Experiencing a New Normal

Today, my sister-in-law and I took my nephew and Anthony up to Eldora to church camp.  This will be their 3rd year going.  I told Anthony that he could blog about it when he gets back.  Unfortunately I forgot to get him a disposable camera - so there will be no pictures - but I'm sure he will have many stories to share.  This picture was taken with my phone camera - I left my other one in the car!  Anyway here they are with Jakob - he will be their cabin counselor.  Jakob was a member of the youth group Jon and I help with.  So the first camp Anthony went to without TJ I requested he be with Jakob.  I'm so grateful they honor my request - it makes this momma feel much better about leaving her kiddo at camp for four days!  Stay tuned for Anthony's post about camp - Friday!

So it's been really busy around here.  We continue to make progress with our tiling around the house.  We are hoping this week to have the egress windows put in and all the other outside work done!  Look at the progress we made this past week. The guys came out to tar our basement walls.  Hopefully this will keep out any water!    Our job (the boys and me) was to scoop the rock out of the loader and into 5 gallon buckets and then give to Jon and Don down in the hole.  It was hard work, but the boys were helpful.   Anthony and Will taking their turn filling the buckets!      Jon and Don down in the hole making sure the tile had the right fall and then putting the rock on top to keep it in place.     We had to make sure the tar was dry before we could start tiling and Jon had to spray during the day so we did this all in a couple of evenings.  It was alot of work but it will defini...

So, usually by now we have had the camper out and maybe even camped a couple of times.  However, this year - different story!  We knew it was going to be a crazy, busy summer so as of June we still had not gotten it out of the shed.  Well about a week or so before we left to go to Guatemala I was talking with a good friend of mine who informed me that she had gotten us camping reservations for the Fourth of July weekend.  Not only for just Friday - Sunday, but starting on Wednesday.  Which meant I needed to get the camper cleaned up before we left because we would be camping the day after we got home from Guatemala.  So, I was helping Jon get the camper out of the shed when I noticed a bunch of mud on the back of the camper next to the ladder.  I thought it was odd when I noticed little hand prints in the mud.  My first response was - those boys got in the mud and then decided to climb the camper - which I wasn't too pleased about.  But ...

This past week we (more Jon) have been working really hard on our basement project.  The people came to structurally (fix) support our basement walls - now they shouldn't push in any more!!  Now that that was done, Jon could start his project -  to re-tile around the house.  We've had some issues and wanted to make sure everything was good to go before we finished the inside of the basement.  It started off Monday with taking the deck off.  That was a project all in itself.  The boys and I helped (as did Jon's dad).  Tuesday we finished that.  Then the rest of the week they dug out around the foundation of the house all the way down to the footings!  Jon's dad, along with my dad came over to help.  This was quite the job as well.  Once they got all that done, then Jon power-washed the cement - he did such a good job - if the cracks hadn't been there - it would have looked like a new basement!  Afte...

Just wanted to remind all of you about tomorrow (Sunday).  Our youth group is sharing all about our trip to Guatemala!  Come to Central Reformed Church in Oskaloosa!  Services are at 9:00 and 10:45!   You won't want to miss this incredible service.  Hope to see you there!

Friday morning Will and I headed to DesMoines for his three month post-op eye appointment.  We got GREAT news.....his eyes are perfect!  AND he doesn't have to wear his glasses anymore!  He (as was I) so excited!  So no more road trips to Wolfe Eye Clinic - just visits with our regular eye dr.  I have to admit I will miss the way he looked with those glasses - he was pretty cute!  However, this will also be one less thing to fight him about!

We finally got TJ's ribbon all decorated!!  The theme this year at the Iowa State Fair is  Happiness is...  So we titled our ribbon Happiness is...spending your "day-sies" at the Iowa State Fair!!  Our idea we thought was going to be easy and wouldn't have quite the detail and time last year's did.  We were wrong.  I believe since our design was so simple we thought it needed more.  We went back and forth on what to do and decided with the original simple design.  Our families all met to work on it.  I love how willing our families are to get together to do things that honor TJ.  Now onto the pictures (I tried hard to get a picture of everyone working on it - but that didn't happen - everyone did something even if there isn't a picture of them).   This picture was actually taken a whole lot earlier - the boys (and Matthew) are putting on the primer.     This was the before picture with our drawin...

After experiencing the fun of the Glow Run - I thought it would be fun to do another similar 5K - only this time add more family members.  So I recruited my mom, sisters, nieces and the boys to do the Color Run.  Holy smokes was it CRAZY!!  There were WAY more people there than the Glow Run (and there was another run at 1:00).  The race was to start at 9:00 am, however we were towards the tail end of the line - so we didn't get to go thru the start line until 10:00 am.  The mob was so big it was hard to run - so we would walk - but then if you walked you almost got trampled on.  It was a challenge.  Along the course they had color stations where they would spray you with color (it was colored cornstarch).  There was blue, orange, yellow and pink.  Once you crossed the finish line you could take your packet of color and go out with the rest of the runners who had finished and throw up your color to get even more colorful.  We di...

So for those of you who know me really well, probably already know what I'm talking about.  But just in case you don't, I'll tell you......it is now less than 30 days until the IOWA STATE FAIR!!!  I can hardly wait!  I have always LOVED the fair.  You see growing up we showed black Angus cattle.  So we would take our livestock up to the fair and spend almost a week there.  We didn't have a camper and we usually got a hotel - so that meant when we showed up for morning chores - we were there until evening chores!  We spent a lot of time just hanging out in the cattle barns.  However, my younger sister and I always would venture off at least a couple different times during the day.  We had our usual spots we wanted to cover - spin art, the big yellow slide, the DNR building and so many more.  There are so many good memories of the Iowa State Fair - too many to tell about in this post anyway! So now that I'm grown, married and have kids o...

I've tried a couple different times to sit down and tell you all about our experience in Guatemala - but I've been a loss for words each time.  It was such an incredible experience that it's really hard to put into words - I'll try my best.  So, in my last post I told you all about our mountains (obstacles) that ended up being anthills.  Well, I can honestly say every worry or concern we had about our flights or just being down there - were quickly put to ease.  God was with us the whole entire time.  It was absolutely amazing.   This was our group - 25 youth and 7 adults   This was the group I worked with and our family.     This was Jon's group and his family.     We built three houses right next to each other - the other two were just on the other side of those trees.    Here the houses are all up with cement board on the outside and drywall in the inside.   ...