Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Summer project

Our summer project is coming along nicely. It has been delightful to watch Joe carefully craft a beautiful and practical work of art in our front yard. We have had lovely visits with our neighbors and the numerous people that walk and drive by as we are busily constructing our walls. The children love to run across the top of the walls and their daddy loves to see how sturdy the walls are when they do! ;) A few days ago we had a busy day and a work filled evening and then were able to have a relaxed meal perched atop "the wall".

I have been delving deep into some of my favorite teaching books and am so inspired and excited about this coming school year. What a wonderful storehouse of information can be packed into the pages of a book! Here is my favorite quote for today:

"What I am saying is simply this: As Christian parents we are concerned about
building whole people--people who are alive emotionally, spiritually,
intellectually. The instruction to train up a child in the way he
should go
encompasses so much more than teaching him the facts of the
gospel. It is to train the child's character, to give him high ideals, and
to encourage integrity. It is to provide largeness of thought, creative
thinking, imaginative wondering--an adequate view of God and His
world... A young child, a fresh uncluttered mind, a world before
him--to what treasures will you lead him? With what will you furnish his
spirit?"
Honey for a Child's Heart, Gladys Hunt

I am looking forward to a year of enlarging: character, ideals, integrity, largeness of thought, creative thinking, imagination... How marvelous to delve deep this coming year!!!

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Seven Blessed Years

July 15, 2000
God's work is marvelous. We thank Him for blessing us...

A wonderful beginning...
Our parents, (and Gannon), who poured so much into us, helping to shape and bring us to maturity.
" You are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh!!!"

July 15, 2007
God's wonderful blessings on our married life: four precious children! We are thankful for seven years of loving, living and growing together.

Landscaping Project: Day 5

Day 5: Blocks and ditches. We dug and dug and placed and placed. How special to prepare a wall together...

We don't have dirt, we have clay. So we tried soaking the trenches to soften everything. We needed to make a 15" trench, which we would fill up with 12" of small rock and then place the brick. David, Jonathan, and Thomas were great helpers!
Dig, dig, dig
Abigail got some mud on her shoes so she needed to clean them before she could countinue helping.
Daddy and Abbie with the first part of the wall complete!!!

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Landscaping Project: Day 4

Day four began as an errand day and ended with some preparations for the wall. Not a lot of visible results for a lot of work. The past few days have certainly spoiled us as far as visibility of a project. (Not much can compete with cutting trees down!) Tomorrow the landscaping blocks will come!!!
We had violin this morning so we picked up Uncle David to be a helper in our project. We were able to take him with us to swimming lessons. What a blast to watch him do handstands on the floor of the pool, walk across the pool on his hands etc... He is an excellent worker and we are delighted to have this time with him. Here you see Jonathan and Uncle David preparing an area for Joe to dig the 12" ditch which will hold the gravel for our new wall.
A willing helper
Joe, starting the ditch, with Thomas removing rocks.
A joyful Elizabeth :)

A refreshing break

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Landscaping Project: Day 3

Day three started out with the demise of our last pine tree. It was probably the trickiest one to come down. It had a fork mid-way up and had entwined itself where it was too high to cut. Joe cut the "mouth" (as JJ says) and I held the rope and nothing happened. He pulled and nothing happened. We ended up pulling from a different angle and "Timber!" it came down. The other side came down with no glitches.

Clean-up was a bit more tiring, we ended up giving a Sundrop for every 20 logs stacked. (We have started giving Sundrops at breakfast for anyone that is dressed to their toes with their bed made and jammies hung on the hook. Also, it is a reward for various virtuous acts performed throughout the day. When our Sundrop jar is filled we will go on an adventure of mom and dad's choosing: a beach trip, or an ice cream trip, or picnic at the park, etc...) We had everything picked up a little before noon and had an early lunch then naps for the younger ones.

During naps I did some planning for this coming school year and I'm sooo excited about what we will be doing. Last night we ordered some books from Queen Homeschool and Sonlight that look very inspiring and delightful! I am looking forward to another formal year of schooling.

Back to our project. Our next step was landscaping blocks. Hmmmm. We decided not to go to Home Depot but decided to go to a block company. We found and ordered some gorgeous block that will be delivered on Friday.

