Bathroom Remodel Still Continues ...

Yesterday was grouting wall tile day. Lyle worked hard getting all the tiles grouted. It was drying faster than he wanted. (You have to start gently cleaning off the excess at the right time, or you will need a lot of elbow grease to get it off.) He called for my help. (I told him to get a picture of me, because it was about the only contribution I was making to the upgrade!)
Here he is, scrubbing down the excess on the north and west walls.

Looking better, but still needs the finishing caps.

Later last evening, Lyle painted the upper walls.

Here he is today, putting on the finishing tile caps.

We are getting close! After returning the 1st toilet that was broken, the new "best flush" toilet was successfully installed. The vanity is moved in, but is not secured or plumbed. That is tomorrow's work.

The end is in sight! Sink, faucet, drain, and door! Then it will be the accessories that are not yet picked out, but we will have a functioning downstairs bathroom by tomorrow! YEA!

Again, Lyle is amazing! It has been only a week and a half to do all this work!

He said the laundry room is next! I guess the work never really ends!

Great Teacher Friends!

I have great teacher friends!

We have such a nice time together! On Wednesday, a few of us gathered for lunch at Figuro's Southwestern Mexican Restaurant. We spent 2.5 hours talking and eating and talking and talking and talking! It was a great time to catch up on everyone's happenings! Left to right, Brandi (a COS teacher and former student of mine), Debbie, Suzanne, Susie, Sharon, Jana, Georgina, and Jeannie with her grandson.

Thanks girls for the fun afternoon! We need to do this more often and invite more people!

Bathroom Remodel Continues...

With the plumbing completed and the Wonderboard up,

Lyle has gone to tile.

(rhyme)

We decided on a brick pattern

and avoid the cutting of the diagonals!

Last night, Lyle got the floor in.
It needs to set up for a while before you can grout.

This morning, he began the wall tiles. I like the look!
Decreative tile rows will go next.

Right now, I hear the tile saw.

Lyle is cutting circles in the tiles for the pipes.

More to come later.

Happy 7th Anniversary Nate and Meg!

Wow! Seven years ago today!Congratulations!

Wishing you a great day and

many, many more years of wedded bliss together!

May God's great love surround you

with his greatest blessings of peace, joy, faith, hope, and love!

We love you!

Happy Anniversary!

Mom and Dad

Bathroom Remodel Again!

We have a new vision for the downstairs bathroom. Unfortunately, Lyle chose this week with over 100 degree temperatures to begin the demolition and reconstruction. This is early in the morning when it was cooler! Walls coming down to make way for tile backer board and wiring for electrical.

Goodbye to our custom geometric style!

Goodbye to Hollywood lights!

Hello to 2 new sconces!

Hello to more of a furniture look.

Don't panic.....This is just a dry fit! More to come as work continues. Lyle is amazing!

VBA - Vacation Bible Adventure 09 - Amazing!

South Valley Community Church on Lemoore goes all out when it comes to VBA!

I have never seen a group of people work so hard to give kids such a fun 1 week experience!

Months of planning and design have gone into preparation for this year's theme:

"Enchanted Tales of Transformation."

1 month of weekends go into making the parts.

1 weekend before goes into assembling the Castle, Shrek's Hut,

and the forest with a waterfall.

Everyday before VBA begins, some volunteers are working from 6 AM to 9 PM!

There are 3 bridges on campus,

a spinning air conditioned Vortex to walk through to get inside the castle.

There's a winding tunnel slide to get to the Bible Story room...that is after you climb the stairs, cross the swinging bridge to get to the roof of the classrooms!

Kids shoot into the room through the tunnel! Great Fun!

Over a hundred people show up 2 Sunday's before VBA

for the beginning of assembling the parts of the castle

that will be on stage for only 4-5 weeks.

Here is the framing for Shrek's Hut.

One of my jobs was foam control!

I volunteered to sweep and bag the leftover foam held in by the barriers.

Here is our Pastor Jeff spraying cement onto the rock carved foam to make the waterfall.

Later, Shrek's hut and the waterfall unfinished.

More Castle together. This is the Friday before VBA! But it is finished by Sunday. (I forgot to take pictures.)

Here we are at the Tuesday, Pre-meeting and prayer time.

The kid music team is on the stage ready

to pump up the kids with words, actions, and smiles!

(Kids told me that they want to do that when they get big!)

After songs, Pinocchio flies from the balcony on the suspension wire to land on the stage.

(The night before it was a fairy to the castle.)

Kids wonder who will be flying in the next night!

Here we are at Shrek's hut, complete with an outhouse on the left.

A big deal about Shrek is his bad smell. Many Jokes every night!

Here we have 4 evil people who have kidnapped Princess Butterfingers.

You may recognize Jafar, Captain Hook, Sleeping Beauties wicked witch, etc.

The characters seem authentic and memorable to the kids.

They recognize them readily and BOOO appropriately!

Costuming is fabulous for all the drama characters.

For those who recognize Garret, he was eager to pose for this picture during a snack time.This is my group, The Thankful Trolls!

In June, I made this cloth banner and a matching bag to hold all the Coins, name tags, etc.

Here is a shot of my group. There are 40 kids in this group tonight!

(There are many groups of 40

because 510 kids showed up the 1st night, and they just keep on coming! Yea!!!!)

So after sliding into the Bible Room,

here are just some of the characters that tell the stories.

Of course, they are in a jazzed up fashion that the kids love to giggle at!

The 2 flat screens are used, there are 2 TV cameras

and there is a spotlight person every night!

