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.