For those of you who know Anthony and Sandra, here is a video clip and a printed article on the dog attack on Christian.

For those of you who don't know Anthony and Sandra, let me explain. Anthony was the music and youth director at our church for seven years. They are also really good friends of ours. Their son was attacked by a bull mastiff the other day.

My Dad & Our Kids

Addison Brooke.....She's Finally Here

Daddy picked out her going home outfit.

A lot of little helpers.

wide awake

Look at this house deal I came across on craigslist.

Nothing much to speak of has been going on. Both Zach and Brittany have been sick, and I'm trying to get my house in some semblance of order before the baby comes.
Zach started flag football yesterday. I'll put some pictures up when I end up taking some.

The Elephant

Two year old Sierra picked this up from Zach and Brittany's schooling so far this year. I'll put the words up here so you can understand what she's saying.


The Elephant
Author Unknown

The elephant walks like this and like that.
He's very tall and he's very fat.
He has no fingers, but he does have toes.
And, goodness gracious, what a nose!

True Camoflauge

I saw this moth this morning. I think he has the original camo. What do you think?

It Runs in the Family

Many times I see something that I like, and I hear from Spencer, "You can make that." He starts explaining how to do it............ "All you have to do is........" I used to just roll my eyes, and sometimes I still do. However, many in his immediate family think the same way. There have been times that they go ahead and make whatever it is that's "so easy" to make. Two things I can think of are a fold out buffet bar found in the Penny's catalog and a merry-go-round for our kids.

Today, I was reading the paper and a picture of a cute metal figure caught my eye. As I started reading farther along, I realized that the article was about one of Spencer's MANY relatives. What made me laugh was how he got into his crafty business. His wife saw a figure she wanted for her yard and of course, Spencer's relative didn't want to pay that much for it and said, "I can make that." Now he makes these really neat things and sells them for a price that I'm pretty sure is close to the same price he didn't want to pay for the yard figure in the first place. :)

Extreme Sour Apple Warheads

Spencer brought home some Sour Apple Warheads tonight to give to the kids and thought it would be funny to video tape them. I think Sierra and Brittany are the funniest. The music in the background is from a video the kids had cranked up in another room.

For those of you who have dial-up, I put up some pictures for you to look at.

Labor Day at Pullen Park

We took the kids to a nice park in Raleigh today. It has plenty of stuff for the kids to do, and they had a great time. I think they're getting spoiled though. While we were driving back home, they asked, "What other fun stuff can we do?" Like they hadn't spent three hours doing fun stuff!

Everyone on the peddle boats -even though you can't see Sierra sitting by her daddy.

Zach on the train

Sierra on the Merry-Go-Round

Brittany coming out from hiding from Dad

All tired out

Rose Garden

We took a spur of the moment trip to our local rose garden the other day, and the kids absolutely loved it. Spencer took a lot of pictures. These are a few.

Anyone know what this is?

It's all metal, and we found two of them around the house, one of which Zach got stuck on his finger. Sorry, I don't know the answer to this one!

Talk About a Drama Queen!

I know this was really mean of me, but I couldn't help it. Brittany can make herself laugh or cry at the drop of a hat. She can really cry when the slightest bit of blood appears. In this video, she had done slight damage to her thumb.

22 Days and Counting

A Million Dollars

My sister, Revka, tagged me with this a long time ago, and I am just now getting around to it. The question is what would I do with a million dollars.
Since we're already fantasizing, we'll pretend there are no taxes involved. :) After tithe and offering, of course, I would finish fixing up our house, pay it off, and sell it. I would then build a new house. Spencer's dream has always been to have a place to keep missionaries that come through, so we would probably also build a place out back for them. Another one of my husband's dreams has been to buy some new vehicles for a ministry out of our church that helps missionaries while they are on deputation and furlough. Oh, we would also pay off our own vehicle. :) So, that's already 600,000! Whew! Investing some money would be a great idea too wouldn't it. Two last things that would be nice to do with the money would be to build my mom a house and our church a new fellowship hall.

Not so innocent

Spencer locking someone in the port-a-john

Sierra was supposed to be asleep. When I went to check on her, her eyes were closed and the GameBoy was on. hmmmmmm.

I'm So Confused....Give Me An American......I'm Tired of Being on Hold!

