in traffic or stopping at a lot of lights. So, I took it in last Monday to have it checked out. They ended up replacing the fan assembly, the thermostat and water outlet that was leaking. What does this have to do with the park? For 2 days I was home with the kids and no car, so we did a lot of traveling by bicycle and bike trailer.

On Wednesday we went to the park and the kids had a great time playing on the climbing wall and the tire swing.



Isabella figured out that she could sit in the middle of the tire swing and balance it out that way. She had lots of fun going very high and spinning around. Zach was not interested in all at going around in circles....

Pictures by Zach

A few days ago Zach got a hold of the camera and took some, shall we say, experimental genre, pictures. He started with a self portrait, but then got a bit more creative...



I like how Indie is looking at the camera in this one like, "What the heck are you doing?"

Global Short Film Stories

In this month's prayer letter, I mentioned a video that we just finished that features stories from people who have been using our films to help start conversations and share their faith. Here it is...

New backyard

Along with the new roof that the hail brought us, we were also able to get a new back yard. Now when I say "get", I mean they came and dropped off 4 pallets of grass, but I had to do the work. I started with a king size rototiller and turned all the dead weeds in to a nice fine dirt. After that was done, I had planned to put grass in on Saturday morning with the help of some friends from our Sunday school class. However, since it was Mother's day weekend, they called me and told me that they were giving the drivers the weekend off, so they would have to deliver the grass on Friday. Joy. It came at 8am on Friday, but I couldn't get home until noon. After I got all the tilling done and took it back to Home Depot, then I started laying in the grass.


Here is the back yard after I finished tilling it. We've also got two new Cleavland Pear trees that we planted a couple of weeks before.

Here is the grass that I got laid down on Friday before I was about to fall over. There was no way I was going to get all the grass laid down and if it stayed on the pallets after 8am on Saturday, it would probably not make it. Thankfully, our neighbors Laurie and Chris saw that I needed help and both came over and jumped right in. Soon after, another neighbor was walking by with his family and he jumped in with us as well. All the kids played with Zach and by dark, all of the sod was down. I was so thankful!

Here you can see the pallets of grass that they dropped off. Below are pictures from the next day. The guys from church (Noel and Matt) still came over and helped to do the detail work... along the edges and around the playscape.

You can see back in the corner by the playscape where there is mostly shade all day. We didn't do that corner because we had to wait a week to get a special shade tolerant grass from a different place.


We used to have a big pile of stones and wood in the far corner of the yard, but with the new grass I was motivated to get rid of all the junk- so now we have a full and beautiful yard.

Today (Saturday) I went and picked up the 3/4 pallet of Amerishade grass and laid it in behind and around the playscape. I got it done just as the rain started to fall.



Finally, last week, Andy came over in late morning and brought a roller that he found for me at a rental place and rolled the whole lawn. It is really light until you fill it with water, then it helps to even out all the sod and push it in to the dirt. I was very thankful for his help since I'm pretty sure my back could not have handled one more thing. :-)

Zach the builder

Zach received this costume from his Aunt Kim for his birthday. He was so excited because it was a "Bob the Builder" outfit. He loves to put it on and play.

Goofballs

Sometimes the kids can be total goofballs, and they love it. A few days ago Zach came down with the princess hat on and quite proud of himself.


About 3 min later, Isabella came down with the "Bob the builder" outfit on, showing off the block building she had engineered.

Kittens

When we were in Houston, the kids had lots of fun playing with the kittens that my sisters have been taking care of. They were found at 1 week old and they have bottle fed them. They will be giving them away when they are off the bottle, but have been fun to play with in the mean time. (The kids lobbied to get one for us, but mommy is firm on the cat issue.)



The kids with their cousins Emmalie and Naomi and the three little kittens.

What?

Last night Zach was wanting to paint. He has some "go paints" that have brushes, but just make the colors appear on the special paper. He decided that he didn't want to paint with those. He said, "I want the driffernt paints."
"What?"
"The driffernt paints."
"Driffernt?" I said.
He replied, "Yes daddy. B.I.O.S. DRIFFERNT!"

After I was able to stop laughing, I asked him if he wanted the different paints- the real water color paints. That was indeed what he was looking for. He and Isabella spent quite a bit of time painting some very nice paintings. :-)