Going camping!

I can't believe it's been a week since my last post. Well, it's going to be another week until my next. We leave tomorrow for Word of Life Family Camp. We're taking the pop-up with some good friends of ours for a week of Christian family fun!

See you next week!

Here are some finished projects for you to look at while I'm gone...

Kitchen wall before...

Kitchen wall after!

Deck before...

Deck during...

Deck after!

Current Work in progress...

This whole hill was overgrown with weeds, pricker bushes, Spirea (now next to the deck steps), Lilacs (now in a row along the road), and other goodies. I'm searching for a picture of what it looked like before but so far no luck. Today, there's mulch spread where you see the darker dirt in the picture, and grass seed planted and sprouting on the lighter colored grey area.

I love JibJab!

Here's a great little ditty courtesy of JibJab. They have some very funny stuff that pokes fun at both sides of the political aisle. Their election year songs are the best! Enjoy!

Send a JibJab Sendables® eCard Today!

Guy movie night

Danielle's at church for worship team practice, the boys were asleep by 7, so Daddy had a movie night!

I perused my collection of fine cinematic features, and chose the classic, Independence Day, with Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman et al.

Ah, the joys of predictable plot, weak dialog, and Will Smith wisecracks! You can't beat it with a stick.

Here's my favorite scene. Will Smith vs. Alien in a dogfight. Best line ever: "Welcome to Earth"
1st video is part 1, 2nd one is part 2. My sincere apologies for the "a" word in 2nd clip!!

Say it ain't so, Donut man!!!

We've stumbled upon some old Donut Man videos in our church library that the kids just love! The Donut Man (Rob Evans) made up all these songs about Jesus, God, salvation, etc, (ex. "Life without Jesus is like a donut 'cause there's a hole in the middle of your heart!", and then there's "Goliath", or as Sean says, "Ba-wy-vif"). His songs are great teaching tools that we hear all the time!

I recently found out that Rob converted to Catholicism. So, my awesome wife did a little research and found an interview with Rob on why he converted. There are some things that I agreed with him on. For example, the seriousness and the solemnity with which they handled the mass. There was no "fluff". The whole mass was leading up to the sacrament of Communion, so there was a very serious tone to the whole thing. In my younger days, I spent a little over a year singing in a catholic church choir. It was a period of time during which I was not really interested in a personal relationship with God. Honestly, the only reason I was even at a church was because I was getting paid to be there. Even in the spiritual state I was in, I was impressed by the awe and wonder that seemed to be present. Every mass, they would proclaim, "The Great Mystery of Faith; Christ has died, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again!"

But then, he started talking about stuff that made me cringe. Example -He's chuckling at his old beliefs that praying to saints/Mary is wrong. Here's his convoluted logic as to why it's ok to pray to saints. Praying to saints is like asking our earthly friends to pray for us. Quoth the Donut Man, "Think of the saints as Jesus' supporting cast. (?!?!?) It would be like Julie Andrews trying to sing every role in 'Sound of Music', there's no way she could do it alone." Sorry, what?!?! So, let me see if I understand...Jesus can't do it on his own, so we should pray to the saints & Mary to lighten Jesus' load so He doesn't have to handle it on his own? What about I Timothy 2:5 - "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ" I don't think there's anywhere in the Bible that says to pray to Paul during peak prayer hours.

There was more, but that's all I'm going to write about. I was so disappointed. There were a few times that we were watching, and we would say, "But, the Bible says __________ about so and so..." We'll keep watching the videos because the old ones are so spiritually sound. We won't be buying any new ones.

Mulch, Glorious Mulch!

I've gotten a TON of work done around the house this week. i'll give it to you in dribs and drabs, but I have to tell you about the mulch...

One of my projects was to deal with this hill in our yard that runs alongside the road . It's about 80 feet long, and about 4 feet high. It's too steep to mow with the mower, and to weed wack it takes way too long. I decided to spray it with Round Up to kill all the grass. Side Note - Round Up Weed & Grass Killer works GREAT!! Then, I figured I would put down some of that weed block sheet stuff, mulch it, and plant some low-lying, low maintenance stuff.

I was not looking forward to buying mulch. It's way too expensive to have it delivered, and I don't have a pick-up or a trailer, so I would have had to borrow one, which was causing a whole other hassle, but anyway...

So, while I'm delaying and delaying, a friend at church last week told me that sometimes if you call your local road department, if they're going to be doing any branch chipping, they'll give you some mulch. Yesterday, I was driving home from Home Depot (deck stairs project, more on that tomorrow) I passed a crew removing branches from around power line. So, I stopped.

Says I, "Hey, what do you guys do with all the mulch after you're done chipping?"

Says the sign-holding guy, "Well, we try to find a place to dump it."

Says I, "Hey! I know a place you can dump it!"

Says the sign-holding guy, "Where?"

Says I, "My house." I write down my address and give it to him.

Says s-h guy, "OK boss, we'll see you in a bit".

This happened at like 10 in the morning, and by 2, they still hadn't come. I was starting to doubt the authority of the sign-holding guy. I was starting to feel like someone who was stood-up on a date...

2:30 rolls around, and here comes the truck! They backed it up the driveway, opened the gate, and dumped the entire contents of the truck in my yard!!! SWEET!!!

and the best part is, IT WAS FREE!!!!!

Ok, so by free, I mean I slipped the 2 guys a few bucks each, and sat down with them and gave them a cold drink, but still..FREE MULCH AND A LOT OF IT!! Here are pictures.

Here comes the truck...

And here's my mulch pile...