In the evening Joe went to a school board meeting, hoping to witness a confirmation of a new charter school his boss was hoping to open in the fall. There was a "Nay" vote, for no apparent valid reason.

Tomorrow will begin Project Day Four...

Our new view from the front door.
A view from the driveway towards the north.

Landscaping Project: Day 2

Our second day, Tuesday, Joe went out and cut down two "small" pine trees on the north side of the driveway. We then cut the branches and carefully put the limbs in the dumpster and the logs in the growing wood pile. We had to decide if we wanted to keep the front pine tree. We decided that we didn't want it because the big pine tree would be more visible if the smaller ones were not competing. We met with an arborist last week and he said that pine trees make very deep roots and we didn't need to worry about our foundation because the roots on such a mature tree would not be a concern to our home.



Some hard workers on day 2

Our Landscaping Project: Day 1

We have been having a full, exciting summer. We had planned on doing some home improvements and we are now in full swing! We are focusing on the landscaping of our home. We had a lot of beautiful pine trees and mature bushes. The downside of the bushes being they were too overgrown. Some of the trees were ruining our driveway. So, here are some pictures from Monday, day 1, of our landscaping adventure...

Joe cut this tree down from the south side of the house. It was a "Carrot tree", a very messy tree that has been tricky to keep clean--though the children will miss the little seeds that they loved to play target practice with--we won't miss the mess!

We rented this dumpster and hoped to fit all our trees in. Joe carefully cut the branches and we trimmed the smaller branches off and laid them all in the same direction and then jumped on them to compact them. Our question was: would all four trees fit??? We all worked to make them. Some cut branches and a stump and the beginning of a wood pile in the far left.

Abbie made an "A" out of a few logs. :)

My Man's New Toy...


Sleeping Beauty

I love pictures of children sleeping. Their cherabic profiles are so enchanting to me. Here is our beautiful six month old Elizabeth Noelle:


Saturday, July 7, 2007

Our Children

We couldn't find Thomas! A quick search found him...in Allegro's water pot!


Abigail's newest love: Grammie's cat, Daisy's, kittens


Take a good look...there are now officially two missing teeth!!!

Our beautiful daughters

Thomas James, 2 years.

Star of India

We visited the Star of India last Monday with some friends of ours that were visiting from Israel. The Star of India is the oldest ship still sailed. She is a beautiful ship and we had a delightful time exploring her and imagining immigrating from England to New Zealand--a trip of nearly a year!
The beautiful Star of India: reminiscent of days gone by.

At the helm.

Enjoying the ocean view from the beautiful wooden seat.
Abbie, sitting at the dining table. Notice the wooden bar to her right? We think it would be put in place to hold the map steady or perhaps to keep the food from flying off the table???
A fitting cross stitch to grace a room beside the Captain's.

Ryan

I had the most amazing experience on the Fourth. I was at my mom and dad's and I was looking for all of my children and I walked into the school room and there was Ryan, playing a song, to me, with rhyming lyrics and a great chord progression and a terrific voice. We are excited to see where God leads Ryan and just wanted to pass on some pictures that we thought would show you what a giant of a man Ryan already is...

Ryan at 13...
Watch out when he's 20!!!

The Snail...

Thomas is always so carefully focused on one thing at a time. Be it a puzzle, he will master it piece by piece. Be it a job he will do it bit by bit. Be it an ouchie he will not forget he will need a kiss, a band aid, another kiss and a push on the swing and maybe the ouchie will be forgotten... Well, one of Thomas' amazing skills is acting. He loves to sing, dance, giggle and entertain. My younger brother, Colin, was in a play at the end of March and was Snail. Colin has been on a missions trip since late May. The other day Thomas was on my lap and he said, "Mom, where's Snail?" The tone was so sad. Colin is one of Thomas' favorite people. Grammie let him hold her phone with a picture of Colin and Thomas sat looking at it and was horrified when the screen saver came on and hid Colin from view.

(If you'd like to watch the real Snail there is a recording on youtube. search for The Snail with the Mail or I'm coming out of my shell and look for the recording of Colin from Frog and Toad.)

Here's "Little Snail"


I'm carrying a letter...

...a most important letter...

Map