Brickyard 400

I don't know how I did it, but I got Steve to take a day off today! What fun it was to see Nascar's Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis speedway. Nascar is celebrating the 15th year of racing in Indy, and yet we have never been to see them. Actually, the Nascars were quite a bit slower than Indy cars and the experience didn't feel quite as exciting. Nevertheless it was wonderful to get away from our church work and experience another world! It was soooo hot today sitting at the track in the sunlight at 86 degrees with no breeze. We took the Solstice covertable and had the top down experiencing the hot sun all the way there and back. A tall glass of ice water and a good luke-warm shower was certainly welcome when we walked into our air-conditioned home.

Day two at Grandmas

Day two at Grandmas has proven to be lots of fun! Oh....let's see, what did we do? Well, the kids got here around 7:00 a.m. and we had oatmeal for breakfast. Oh, and hey...Jaybin likes grapefruit! We hung laundry on the line outside. Now, this was a novel function for the kids, because they ran through my clean laundry with broomsticks for over an hour - screaming and laughing and knocking my clean laundry on the ground. Kinsen soon learned how to re-hang Grandpas big colorful T-shirts which I think became the game more than riding their pretend horses through the entourage of dangling clothing. We proceeded to a rousing game of climbing on the bunkbeds and throwing stuffed animals on each others heads. Soon we embarked on making sweet tea, which I might add the children love - a lot. Grandpa came home at lunch and put on Sleeping Beauty for Kinsen to watch while she ate her lunch of Chef-boy-ar-dee Ravioli (which was grandpas request). We had a big conversation as to what Sleeping beauty's name was....was it Aurora, Briar Rose or Sleeping Beauty? After lunch we took naps (all of us, including Grandpa). THEN....outside once again to run in the sprinklers. The sprinklers were not a hit, but take the sprinklers off the hose and voila, we had .....fun of the greatest degree. Check out these pictures.

Grandmas Garden

Check out my garden this year. It is really pretty now with all the day lillies blooming. I enjoyed taking pictures of Kinsen and Jaybin today while we were moving plants and digging in the dirt.

A Day With Grandma

Kendra is taking her last class this summer for her Masters Degree in Journaling. Grandma and Grandpa get to help by watching the children while she is studying this week.

Today we had a tea party, played soccer, softball, volleyball, Hula hoop, gardening, watering flowers, barbie dolls, boccerball, pool, basketball, watched the Chipmunk Adventure, ladder golf...... and grandma was exhausted by the end of the day.... a whole week of exhaustion - I can't wait! How in the world do our children handle this day after day - after one day I hit my bed by 9:00 p.m. and slept harder than I've slept in a month!

POOF

Last week Stephen and I were taking a walk with our dog, POOF. POOF was really excited about taking her walk until we rounded the corner and a big brown dog come running out of his house and attacked POOF shaking her like a wounded bunny. Needless to say, POOF was badly hurt. Many, many stitches later and her entire torso wrapped in bandages, she is surviving. It was a tough decision as to whether we should put her to sleep because her wounds were so bad, but now that we are through the worst of it all, we are glad we were able to save her. This posting is really for Sara/Chris in Florida and Stephanie/Daniel who are currently in South America - just so you can see that POOF is good!

Her bandages are to be taken off tomorrow, so I will take pictures so you can actually see the extent of her injuries. They showed us at the Vet today and it looks really awful! She looks good with the bandages -

Fourth of July

We certainly had a wonderful time celebrating the fourth of July with Jason, Kendra, Kinsen and Jaybin. The entire day was enjoyable playing basketball, soccer, blowing bubbles, having a cookout and topping the evening off by going into the city of Carmel where they had a festival complete with a firetruck, an orchestra in the town gazebo, and elephant ears! Watching the fireworks through the eyes of children certainly is welcome once again in our lives. Kinsen smiled through the entire event saying "this is a really good show" and Jaybin clapped the entire time.

Stephanie and Daniel finally made it to Huancayo Peru, South America. If you want to keep up with what is going on with their missionary work, their blogsite address is: http://jayhawks007.googlepages.com/peru. They have a lot of really great stories to share.

Stephani loves to hear from people in English since the only language spoken in the mountains of Peru is Spanish. So if you would like to write her and let her know you are thinking of and praying for them, thier email address is Stephgirl66@gmail.com