More Pics from Jess

Here are a FEW of my favorites... ~Jaye~

Ahhh...summertime!

One of our many bonfires...interesting wood formation just kinda happened

Okay...I finally quit pulling the milkweeds from our yard and we
had MANY beautiful butterflies because of it!!

do whap diddy whap...

Return the Roaster Days 3-4-5-6

The roofing continues...Wednesday, Day 3...The Dumpster arrives!! Brian did tear some more shingles off but since it was church day not too much got done!!

Thursday, Day 4...Brian was up on the roof all day tearing off...around 4 ish the help arrived!! Yeah!! Thanks to Fred Ellis, Pastor Steve, Brian Kushman, Kevin Standfest, Rich Street, Tony Parandi, Anthony Hargrave, Anna Huey and Eric!!! We all worked until 8:30...talk about using your night vision!!

Friday, Day 5...Bright and early the supplies arrived from Carter Lumber!! Let me just say Carter Lumber is the place to go for all your home improvement needs!! Brian figured out an estimate for everything he needed to do the roof. He took all his "figures" to the home improvement stores to compare. He got the BEST service from Carter..they seem to go above and beyond to help us out. One of their sales reps came out and measured...actually spent over an hour at our house covering all the bases with Brian. He called back a couple hours later with an estimate for our supplies and it was only about $50 more than what Brian figured. The difference was their "delivery" charge. Pastor Steve and Brian Kushman showed up again to help for the day!! Yeah for great, servant hearts!!
Saturday, Day 6...Pastor Steve and Brian were up on the roof "before God was even awake"!! Kent Santee came later in the morning to help finish up the project!! Yipee...the roof is complete!!

Return the Roaster Day 2

Day two brought some help...Wesley joined his dad on the roof today. Too bad it's ISTEP testing or I know a boy who would be staying home from school!! Good news, the dumpster comes tomorrow and the new roof supplies come on Friday morning. Brian said today, "I'm not as young as I used to be." There will not likely be any trips to the gym this week :) The guys did get layer #1 off on one side! Yeah!! They stopped there because they are just making a big pile on the edge of the roof waiting for that dumpster. Plus, as Brian said, "It's like a million degrees up there in the sun."

The Roasting Pan

Jaye wants her roasting pan back. You see for the last two years I have been using her pan to catch rain water in the attic, along with about six or seven other buckets and pans. Our roof has been leaking for quite some time. In order to return Jaye her pan I started working on my roof. We have three layers of very old, brittle, ugly shingles. The top layer, black, the middle green t locks, and the bottom layer green three tabs. I started my quest to return the pan by driving around Marion looking for the best deal on a truck load of shingles. I did the usual stops...Lowes, The Home Depot and I even went to a place that is out of business as of September 12th. None of these wonderful establishment would be able to place my truck load of shingles on top of my roof, for that is a very important service I need. I really don't want to lug the bundles up the ladder myself. Carters Lumber will conveyor the load up for me for only .50 a bundle. What a great deal! Join with the Hollands this week as we blog the progress of retuning the pan. I'm working on it all week, so if you wanna show us some love please feel free to stop by and lend a hand.

"King of the roof"

Pictures

This summer we got a new camera. Jessica has kinda taken over the photo duty here around the house and has come up with some pretty cool shots. During the summer I challenged her to get 100 "wow" pictures from around our house, the rule; they must be taken from our property. I wanted to share some of the 100 with you. ~Brian

May I please have a handful of napkins?

Did you ever notice....everytime you go to a fast food drive up you get more napkins than you would ever need for your meal??? It happens to us anyway! Maybe we're just a neat family and don't spill...maybe we are slobs and don't really care to wipe it up. Either way, we found we were throwing away unused napkins. So, being the quirky little family that we sometimes are...we decided to capitalize on this. We started saving our napkins from fast food restaurants and sometimes even asking them for extras. By doing this I couldn't tell you the last time we bought a package of napkins...and we don't eat out THAT often! Even the kids are in on this...it has become a challenge for us! Our most cherished napkins came all the way from Chicago. They have a picture of Soldier Field printed on them...maybe we'll use those for Christmas! Cheapskates you say, maybe so but it's fun! ~Jaye~

Same Day Different Views

When you think you're having a bad day, just think of these poor guys at the parade. A couple times a year you have to be on your game and these guys miss it. You can't tell by the photo but the three wheeler isn't running either. I missed the shot of them pushing both rides down the alley. I know how they must feel.


