Roofing

Defective shingles call for a new roof job.  My Guys at work!

Flute Offertory

Sinus Surgery

Monday morning I am scheduled to have sinus surgery. I have been asked what this consists of so I went looking to get visuals to help. The images should be able to be clicked to enlarge in a new window.

This was one of the pages in the book the surgeon gave me explaining how they go about the surgery. I will be completely knocked out, he promised! He did not say anything about polyps.  Mine are just swollen shut and congestion is trapped. It has been just about a year since I noticed any of it starting.

If you look at where the arrow is (I took this screen shot from the video below) He explained that is the part of the brain where smell is found.  Since nothing can get up there that is why I lost my sense of smell (about 6-8 weeks ago now) and why I am loosing my sense of taste also.  I made molasses cookies the other day for the kids and while they were cooking they went on and on about how good they smelled and that they tasted delicious.  I hope they leave me some and hopefully in a few weeks I can taste at least one of them. I washed the floors with pine-sol and all of them were crying about how strong it smelled...not even a glimpse of the smell for me.

I found this great video that shows what the sinuses look like on a CT scan...unfortunately this is not what mine looks like...where you see black in the video is where the air can fill, I have no black at all.

Well, I hope that helps you understand what this surgery is about. If you have any questions ask and I will do my best to answer. I appreciate all of the prayers!!!! (My other surgeries are scheduled for the 26th and I am on limited activities for at least 6 weeks after then.)

I forgot to mention that I will have to sleep sitting up for the first few days. I am not to blow my nose for at least 10 days and try to avoid sneezing for the first month.  I can't imagine that since I must sneeze 30-40 times a day and go through a box of Kleenex in about 3 days by myself..

Laundry Room

An example of the previous wall. I was so glad to finally have this hole fixed. For those who remembered this use to be the camouflaged room.  It had lots of mudding to do plus we extended the one wall of the closet, removed the wrap around edges and the closest header so we could get more room for the cabinets and more lighting to catch those ever lingering stains that you do not see until the kids try walking out the door with them on...

Then after a couple of coats of paint.  I was surprised how easy it covered.  I tried the new frog tape for these stripes and I am glad I did, it worked amazingly!

So here are the stripes with all of the dressers along one wall.  Since Levi's bed is still in this room he wants me to add Gold stenciled stars to the bottom of the rectangle.  We need to hang the blinds and he will also have some shelves above the dresser to keep his nerf guns etc. Levi's bed is underneath the window with plenty of room to get in the dresser.  We put his bed on risers so he can fit his totes of legos and lincoln logs etc underneath his bed.

On the opposite wall is a 6' cabinet (which he can also store things in) for me to fold the laundry straight out of the dryer.  I can also hang the clothes straight out of the dryer :).

So this one is kind of dark but if you can see the cabinet is on the far left, right next to the dryer.  The dryer is at an angle to give the vent more room and make it easier to get into. There is a space beside the upper cabinet to store the broom, mop etc.  Eventually (when the budget allows) I would love a stackable front load unit so I can put cabinet for all of the games etc up here too.  We did not design this house very well for extra storage....so now I am going through all of the kids' clothes etc. and throwing or packing up for a garage sale.


I have been trying to send these pictures from my phone via e-mail for a couple of days now and they always just get sent back to me so I thought why not just post them here.  We started last Friday by emptying everything from Levi's room into the family room (which was then unusable and almost unpassable.)  The reason we decided to do this is the way we had originally had our laundry set it just never got caught up and always looked messy.  I wanted a room that contained all of the kid's dressers and a place to hang things up straight out of the dryer.  I got in a bad habit of hauling it all upstairs and folding them on the couch where they would eventually get hauled back downstairs and hopefully put in the right dresser.

June 28th Junior Camp

Today my babies left for camp.  This is Shelby's first time going.  She made me a card for every night full of hugs and kisses so that I would not have to go without.  I made her a bracelet that said hugs and kisses from Mom so she can get one any time she wants one.   I think we will both do just fine.

Of course her and Hannah had to dress alike and will do so most of the week.

Most of the kids that are going on the bus

Shelby helping Hannah with her luggage.

Julie lifting Shelby's luggage on the bus.

Double set of twins.

The girls from Cornerstone Baptist Church

Smiles!

Giggles.

Bye Bye kids!  We will see you back on Saturday!!

I think that actually catches this horrible blogger up on the month of June.  Let's wait and see what July brings....

Family Reunion June 26th

Saturday, since we survived the storm we headed over to Lake Crystal for a family reunion.  Rita's sister Joyce rented a room at the rec center so the kids could go swimming and the adults did not need to fight the heat or bugs.  It was a great day

Shelby loves having a girl cousin to play with.  Sophia did not even seem to get too tired of Mommy Shelby...

Garrett was swimming laps and got winded.

Then he decided to see what variations he could use to increase his speed down the slide.  We watched and timed all of the cousins and then he tried a bunch.  He took a full second off his best time (7.26) but was only the 3rd fastest with the fastest two being 6.36 seconds and 7.07 seconds.

Can you say competitive?

Levi was quite a bit slower and decided just to have fun, and he did!

Straight on in and under...

Shelby even went down a few times.  Seth decided that since Dad was busy telling everyone about his trip that he would sit with me and help time the kids.  His favorite part was all of the delicious foods.

Sophia once again!

Storm, June 25th

Friday after Levi's band lesson we headed to Iowa to spend the night at Steve's parent's house.  We had a family reunion on Saturday and had not been to visit the farm in quite some time.  After supper we sat down to look at Steven's pictures from Ukraine and this little storm came rolling in.

Here pops down this nice little funnel cloud.

The temp dropped almost 15º in a matter of second and the wind picked up fast as you can see by Garrett here.

So instead of going in the house to take shelter...we stood outside and watched it come in...

Within 20 minutes the sun was completely gone and it was just after 7:00 p.m.