Storm Chasers

Do any of you watch the show Storm Chasers?  Last night there was some severe weather in our area, including at least one tornado.  This morning when I looked out the window there was one of the crews from Storm Chasers parked at the hotel across the street.  I could see the camera crew taking video and several of the people from the show.  It looks as if they are still hanging around waiting for the next severe weather to strike, which is in the forecast again today.  In our little town this creates a bit of excitement (at least for me). 

This is the main vehicle.  There are also several other SUV’s that travel with them parked over there.

I have heard that various celebrities, athletes and other stars stop by our little town, but I have never actually seen any of them.

Mother’s Day

These cuties are why I celebrate Mother’s Day.

We took a quick picture before church.  It was already so nice outside that no one needed jackets.  By late afternoon it was 92 degrees.  A nice warm Mother’s Day.  It was also very relaxing; every one of us took a nap this afternoon.  I don’t know if that has ever happened.

We hope that all the other mother’s had a great day too!

Construction, Construction, and More Construction

The last week and a half have been full of (you guessed it) construction.  Our first project was at our local park.  Our city is putting in a fishing pier at the dam, and a group we belong to paid for and did the work to put in the cement it will be attached to.  We started this project last Friday when the wind was starting to come up.  David happened to be gone helping a friend in SF with a different construction project.  The girls and I, and a couple of other women worked with one of the city employees to build the frame.  On Tuesday of this week, we were able to finish the forms the dirt work, and lay the rebar.  The cement was poured on Wednesday.

David is at the way bottom of the picture.  One of our church members is running the packer.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get any other pictures with my own camera or cell phone.

As I mentioned above, David was doing a different project the day we started the concrete project at the park.  One of his college friends wanted to start framing his basement to finish it, so David headed to SF to help out.  They work well together and have a great time catching up with each other.  It also gives them some good guy time.

The next construction project was actually next door to us, at our church.  Our church has been needing a new parking lot for a long time, and several weeks ago we had a day of sacrificial giving and raised enough money (along with what we had been saving) to redo the main parking lot and pave the parking lot on the alley side of the church.  Last Friday, the church board and the city came and tore up all the old pavement.  The girls had a great time watching everything from our living room window.  Monday, the construction crew came and started the dirt work, and by Thursday, all the concrete was poured.  On Friday, the whole project was finished, and today everyone could park on it.  It looks really nice and gives the girls a great place to learn to ride bikes, or to ride their John Deere tractors!

Just as the project next door was getting wrapped up we started our next project—shingling the roof.  We had a couple of spots that were leaking (or pouring in, depending on the wind), and the wood shingles had started peeling up with the high winds we’ve been having.  David and one of our other friends was helped by a friend from town who does construction and has all the equipment (telehandler).  The roof of the house is broken up into four sections, and the men were able to get three of them done in the two days they worked on it.  Our garage is the only section that we haven’t tackled yet.  We have to lift up and support the extended trusses at the back of the garage.  The plan is to complete that tomorrow, especially with the forecast of rain.  Once that is complete, they can do the shingles.

David and John on the roof.

The telehandler, which was a great asset.

The weather cooperated as much as we could expect it to.  The wind wasn’t too bad, it was warm, and we didn’t have any rain.

Sounds of Different Ages

It is fun to hear the ways my kids are growing up.  The development of language is so quick.  Bentley can identify animals as we are out walking or driving.  She may not be able to pronounce their names perfectly, but we can definitely tell what she is saying.  Sometimes she even makes their sounds, but she is a lot better at making their sounds when we ask her what a certain animal says.  Bentley also really loves Bria and says her name all the time.  Right now she is only able to say “Bia”.

Bria on the other hand, is learning all kinds of things and is always communicating them to us.  She asks questions about things like momentum and says words like hypothesis.  Spelling is one thing that has always been interesting to her.  One day on the paper she was writing on were the letters “UV”.  She proceeded to tell me that it was the word “of” that she had sounded out.  Obviously, that is not the word “of”, but when you sound it out those would be the letters that make sense.  We have been working on letter sounds for a while, and she has been trying to sound out words and spell them for some time too; but for some reason that day just seemed to make her more grown up.

