the statue

Since before Sarah & I were married she has mentioned that she would some day like to have this statue that sat outside her grandmother's house. Well here it is sitting in our flowerbed. It's one of those rare moments when a husband gets to make a wish come true.

watermelon

The summer schedule gets really busy so I have to work harder at making the most of moments. If in the chaos of the events and planning I forget to stop and enjoy even a few minutes of the kids eating watermelon on the porch, then in the fall I feel like I never got to do anything all summer. So here's stopping.

april?

Does this look like an April scene? It was really cool to see the snow with the redbuds in bloom. Unfortunately, we got a deep freeze right after this and it sent us into a second Fall.

dog

We got a dog. The kids love her. They run around the house screaming as she tries to bite their feet. It's a good thing she's tough though because the kids can give it as much as they get it. Meanwhile I'm getting to practice all of my carpet cleaning skills.

birthday

Trevor turned 2. He had a nice birthday, loved the cake, loved the presents and got himself tuckered out.

a hint of spring

I'm sitting barefoot out on my porch as I write, waiting for a storm to approach. What a stark contrast to recent weeks of bitter cold and snow. I love the anticipation of spring. It breathes hope of new things. I can't wait!

ice storm

Here's some pictures from my parent's house in Springfield, MO where the big ice storm hit.
This is what the driveway looks like after an hour and a half of work to clear a path enough to get the car through. The house is to the left. They had returned from Florida to come home to this.

This is the front yard.

And the back deck.

the leak

We had a bit of a leak at the church. Ok, we had a big leak. Actually, a waterline broke in the ceiling and flooded the gym/sanctuary. It was a mess with water covering most of the gym and running down the wall. The cleanup crew got there quick and the insurance company is working to get people fixing it right away. Right now it looks like they will have to remove half of the back wall and replace the insulation.

messy

Caelan painted Trevor with Desitin (a diaper rash cream). Sarah has washed his hair 6 times, once even with dish soap and you can still feel it.

spider

Look what I caught. I was cleaning out a flowerbed at my house on Monday and saw this spider crawling around. I thought it might be a black widow so I had Tanner run inside and get a jar. Sure enough, here it is.

a good Christmas

Christmas was a really nice time this year. I thought it was going to be kinda depressing because we weren't going to be able to go out of town but we ended up with family coming to us. We had a good time of talking, analyzing the world, playing games and laughing. Sarah was scheduled to work Christmas Eve but got called off so we gained an evening we didn't expect. We ended up with 43 people at our house during the holidays.