Timber!

Our big pine that fell a couple of weeks ago is gone. We have been working nights and weekends to make it go away. Jeremy climbed the tree, cut off all the limbs. We cut them smaller and loaded them into the truck and hauled them away. Cut down the trunk, chunk ed it up and hauled that away. And then the last few huge pieces went away too. We had to have a neighbor's help on a few. And it took 3 of us on the last piece. But it's all gone. Good bye tree, hello garden! While I wondered if Jeremy could do it, he pulled through and the chainsaw lasted.

Maple whos?

Most of you who know me well, know that I'm a little crazy for the Toronto Mapleleafs hockey team. I even considered getting a tattoo of their logo for a long time.
But this is the year of the rebuild. And they have to destroy to rebuild. And they are taking a huge explosion to the whole team. The have gotten rid of all their marquee players in the last week. From my favorites of Darcy Tucker to the useless baggage of Raycroft. I'm shocked all the waivers, and buyouts that are happening. While it's a much needed rebuild, it's still surprising and a little scary. As of now I'm left with the winning goalie and a lot of young players still to prove their talent.
I hope it goes well. You may not see me flying my leaf flag as often while I wait with bated breath to see how the season goes. I'm not jumping from the bandwagon yet.

happy but busy

I apologize for my lack of attention. The house is a happy busy house.
Last 2 weeks, Anora has had swimming lessons and programs through the library.

And 4th of July is quickly sneaking up on us. I'm starting to believe the 4th is a cruel joke. It's right at the beginning of the month. So you're preparing for June to wind down, you flip the page and BAM there' the 4th just 3 days away! I and my friend Betti are trying to pull together a float for the church, but it's looking like a pointless battle. I'm thinking it's not worth the head and heart ache. And don't forget the sweat, and muscles involved. And time! I'm a beaten woman.

That's about us for now. When I get some pictures, or something to report on the float I'll update you.

Be who you are...

What DLF is…

We are a quilted cross.

We’re soft to the touch.

We’re comforting and warm, even soothing.

Some might even call us shabby chic.

We’re made up of pieces stitched together.

There are strips added in to hide our ugly seams.

We’re homemade right in God’s house.

When the sun shines we really reflect God’s light.

We’re multicolored of talents, gifts, young and old.

Though we’ve all been poked with needles, when we’re together you can no longer see our holes.

We’re not an intimidating cross with slivers, or eyes looking down in judgment.

We have compass points show our forgiveness. “As far as the East is from the West.”

When you’re lost or falling away, wrap our cross around you, it’s why we are here.

spitting venom

I'm spitting mad, and must tire myself out on screen. My local nameless grocery store infuriates me to the point of screaming. I had my list all made, and their ad in hand ready to shop. I was by myself, so usually it's a zen experience.

First, they were out of the advertised tomatoes. Fine.
Lettuce which runs usually .80 was double in price, I'm sure it was to push the romaine hearts. Coincidentally they were out of!
Ok calming down I get out of the veggie isle.
Meat, I had planned to get the chicken that was less than 1$/ pound, but all of the 5 chickens they offered were so heavy they were the size of a turkey, costing $7 and up!
I call Jeremy for a little calming down and to help me pick a replacement.
So I just need one chicken breast for a stir fry. Not even a whole one, just some meat to put in a stir fry. They don't have any small packs, you had to buy a minimum of 4 1/2 breasts. Costing well over $5. Ahh. So I got a piece of cat fish for $3. We'll have seafood stir fry.

Milk cost $1 more there than anywhere else.
Eggs are average priced, but only had 5 cartons to offer and all had broken eggs in them. I did a quick swap to get a full intact dozen.

They hike the price of cereal so people will buy their over priced generics. A box of name brand frosted flakes should be $2, but since their generic is 2.20 you'll have to pay 2.5 for name brand.

I like to watch the prices too, making sure they don't pull a fast one and not honor a promised price. But they don't have a monitor so you can see while filing the belt.

Juice is .50 more there than anywhere else. Apple juice I can usually get for 2.00 or less. and they didn't have a jug less than 2.50.

They had corrections to their ad posted in a few places even.

And to top it off and driving me to the computer to purge myself, (poor keyboard, oops, a little on the monitor) I bought peaches and nectarines, even though they were over priced. I got 2 of each, averaging .50/piece. They looked beautiful, but ripe so they won't last long. Well they got smashed! Guess it's fruit salad for lunch.

I walked out of there with just 5 bags. Very few spluges, no alcohol, and spending $60 on what I could've paid $40-$50 anywhere else.

But with gas prices they was they are, I'd spend $8.00-$10.00 on gas going anywhere else. They is no competition in town for this store and they have no reason to be competitive. I might go back to driving further just to avoid the aggravation.

On other news, Jeremy took down the last of the limbs off the pine trees. We have a lot of hauling away to be done, and fall the trunk yet, but the end of it is in sight.

I'm working of a couple of things for church. And today is Anora's last day for her getting for kindergarten thing.