That last picture makes it look like the pile is bigger than our truck, but that's just the camera angle. I figured the pile was about 10 feet long x about 5-6 feet wide x about 4 feet high. And free. I spent half the day today spreading it. I estimate I spread about 3-4 yards of it, and the pile is about half gone, so we got somewhere about 7 yards of the stinky stuff. Figure it would have been about $20 per yard, plus $75 delivery, and we got it for a nice tip and 2 cold drinks. And one drink was water, so we didn't even have to pay for that!! :)

Phil. 4:19 - And my God will meet all your needs according to His riches in Christ Jesus...

Thank You, Lord, for free mulch!!!

Oh yeah, and I slew a big snake today...

That's a size 13 boot next to it.

Projects, projects, projects

Today was a busy day. Danielle & the boys were at VBS all morning and into the afternoon, so it's a perfect time for me to do work.

Since there were scattered T-storms in the forecast for the afternoon, I started by mowing the lawn. It was a totally different experience mowing the lawn without the boys to "help" me. Usually, I have to stop every few minutes to answer a question, mediate a disagreement, etc, but today I was actually able to mow the lawn from start to finish without interruption. It was really boring! I missed the boys so much. I missed seeing them pushing around their little bubble mowers. However, I did enjoy getting to just listen to my iPod and nothing else. Since our church hasn't started putting Pastor Rick's sermons online yet, I've started downloading sermons by Tony out in Kansas. He's a great minister who does some great expounding on God's Word. The sermon I listened to today was on James 1:12-16. It was about resisting the temptation to sin. Part of that passage exposes the awful truth about sin...

James 1:14-16 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.

Notice, we are tempted by our own desires. It is our responsibility to be diligent and to avoid situations/people/things that cause us to sin. And, more importantly, it is only through God's grace that we can be free from the sin. We cannot do it on our own. If we think we can do it alone, we're crazy. Bottom line - The awful truth is that Sin does NOT bring happiness/pleasure/contentment. It brings Death. But, as Tony pointed out, Praise God that...

1 Corinthians 10:13 No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

Mowing the lawn was by far the most productive part of the day!

After the lawn, it was on to the garage. A good friend of mine from church hooked me up with some free cabinets from a guy at work that was remodeling his kitchen. They were exactly what I was looking for to put in the garage. So I hung 3 of them in the garage today. Since I'm going to eventually finish the garage really nice, I put in some insulation behind them so that when I finally get around to re-doing the garage, I won't have to take them down again to insulate. Pretty smart, eh??

The problem is, the studs in the garage aren't exactly what you'd call plumb. They aren't really that bad out of line, but when I hung the cabinets all nice and plumb, it really accentuated the crooked studs. So, I ended up putting up some plywood around the cabinets to cover the studs. Problem solved...

Then, I cleaned up my lumber corner in the garage. I threw out any scrap pieces that have gotten thrown in the corner over the past 2 years of projects, and I even sorted the good wood into stacks. Pressure Treated on the left, regular pine on the right. Sorted by size, too. Now, I'm ready to tackle the next wood project - Steps on the side of the front deck. I'll explain that in a different post!

All this before noon! I couldn't believe how much work I got done. We'll see what tomorrow brings!

Family Farm Fun Fest & First Fish Fishing!!

Well, we had a GREAT time on our family vacation! I wouldn't necessarily call it a reunion, but it was the first time that my whole immediate family (Mom & Dad, the 5 of us, and my brother & his wife & daughter) went away together in a long time. The last time we did this was maybe 15 years ago, and there weren't any wives or kids yet. OK, so I guess it was a reunion of sorts...

Here's the farm...

If you want more pictures of the farm go to my wife's blog.

Most importantly, the boys got to go fishing. And caught their first fish. Actually, they both caught their first 6 fish. 6 monster sunnies each. Boy, those sunnies put up a fight...

Here's Ryan's FIRST FISH EVER!!!

And here's Kevin's FIRST FISH EVER!!!

My Dad was reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally far away when he took the pictures. Those sunnies are actually about 10 pounds each, and about a foot long...

Sean didn't go fishing. He just sat on the dock saying, "EEESH!!".

Oh, yeah, and, I got the obligatory hook in the finger while I was untangling one of the boys' lines. He thought I had let go, so he cast his line out. I hadn't let go yet. ouch. I have to say, I managed to not use any regrettable words in front of the boys (or my mom) when it happened! All I could muster up was "AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!".

Oh, and at one point, the fishing line got hooked on the anchor rope of the diving dock, so I got in the canoe to unhook it. All the while, my beloved bride was sitting on the dock, convinced that I was going to fall in. She even took a picture of me...

Thanks for the support baby! I couldn't have done it without you!!

We also had a great time with my parents and my brother, sister-in-law and neice. She is adorable!! The boys absolutely loved her!

The boys also enjoyed spending time with Pop Pop and Grandma. Here they are pondering the deepest thoughts life has to offer...

I think in this picture, they were pondering whether we could finally go inside the Villa Como to eat some pizza!

And here are the boys pondering about the snails in the pond...

The highlight for me was going out to dinner with my beautiful bride and my brother and his bride. We had a great adult dinner at a restaurant on a lake, and enjoyed being family. Then our wives made fun of us because we HAD to go to an ice cream place that we went to when we were kids. They even had the same posters that were up in 1985. no kidding. One was a picture of Jane Fonda in an exercise outfit that boasted, "We have low-fat frozen yogurt!".

So, a good time was had by all! It was a real blessing to get away as a family again. Hopefully we can do it again soon!