Our plans changed...

What a week. As you may have read below, we were to be on our way to Ohio today. However, as sometimes happens... our plans were changed. Monday evening the mother of a lady at church was found dead. She was only 51 and obviously, the family was quite shocked and surprised. This is the part where "the job" takes priority of necessity. Tim is doing the memorial service and burial today so we will leave tomorrow for Ohio. It means we will miss the wedding, which is a shame but under the circumstances, it is really unavoidable. We talked about driving part way tonight, getting a hotel and then finishing the drive tomorrow but there are several problems with that... 1. Tim won't be home until dinnertime, so we really couldn't get on the road until 6:30 or 7 tonight.... driving at night with the kids, we could only go three, maybe four hours... then spend a fortune for two hotel rooms (7 people can't stay in one room)... get up and rush out the door in order to make it in time to shower and leave for the wedding... it'd be crazy. I'd feel beyond stressed to get there in time and everyone would be miserable. So, we are not spending the money for the hotel (which we don't have anyway), not killing ourselves by packing for a hotel stay (which is more involved than packing to stay with my dad) taking a leisure drive tomorrow and not worrying about getting there. We'll get there after dinner tomorrow and call it good enough.
I have thus far today, finished the laundry and finished packing the kids things (with Hannah's help). My stuff is packed as well... mostly. I have cleaned the camera of pictures so I have fresh, empty cards to fill and charged batteries. I need to load and charge my iPod and print the bulletin for church on Sunday (Frank from Philly is teaching for Tim).
We plan to return late next Friday and I'm sure I'll have pictures and stories to share!

He Rolls!

This was from Wednesday. He first rolled over the Wednesday previous (the 12th), but I was only able to do the sequence pictures this week. He's getting incredibly big, but still cute as anything!

The Mountains are Good

This is one of the best things about living in the mountains. I just adore the fawns at this time of year. Their little spots are too cute and if you've never seen a real live baby deer, go watch Disney's Bambie, because that is just how they behave. They bounce and bounce and bounce everywhere. Most does give birth to two fawns and I've decided it is so they have someone to chase besides their mother, because that is what they do. This one's little brother or sister was more shy and stayed back a bit when I got out my camera. The deer feeder that Tim and the kids made last fall has been great! I'll never get tired of seeing the deer :) I need to go dig up my picture of the eagle's nest too.... another very cool thing!

Here is the promised picture of Jot's room. The lighting makes it hard to tell the color, so you'll just have to take my word for it. It looks better! The baseboards will be done this weekend (hopefully) and then we'll do the big move.
We will be traveling to Ohio next weekend for Tim's niece's wedding. We're staying with my Dad and the kids are beyond excited to go. On the way back home, we'll stop and stay with Julie and Paul in Columbus. We'll take the kids to the waterpark and great fun will no doubt be had by all. I'm not looking forward to hours in the car with five kids, but I am looking forward to seeing my family again.



Lastly, I'll leave you with the picture of my beautiful cherry pie. I was quite proud of it, even if the crust didn't bake entirely :) It was mooshy, but still good. And with some ice cream, how can anything not be good?

The Paint Saga

This is our attempt at using what we have :) The time has come to move Quinton into the room with Jot and this picture tells the story for me. I'll share it with you too... It began when I saw a room with a horizontal stripe painted in it and like it. When we moved, Jot wanted an orange room with red carpet. Tim and I vetoed that choice. I suggested blue with an orange stripe to which Jot liked the idea. So off I went to Lowes and chose some colors. Well the blue I picked was too dark in hindsight and the horizontal orange stripe made the room look small and confining. It was that way for nearly two years though, so at least it wasn't a total waste. Before moving Quinton in, we decided now was the opportunity to repaint. Tim primed and rerolled the ceiling while we discussed colors (this time only giving Jot a bit of choice in the matter). I thought we should paint it the green tea color like the family room since we had three gallons left over and wouldn't be wasting the money on more paint. Tim agreed that we shouldn't spend more money on paint when we had so much, but wasn't keen on the green. He liked blue better. The only blue we had was really bright (the left over of what I chose before) or a nice blue (from our bedroom) but not much of it.... so we set out to begin mixing colors. We lined up all the paint we owned and played for a couple of hours... finally mixing our bedroom blue, with some green tinted ceiling paint and the green tea to get a nice very subtle teal color... what a compromise! His room is now painted (pictures forthcoming)and is only waiting for baseboards, new closet doors and a new door. We are replacing all the luan doors with white panel doors as we do each room. I will say the his room already looks tons bigger and better. Soon Quinton will join him in there and Tim can finally reclaim the office. We have already begun (well Tim has) to repaint the office as well. I had painted it a lovely teal and yellow (2 walls of each) when it was my scrapbook room, but Tim wants it tan. It will be another home mixing job to get his paint right, but we have the paint already and are determined to use what we have! I have two gallons of $5 oops paint from Lowes in a light tan to which we will add the left over Ralph Lauren Burlap from his study closet... all together it should be a nice color (I hope.). It's been a busy few weekends, but as we keep reminding ourselves, progress is being made. I look at pictures of the final walk through on the house and am reminded that as disorganized and unfinished as it looks now, it is a zillion times better than when we first moved in.

