I know people are concerned with us with all the storms going through Iowa lately. We have fortunately not had any come through our area, but have had two separate nights of the weather alert radio going off. (this morning it woke us up at 4:45am - yuck! I am spoiled now that the girls will sleep til 7-8am!) Last weekend was the best as we had a tremendous thunderstorm that was just awesome to behold. I watched the lightning flashing as though it were morse code being sent - safely from my basement window, I might add! ;)

David started training with his new company this Tuesday. He is learning a lot and finding out that the other company was doing a lot of things wrong. (surprise, surprise) Speaking of his last company, we did get his final paycheck and they took out $980 in deductions which we are contesting. I have no idea how that is being received as you can not reach anyone on the phone except voicemail and they generally do not respond back to email. Adding up the money they still owe us from the first month of work, we are still short $1780 total. So please be praying that they come through and pay us the rest of the money owed. Because David was an independent contractor, our only recourse would be small claims court if they don't pay us - obviously not something worth our effort to do.

I am pursuing doing home staging as a part-time business. I now have business cards (yeah!) so I can start handing them out and asking for referrals. This past Sunday I went and worked on the home of one the guys we know from church. I had a blast and I know that I am going to enjoy whatever work the Lord provides for me in this field. This weekend I will be on the women's retreat with church, so I will start working at promoting my business more next week.

Here are some of the latest photos. This is from Tuesday when Trinity's best friend Katie came over to play. The girls decided to dress up as ballerinas and I put on classical music and they all danced around the living room. Very cute!

We were out in the backyard last week and our neighbor Joe pulled up to the fence in his utility cart to chat. Then he offered to take the girls for a ride. I thought maybe he would just go around in a circle in the side yard, but heck - he headed off for the back 40 with my family. What fun for the girls!


David found a big frog out back and was showing it to the girls. Here the frog started hopping -right onto Angelina's leg...eeek! Both of the girls were freaking out. (Angelina the most!)
Now that he stopped moving, they were less intimidated and more curious as to their new friend.

This was a picture I took of the flowers blooming in front our home. The funny thing is that same day, Trinity decided to bless her mommy with a beautiful flower. Bye-bye flowers! Angelina did the same thing with the next one to bloom. I guess I should be happy my girls like to give me flowers. But we are working on learning not to get into mommy's garden beds. Maybe we will have some survivors soon. :)


Well, rainy nights lead to muddy driveways the next day. Here the girls are enjoying theirs.

A shot of the happy mud girls after playing.The cows were grazing in the pasture closest to us last night. David took the girls over to see them. Here is Angelina pointing out the cows to me.
Everybody say, "MOOOOOOOOO."
Here is Trinity, still mooing. (if anyone is thinking "like mother, like daughter" just keep it to yourself - and for those of you who don't know, growing up I collected cows)
Our garden is sprouting and our strawberries already have berries growing. I have been working in the yard a lot. I found that we can get all the mulch you can haul for free from Warren County brush facility in Indianola. So I line the back of the van with drop cloths and fill 'er up. I have been working the beds at the front our house and they now look nice instead of 1. overgrown, or 2. nothing but some scraggly weeds. Our next project is putting a pergola over the deck off the back of the house. We are mostly reusing wood that we had on hand to make it.

Once that is done, what next? I'm thinking chickens.....

Posted in: cows, dress up, frog, Slow Lane, tornado on Friday, May 30, 2008 at at 10:49 AM