Adrenaline

Matt and I were taking a nap after church today. The boys were outside playing. Elijah's job this afternoon was to trim back the plants that the frost had killed. I gave him some gardening clippers to do the job, but he asked if he could use his bowie knife instead. It was just cooler. Elijah generally carries between 6 and 8 knives on his belt. I said fine, but the gardening clippers would work better.

Matt and I laid down for a nap after lunch with Gideon. None of us were asleep yet when Elijah came in and invited Gideon to come out and help. Gideon was snuggled up next to me and not very interested in doing chores. Elijah tempted him, "I'll let you hold my bowie knife...." Gideon still didn't see a reason to leave his toasty momma spot. "I'll let you hold two bowie knives...." That did it! Gideon popped up and was out the door to help.

About an hour went by. Matt and I were peacefully resting when there was a sudden "Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang" on the door. "Mom! Dad! Gideon!"

Matt and I were up about as fast as old slow people go. I was shouting, "What's wrong? What happened?" There was no answer. Elijah finally yelled from the other room "knifed!" "grab a towel I yelled back!" Matt and I headed for the door with Elijah in front holding a towel. I could hear Gideon screaming from the yard. Elijah was first out the door. There was blood everywhere, on Gideon's body, all over the sidewalk, the porch. Gideon was screaming and screaming just standing in the yard. Elijah wrapped Gideon in the towel. Matt very coolly walked out and assessed the situation.

It took a moment to take in the disaster. Blood was dripping from Giddy's hand; that must be the location of the wound.

Then it came to me. In the corner sat a can of fake blood! But that still didn't explain why Gideon was screaming like he had just been stabbed. I scooped him up in the towel and asked where do you hurt. "Everywhere...." he bawled. "What's wrong?" I asked again still confused. "Its COLD!!! the blood is cold. WAAAHHHHHHHH!"

He is now in a bubble bath with nice toasty water. My heart rate has slowed to 195. I will recover.

Elijah said, "Ha Ha, I got you." :)

Spiderman

October 10th

The proper pronounciation debate.

Our friend was in the hospital recently and Titus and Gideon were discussing it. They got in a fight over the pronunciation of hospital. Gideon called it a hostabull and Titus, older and wiser, was sure it was hosbabel. Eventually they peaceably agreed to say Kelsea went to the docto. My sweet little men. : )

Good news and bad news

I'll start with the bad.

Our fish died.

Now the good.

Matt got a promotion and parole! He was the IT Manager at Wyoming's newest prison. He will now be the CT Systems and Infrastructure Analyst for the Department of Corrections.

He will be working at the DOC headquarters in Cheyenne, but the commute time is about the same as driving to the prison in Torrington. We hope to stay in Lagrange.

He will be responsible for the computer systems in all the DOC facilities throughout the state. There are, I think, 5 prisons and 20+ field offices. He will need to travel sometimes but most of the work can be done from Cheyenne.

on a side note - he wears slacks and a tie (and looks REALLY GOOD ) to work and he still wears shorts and flipflops to church. I think when it hits 30 in the morning he will add a sweatshirt to his church ensemble. ; )

Sayings IV

In Awana, Luke memorized John 3:16, and it goes like this, "For God so loved the world that he gave His only forgotten Son..."

And, he learned the Mission statement of Awana as, "to hit boys and girls with the gospel of Christ."

Birthdays, Birthdays, Birthdays, Birthdays, and two more to go.

We have a bunch of birthdays to celebrate in Autumn. This year between Sept 30 and Nov 2, (just 34 days), we will have celebrated 6 birthdays.

Abbey - 1 year

Abbey’s birthday was uneventful except that she seems to have food allergies and got a giant rash from her apple pie and ice cream. Nana and Papa came to celebrate with her.

