The Observation Tower

High atop the Shawnee Mission Park Observation Tower

Karl Marx?

As one of her siblings said, “Look! It’s Karl Marx.”

Now That's a Mouth Full

The local library in our area started having a chess night a couple times a month when people can get together at the library and play a few games of chess. Our boys love to play chess and they're tired of getting beat by dad all the time so we have been going fairly regularly and it has been lots of fun.

This last time I took my four year old daughter along and she naturally became bored with the whole chess thing after a little bit, so I took her out to walk around in the library for a while. As we entered the toddlers play area I noticed a 4 foot tall stuffed Barney flopped over in a chair in the corner and before I knew it my sweet little daughter was running over to see him. I don't think we have ever even watched Barney so I had no idea what she was doing.

Much to the horror of all the on-looking toddlers my little girl ran right up to him, stuck her head right in his big mouth and started hollering (quietly of course, she does have some manners) "Ahhhhh, he's chewing my head!"

I don't know, maybe we need to do a little more work on the whole "meek and quiet spirit" thing (1 Peter 3:4). One things for sure though, I think Barney bit off more than he could chew with this one.

The Daddy Fan Club Gang

As I returned home from work yesterday I was treated to three of my children running out to meet me hollering "We're the daddy fan club!" They looked so cute and happy I just had to take a picture of them.

On the Treadmill at Grandmas House

Alyssa's First Bag of Pop Rocks

Its Good to be Home Again!

Between long hours working out of state and working on a Reformed Baptist Family Integrated church plant here in Kansas City (Mars Hill Reformed Baptist Church) it’s been very difficult to find the time to do all the things that I really need to do let alone blog. I just got home from another out of state trip and while I hate being gone from home this job was kind of interesting. Heres a few of the pictures that I got for the kids.

At this particular job I was working in some hangers where they kept some of the F-16 fighters between flights. They promised they wouldn't shoot me as long as I didn't try to take a picture inside the cockpit or up the air intake.

There were bombs and missiles sitting around here and there

And even some bomb ashtrays (a little military humor I guess).

But nothing beats being at home!

Sugar Packets!

Asa and Alyssa with their sugar packets!

"Oh boy!"

I was preparing to go out of town for a few days when my four year old daughter (Alyssa) came to me and asked if I was going to bring her a surprise back from Oklahoma, I usually bring the kids some sort of souvenir back when I work out of town. But before I could answer her my wife, who was also in the room, jokingly said "Yeah, he's going to bring you a sugar packet from Mc Donalds." At this Alyssa's little eyes lit up and she gasped with delight "Really?" she asked all tense with excitement.

"Uhhhh... sure" I said "I'll bring you two of them."

"Oh boy!" she exclaimed as she ran off down the hallway.

Every day now as I have been in Oklahoma I have talked to Alyssa on the phone and she has reminded me to make sure and get her sugar packets. So here I am, getting ready to leave Oklahoma with a pocket full of sugar packets (a couple for each of the kids). I cant wait to see what shes going to do with them.

"Tie your little sister to a tree"

A new game called "Tie your little sister to a tree." While I hate to stifle creativity I had to put an end to this one.

A Sunday Afternoon Adventure

A Sunday Afternoon Adventure on the Bike Trails.

A Little Cement Work

We've been watching one square of our sidewalk slowly dissolve into a treacherous pit of death over the last couple of years and we finally decided to fix it before someone got hurt.

After a few minutes of breaking up the remaining part of the square my youngest son said quote: "I should do this for a living, its kinda fun to break stuff!" Needless to say the thrill wore off just a few minutes later and he decided to go back to Architecture, but we still had some fun and some good hard work.

And, of coarse, we left some hand prints for future generations.

Square Foot Gardening

After our garden got a little bit out of hand last year my dear wife bought the Square Foot Gardening book by Mel Bartholomew. The idea is to make the most out of your gardening space with relatively little maintenance and I must say its worked pretty well so far. It even seems to be keeping the rabbits from eating our onions (by this time last year they had eaten all the tops off of them). The whole ideas pretty simple:

You build a 4' by 4' box lined with weed barrier on the bottom

Fill it with a mixture of peat moss, vermiculite and five different kinds of mulch

Divide it into square foot sections

And plant the recommended amount of each type of plant in the sections

The kids have had a lot of fun helping, the plants seem to be doing pretty good so far, it looks neat and hopefully it wont get overgrown with weeds so easily.

It's a what?

