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:

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...