Meeting Friends

Yesterday I had a rather rare opportunity to meet my friend Ashlei - I know her quite well, but we had never actually met before. We have been pen pals for a couple of years, but as she lives in Alaska, we obviously couldn't get together. She and her family are Christians and homeschooled too.

She and her dad were at Vision Forum's Father Daughter Retreat this past weekend, and had a layover here for a few hours, so we met them and went out for lunch.

It was so much fun to finally meet after all this time!

The Finished Ceiling!

Renovations

Item of news: We are getting a new ceiling.

Why? Our living room has always very cold in winter. We've tried a lot of things to keep it warm. Dad cut a hole in the floor under our bench and put a pipe channeling the air out of the bench vents, hoping the warm air from the basement where the pellet stove is would come up, but that didn't work.

Then he tried putting a duct fan in that pipe, and that didn't work either.

He tried caulking, he tried that disgusting, oozy "Great Stuff" sealant thing, but it turned out to not be so great after all.

We even resorted to stuffing little pieces of paper towel into all the cracks around the skylight and along the edge of the ceiling.

We were STILL cold!

And so, Dad decided it was time to stop putsing and get serious. Enter Mr. Chid. Yesterday he and his men came out and started piling insulation over the existing ceiling and nailing new boards over that.

The new wood is much prettier - natural cedar. The old stuff was, quite frankly, stained a rather ugly rust color.

Enjoy the pictorial documentation of the progress thus far.

The "Before" Photo - original ceiling

Half way - what do you think, should we just leave it like that?

Gavana thinks she better stay up here...

They still have a day or so of work left, but pictures of the finished product will be coming!

Liberty Day 2009!

Well... yet another FABULOUS Liberty Day has gone! Dr. Jehle was the guest speaker this year. He was fantastic in 2006 when he spoke about the Constitution, but if possible he was even better this year! The conference was truly PHENOMENAL!! He spoke about response to the government and... well, I can't even begin to tell you everything he said. It was SOOO good and appropriate to our present time. I highly, HIGHLY recommend that you get the audios if you haven't already. (You can order them online here).

Now, I must say that I arrived with full intentions of loading my camera with pictures, but... I was just so busy running around and helping at the registration table and everything that I didn't get as many as I'd like. I did get some, however, which I share with you below:

Doing hair in the car on the way... as usual. :-)

Registration

The Concession Stand Crew

Ricky... um... poking his cheek

Lunch time!

Here we are with the Emily & Sokea ready for the next session. All our pens were moving furiously so hopefully between the four of us we have some pretty complete notes. :-)

We were entertained musically by Mr. Charlie Zahm (videos at the end of the post)

Raeanne plays some background music during a break

Me and Emily at dinner

Sweet little Bella, who is so cute I can't stand it!

Now for videos. Let me tell you, that little Flip camera is so handy!

Here is Charlie Zahm singing a poem that Jessica E. wrote which he put to music (Jessica, that was my favorite song that he sang - did you know about it? :-)



Noticeably missing from the evening program were the traditional Erberantey songs. I have heard they were too chicken to sing in front of Mr. Zahm (sorry, Mr. DeL but your claim to being "tough" kinda breaks down here... going without a coat in below freezing weather can just be called stubborn...). To make up for their cowardice, their sister had to play in front of him, and, I might add, did a fabulous job and was praised by Mr. Zahm himself. So there.

Here's the video of Joanna and Raeanne playing their song. Though Mr. Zahm may be the famous one, and I do love his music, I have to say that this was my top favorite piece of the entire day.



Anyway, it was a truly wonderful day and once again a huge THANK YOU goes to the Erbers and all the other families who made it possible.

Looking forward to next year... LOL!

The Golfers Are Out!

A sure sign that spring is on the way!! :-)

Not to mention glorious weather...


And buds everywhere....


It won't be long now!

Gavana feeling... pretty or plagued?

Tara just finished a doily and I decided to put it on Gavana like a bonnet. Cute, huh? :-) Poor cat. Believe me, we don't treat her like this all the time...

Anyway... just thought I'd share! :-)

Our Musical Day

This Saturday was a busy day musically. In the morning we drove out to Grayslake for Tara to accompany our friend Rhiannon for a judging thing. Rhiannon is a violinist, and was our neighbor for the 9 years we lived in Algonquin.



Then we came home briefly for lunch, and then headed out to Rockford for Raeanne's harp recital. Let me tell you, it was something else! There were 30 harps, all of them on stage, in all sizes and for three songs they ALL played together (see Hannah - I got to see 30 harps play together after all even though I couldn't be in Texas for your concert!). VERY neat! As you can imagine with that many harpists it was a very long recital but very enjoyable. Raeanne played her solo beautifully and didn't make one mistake. Here's the video of it - it's a bit hard to hear (none of the harps had mics) but if you turn up your volume all the way it's worth listening to. :-)



Unfortunately I only have two not-very-good pictures that I shot very quickly at the end before they took all the harps off the stage.



In this one you can see Caroline & Corrine getting their picture with Raeanne... cute!!

From Our Kitchen...

This was the latest recipe from the baking club Tara and I are in... Lemon Curd Tartlettes. I liked how the pictures came out and for lack of anything else to post, I'm sharing them with you. :-)