My sweet little four year old came to me early Sunday morning with this little scrap of paper with some doodles on it. "Here Daddy, I made this for you." she said with a great big cute smile on her face.

"Aww thats cute, what is it?" I asked

"It's an Atom Bomb." she said with a sparkle in her eye.

"It's a what?" I asked, not sure if I heard her correctly.

"It's an Atom Bomb" she said again slightly exasperated that I had to ask a second time. "With little people" she added.

Apparently the little people are blissfully unaware of whats about to happen to them.

When Home Schoolers Get Bored

Inside the Big Yellow Beast

One of the highlights of our trip to the Civil War on the Boarder (I know, it sounds like a Mexican dish) was the ride back to our car. We had parked at a nearby school and walked to the battle field and all the rest of the stuff, by the time we were done we were a little tired so we took the shuttle back to the school we had parked. The shuttle was a public school bus and my kids thought it was one of the strangest things in the world to be inside one of those things that they had often seen swallowing up other little children and taking them away like they were going off to prison or something.

I told them to soak it all in now and hopefully they would never have to see the inside of one of those things again.

Home Schooling at the Civil War

My family and I went to the Civil War on the Border at the Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop this past weekend in Olathe Kansas and had a blast. We had a pretty good view, but mostly from behind the Yankee lines this time.

The cannons were deafening

We saw lots of smoke

And the North won again.

Hello Kitty

Our 4 year-olds rendition of our pet cat Tiger.

At the Shatto Milk Company Dairy Farm

Homeschooling at the Shatto Milk Company dairy farm.

Alot of Ups and Downs

Springs are in the air here in the Midwest! After a long cold winter this trampoline suddenly sprung up in our backyard and the kids are having a blast! Thank you, Grandma, Aunt Rachel and Uncle Kevin!
The kids say, quote: "Its very bouncy!"

All Dressed Up And Nowhere To Go

I told Alyssa that she couldn't go outside and play because she was going to eat dinner pretty soon, so she put on a "disguise", told me her name was Mary and then asked if she could go outside and play. Whats wrong with this child?

A shameless bribe!

It was getting late for my four-year old daughter to be up and she was starting to have a bit of a melt down, so I had her go sit on her bed until I could come up and talk to her. A few moments after I watched her go up to her room I felt a small tug on my shirt. I looked down and there was my daughter, whom I had just sent up to her room, standing with a handful of Monopoly money; mostly $500 bills.

I looked at her for a moment and then said "Yes?"

Very carefully and articulately she responded "I will give you all of this money if you let me come out of my room right now."

I looked at her in astonishment for a moment and then asked "You're gonna bribe me with Monopoly money?"

"No, this is real money." she said very carefully.

I couldn't help but think of the trunk monkey commercial that someone had shown me some time ago.

Off to the Fire!

Another Bite of the Big Apple

That’s right I had another eight-day tour of duty in New York City (ten days when you include travel and getting snowed in at the Cincinnati Air Port, but that's another story).

Even though I almost became a pedestrian fatality statistic on several occasions I’ve got to admit most of the New Yorkers that I spoke with were much friendlier than I was expecting, it’s the ones in the cars you got to watch out for (they seem to confuse the brake pedal and the horn).

I also noticed that although a lot of the people there had trouble with the English language they could usually say the F word with great clarity, and in defiance of all rules of grammar many of them even used it as a conjunction (you remember the old School House Rock song?: “Conjunction Junction what’s your #@*&tion).

Even though I spent all of the day light hours working again I did try to make it to a few more of the sights this time, they were just a little harder to see in the dark.

I went to ground zero one night but couldn’t see very much because they had most of it blocked off for the construction of the Freedom Tower. This is probably the best picture of it I could get, it looks like a really big hole in the midst of some very tall buildings. I can't imagine what it would have been like to have been there when they fell.

I did get a couple of good pictures of the Vesey Street staircase, or the Survivors Stairway as they call it; the last remaining above ground structure that was part of the towers.

I also stopped at Battery Park and got a few pictures of The Sphere which used to stand in the Trade Centers plaza area. It's hard to see just how beat up it is in these photos.



I also made it up to Grand Central Station this time. I had been at the subway stop beneath it many times on my last trip but this time I made it a point to crawl out and see what the station actually looked like.



It looked just like in the movie (Madagascar).

Last of all I really wanted to get some pictures for the kids from the top of the Empire State building looking down but they wanted nearly $20.00, which I didn't even have at the moment, for fifteen minutes of time so I opted for some pictures from the bottom of the building looking up.

Is Time Longer When You're Shorter?

