Date Night was actually Date Day this week. Home from his business trip, Cody spent the day with Paige doing temple work up in Omaha, NE at the Winter Quarters Temple. Tyson spent the day at school and then with neighbors while Kallie had to hold it while in her kennel. Thomas & Jeffery of course had free roam of the house.
Lot's of storms and rain this week. See our weather blog for our latest weather purchase ...
We're a little more than half way there ... on two accounts. During Tyson's Spring break he participated in a mom-mandated "No Screen Policy" which meant the ban of using anything with a screen ... such as computer screens, television screens, Palm screens, cell phone
screens, laptop screens, etc. Much to his surprise, it's gone quite well! There's been a lot of reading, exploring the outside (till he saw a snake) and playing with toys long forgotten. Nothing wrong with electronics, but it's been a good break nonetheless.
Cody avoided the no-screen policy by going on business and is a little more than halfway through an extended business trip that began last Tuesday in Charlotte and concludes in Gettysburg on Wednesday. Driving from North Carolina to Pennsylvania over the weekend offered him the chance to spend some time in his old mission area of Washington DC, which included a trip to the Washington DC temple. Sunday was a chance to see just how much Spanish he remembered as he mixed-n-mingled with Hispanics of all nationalities at church.
It'll be nice to have the whole family back together again on Wednesday - and maybe we'll turn the tv on again, if we remember how.
Spotty. Boring. Barren. Weeds that passed for imitation grass. Like a teenager with acne, it was time for our front yard to get a makeover. After missing out on serious landscaping over the past couple of years, we spent the past week making some big changes in our front yard and boy was it therapeutic!
It started with a decorative split rail fence along the creek (aka "ditch") and moved from there. After having helped Heidi Fletcher thin out some of their raspberries, 50 or so plants found their way to our yard. Like a potter with clay, Cody shaped and sculpted the slope in the front yard to a decorative terrace with a future bench area for sunset and thunderstorm observations. Tyson transported the rock from the Lowe's delivered palette over to the work area - half by wheelbarrow, half by skateboard.
It took every night after work, a full day of Spring Break labor on Friday and a final exhausting day on Saturday to complete the project. 16 pictures have been posted to our family photo album (click here) and we'll post some more later this summer when the new grass comes in. Now we await the arrival of our trees, bushes, shrubs, vegetables and seeds from the Kansas Forest Service, Gurney's and the Arbor Day Foundation. Hay! And that yellow stuff you see isn't grass spun from gold, it's the hay covering the seed.
There's only so much you can learn from your mother. Better said, there's only so much you're willing to learn from your mother. The piano is one of them. A few years ago Tyson learned the basics of playing the piano from Paige but now he's taking weekly lessons from Patrick Monahan, a junior at Tonganoxie High School. A few weeks into it and we're already privileged to hear Tyson banging out tunes such as "Old McDonald" on the ivory keys or whistling a tune on his school recorder. Ah ... the gift of music. Oh! And Paige recently tuned the piano with her piano tuning kit she bought off eBay. You know what the difference is between a fish and a piano? You can't tune a fish.
What weather we had to start the month of March! 70's one day, snow flurries another and a batch of tornadoes and thunderstorms to boot. It was awesome! So awesome that we created a separate blog just for the wild weather in Kansas. See the link on the right or click here.
It was cold and windy on Saturday but it didn't stop us from building our decorative fence out front. The mugo plants were screamin' to get in the ground and they seem happy to finally be planted. This of course is only the beginning as many more decorative fences, plants and trees will be going in soon ...
The cats now live on the second floor of the animal corner. Kalie, less inclined to jump, is content to stay on the main floor. Keeping the cats from taunting her though is another story.
Thought we would have another project to do Saturday when we found water dripping out of the heat vent downstairs in the basement. A little investigative work revealed the water came from excessive splashing, sloshing and frolicking in Tyson's bathroom. Tyson spent the next little while cleaning up water from the bathtub all the way over to the heat vent in the floor.
Date Night was actually Date Day this week. Home from his business trip, Cody spent the day with Paige doing temple work up in Omaha, NE at the Winter Quarters Temple. Tyson spent the day at school and then with neighbors while Kallie had to hold it while in her kennel. Thomas & Jeffery of course had free roam of the house.
screens, laptop screens, etc. Much to his surprise, it's gone quite well! There's been a lot of reading, exploring the outside (till he saw a snake) and playing with toys long forgotten. Nothing wrong with electronics, but it's been a good break nonetheless.
Spotty. Boring. Barren. Weeds that passed for imitation grass. Like a teenager with acne, it was time for our front yard to get a makeover. After missing out on serious landscaping over the past couple of years, we spent the past week making some big changes in our front yard and boy was it therapeutic!
There's only so much you can learn from your mother. Better said, there's only so much you're willing to learn from your mother. The piano is one of them. A few years ago Tyson learned the basics of playing the piano from Paige but now he's taking weekly lessons from Patrick Monahan, a junior at Tonganoxie High School. A few weeks into it and we're already privileged to hear Tyson banging out tunes such as "Old McDonald" on the ivory keys or whistling a tune on his school recorder. Ah ... the gift of music. Oh! And Paige recently tuned the piano with her piano tuning kit she bought off eBay. You know what the difference is between a fish and a piano? You can't tune a fish.
It was cold and windy on Saturday but it didn't stop us from building our decorative fence out front. The mugo plants were screamin' to get in the ground and they seem happy to finally be planted. This of course is only the beginning as many more decorative fences, plants and trees will be going in soon ...
