Cake making

Creativity is Lydia's middle name. Her hands are always working and doing something. Her piano skills top the list of finger abilities. Last summer my mom taught her how to quilt and she came home and made a quilt all by herself. She makes cards. She loves to work in the kitchen. She has recently taken an interest in cake decorating.

Lydia making a cake for a friend's birthday.

Lydia and her friend, Meredith, making the marshmallow fondant for the cake.

The finished purse cakes for Amanda's birthday.

A second view of the finished cakes.

Just kids

JoAnna has recently discovered our microscope. The one we bought came with a case of pre-made slides. Last week we enjoyed examining each of the slides. We talked about how amazing God is and how marvelous is His creation.

JoAnna exploring some tiny little "pieces" of God's creation.

The children tried to get me to give them President's Day off. After they had worked all morning I told them that they could play a game this afternoon. They settled on Monopoly. They are out there now, talking and I think they are even teaching JoAnna something about buying and selling property.

We're still here

When we moved into our house last year we had visions of finishing the basement to give us a place to hang out. In August that dream came to fruition. Here is the basement finished and ready to use - with the exception of the door to the laundry room to the far right (it was on order).

We went to my parents house for Thanksgiving and this is what we came home to...4 inches of water in the basement. The water came to the top of the baseboards, so this is with some of the water already removed. I was sick to my stomach when I saw my beautiful bamboo floor under water. The only thing that upset me more were the photo albums on the bottom shelf of the book shelf. One of the albums submerged was my wedding album. Thankfully, I was able to salvage all of the pictures.

Our home fellowship group came and bailed water and ripped out the bottom of the dry wall. Here is the flooring as the children and I pulled it up and numbered it. I think we were able to save the flooring. I now have a brand new sump pump in my storage room (the lowest point of the basement). We look forward to putting things back together and getting our "hang out space" back.

In the fall my dish washer decided to stop cleaning. It still worked, but several parts had fallen off and the dishes actually came out dirtier than they went in. I ended up purchasing a new one and Caleb saved the installation fees by installing it for me.

In early January a family at church needed help watching their grandson. Little Bryan was only a few days old. Lydia even tried her hand at holding this sweet bundle of boy.

JoAnna loves science experiments. She has been doing a series of experiments focused on teaching her about magnetic fields. In this one she had to hang as many paper clips as possible in the bent clip. As we put layers of tape on the magnet the bent clip held fewer and fewer paper clips.

Most every morning JoAnna can be found in the kitchen getting her own breakfast. For this budding chef cereal is too easy...she has to make oat bran or eggs.