So this past Sunday we went to Butler’s Cruisa Palooza. My brother-in-law was there with his custom Mustang. Here are a couple of shots of the girls. The first shot is of them in front of his Mustang. The second one was the girls second favorite car, because of the colors.

 

So we got back to working in our attic today. My brother in law came and got me started with some trim work. He made the windows look easy. He also installed the closet door and the cap and trim on the stairway. It is looking real good. Next time he comes we will work on the base board and storage doors. For now I will start to paint what is installed and do some other trim work that I know I can handle. But here is a picture of one of the three windows that we finished and you can see some of the top of the  half wall. I plan on doing another video of the progress soon. It is really coming together. Thanks for visiting and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Bridget swimming at the pool. The girls just love to get wet. Our pool membership is the best $140 we spend all year. Lots of bang for our buck!

This is where Romy and I fell a sleep the other afternoon. I was supposed to be making dinner. Good thing what I had planned was a quick dinner.

Last night we met with my Mom, Dad, Sister, and her family, for a graduation celebration at Red Lobster. Here is a picture of the Graduate (Rachel) and my sister. They are hams when the cameras come out.

Here is my girls and Derek (my Nephew).

The sun was setting and bouncing light off of these storm clouds that missed us.

The girls waiting at Red Robin for my Father's Day dinner. Woot, I don't have to cook. This is one of my favorites. We all love the Tower of Onion Rings. We had a great Outdoor Worship service and Picnic. What a great time of fellowship. God Bless.

The girls making pancakes.

Hey, it’s VBS week. Here is Bridget dancing at our Crocodile Dock VBS Day 3. We’re having a blast!

We had some wild storms last night. The power flickered for a few seconds giving all the kids and some of the crew leaders a little scare. We also suffered a slight power failure when we got home. It was long enough for us to drag out our power outage emergency kit and head to bed. After all four of us being in our bed(due to the storms) for about 15 minutes, the power came back on. We are sending out prayers to those who have suffered from flooding and wind damage locally and abroad. Thanks for visiting and Fear Not!

So, today we went the pool for the first time this summer. It was good to see the girls having a blast in the water. We started VBS last night and it was a bit chaotic but registration night is usually anyways. Tonight should be better and fun. It looks like we may be rained out from the pool for the rest of the week, so I figured we should get some swim time in today.

This is my nephew, Derek. They came yesterday to spend. We had fun throwing the football and playing tag. We had all of the campfire snacks, Smore's and Mountain Pies. We are wrapping up a wonderful weekend at camp. We will pack this morning and be back to help lead music for Crocodile Dock VBS.....Fear Not!

A instructional meeting for kayaking. I want a kayak now. It looks like fun!

I saw this cartoon in The Herald, this morningand I thought it was kind of funny. With the economy as tough as it is, why does it seems there are even bigger RV's and campers this year. Maybe I was not paying attention, or maybe people are spending there money on a camper that can be used for long term instead of spending there money on vacations that come and are gone in a flash. Just my thoughts on the matter. Thanks for visiting my blog, and have a great week!

This fine morning of day 3, sit and think. I have always had difficulties just walking up to people I don't know and talking. I'm shy, what can I say?? Camping makes doing that much easier. I figure it must be the common ground. We are all here doing the same thing, with no expectations, we are just here to relax with our families. For the social butterflies, like my daughters, making friends is quickly on their todo lists. The girls made friends with a little boy and they have been inseparable since. The picture below shows the campers site right next to us. Fellow Steeler's fans and Pittsburgh Natives. When they arrived on Friday, we hovered between our camp fire to stay warm and their truck so we could hear the game and celebrated when the Pens won the Stanley Cup. Their satellite service picked up the game when our AM radios did not. They are a nice and funny couple. Camping makes
the "outside my comfort zone", almost "comfortable". I hope everyone has a great Sunday!

Here the two girls are standing on a fishing pier. After two days of this, I think we are going to stay. I can handle doing this everyday. It is so relaxing, this is the kind of resting God intended for Sundays. God has made good things, and they are all around us. You just have to take moments like this to thoroughly enjoy them. God Bless!

First, I have to say that I am one lucky man.
How many wives would want to be out on a boat at 8 in the morning, on there birthday. Mine does! Here are my girls, in the front of the boat. We caught a decent size crappie that I cooked up for lunch and a baby walleye that we threw back to grow some more. Overall a good morning on the boat and a Birthday for Brenda. She turns 30 something.....Look out, we're going all out for her Birthday tonight. She said she had a craving for pizza, We will try the Covered Bridge Pizza in Andover and Dairy Queen after that. Happy Camping, campers. Have a Blessed rest of the weekend.