Still one more week of swimming lessons. She really likes them. She discovered goggles yesterday. I'm not sure how, but I saw the instructor putting goggles on her and the rest of class she had her head under water searching for things! It was like she was snorkeling with her feet on the floor. So we got her some yesterday for the rest of the week. I hope she keeps liking swimming. She really likes the pool we have in town. It's a zero depth entry she can walk all around the 2-3 feet area and play and swim, but be able to stand when she is done. It's super nice and clean too, but will cost us $10 for the whole family to go some night. The cheaper pool I like to go to, the choices are baby pool, or 3'. Nothing in between.

Please pray for all the mothers who think this has been a long summer already.

swimm lessons

OH my girl!

It's been a couple of months since I talked much about school. It's summer after all, so I didn't have to think about it. But last week a woman from school called and offered to have Anora come to a play time at school. I jumped at the chance. Not to mention the chance to have some over due quiet/cleaning time, but Anora does much better being prepared before starting anything new. It starts today and lasts all week, just for a couple of hours. So this morning we got ready early and went out 5 minutes early for the bus. Apparently the bus was also 5 minutes early, cause it met us at the sidewalk! I snapped a couple of pictures and she was off. So many new things for her.

We even have swimming lessons this week. We had to move them later in the morning due to school. So it'll be a busy week!

I figured we'd have a hard time getting use to being ready 1 full hour earlier than we had to for preschool. But we really didn't. I didn't let her watch cartoons during breakfast like she usually would. That cut a 1/2 hour right there. I think she is ready for this.

I can't believe how fast she is growing!

On another topic, the floods of Iowa. We are ok. We're not really effected yet. If the river Jeremy crosses to get to the cities goes over the 4 lane highway, we'll have problems. But so far so good. Even our family is ok so far as we know. But a lot of our church friends, have friends and kids that are displaced due to the floods. Or even in once case, they don't have much water, so came a very long way home to wash clothes and take showers.

Please keep praying for those who have been evacuated or losing their possessions. I pray they turn to God. He can't be washed away or mold or mildew.

guess what we did today

We started the day camping but came home cause we were all crabby, and there was a chance of storms. Well the chance arrived! We had a little cell move through and took out 1/2 of our back pine tree and tons of our maple tree!
But her are the miracles! We were home, not camping, we moved the truck just in time. The camper wasn't hurt at all. The trees didn't do any real damage to the garage, porch or house. A few object like our umbrella were broken, but hey, that's fine. And that back pine, we hate, so I'm glad so much is gone.

And Praise God for helpful neighbors, and God parents. Our God Father and Mother and their son Caleb came and helped a ton!
Speaking of ton, we took 14 trucks to the compost. There was a line at the compost heap, and an endloader pushing the existing piles back to make room for more.

Though I don't know for sure, thank God no one in the storms was hurt.


This is copied out of local news. Where they 80 mph winds, is where we were camping this a.m. !


Severe weather pops up in the Quad Cities

QUAD CITIES -- This afternoon, doppler radar indicated a tornado, and a warning was issued. That initial warning expired at 2:30pm. At 1:50 this afternoon, a trained spotter reported a funnel cloud near Mediapolis, Iowa. Heavy rain and 60MPH wind gusts were reported at the Walmart in Muscatine at 2:06.

Trees were reported down in Oakville, Iowa at 2:22pm. A trained spotter reported 80MPH winds, damaging gas pumps in Parkview, Iowa.

Trees and powerlines were also reported down just northwest of Davenport along Highway 130.

out of school

Well it's 3 days and counting. And it has been very interesting. Today is the first day Anora hasn't asked if we're going to school today.
We've done a lot of things. She helped me clean the Sunday school rooms at church, visited the playground of her new school, and then helped make decorations for Vacation Bible School (vbs). I have a lot of things planned. But we've also had a lot of time outs, and a new unique punishment.
She is still having a lot of wetting accidents, just because she doesn't want to go when we tell her, but she won't go on her own either. Several wise mom's said just let it do herself and it'll turn around, doesn't work for Anora. She likes washing her own pants, and doesn't mind wetting herself. So she knows enough letters to write "ITS NOT OK TO PEE ON ME" I made her do it 5 times. We worked on letters and subliminal messaging and torture of sitting that long, all at the same time. It was torture for both of us at one time, but I think I would do it again.
In my free time, I've been trying to figure out and set up, with Jeremy's help, a new computer music system. We're replacing one that starts with an "i" cause it's too hard on the computer, it freezes up too much. This new one is so much better! But it's made for people who speak computer. So there were a lot of thing I didn't understand at first. But I'm really liking it. We listen to podcasts a lot, but sometimes we get behind on them. With the new one we can preview it before we download it. Saving us a ton of disk space. And the new one we can make look how we want. It has all kinds of nifty gadgets. And works with both of our music players. I'm excited and it hasn't crashed anything yet.

Please pray for VBS and all the kids attending one. May God speak loud shouts of joy to them.