Houses will eat ALL your time

This summer we worked at getting our house painted and replacing the 4x6 posts in the front with columns. The columns which were supposed to be a 1 weekend project, turned into much more, but we finally got them done and I thought I'd post a pic of our house. It will never be a really cute house, but I do think that it looks better than it did before.

Thread...really?

Charity thinks that someone needs to teach my kids how to make Christmas lists.

Here's Israel's exactly how he wrote it:

• Yo-yo
• Soda (Pepsi or coke)
• Water pistol
• 10 stay home from school certificates (signed by you)
• Jump drive
• Bag-o-chocolate pretzels
• Rosin
• Thread
• Sour Spray
• Silly String
• Bamboo

Luckily for me, I think I can get everything on his list for pretty cheap...although he's not getting silly string, Steve has banned it from the house. We still have remnants of it from 5 years ago when I made the mistake of buying it.

He'll definitely be getting the thread. Because, the boy asked for thread.

Tree hunting

We took the kids up to the mountains last night to cut a Christmas tree. The weather couldn't have been better, we needed coats, but it wasn't bitter or anything. The kids quickly discovered that the trees that you get in the forest aren't exactly like trees that you get at Home Depot. "They have feelings, my friend." No, really, trees in the forest usually grow in groves and in pairs. When you see a beautiful tree, most likely it is two trees growing together, so that if you cut down one, you essentially get a half of a tree. (We decided that next year maybe we should get two permits and finding a tree would be a peice of cake.) Finally Israel and Elijah found our perfect tree. We brought it home and decorated it.

I love Christmas!