Boys Day

Today was “Boys Day” at the Payne’s. Cari spent the day painting at the school and I stayed at home with the boys. With me in charge of lunch we had an excellent meal with chicken nuggets, tater tots and grapes. Of course no real cooking was required. It was a beautiful day (but quite windy), which made for great painting weather and a great day to take the kids outside to play. Just give the kids a ball, some dirt and a swingset to climb on and they can entertain themselves for a long time. Nathaniel is getting big enough where he can sit on a blanket and keep himself entertained. While he is doing that, I can type up this blog on my AlphaSmart.

Faith

I was talking to someone today and they mentioned that they were glad that during hard times they had their faith to “fall back on”. Is faith something that we “fall back on”, or is it something that should be part of our every day lives? Of course we rely on our faith during times of need, but shouldn’t faith be so integrated into our lives that it is with us through the good times and the bad times? Falling back on our faith only during the hard times seems to disrespect what God has done for us. I see faith as an every day event and not just an ER trip that we take every now and then.

Playing Outside

Now that the weather has warmed up the kids are able to use some of their energy outside. They are able to use their swingset, ride their bikes, use their new scooters and just run around. We recently set up their huge inflatable soccer ball and goal. They think it is a lot of fun. We just have to make sure that we stake the goal down on windy days.
With Levi starting baseball in a few weeks and me starting softball, we will be spending quite a bit of time outside. We need to take advantage of it while we can, since the snow will start to fly again in 6 months.

Motivation

As a parent you find that each of your children is motivated in different ways. This weekend we found something that really motivated Levi.
Everyday Levi is supposed to read for at least 15 minutes a day. That is about 450 minutes a month. The last two months we found that he had read about 700 minutes per month. I asked him if he thought he could 1,000 minutes during the month of May. I told him that if he met that goal that we would take him to Dairy Queen. I guess that’s all he needed to hear because on Saturday he read for 150 minutes! That is a combination of him reading to himself and us reading to him.
I guess Dairy Queen is very motivating to a first-grader.

The joys of raising boys

Ah, the joys of raising boys. They never cease to amaze me. A couple of days ago Josiah decided to take the soap dispenser and walk around upstairs. It was in the bathroom, his room and Nathanael’s room. It could have been a lot worse, but boy was I mad.

Chris

Upcoming Projects

Now that the kitchen project it is time to start thinking about the other projects on the “honey do” list. Fortunately these projects are not as expensive and not as invasive to our daily lives. This summer we hope to accomplish some, if not all of these tasks: stripping the deck and putting a new coat of stain (this time we will buy a good oil based stain and not the bad stuff we put on 2 or 3 years ago), paint the front porch where we had the windows put in last year, put a fence up around the yard. We’ll see how much we get done, but those are the bigger projects on the list.
As I sit outside watching the kids play I’m typing this up on my AlphaSmart Neo, (it’s great not being tied to the computer in the house) I look at the house and it is hard to believe what we have put into this house over the past six years. The deck, remodeled bathroom, new double-hung windows, new shingles (before and after the hail storm) remodeled kitchen, new storm windows on the front porch. We really feel blessed with how we have been able to turn our house into a nice home. Now we’ll have to see if we ever get that garage we have been talking about.

99% Complete

The kitchen project that has seen two seasons (winter and spring), St. Patrick's Day, Easter, both Chris and Cari's birthday's the NCAA men's basketball tournament, tax day and yes, even Earth Day is now 99% complete. Just a few final touches to be completed. Since 99% is an A+ in my book this will be the last post on the kitchen project. The slide show will show you before, during and after pictures. By clicking on the caption icon on the lower left side you can see comments about each picture.



Chris