Today was a great day. Weather turned out almost perfect. Almost no humidity with the breeze coming off the lake. Notice the view we have in the photo. We set up the remainder of camp, we rode bikes, we took the girls and friend they made to the camp store to pick out an ice cream. We actually have found an AM radio station that is carrying the Stanley Cup Final's Game 7. So that is what we will be doing around the camp fire. Have a great weekend.

I'm not sure what happened to my post yesterday evening, it was really screwed up. So here is the abreviated(sp...one b or two b's, I wish this phone had spell check) version. It was really wet to start our vacation.

Good morning. We made it to our destination. It rained the whole way here and stopped when we arrived. So we did not completly soaked setting up a rough camp for one nights sleep. It rained off and on throught the night. We will set up uhe rest this morning, it currently is not raining. It is awesome waking up to a view of the lake. In that far loop(where we camped last year) there were only a handful of sites the can you can actually see the lake from. Most of them are premium sites and have to be reserved 6 months ahead of time. We are not sure what we are doing 6 weeks in advance let alone 6 months. Lots of boats fishing early this morning, With any luck we will be on one of them(ours) early tomorrow morning. So I think I hear Bridget stirring, best to get her before she wakes Bethany. Bethany goes from sweetheart to crank in nothing flat if she does not get enough sleep. Thanks for
visiting and have a full of fun Friday! God Bless!

I have been preparing for Camping Trip 2009 Trip 2. The girls and my clothes are packed as soon as Brenda packs hers they will go in the camper. That is the only thing that needs to go in the camper. The boat is ready with its cover on. And all of the stuff on the back of the camper will go into the van tomorrow afternoon along with our coolers.
Notice the bike rack on the camper. It was given to us by Brenda’s Aunt and Uncle. They bought an apartment on wheels, I mean a camper that came with the bike rack. They did not plan on using, so asked if we would? It’s a four hundred dollar rack. I wish it held four bikes, but it works. When we are taking the boat, Brenda’s and my bike go in it, if we don’t bring the boat I have a bike rack that can go on the back of the van when towing the camper.

If it looks tight in our garage, it is. We are actually very lucky to be able to park the boat, the camper, the lawn mower and both vehicles in our garage. I know it will prolong the life span of all items mentioned. I even have room on the other side of my van for a fridge that is usually stocked with beer water, and popsicles. Our garage actually has a basement, but It is a mess currently, I need to purge most of the stuff that is down there. One of these days I will get to that.
For Camping Trip # 2, we are going to Pymatuning Ohio State Camp Ground. We went there several times last year and loved it. We are excited that we will be able to camp in the middle loop this year. Last year only the third loop, the loop farthest away from the lake was the only pet friendly loop. They ran a pilot program last year towards the end of the year to allow pets in the middle loop to see it the pets would keep the geese from crapping all over the camp grounds. It must have worked. Hurray! With a little planning we should be able to acquire a site right on the shore, not this time though.

This morning was a quiet one, Bethany had a sleepover last night at a friend’s house and was not due back until around 11:00. Bridget and i had some breakfast and started knocking out some laundry. I must of tweaked something in my back either working on the cars Saturday or playing around at Harry and Karen’s house on Sunday, I was looking for a little relief by laying on the floor for a moment after lugging a load of clean towels from the basement and Bridget asked, “Dad, can I help fold them?” I thought a little and said, you can fold them all. After all, towels and wash cloths are the perfect item of laundry to learn how to fold, and they don’t have to be perfect.  Here she is with her pile:

Later in the afternoon, I was folding some of my T-shirts and again she asked to help. I showed her how to do one, and she was off. I’m liking this, do you think she is old enough for the riding mower? The lawn is one of my least favorite things to do anymore.

I have had a secret brewing for the past week, better yet, the kids new the secret and kept it a secret for the past week also. We did it!

Here is little history about the secret.

In one of our Wednesday nights small group Bible study, a question came up I think I remember it being asked like this. “What do you remember most about childhood Birthdays?” Brenda, answered that she remembers inviting friends from school and no one ever showed up to the parties. I have to also mention that the small group consists of several younger families. We have the kiddos in common are around the same age and get along well with each other.

as Brenda’s Birthday is coming up on June 13th, the leader of the group, Jason, started an email campaign to initiate a surprise Birthday party for her. We initially set up for today and it was going to be here at our house right after church. After a day of trying to figure out how I was going to keep it a surprise and have it here, Harry and Karen so generously opened up their household for the party. Jason took charge and gave each family something to bring, making it easy for my to keep it on the low down.