Josiah - 9 years

We celebrated Josiah's late because we were in California on his birthday. He invited some friends over and Nana came too. About 5 minutes into the party a dirt clod/rock landed on Sam’s head and he gushed blood all over the backyard, kitchen, and bathroom. The blood was spurting out rhythmically with his heart pumping. He soaked 3 towels and his shirt before it stopped. The birthday was a hit! All the kids had fun – even Sam with an icepack on his head.

Elijah - 12 years

Elijah’s birthday was the following night. Our friend Ben came to spend the night. And so did the seven Huismans, five Zanders, one Cox, one Jankovsky, and other random neighbor kids that stopped by. The Huismans planned a surprise visit from Utah that night. The Zander kids and the Jankovsky kid are also friends with them. The Cox kid moved into the Huismans old house and I guess he figured he belonged too. And of course Nana came back for the 3^rd birthday in a row.

So, Ben slept in Abbey’s room. Titus, Gideon and the Huismans daughter slept in Elijah’s room. The rest of the kids slept in a tent in the yard, and the Huisman parents slept in their Tahoe.

22 people slept at our house the night. We have one bathroom. The picture below represents some. The wives didn't want their picture taken, one guy didn't make it in there for some reason, and Matt was taking the picture. : )



Some of the little girls that were over played "doll" with Abbey.


They turned a drawer into her crib. But she kept laughing and kicking off the blanket, "and just will not go to sleep." "sigh" - Maggie


It was a blast. Fezzik got sprayed by a skunk that night as well. We all went to church together in the morning and all of us crammed into 2 pews. It was awesome to see all those boys in church together, encouraging each other in the Lord.

Then they all came back for lunch – that the Huismans made – Hurrah! That afternoon those people left and more people came by and Matt ended up tutoring a girl in math for the rest of the evening. Whew. Bedtime.

Gideon - 3 years

Gideon turned 3 last Wednesday. Nana and Papa came to his birthday party on Friday. Here he is enjoying his rootbeer float.



Those to come Luke - 6 years, Robin - 32 years

This Friday we will celebrate Luke's 6th birthday and then 10 days after that its my birthday and then NO MORE BIRTHDAYS until January. YaY!!

We should celebrate!

Baptism

We have had a lot going on since we got back from California.  Our first weekend back our church and a neighboring church went out to Lone Tree Canyon for a baptism service.  Josiah and Luke asked to be baptized.  The service was so special.  We were in the middle of God’s creation, worshipping Him with people who love Him, and people who love us. 

The owners of the canyon had dug a hole in the stream and dammed it up.  They did the baptism right there.  We had a potluck afterward.  Yum.  Some people brought their dogs.  Silas fell in the stream during church.  Luke looked at us to see if he could do it on purpose and get away with it.  Our look told him he couldn’t.

 This is my friend Heather getting baptised.  Her husband, on the left, got to help baptize her.

The kids played in the stream for the rest of the afternoon.

The Garden

This was our garden harvest when we got back from California.  It froze the last few days we were gone and most of the plants died.  I should have left everything on the vine.  The whole garden grew back.  It has been almost a month and still hasn't frozen again.

The boys made $26 selling gourds.

The Great Quarentine

Interesting fact about the Boyds:  We've been under quarantine.

Gideon woke up Thursday morning with a swollen face.  No fever, just swollen cheeks and a raspy voice.  He had a bruised cheek but that was a week old, and he also had a scuffed chin from the bathtub but that was a day or two old as well.  I didn't know what to do for a swollen face.

So, I took him to the doctor.  She also thought the bruise and chin scuff were unrelated.  She thought Gideon might have the mumps.  He got a blood test and then all the children had to come in and get a shot just in case.  The kids did great getting their shots.

The doctor then quarantined us - the entire family - for 5 days or until the blood test came in.  No going anywhere, nobody coming over. Gideon's face was fine the following morning, but that didn't change the quarantine.

It was actually GREAT to be quarentined!  We've been really busy and it gave us an opporutinity for family time.  We read books, rearranged bedrooms, fixed things, did a giant puzzle, played games, and caught up on laundry.

