Home grown fun

For the past 7 months we have had workers at our house doing some home repairs and what not.  We had a room built for Austin in the attic space above our room, painted Dania's bathroom, fixed our sagging sun room, stained the decks and underpinning and painted the exterior of the house.  When you have someone in your home for7 months they become friends.  We had many long talks about God, wives, marriage, childrearing and the meaning of life.  I thoroughly enjoyed having them here and so did the kids.  Luke in particular made good friends with them both, and was always challenging them to some kind of competition.  Luke even hounded Chris (the younger guy) to give up cigarettes. (which he did)  Luke even went so far as to write his "hero" paper about Chris.  Often, I would look out the window to see the workers playing some sort of game with the kids, Brad who knew quite a bit of riddles and magic was always stumping them with his tricks.  The workers called their time at our place; The Brock Glory Train

This is how you sleigh ride in the south

They could barely hang on for a minute, Nate was ruthless in his attempts to fling them off

Nate gets sucked into the kickoffs

"I felt something rip"

Chris says "watch a pro do it"

Brad takes a stab at it, while Luke who instigated the whole thing with a "betcha can't" watches on.

Military Weekend

Our town hosts a military weekend every year.  The Band of Brothers military series was based on an infantry group that trained here, and I believe parts of the film were shot here on location as well.  It is a pretty big deal and a wonderful piece of history, so we try to come out every year and see the old planes and go to the demos.

This is the Huey that we all took a ride in at the local airport

Nate is too big to fly this bird, but he keeps on dreaming

Evan mentally gets ready for his first flight in any type of aircraft

Random thoughts

I have been reading over and over again the book of Ecclesiastes.  I do not feel like I can move on yet.  I have been getting some surprisingly good stuff out of it.  Usually, I skim through this book or just pick out the "good" verses, since the little black cloud that follows me doesn't need anymore fuel to the "woe is me" fire.

Austin is not doing that great in school.  His spelling is atrocious and his handwriting leaves much to be desired.  I am SO glad we got the Reading Detective comprehension material; until this past week, he was failing every one of the assignments.  He over thinks everything, and his brain is certainly not wired like mine. He has been struggling in grammar as well.  The comma splice, fragments, and fused sentences were throwing us both for a loop.  I still don't really understand when to use ; (this) rather than , (that). ugh!  We are having a good time though, and I am not really concerned with his performance.  I will whip him into shape soon.

He is having the most wonderful opportunities to go to Nate's shop and help out with the motorcycle business.  He and Nate took apart his first bike last week.  He received $35 as his share in the process.  He gets to hang around a bunch of really nice young men, and with the 12 or so motorcycles in the shop right now, the testosterone is really flowing.  I even caught some of it the other day and jumped on an orange crotch rocket and sped off past the airport.  When I thought that I was really flying, I looked down to see that I was going all of 43mph.  Nathan was ahead of me.  I should actually say that he was a small black speck on the horizon, and when we arrived at the shop, he stated that I could hardly have been going any slower. Oh well!  I guess I have no future as a leather ed up street racer.

I just got home from driving a couple in our church to the Atl airport.  They are on their way to Bulgaria to pick up their new 4 year old son.  I am so excited!  I felt like I participated in a moment of eternity.

I am excited about the young married women in our church.  I have a couple of them that I am particularly vested in.  I find great fulfillment in these mentoring type relationships.