On the way home from Church, I made up a bogus story about needing to go to Harry and Karen’s house to check out his new back up generator he installed. She bought it, but it was a challenge. Usually, right after Church we are both pretty hungry, and are whipping up something to eat for lunch. She mentioned that we should eat before we go, but I insisted that if we just had something to hold us over, it would give us a reason to have to leave. She bought that, also. As we pulled up to their house, she says what the heck? Why are all of these cars here? I stated, maybe they have some family over. She was completely surprised. We succeeded to surprise my beautiful wife for her Birthday.

I don’t think everyone in the small group reads my blog, but they should….Anyways, I will use this platform to thank everyone that came.

• Jason & Angie – Thanks for heading this up and bringing the hot dogs and burgers.
• Aaron & Crystal – Crystal, thanks for baking the great cake and cupcakes, and Aaron, thanks for decorating them. They were delicious!
• Paul & JoAnna – Thanks for bringing the ice cream, chips and coordinating the card and gift card.
• Harry & Karen – Thanks so much for opening your home for the party, Harry for cooking the hots and burgers, Karen for making the macaroni salad, (it was good)
• All the kids for getting along for the day. 11 kids and no major problems.
• Dave and Annemarie – we missed you. Sorry you could not make it.

So here is picture 3 of 87:

For those of you paying attention, I know in my last post I revoked swimming privileges for the girls, the revocation was from the pool we belong to. Another challenging in parenting……sigh.

Day two of SV ‘09 was not a fun one by any means. We washed and detailed two vehicles after going to a few garage sales. While Brenda did some detailing I changed oil and filters on both vehicles. Then we packed the camper enough so I could put it away and fit both clean cars into the garage. The girls got into trouble because they went swimming at the neighbors house when we told them they were not allowed. I revoked swimming privileges for the week. The start to summer has been a bit of struggle as far as the girls listening. Hopefully some serious consequences will impact their decision making. I hate to be the mean one, but someone has to do it. My mother-in-law came a took the girls for the afternoon, so Brenda and I cleaned up and went to dinner at Pizza Hut, and now we are waiting to watch the Pens play the Redwings. Here is picture of us watching some pre game.

Peter Novak, CEO of SunFlower Corporation, and my brother-in-law sent me this video. This unit is located at Douglas County Library’s Philip S. Miller Campus in Castle Rock, Colorado. This working unit is a great example of what great engineering minds can accomplish for a greater goal. Great job, Peter!

Today marks the first day for Summer Vacation 2009. If we did everything that the girls wanted to do today, the day would need to consist of 72 hours. They want to go swimming to the pool, they want to go the local park to have a picnic, they want to hang out at the neighbors pool with the neighbors, they want to ride bikes at the local park, they want to visit with Grandma Black (a neighbor which holds Good News Club, once during the summer and once during school), they want to go downtown to Pittsburgh and have lunch with their mommy, they want to go play and swim at the purple park. Yes, another pool.

Well we are going to pace ourselves, if the clouds break we may end up at the pool. But, I do have to start packing for our next camping trip next weekend and laundry as usual, ooh, now that is exciting. I wish I could have a summer vacation from all of my house work.

Last night we joined a couple of families from Church at the drive in theatre to see Disney’s Up to get this summer thing off to a kick-start. It was a fun night. Bridget did not last through the whole movie, which is not a surprise. She has a hard time staying up past 8. Brenda and I were up at our usual time (5:30). Not much can budge this natural alarm clock I have in my head. Brenda on the other hand could have probably used to sleep in, but someone has to bring home the bacon.

I am going to try to create at least one photo a day for this summer vacation and post it here daily. So here is the Photo 1 of 87.  Almost every day Bethany has two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crust cut off. Our little dog, Romy waits every morning to share crust with me as I make everyone else's lunch. This morning she waited, and waited, and waited, ever so patiently for a couple of morsels of sticky pb and j on what i consider the best part of bread,. I did break down and give her a treat from her treat bin. She was a happy dog. Here she is being the awesome dog, she is, waiting. I wish I had just an once of her patience.

 

The girls waiting for the bus on the last day of school. Another chapter complete in our adventure of life. Here is to a safe, healthy, fun, and Blessed summer.

White as snow. Romy after her bath.

Just Watch!

Laugh to keep things positive with this Positive Post on this Tuesday.

These guys are funny. Here is their website: Rhett & Link