The Pictures From Before

Look I got them to load! Here's Hannah and her cherry picking adventure picture....



Tim talking to the group before beginning the baptism...



And our friend Cathy. Lou is helping Tim here...

So Far This July....

I'll begin by saying that I've been working on this blog entry for about four days now. Evidently there is a problem getting my pictures to imbed within my entry and I kept getting frustrated with it and giving up. So I finally decided to just post the thing without pictures and later add them if I can get it figured out. I also thought it a good idea to post this before it got any longer!

So I come back from some errands on Tuesday and Tim says to me that Michele Wysong called. I at first though he was just making up some name and kidding around as he is known to do, but I'm a bit taken aback because I actually know a Michele Wysong. In fact I graduated with her and indeed she did call. After thinking about it, I'm shocked to realize that 20 years ago I graduated from high school. Wow. Michele called back a bit later and we had a nice chat. It was rather odd talking to someone you haven't seen or spoken to in 20 years, but we managed a 30 minute conversation so I'd say I did OK :) She caught me up a bit on the plans and after we hung up I got to thinking. I haven't stayed in touch with one single person I went to high school with. And I wonder, is that odd? In so many ways I feel so, so different than who I was 20 years ago, but after speaking with Michele, I realized that everyone else is somewhat different as well. It was kind of fun to catch up a bit and remember my friends from school. I'm not sure if we'll attend the reunion or not, but it made me think I might have fun if we do go. Does that mean I've arrived at a comfort place with myself that I'm not afraid to "return"? Hmmmmm....?

The fourth of July came and went here with just a handful of calls to security. I'll not bore your with the details of our reckless weekender neighbors.

Thursday night, Tim had finished verse by verse through Exodus and did an overview of the Old Testament. It was fabulous and I recommend anyone that is reading to listen to it online . This week he's doing the New Testament. This stuff was so helpful to me as a new beleiver. I was amazed that I had gone to church for much of my early life and didn't know some of the most basic information about the Bible. Hannah stayed upstairs in the sanctuary for it and said she learned a lot even. Good stuff.

The next day, Friday the 7th, Hannah, Jeanne and Nancy went cherry picking. Sour cherries fresh from the tree...mmmm. Hannah made a pie that night and I made one a couple of days ago. More good stuff.

Saturday Tim had men's prayer in the morning and I got a head start on totally emptying the garage. By the time he got home, the kids and I had it about a quarter of the way empty. We all cleaned and sorted everything and boy what a lot of stuff! Tim and I removed the back shelf that the previous owner had put in and moved his work benches around. It took nearly 12 hours to get everything back in and cleaned up, but it does look a ton better. Tim seems glad to have his garage in more workable order. I had a pile of stuff to freecycle and thankfully, nearly everyone has already picked up their items. Everyone was very tired that night.

Sunday was the church picnic and baptism after the service. There was a chance of rain forecast, but the day turned out beautifully. Sunny, warm and perfect. In all, eight people were dunked this year. I love baptisms. It is so neat to see people take that step of obedience. It always makes me think back to my own baptism 19 years ago and how new it all was then... even more good stuff. The pictures here (that should be here :) ) are of Tim explaining to the people what baptism is all about and what was going to happen. Then there is one of our friend Cathy. Cathy is such a neat person and she was able to have much of her family there with her. She has had some difficult times these last few months and this day was so important to her. We were all glad to be there with her. Soon the other pictures will be on the website if you'd like to check them out. The guy helping Tim is Lou. Tim baptized Lou and his wife, Danielle, two years ago. What a glorious thing it is to see him serving now. God is really cool. I need to remember when things are difficult that days like this are great reminders of His faithfulness to complete the work He has begun.