This is Lot and his Wife with 2 angels.

(In the end, She turns into a pillar of salt! Smoke, light flashes, and darkness end the story!)

Last night, the king wanted to get Balam and his donkey.

Toward the end, Balam was not kind to his donkey, so God made him talk!

But in the end, All characters were on the stage

in a Chorus line singing, "Why Can't We Be Friends." Funny!

Here is just 1 shot from Crafts. They are decorating a Picture album

that they can put pictures of their friends and family in.

They had many choices of materials to use to decorate with.

They came out beautiful!
All games have included Water! They encourage the kids to get as wet as possible!

The wettest kids get coins to spend at the store.

There are about 80 kids in this group.

There are 5 stations.

They will run this activity 5 times each night!

Maybe 6 with the preschoolers!

This is only a glimpse of the happenings.

Here are 3 video clips to give you a glimpse of the plays and music.

In the end, the kids are memorizing Bible Verses and good actions:

Be Humble, Be Wise, Be Kind, etc.

The saying for Transformation is:

God Loves us! We blew it! Jesus Saves us! We must Choose it!

Easy!

We all need to learn this transformation!

First you take G-ville to the 99, the 99 to the 5, the 5 to the 210, the 210 to the 15, the 15 to Escondido.....

We started our little excursion by having lunch at Johnny Rockets in Old Town Pasadena. It's really a cool place to walk around and stretch your legs.

JR's has great food and the staff was very friendly.

Our destination was a resort run by Harrahs. They gave us 3 free nights and free food. Not bad. Didn't know how far out we were though, but it worked out just fine. The rooms were beautiful and everyone was very nice.

The next day we headed for Julian, home of the famous Julian pies. Marlene had never heard of this place. We drove up into the mountains to this quaint little town to have breakfast. We ate at the Julian Cafe, met the owner and had a really good time. The food was fantastic.

Marlene is reading the history of this old building. She couldn't finish her pancakes, which means she has to go back.

Weekends around here are busy. This is Mom's Bakery. They compete with the Julian cafe for pie sales. I guess they line up down the street to buy fresh baked pies, it's really a big deal.

After stuffing ourselves we headed off to find the 8 into San Diego, but I got lost a time or two. We took what looked like the bigger road on the map and there wasn't 50 feet of straight road for 20 miles. The other way must be gravel. We shot down the 8 into Mission Bay. I only had two goals for the trip, go to Julian and rent a boat on MB. We had rented boats years ago when Nathan was in the Navy. They had these little two person boats that really went pretty good. They no longer have them so you have to get a considerably larger boat with more power. We had a great time. Lost the lifepreservers, got stuck on a sand bar but got the boat back in one piece and didn't get arrested.

We left MB and headed for downtown and the waterfront. Parked and started walking towards the aircraft carrier Midway. It turned out to be too late to spend all the time needed to go on board so we took a Pedicab to Seaport Village. All along the waterfront there are beautiful sculptures.

Imagine the size of that horse.Yes, Marlene caught me in a candid moment with my shirt off. I told her not to do that.Completely made of metal straps.
There is a beautiful WWII memorial, honoring Navy personel.

The trees in SeaPort Village are amazing and shade huge areas.

This guy was great.

This guy put out beautiful music without any soundtrak. It was hard to believe he was doing it all. The video didn't want to load.Just had to take this of these junior Marines. They looked really squared away.
Next to the Midway, which you can see in the background there is a park with a sculpture garden honoring Bob Hope. It's incredible.

Each person depicted represents a branch of service. They are life-size figures.This is modeled after the famous picture from Life magazine. It's twenty five feet tall and very impressive to see.

This was taken from the flight deck of the Midway. You can see how big this thing is.

Left the waterfront and went up the street to Horton Plaza, a multi, multi level shopping center.

Tried to get an internet connection but failed. Just rested for awhile.

Next day we headed back into SD to go to the Midway, but on the way we stopped at the flying Leathernecks museum in Mirimar. Lots of planes and memorabilia, quite interesting and free.
Got on the Midway. You have no appreciation of how big these things are until you get on one. They give you head phones for the self guided tour.


This an Intruder with its wings folded in the hanger deck. There was one of these at the Marine museum and I couldn't get over how big this plane is.

This is a fuel tank with VA195 logo on it. This was an old friend, Bill Brewer's squadren.

A connector for the anchor chain. Each link in the chain weighs 135 pounds.

Junior officers berths. Roomy compared to enlisted.
Logos from the different squadrons that served on the Midway. I recognized a few of friends.
Up on the island, where the air boss sits. Great view.

The ladders up to the bridge were tricky to say the least.
From the late 60's through Viet Nam and into the 80's the Navy's workhorse plane was the A7. I had many friends that flew these planes, Bill Brewer, Jack Nickle and others. The A7 below is staged to look like it is ready to launch from the Midway. Brewer mainly flew off the Kitty Hawk and I'm not sure about Jack. This plane was replaced with the F18.

In the hanger bay they have cockpits of various planes that you can get in. I had to get into the A7 cockpit. It is a tight fit.

Finally we headed home by way of Nathan's for his birthday. We took him shopping but struck out on the kind of shirts he was looking for. He wanted to go to Red Robin for lunch. Hard to believe he's THIRTY! It just doesn't seem possible that much time has gone by. Marlene was just six years into teaching and we were 28 years old. Wow!!!

We had a great trip and hope they invite us back. It had been a few years since we were last in San Diego and really enjoyed seeing it again.