In the middle of July we switched over to Earthlink Digital Phone and Cable Internet. The bundle price was a great deal and better benefits than what we were using. However, when I started talking to customer service, it almost was not worth the trouble of switching to a better product. Every time I call customer service, I get hold of an Indian on the other side of the world. Not only is there a confusing accent to overcome, there is also a major communication gap. One of the first people I talked to could not answer my questions except with a laugh. That sure wasn't helpful! He also ended up telling me that I could not order the new services via the internet which I turned around and did anyway after I got off the phone with him. Without going into major detail, we ran into some serious snags getting the new phone service hooked up, and I ended up being on the phone for about and hour and forty-five minutes getting the problem straight. Today, I got a $91.55 bill from them and had to talk to the Indians again for about and hour and a half. I figured our phone bill was supposed to be about $72 which included overnight shipping for equipment for the digital phone. By the end of the conversation, our bill had been lowered to $19.75 and all future bills to be $19.95. After many questions about how they arrived at $19.75 for this bill, and many laughs and "Let me explain it you" on their side, I'm still confused. I'm not going to complain though if that is all they want to charge. I just hope that I don't have to talk to them again any time soon! Oh, and if you're a big company exec. reading this (ha ha), please don't outsource your customer service department to some other country! Customer satisfaction would be a lot higher if the customers could understand what the service department was saying in the first place.

Useless but Funny Quote

"My grandson is covered in freckles. He looks like he swallowed a dollar bill and broke out in pennies." -Evangelist Jack Tripp

Panic and Another Hair Cut

Zach played the piano to keep himself calm while we waited for Spencer to come home.

This past Monday, Zachary was supposed to be cleaning his room. He came out to our den and in an upset little voice told me he had something stuck on his finger. To this day, we don't know what it was, but it looked like a ring to him at the time. By the time he came to me, his finger was swollen, and every remedy I tried would not remove the "ring." I was starting to panic because I was picturing his finger losing circulation and the tip having to be cut off. It didn't help that I could see the metal cutting into his skin. I called Spencer at work to see what I should do, and he graciously came home knowing that I do not handle medical emergencies well at all...especially ones where cuts are involved. When Spencer saw that the ring could not be removed, he took Zach to the doctor. It took Spencer and two doctors to hold Zach down while a fourth person put three shots in Zach's finger to numb it. The doctor then tried to cut the metal off but to no avail. They finally made a couple of cuts with a ring cutter and got it off. Zachary didn't want it for a souvenir and told the nurse to "put it in the sharp box."




Oh yes, Zach also cut his hair that day because I had told him that it was getting long and was time for a hair cut. What is it with my kids and their hair?!

Revka did a good job creating Woody, don't you think?

My mom and eight of her ten grandkids.

This last week we've been busy traveling around the eastern portion of our state. On Saturday we went to the New Bern area to help my niece celebrate her 2nd birthday. My sister made her a cake and decorated it with Woody from Toy Story. Revka thinks she did a terrible job, but I could never decorate a cake free hand and make it come out resembling anything but flowers.

The same day, Spencer took the teenagers to a Putt Putt place that also had other items of amusement. He decided to try out the rock climbing wall. About 2/3 of the way up, he decided that he had enough of rock climbing and asked the worker if she had everything under control when he let go. She assured him she did. However, Spencer is very cautious, so he asked her four times. After the fourth time, he let go and immediately hit the ground on both feet. The girl then realized that she did not have the ropes hooked up right, and she definitely did not have everything under control. I'm glad he didn't get hurt. For some reason, he keeps avoiding having a camera around when these things happen. I told him that if he keeps it up, we're going to have to take out a higher life insurance policy on him. :)

This last Tuesday, the kids, the boy I babysit, two friends and I packed up in our vehicle and made it to the beach where we met up with my sister and her kids. The water was actually pretty even though we were rained on at one time. This is the same beach where there was a shark attack a couple of weeks ago, so I was leary of going very far out in the water. Zach and Brittany weren't scared though. Now we are home for the remainder of the week where I really need to do quite a bit of cleaning since we won't be home enough next week except to sleep at night.

Hint: If you use spray on sunscreen, don't forget to rub it in. Otherwise you look quite speckled!

Update

Due to some miscommunication, we are not getting the dog. We had some very sad children.

Why, Oh, Why??????????

I am not an animal lover. However, Spencer and the kids have been wanting a dog for a very long time. Last night, Spencer came across an offer on our local freecycle site for a 6 mo. old lab, dog house, 10x10 pen, and all other accessories. I should never told him about Freecycle! As things turn out, no one else has offered to take the dog except us. Oh, Yippee...............:( I guess we're getting a dog.

