Wrapping up some pictures ...

I'm trying to get out some various picture sets I've promised, so here are some random ones ...


Here's Anna Holte, Emma's good friend, getting baptized at the lake.

Emma and Timmy trying to play Guitar Hero!

Cyndie and the kids with Lee during his visit.

Making a slip and slide with Lee and the kids.

A little water aerobatics with Emma.

Cold?

As in "burrrrr", not "achooo".

It's been pretty cold the last four or five nights. Down into the fifties. It is 10:21 am as I write this and, granted the windows are open, I'm cold sitting here in my shorts and t-shirt with sweatshirt over the top and slippers on. Weather.com says it's 76, but with the wind, it's definitely chillier than that! I'm not sure when the weather starts to get colder around here, but we've definitely seen the days start to cool off. There are no more high 80s with humidity days ... at least there really haven't been for the last several weeks. It has actually been very pleasant . I think we've only run our air conditioner* two or three days out of the last three weeks.

*Bad news on the AC front. We actually discovered this when Lee was here ... actually he discovered it ... but the pan that sits under our coolant coils is leaking. We're going around and around with Peck and Weiss, with whom we have our AC and heater coverage plan, about how to deal with it. It looks like it could be as little as $100 or so dollars (replace the pan) up to $2800 (replace the AC)! The problem is two fold. First, the coils/pan were installed right on top of the heater cavity where the flames and heat and everything is. Over time, this melted the plastic condenser pan under the coils causing the leak. The complication is that the AC is old enough ... 1994 ... that the manufacturer is not going to support parts for it after 2010. Peck and Weiss is looking to see if they can find just a pan to replace that, which would be our ideal situation!

So Cyndie and the kids are at MOPS this morning and I'm pounding out the code. The excitement for last night was a trip to the library and then to Culver's for ice cream. This all came as part of playing school ... which Emma has really been excited about lately. The trip was a "field trip" and I (the teacher) even made her have a signed permission slip to go!

That's it for now.

Cousins, Vomit, Construction

Pretty much in that order!

Cousins
So this weekend was our turn to have the Caspari kids over here and Dave and Amy to have 24 hours to themselves. They got here at noon and we basically killed the afternoon and evening with playing (in and outside), swimming at the pool, dinner, a movie (All Dogs Go To Heaven), and baths. Everyone went to be okay ... Kristi had a little problem staying in bed, and Emma had some issues*. But for the most part it went pretty well until ...

Vomit
The middle of the night ... Timmy woke up and threw up. He continued to do so off and on from then until Saturday night. At first we thought maybe he had just overdone it what with the cousins and food and playing, etc. But nope, he was sick. So Cyndie quarantined him to our room where he basically spent the rest of the day laying on the bed and watching movies. That kind of like would kill Emma, but for Tim, it really was a pretty good day ... throwing up aside! After breakfast of pancakes (Sarah is the only kid I know who does not like chocolate chip pancakes!), I took the healthy kids on a driving tour of local parks ... thanks for the inspiration Auntie Jane. We hit six ... the Dragon's Lair (we think that one counts as a "full-fledged park"), Emma's school, the Cobb Park off McDonald, the Tot Lot near the water tower, and the two Elementary schools in LG. We had several more on the list that we just didn't have time for. Then Emma and I drove the Caspari kids down to Crystal Lake. We stayed for lunch and an hour or so of play, but that was it. The rest of the day Cyndie and the kids laid low but ...

Construction
I hit the outside of our north wall to remove the siding. The deal we're doing with our friend the contractor is that he's going to charge us his "friends and family" rate hourly. Basically he uses these kinds of things to keep his guys busy between jobs or while waiting for inspections, he's not making much money. So he pointed out a few things like taking the siding off that I could do to save us a few bucks. It took about 2.5 hours. So now we have a big tarp on the side of the house. In the evening we watched a bit more TV.

Sunday Timmy seemed pretty good, though he and Cyndie stayed home from church. After quiet time he was pretty perky and was participating in our marathon "school" session. I was the teacher, Emma the student, and Timmy and Cyndie the Principals. We did classroom work and pledges (of allegiance) and had homework and took field trips (a bike ride) and had gym (cornhole) and art class and music class (learning a song from church complete with actions). It was fun, and took most of the later afternoon and evening.

Unfortunately Timmy was feeling a little yucky by bedtime ... maybe we over did it. Anyway, he threw up again in the middle of the night. He's a bit pluckier today again and ran some errands with Cyndie, so hopefully he'll be back on top of things again before too long.

*Emma for some reason decided that she had to go to the bathroom literally 10 - 15 times within a half hour of going to bed. I think it was actually a bladder infection with kind of confused her, but she really over dramatized it and made life miserable for Cyndie and I for an hour and a half after bedtime on Friday and Saturday nights. Oh well, I think Cyndie and I learned some more about how to help her and deal with her when that happens again.

So now the week is upon us. It is the last one before school starts. We're looking forward to a couple of play dates, Auntie Jane's visit this weekend (and seeing cousins), Grandma and Grandpa D return home, and, of course, school starting ... Emma on Tuesday and Timmy on Thursday.

Official construction!

It looks like the door project is moving right along. We talked to the contractor friend who will actually put in the door and we're on for "Wednesday or Thursday" ... which means that tomorrow afternoon and/or Sunday afternoon will be filled with taking off the siding on the outside of the north end of the house up to a height of eight or so feet. Good stuff!

