Kalona Days Parade

Saturday was the Kalona Days parade.  Ryan's dad's business (Farmer's Hen House) is celebrating their 10 year anniversary so they created a float and our family got to ride on it.  The kids were excited, of course, about being in a parade and getting a chance to throw candy.  They counted down the days and did a very good job on the float.  I don't know if any of their candy reached the kids on the sidewalk, but they threw it the best they could.  I thought the float turned out very nicely, and I can say that because I didn't have anything to do with creating it.  It was funny to hear the people along the parade route comment on "all the eggs" on the float since we only had one palate of eggs.  Compared to all the eggs at the hen house, this was a drop in the bucket.  If you'd like to learn more about the business, you can visit their website at www.farmershenhouse.com.

A few pictures of preparing the float.  We were towards the end of the parade so we had a long wait time.  We were very thankful for the breeze since it was a hot day.  

All the grandkids:  Cameron, Lauren, Ian, Maggie & Aubrey

Our family

Enjoying a snack from Grandma

Flood

This morning as the kids and I were waiting for swimming lessons to begin we heard a flash flood warning on the radio.  I thought, oh, that won't happen.  Well, it began to pour and on the way home, I found out how wrong I was.  I had to back up when I came to standing water on Melrose by West High.  Oh well, crisis averted.  Not so.  As I was headed down Mormon Trek I had to decide whether or not to go through standing water by Fareway.  I decided to do it because there was a policeman right in front of me and he went through, so my logic was that it was safe.  I don't know if that was smart or not, but I made it through.  Then, when I got close to our street I saw that Mormon Trek was flooded just ahead.  I turned on our street and saw that our street was flooded.  Thankfully I could turn around and get to our house from another way.  As soon as I got home I got a phone call from a friend who had driven through standing water, but her story didn't end well.  Her van stalled so I went to her rescue.  After I dropped her off at her appointment and came home, Mormon Trek was clear. I assume that's because it stopped raining.  However, our street was still flooded.  I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take pictures of our street and once I was outside I saw our neighbors across the street had the flood in their yard too.  I guess it's good we don't have a creek in our backyard.  Praise God that through this all our basement is dry and the water flowed through our yard like it is supposed to!  A dry basement is a wonderful thing!

Our neighbor's backyard

Our street, it's kind of hard to see, but it's flooded nonetheless

Another picture of our neighbor's backyard

Camping and other weekend fun

This past weekend was spent mostly at home, but we had a lot of fun.  I have to admit that I was bummed that most of our friends were busy and I thought the whole weekend would be boring, but that was not the case.  Saturday was full of work, but Sunday we took the kids on a long bike ride.  Now that Aubrey and Cameron can ride without training wheels, we decided we could go for a long family ride.  We actually went about 4 miles.  They did complain some towards the end, but I thought they did great for how far their little legs pedaled. Then Sunday evening we set up the tent in the back yard and had a campfire with hotdogs and s'mores.  We decided not to put the fly (I think that's what it's called) on top of the tent because it was so hot.  Well, everyone settled down easily and went to sleep (thanks to the long bike ride) but at about 5:00 in the morning, I began to hear thunder.  Then we saw lightning.  We chose to drag the kids into the house and their own beds, and take down the tent.  It was a good choice since it rained heavily, not for long, but we would have been soaked.  Thankfully they stayed asleep and even slept in.  Oh, it's fun to see them getting older and enjoying family fun!

The girls

Cameron and his silly face (the flash was quite bright in the dark)

The kids eating supper, Lauren really looked like an orphan by the end of the night with food on her face and her pigtails coming out!

Growing Kids God's Way

Ryan and I have been taking a parenting class called Growing Kids God's Way.  It has been wonderful and challenging at the same time.  We have learned lots of great tools and truths from God's word, but have also had to take a hard look at our parenting style.  We have seen our lack of consistency and how our emotions have often led to bad parenting decisions.  It's great to see how our new outlook and tools are changing our kids behavior, one little bit at a time.  Some things that we love are the interrupt rule, gaining self-control, couch time (as long as we remember to do it), no whining and giving the moral reason why.  I'm writing this post to remind myself of all the great things we have learned.  I'll admit that it's been difficult to keep up with all the things we have been learning for the past 17 weeks, so this is my way of reminding myself.  We love our kids so much and want them to grow up loving and serving God, completely sold out to the Lord Jesus Christ.  This is just one step along the way.

Strong little man

Cameron is always willing to help Ryan, so much so that he even wants to do manual labor.  Ryan was pulling old stumps out of the ground with the truck and Cameron said, "Just hook the rope to my bike dad, I can do it." He was so serious, and tried for quite a while.  We laughed so hard because he was straining to get it.  It took us several tries with the truck to uproot the stumps, but Cameron wasn't deterred!