Yesterday, Bria had a child development screening (the same as pre-kindergarten screening).  The people who did the tests were impressed, and said that she could hold a nice conversation.  Even though Bria is not old enough for kindergarten this fall, the screening showed that she would be ready if she could go.  We are glad that she is doing so well.  Honestly, she is easy to teach because she is so curious about learning.

The sounds in our house never stop.  I hope that it continues to mean that the girls are learning new and exciting things.

Easter Fun

The girls and I headed to my parents’ for a couple of days before Easter. Grandma had all kinds of Easter activities for the girls, which kept them busy the whole time.

The first night we dyed eggs. The youth center that my mom runs is a great place to do it. Messes are easier to clean up and there is lots of room. Dying eggs before Easter has been a tradition in my family since I was little, and it is something that they still love to do (even if my siblings are all grown up). I seem to be the only one who doesn’t get to excited about it. I’m sure it has something to do with my aversion to things that make big messes that could be hard to clean up.

Bentley was also excited about dying the eggs, but she just kept trying to drop them into and take them out of the dye. We tried to just let her watch, but she was always reaching for the dye so we found something else for her to do.

One of the most fun parts was watching my dad dye eggs. I don’t know if we have ever seen him do it before. He liked making them two colors and had a very steady hand for holding half the egg in one color then turning it and holding the other half in another color. It was funny how excited he was about it. My brother also had a good time taping his egg and getting it three different striped colors. It was obvious that he is an auto body repair person.

The next day was spent swinging and hunting for Easter eggs outside, the ones we had dyed.

Bentley can’t sit on the swing yet, so grandma helped her by holding her. Bria then thought she needed to push the swing.

Bentley enjoyed finding the eggs. I couldn’t get very good pictures of Bria because she was running around the yard looking for eggs.

We came back home Saturday morning, so that this morning we could be part of our church’s sunrise Easter service. We had church at 7:30 am this morning. In order to get the girls ready, we had to wake them up, which they were not happy about and continued to let us know that while we were at church. After the sunrise service, we had breakfast at church, and then had our regular Sunday school and church services. The girls were so crabby after Sunday school that D brought them back home. That concluded our Easter activities. I didn’t even make an Easter meal since we were going to be spending so much time at church this morning. The lazy afternoon was really nice.

We hope that all of you had a joyous Resurrection Day. The reason that we have hope in eternal life is in the fact that Jesus is Risen from the grave. His death alone could not save us, but because he was raised again we can be certain that we can receive eternal life by placing our faith in a living Savior.

As a side note: our cell phone service switched over to AT&T on Thursday and all the pictures above were taken with my new phone. The camera on the phone seems to work quite well, however, we are not so sure about the actual phone service yet. There seems to be some kinks that need to be worked out.

April Snow

We just had a very wet April snow storm. It didn’t even last 24 hours and we had about 8 inches of snow. That doesn’t include the rain and ice we had before the snow.

This a picture of our pine trees in the back yard. They are so weighed down by snow that the lowest branches are almost touching the patio. Usually, we can walk underneath the branches while walking on the deck.

The girls thought it would be fun to get outside and play in the snow. We haven’t had wet enough snow to build a snowman yet this year, so D and Bria built one yesterday.

Getting started on the snowman. I think they were adding the middle snowball.

Bentley couldn’t get around in the snow very well, so she just stood on the sidewalk most of the time (it doesn’t help that her boots are too big).

Her adorable round face with her hat on was too cute.

Before the snow stopped, and we were all just hanging out in the house, D was listening to some music and Bentley wanted to listen too.

Do you think that she is going to want her own iPod in a few years?

Slow, Slow, Slow…

We haven’t done too much out of the ordinary the last three weeks, and I haven’t had the motivation to update the blog.  We have spent some time with both the grandparents, but there aren’t many pictures to show for it.  Because it has been such a long time since I updated the blog I thought I would at least put up some more recent pictures.

Both girls helping grandma wash dishes.  Really just making a bigger mess for her to clean up.

Bria using a bulletin from church to type on the computer.  What a professional.

Bentley learning to take her own pants off and put them back on.

Tattoos that the girls found.  Once I put one on Bria, Bentley insisted on having one too.

There have been plenty of memorable moments in the last month, but they are not all on camera or they are something that only parents find interesting.