Horsey!

This past Saturday my friend Amanda and I took our girls to Oxen Hill
farm, about 15 minutes from our houses. It isn't anything fancy-a
working well kept 19th century farm with (thankfully) no tourist
gimmicks. They got to gave a goat sniff their hands, cluck at the
chickens, neigh at the horses and moo at the cows. There was plenty of
open space so they ran around until they just couldn't walk any more.
(Caroline went from running one minute to sitting down crying and
begging to be carried the next. Poor thing). They were enthralled by
the chain locking the horses in (it made fun clanging noises). They
also tried to climb the chicken coop's wiring. They git ridiculously
hot, sweaty and dirty. All in all a successful and fun outing!

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Now this is fun

Today is festival day at Caroline's day care. They have a moon bounce
and lots of water to play in. The kids all got lais and sunglasses
too. As you can see Caroline isn't having any fun.

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Well..

Wrong feet, but the right idea.

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Mmmm Yogurt

I'm not sure how much of this actually made it into her tummy, but she
sure did have fun eating it.

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You might remember....

A few weeks back we had a pretty bad storm hit our neighborhood. It
sent trees crashing into cars and homes. Well the storm pulled the
seat covers off of our lawn equipment. We immedietly found 2, a
neighbor found one in the street but we could never find the fourth
until a fee days ago.

Well Julie, Caroline and I were on a walk in our neighborhood and
glanced up in a tree about 75 yards from our house and found the 4th
cover lodged in a tree. Wow

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I feel like dressing myself should be easier

Maybe if she wasn't already dressed it would go better.

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So that's where that was

Remember how we couldn't find our chair cover for the back yard? We
found it. By the road. 100 yards from our house. In a tree. Weird.

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What a fun retreat!

We are back from a really fun retreat!! Here's a picture of all of us out in front of the retreat center at Shrine Mont.

We had a wonderful weekend with Dr. Corne Bekker, who spoke on the Psalms of ascent. He was inspiring, but called us onward to be present with God.

Of course, there had to be some fun time while we were there as well. Our friend Patrick put together quite a fun scavenger hunt that had kids and adults alike running around. Here's a picture of our friend Murray helping our pastor's daughter Gracie figure out what comes next in the scavenger hunt.
No church retreat is complete without lots and lots of good snacks. People brought cookies and we had lots of other yummy food, as you can tell from Jennifer Glade's big smile...her daughter Sara (and Gracie's little sister) wasn't quite so sure.
Shrine Mont is located in what used to be an old hotel (think 1870s sort) with a huge wrap around porch. That type of porch requires, of course, many rocking chairs. Caroline thought that they were great fun.
She was super excited when she got herself into this one and was rocking for all her might. She's saying "cheese" in this picture, but she just got done saying "wheeeeeeee"
Here is a great picture of a number of the little girls that were there. My colleagues at work have been calling this the "gap ad" photo. Of course, that's only because this picture was taken very first thing in the morning, before a breakfast of pancakes. (Note that the Lord blessed us with wonderful weather, especially for the middle of August. Caroline had already taken off her jacket, but you can see that a lot of the other little girls have jackets.)

Here's a picture of the place we stayed (you can see the hotel in the way back left).

As you can see, Jack and Caroline had quite a good time. She was really, really dirty when we got home (we had to wash her hair twice). But she had a blast. There were lots of new fun places to explore and run around. She got to play with lots of little girls from church. There was macaroni and cheese for lunch one day. What's not to like?

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Off to retreat

We have organized the church retreat for Christ the King (our church)
an we are on our way. You can't quite tell from this picture, but
Caroline is between a cooler on one side and a duffle bag on the
other. Her feet are resting on another bag. Our trunck is packed with
all the snacks, water and juice. After a long morning of "helping" us
pack Caroline is tuckered out!!

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Is this distracted driving?

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A big storm

This week we got quite the storm. Around 3:30 on Thursday the skies
opened up over our area all of a sudden. We had really high winds, 72
miles per hour at the high school a few blocks away. It took out tons
of lovely old trees. This is a view of our neighbor's front yard.

Our neighbors across the sidewalk lost their roof (it is a flat roof
like ours). It appears to have rolled up of sorts in the wind. That
left only the decking between their house and the rain. Needless to
say their houses were soaked. All the other neighbors pitched in to
help with extra hands, towels, dehumidifiers and wet/dry vacs. Luckily
the homeowner's association's property management people were out
within a few hours with industrial strength dehumidifiers. They are
putting th new roof on now.

Of course those guys had it better than the people two houses down who
had a tree go on their roof and into a bit of the attic. Reminded me
of when the tree fell on the house when I was a kid. Luckily no one
was hurt in the storm that I've heard of. But it definitely hs made
for lots of excitement.

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