Yesterday afternoon a friend of Cyndie's from MOPS came over with her three kids, so the afternoon was pretty full. Other than that, we tried to play it pretty low key. Emma and I did go to Target to get her a "first day of school" outfit. She ended up with some jeans with butterflies stitched on them and little jewels around them with three sparkly belts and some new shoes. She went for the extra belts instead of a new shirt because she wasn't totally sold on any of the shirts and she just opened up a whole bunch of new shirts in a hand-me-down box recently. She is just hilarious when shopping, especially for clothes. She loves to try them all on and look at herself in the mirror ... I think Target made the "mirror on three sides of the dressing room" configuration just for little girls like Emma!

This morning will be cleaning up a bit and getting ready for "cousin weekend". Since we got the Friday to Saturday off last week, this week Dave and Amy are off and we have Benny and Sarah and Kristi. It should be fun, although it's been a bit rainy so our activities may be somewhat restricted.

We have one full week left before school. Emma starts the 2nd and (I think) Timmy the 4th. We're looking forward to that (although I think Emma is a little nervous too*) and to having Grandma and Grandpa D back in town after three plus months away. There's also a chance Auntie Jane may come through over Labor Day which would be exciting!

*Toward this end, we're going to try to have at least a couple of play dates with school friends for Emma next week to try to ease her back into that realm of her life. We're also going to try to go up to the school to walk around a bit and peak in her classroom.

Construction ... continued

So yesterday was a pretty standard day ... I guess, like I mentioned yesterday, we're moving into a routine in preparation for school. In the early afternoon, Cyndie took the kids to the library to see a magician. They really enjoyed that and came home with lots of interesting descriptions of what the show entailed. For an hour or so while they were gone, I used the Suburban (the tractor didn't weigh enough to keep traction) to pull bushes out by the roots. It worked pretty well! The main purpose was to get rid of bushes that will be blocking the doors that we'll install, but also some were done in preparation for getting rid of some of the "planters"* that we'll do next spring. Cyndie had sailing in the evening so the kids and I had roast that Cyndie had made in the crock pot and then worked on hanging the hammock out in the yard and played some cornhole before the team came over for worship practice.

*The so called planters are a combination of rock and bark beds that are not grass, but really not flowers either. There are over-grown/scraggly bushes in most of them. Really they're mostly a pain in the behind since they get full of weeds and there are so many of them. The plan for this fall is to prepare them (remove bushes, rock/bark, weed barrier) for putting grass in in the spring. We'll probably do this every where (around the whole house) except for between the boardwalk and the house and a small spot to the left and right of the front door. The line of thinking is that doing weed and feed and mowing with the lawn tractor is much easier than trying to weed all these beds, and it just plain looks nicer!

Emma is gearing up for school. We'll probably go shopping for a first day outfit in the next day or so. I'll do the same with Timmy too. I guess I'm the designated shopper for the family!

A settled house means ... construction!

So, it's that time of year. Visits from friends have come and gone. Summer is winding to an end. Backpacks are being pulled out of storage and school supplies are materializing. Life is close to returning to the normal routine of the school year. What does that mean for the Wildwood DeVries? Construction!

Last night after an early evening of "Family Movie Night"*, Cyndie and I moved the furniture in the dining room and took the lovely knotty pine paneling off the wall. We now have a dining room of insulation! It actually went pretty quickly, which we were very happy about. The other nice thing was that I found that the socket that I'll have to move in order to put in the french doors is at the end of a circuit, so I'll just have to shorten the wiring rather than move it ... saving a lot of work. Next up in the process of getting the doors in ... taking out a bunch of bushes on the outside of the house, then removing the siding. We're going to pay a friend who is a contractor to actually install the door, but he suggested that we remove the siding as it will mean less time for his guy on site, and therefore a smaller bill which we're all for!

*So we watched Jonah, A VeggieTales Movie. It was kind of "Eh". There were a few nice one-liners, and a couple of the songs/dance routines were good, but all in all I can see why it did so poorly in the theaters. I'd give it a 2.4/5.

Movies I've seen this year (in the theater/a few video):
Iron Man - 4.2/5
Wall-E - 4.0/5
The Dark Knight - 3.9/5
Kung Fu Panda - 3.5/5
Horton Hears a Who - 3.0/5
Jonah, a VeggieTales Movie - 2.4/5
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - 1.9/5

Zone Visit Megapost ... Part I

Okay, so here are the first 20 or so pix from the Zone visit ... we had a blast!!


Of course the girls (and Tim too) played lots of dress up and dolls, etc.

Timmy and Caitlyn did a lot of hamming around.


The Dragon's Lair presented opportunity for a lot of fun.

This is on a walk around the "Wildwood Loop".

This looks like a picture out of some kids magazine!

We took several walks and on each one Caitlyn came home with at least a handful of wildflowers.

We celebrated all the kids' birthdays one night.

Many of the evenings were passed playing Guitar Hero.


The Zone kids and our kids both love to swim, so the pool and lake were big hits.


Here's Maddi learning a song.

One evening Jim, Laurie, Cyndie, and I went out for dinner while the kids stayed with a babysitter.

After dinner we walked a bit of the lake trail.

We picked out this house as the best we saw.

Here are the kids with their baby sitter who also happens to be the daughter of Tim's preschool teacher this fall.

One evening we had a bonfire and roasted marshmellows.

This is down by the beach at the lakefront.

More to come later, but no time for parsing through the other pictures right now!