But here I am with my daughter having a great day. ~ Brian

She Did It!!

8th grade~~~~~~~~~~Freshman

Every year when Jessica gets her school pics taken we always "dare" her to come up with her own pose. After sweet talking the photographer, this is the year she did it!

What I Learned from Disney

While in Florida last week I noticed something about Orlando. Just about everywhere we went people were really friendly. We stayed in an exceptionally nice hotel, the Shingle Creek. I kinda expected them to be nice because it cost big $ to stay there. Thank you Wesleyan Church for making a trip like this possible for us poor folks. But they were nice, very nice. Here's the thing EVERYONE down there was nice. I wonder if the influence of Disney World has caused the rest of the town to step up into the world of niceness. We walked around a lot while we were down there. You go into one of those "tourist" shops with all the knock off Disney stuff and the workers ask how you were, thanks for coming in and have a great day. It was great! Now my experience here in Marion is often quite different. Take for example that evil place, Walmart. I mentioned to Jaye I wish Walmart would send its workers down to Florida for training. I went to the pharmacy the other day. Two ladies were behind the counter working on their computers. I walked up, they both looked at me and neither one said a word. I have to admit, I'm kinda used to that at Walmart. I usually feel more like an inconvenience than a necessary, vital part of keeping their store open. I looked at my watch to see how long it would take for them to see they had a customer waiting to be helped. FOUR minutes standing there with my empty pill bottle before I heard those friendly words, "I'll be with you in a minute." I don't know how to write grouchy but that was how she said it. You'll never guess what happened, the phone rang.... she jumped right on it. A few minutes on the phone and she was done. She took my pill bottle, barked off some demands to me about not coming back for at least two hours and never once said anything like, "Sorry for the wait, I hate my job so I'm not going to be nice to you, drop dead"...nothing. I thought to myself I should just get right back in line cause it would take two hours to get anyone to speak to me again anyway. I wish I would have had my cell phone while I was standing there, I could have called in my prescription. At least one of the two would have picked up the phone. It's not just Walmart, have you gone to McDonalds? I've gotten to the point that I'll say to the girl taking my cash, "Wow, having a bad day are ya?" They don't get it. But back to FL...I don't think that would have happened down there. I miss the beach, but mostly I miss the friendliness. I wonder how this might translate to the church? ~Brian~

What a Difference a Year Makes!

Wes
6th Grade~~~~~~~~~~7th Grade

Pictures from our FL trip

Our home on the beach

Brian & Jaye

We left our mark

Whatta Babe :)-

We Are Back!

Greetings! Okay, I know what you're thinking... "I knew it wouldn't last long! New bloggers are all the same, giving up only weeks after they start." Well, Jaye and I were away this past week enjoying a "working" vacation to Florida. It was GREAT! I'm sure in the next few days you will be hearing all about our little get away. I've got a lot of little stories to share with you and some pictures as well.
Let's get to one. Jaye and I left Indiana on Tuesday morning, fly down to Orlando and get checked into our room. What a great hotel room, we stayed at the Shingle Creek Resort. Check it out at rosenshinglecreek.com After dumping our bags in the room we headed straight out the door to Cocoa Beach. It was about 50 miles away. I'm guessing Tuesdays aren't big beach days because the beach wasn't all that crowded. The water was really warm. The sun was really hot...a perfect beach day. We rented a couple of chairs and a beach umbrella...I know I wasn't the fattest guy on the beach but I might have been the whitest. (hence, the need for the umbrella). After a couple of layers of sun screen I was set. You know how long it has been since I sat around? No cell phones, computers or calendars to work on...it was great.
After some time I opened my eyes to see this lady standing there with her buddies. Keep in mind that I'm not a big fan of tattoos, I don't have anything against them, I just don't think I would ever want one. If I did it would have to be an orange and blue C, or a Chicago bear head, or something like that. I have a lot of friends that have them. More power to them. The tattoo has always been one of the "rebel" things. The bikers have them, the rockers have them, they are the "cool" on the edge kinda things. I've never been cool or on the edge. All that said to show you this picture.

Lady on the beach

Tattooed lady on the beach

I think this picture takes away all the "coolness" in getting a tat. Now all you bikers and rockers share a bit of "rebel-ness" with this lady. How cool is that! ~Brian~