Family Pics

He's smiling!


He's not smiling-wonder why?!?

The Importance of Faithfulness

This is more of a soapbox type of posting. I've been thinking about it for the past couple of weeks after going to a teen rally. Then last night at church a missionary spoke along the same lines, so I thought I would go ahead an post my thought on the topic. Since Spencer started working with the music and youth at church, I have noticed something interesting. There are basically four types of people.

First there are the complacent, walk into church, get their weekly dose of whatever, and walk back out. They don't say much of anything and they don't do much of anything.

Then there are the ones who complain about everything that is done no matter how it is done but refuse to do anything. If they would try to help, their complaints might be considered. On the other hand, they probably wouldn't be complaining any more because they are making an effort for something.

There are those who want the so called lime light and are jealous of recognition that others receive for the work that they do. In the cases that I know, these people are actually quite capable of performing the things they want to do, and they actually volunteer to do things. The problem comes in the fact that when they are asked to do things, these people suddenly have excuses as to why they cannot do what is asked of them or even what they volunteered to do. Even worse, they are a "no show" at the time the task is to be performed leaving no replacement and leaving someone else in a serious bind. These people then become offended when no one asks them to do anything anymore. What do you expect when you are not dependable (faithful)?

There are also people known as "the faithful few." They are an encouragement to the leadership around them because they can be counted on thus taking the burden off the those in charge. The more faithful people there are, the more encouraged others become to be faithful as well. Sometimes these people become overloaded because others know that if the faithful are asked to do something, it will get done. Also, the Bible does mention that if someone is faithful in little things, he can be counted to be faithful in bigger things.

Stuff We've Done This Summer

Had a lot of birthday parties

Set off fire works in our back yard

Took the kids to a splash park

The girls adopted Sarah's new dog. He looks like a stuffed animal.

Had a rescue themed Vacation Bible School

Watch my mom chase fireflies with six of her grandkids.

Watch Brittany and cousin Candace being wild.

Brittany's Birthday

We had a last big birthday party for Brittany at the local Putt-Putt place. It was a really good party but extremely hot! The littlest ones just wanted to stuff ball after ball down the last hole. The man of the place finally poured a whole bucket of balls on the last hole and let them have a great time.

Whew! That's Better

We got Road Runner last night, so now I don't have to wait an hour for my pictures to post up here. Maybe I'll get more up here soon.

You'll Have to Picture This

I haven't posted anything lately because our internet has been giving us trouble, and I also have been having problems uploading pictures. We are in the process of changing things though. In the mean time....I'll leave you with this story.
I had pulled halfway into our driveway after a grocery shopping trip. My husband was getting back on his riding lawn mower, and Zach and a neighbor boy were under the carport. As I was waiting for them to get out of the way, Spencer was using his alternative way of starting his mower........a jerry rigged rope pull. (This starts the mower even though the battery is dead.) As he was sitting back down after pulling the rope, the lawn mower jerked forward throwing Spencer off in a backward somersault. The lawn mower then began making its way for Zachary and the neighbor kid. They jumped out of the way in time, and Spencer was now up and chasing the mower across the yard and motioning for me to get out of the vehicle and help him. Being the submissive wife that I am, I did not do it for two reasons. I knew Spencer would be really mad if the lawn mower hit the vehicle, and I figured I'd be more useful if I stayed in the vehicle and moved it out of the way if need be. The second reason was, I'm seven months pregnant! How am I supposed to help stop a runaway lawn mower? I remember the lecture I got from Spencer when I was pregnant with Sierra helped a boy get his four wheeler out of a ditch.
Spencer finally got the lawnmower pointed toward a tree which it ran into, and Spencer was able to turn it off. Too bad I didn't have my camera with me when it happened!
The moral to this story is always make sure that the lawn mower is out of gear before you start it up.

Catching Up

Haven't blogged much in a while due mostly to internet problems. That doesn't mean I haven't taken any pictures though. I'm going to start with my brother in law and his fiance. Her dad and grandad run a gas pipeline business, but run a ranch as a hobby.

One week they asked Cameron to look after some baby calves that were not being fed by their mothers. Cameron thought our kids would like to help feed the baby calves, and invited them out to the ranch to help him out. It turned out to be a harder job than he thought because the calves weren't really hungry at the time.

After the kids got done, they found a wagon to pull each other around in.

Sierra also found a dog under a hay wagon that she could aggrivate. She quickly found out that she better not mess with that dog!