I was only gone to New York for nine days but it must have seemed like forever to my four year old daughter. The day after I returned home she took me by the hand and said "I'll show you where my room is, it's the pink one upstairs".

I remember how time used to go so slow when I was younger but now it flies by at unforgiving speeds. Time seems to go much faster as you get older, kinda like things that are falling seem to be traveling fastest just before they smash into the ground.

New York, New York

Work has kept me away from the computer as I've been in New York City for the last couple of weeks. It sure is good to be back home!

I grew up on the west coast and I've lived in numerous places around the Midwest but I had never been to New York City before, I feel like I just came back from a different planet. It was a neat place to visit for a little while but I sure wouldn't want to live there. I didn't make it to Central Park so I don't believe I saw any grass or trees the whole time I was there. The traffic was terrible, the Taxis were frightening and the parking sure left something to be desired!

The subway was horribly crowded for the most part but every once in a while we got to sit down. One afternoon we even had a little Mexican band come through our subway car and serenade us for a few minutes as we flew through Queens on the elevated track.


Work kept me very busy but I did find the time to go visit Time Square at night, now that was interesting.

Even the bums in New York were different, I found one holding a cardboard sign on which he had scribbled the words "Can you spare a beer?"; very direct and to the point. When I tried to take his picture he put his sign down and asked me for money first. Needless to say I wasn't about to give him money just to get a picture; "if any would not work, neither should he" drink beer (2 Thessalonians 3:10).

A co-worker saw another bum holding a cardboard sign on which he had scribbled the following: "Father killed by Ninja, need money for karate lessons". Now thats some creative bumming!

Happy 11th Birthday Megan!

The agony of defeat and the thrill of victory

Michael getting whupped (again) by Uncle Kevin "Bucktooth" at a game of Connect Four.

Michael shouting in victory as he finally beats Uncle Kevin "Bucktooth" at a game of Connect Four.

A Hard Day

It isn't easy being four.

A few pictures from the Holidays

Here are the kids making chocolate dipped candy coated pretzels

Mom making home-made marshmellows

and Alyssa giving all the junk food a big thumbs up.

Twas two nights before Christmas...

For the longest time our youngest daughter was afflicted by Limabeanaphobia; that’s right, she was afraid of Lima beans. She would wake up in the night after having nightmares about Lima beans. She would be scared to go to sleep because of Lima beans and she would want me to pray about the Lima beans before she went to bed. I don’t have any idea why; we never even ate Lima beans that I could remember (they kinda scare me too).

She finally got over the Lima bean thing and then she had a nightmare about hairy bugs in her bed. For weeks she slept on the floor or in her sister’s bed. In desperation to get her back in her own bed we finally bought a bottle of Lavender spray and assured her that we probably thought that the bugs would maybe not like the spray and they would never come back to her bed again. So now for the past several weeks we have had to go through an elaborate bed time ritual of taking everything out of her bed and spraying it down with Lavender spray.

I was thrilled to death last night when I got her in bed without doing the Lavender ritual; she didn’t seem to notice that we had just skipped right over it, we just read the Bible and went right to bed. But at 2:36 AM I woke up to “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” I fumbled out of bed, stumbled down the stairs and ran into the girl’s room where Alyssa was sitting in bed waiting for me to show up. “Daddy” she said “we forgot to spray my bed.” So there I was at 2:30 in the morning taking everything out of bed so I could spray it down with the Lavender spray.

Half asleep with only the light of a night light, I picked up the bottle and proceeded to spray myself right in the face. It seems like there’s always something to mess up a good nights sleep.

They are new every morning!

Yes! We woke up with electricity this morning and it looks like all of our trees are still standing! On the way home from work yesterday I noticed numerous trees that were beginning to break under the weight of all the ice that we've had and I thought for sure that we would lose something.

"It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.
They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness." Lamentations 3: 22,23

A fire by night

Fire and Ice

After some unusually warm weather here in the Midwest we're finally getting a little winter. For those of you who have never seen freezing rain, it's quite an experience (and it makes for some good sledding).

Yesterday the boys and I braved the first freezing drizzle storm of the year in order to go get a little free fire wood from a friends acreage. It was a lot of work chopping ice covered wood all day but as in all other areas of life, good things generally don't come without hard work and suffering.

And just as in most other areas of life the perseverance paid off in the end. It sure was nice when we were done to come in the house, light a big fire and enjoy the fruit of our labor!

Happy Birthday Michael!

Happy 9th Birthday Michael!