Brandon was so excited to get in his little Bimmer and take it for a spin. Sadly, he discovered the next day that it had a leaking head gasket...darn it all! So he spent his 2 weeks at home taking his car apart and putting it back together. He did a great job though...it drove all the way to Utah with no problems!

Mothers Day Greeting

To our mothers: come sit in our living room for a few moments so we can share some music with you!

Make a Smilebox greeting

We honor our mothers who taught us what was most important in life: God and Family

Lacrosse !

Saturday the girls had their first Lacrosse game in Tulsa. They were so excited, had just been given their uniforms and were so ready to play. There are not very many girl teams in this region of the US, so we have to travel to play games.

 

The girls won their game in the morning and Justin's team won both of their games.

 

Lacrosse combines many skill sets from other sports: soccer, football, basketball, hockey.
For the boys, it is a contact sport and they have to wear gear similar to football players. The girls are not as physical, so they don't have to wear the gear. They all wear mouthguards and look quite funny when they are in!

 

All three of the kids love the game and have quite a lot of fun practicing together. Justin throws the ball against the back of the house on the brick wall, so I hear "thump, thumpity, thump over and over..." At times it sounds like he is trying to practice against the wall upstairs, but we had one ball go through the wall in our room when the boys put it on the treadmill - you know - newton's law - an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by another force. In this case, the heavy ball made a perfect round hole in the wall before anyone could catch it!

 

Our Easter Bunnies

We found our big dog digging at a spot in the flower bed and when we investigated what she was trying to get at, discovered that it as a nest of bunnies. There were three in the nest still, one had become a snack for the dog and another was ouside of the nest and had passed on.

We made a box nest in the kitchen and put a lamp by it for warmth. This is how we fed the babies, and although we took great pains to love and care for them, they died one by one - the last on Easter morning. So there were many sad kids in our home last week. We are comforted that God knows each person and creature and loves them all. He will watch over this little bunny family until we can see them again. The kids have such tender hearts and had come to love these tiny creatures. We did our very best to care for them, but they really needed their mommy! We all need a mommy!

March Madness Wall Style

 

The girls and Justin have started Lacrosse and they all absolutely love it! The only down side is that games right now are 2-4 hours away! Yikes! This means a whole day event when we go to a game and more often than not, we divide and conquer. The second half of the season has all home games and that starts after this next game so we are thrilled!

 

The "Madness" element comes in when you add baseball into the mix. The boys have practices two times a week and if you add Lacrosse three times a week and multiply that times 5 kids...oops! We are consolidating and eliminating things - it is a balancing act.

 

Justin has picked up the game, loves his team and thoroughly enjoys playing.

 

Yesterday our big dog found a nest in the back yard that contained several baby bunnys. The kids were so excited that the Easter bunny came early! The dog was just so pleased with herself and with true Lab style, she went after these helpless baby bunnys and we got there too late for one, but saved three. The sad part is that our indoor dog found the box and started after one of them and he died a few hours later. These are the two left and we are trying to feed them with a tiny bottle with puppy milk. They don't drink much, but seem satisfied after a few drops! As soon as they get their eyes open, they are safe to go back outside on their own, but we will make sure they are NOT in our back yard when they do!

The Final Cleanup in our Back Yard

 

Barry climbed up this big old tree in our back yard that seems to lose a branch in every storm and cut all of the lower damaged branches off.

 

He did this all very carefully. He put the ladder up next to the tree ON the fort, tied the chainsaw to a rope and hoisted it up, climbed to a perch and took one branch out at a time, making sure he left enough of the branches to climb DOWN again!

 

The branches did a number on the boys fort and that will be a project that Barry and the boys can do this year. We'll be doing quite a bit of work on the back yard this summer. One branch fell on the house and only dented the gutter - whew! Another large branch fell on the trellis, but we built it with heavy timbers and it just shuddered and did not move again. A very large branch had the potential of falling on the roof and doing damage to the skylight and roof, but Barry did a great job minimizing the damage. We are just glad it is all cleaned up and gone now.

 

Jack - the newest member of the family

This is Jack. He is a Shi-Poodle. He is housebroken, kid-proof (no biting), does not bark, is trained very well and is now the newest member of our family. He came to us from a friend and we are happy to have him here. The kids love having him in the house and since he is hypoallergenic, and doesn't shed or have accidents inside - I am happy to share the space with him. He is sweet and cuddly so the kids are thrilled to have a pet that likes them too!

Storm Pictures

This is one of the large branches that fell in the front yard early in the storm, another fell the next day...right by the kids!

We got ice first, then snow!

This branch went down on our power lines and into the neighbors yard. We'll see when it melts if it got their pool cover. We did not want to get very close to the pool because it was hard to see where the edge ended and pool cover began!

This is one of the evergreen shrubs near the front door. The ice was SO thick!

Deep Freeze in the Ozarks

What a week we have had! The kids were out of school the whole week and today is the first day we have felt safe in driving. Snow is one thing, but ice is a different situation. We lost some big limbs off of our large trees and one fell within a few inches of our back door. Another fell near Justin while he was heating water on the camp stove in the back yard. Another fell while Jeff was in the front yard. We decided to stay completely away from trees from then on. There was a full inch or more of ice on everything. When the sun came out and shone through the ice on everything the world glistenend beautifully. The sad part is that so many of our beautiful trees are just destroyed. It will be a long time before things fill out and look normal again. Anyone in the tree trimming business will do very well! Today as the temperature rose, the ice began to fall. The ground is just covered with chunks of ice and it fell all day long - chunks about the size of hotdogs lie beneath the trees in heaps. It sounded like we had squirrels running all over the roof dropping nuts and scurring about as the ice would fall and slide off of the roof. It was quite a ruckus!We were without power for a couple of days, but had our generator, fuel, food, water and lots of blankets to keep warm. The second day we figured out how to hook the generator up to the furnace - SWEET! We survived better than most. Many of our neighbors had to move to hotels to survive. We have enjoyed the opportunity to serve many neighbors, church members and strangers remove trees from their driveways, roadways and roofs. It will take months to clean it all up - it just means we will have LOTS of opportunities to serve!

Upstairs Camping Trip

 

Justin and Bryce were supposed to go on a winter campout that was going to be held in a cave near our home. Barry was just getting over a bad cold and Justin had missed school due to sickness. It just was not going to happen, but not to be left out, they went camping anyway! They just did it upstairs! Jeffrey made his place in the sofa, Barry "under the stars" and Bryce in his tent. They all had their own lights to enjoy some bedtime reading, Barry's was the funniest. His baseball cap has 2 lights built into the visor! They had a blast!