Last night Josiah was cooking sausage for dinner.  The power went out while he was cooking and the sausage stopped cooking.  The whole house was dark except for a few flashlights for maybe 10 minutes. 

When the power came back on I finished cooking it and the rest of dinner.

Sam didn't eat dinner.  He threw up.  I thought "oh no!"  We've gone from mumps to stomach flu!  Then he mentioned he ate the sausage and it tasted really juicy.  I asked him did you eat it while the power was out?  Yes he had. And several other people had sampled it as well.  The sausage they had eaten in the dark was still RAW!  All the boys who sneaked some ended up either nauseated or actually throwing up.  The exception was Matt who said he ate whole handfuls of sausage in the dark and he felt fine all night.

Our quarantine only lasted 3 days.  The blood test came in this morning.  No mumps!  Also no explanation for the swollen cheeks, but whatever it was its gone now.

Sayings

When wanting to melt something, Silas said, "We could burn cow maneuver."

When complaining about his two hurting cheeks, Gideon said, "My two cents mama, my two cents."

At Ben's

We went to see our friend Ben.

Ben was Matt's roommate at Frontier School of the Bible.  He enjoys hunting and lives on acreage and the boys and the dog love play there.

Ben bought a super nice bow.














Here, the boys are "helping" him gather arrows.

The boys loved watching him shoot.














Luke sat on a cactus and had stickers stuck in his rear.  I had to pull each one out with tweezers.

It doesn't seem possible that he sat on a cactus.  Its almost like he rolled in cactus.

Sam brought some legos and built lego ships.
Who needs 1000 acres of National Forest when you have X-Wing Fighters?

I finally caught a picture of Elijah!












 Oops! Now I'm caught!

Titus rides his Trusty Steed across the field.

Josiah just wanted to shoot the .22 again.

Sitting and watching Ben shoot.

a porch swing. : ) and perfect weather

A lazy afternoon

The last leg

We spent the night and drove all the next day.  We made it to Evanston, Wyoming around 2:00 in the afternoon.  At each stop Matt checked the trailer for problems.  In Evanston he noticed the weld on the U-joints had broken and the metal looked like it was going to come out of the bolt.  He decided it was a good time to fix that before it came off and our suspension dropped to the ground.

He figured he could get it to hold fairly quickly and we would be back on the road and get home by 9:30.  He had to go to work the next morning.

We parked at a truckstop.  We had 1 semi space for the van and trailer and set up 1 semi space as a playground for children.  The yellow line was not to be crossed and Matt put the ice chest and some boxes as the other barrier.

Matt got out his tools.  He had a drill, some scrap wood, some screws.  He began to jack up the side of the trailer so he could get to the u-joint.  As soon as the trailer began to lift up, the other welded support snapped off at the bottom.

It was better that it broke in the parking lot than on the road.  Matt could fix it the same way he did the other side at Ben's house - with wood and screws.  We had a hurdle though.  The weld had only snapped on the bottom.  It was still attached at the top and it was in the way of our fix.  We some how needed to break of the top weld.  It didn't look too difficult.  All of the guys other welds had broken and this had lots of holes in it.  How hard could it be? 

Apparently hard.  We banged on it with a hammer.  Gideon banged on it.  Elijah banged on it.  We used a crowbar.  not a budge.  A crowbar with a cheater bar.  A longer crowbar with a cheater.  That thing was not budging.  A man walked up and gave the kids some cookies.

We sat the children down.  

Matt updated the children on the situation.  "Ok kids.  We have another problem.  The weld broke and we can't get the weld off.  Also the U-joint is falling off.  We don't know how to deal with either problem and we have used all the tools we have.  We are still 7 hours from home." 

Sam responded, "This is pure joy!"

We all sat down and prayed.  The children went back to playing.  They tied Sam up for fun.

Around that time Abbey got fussy so Josiah entertained her in the car.  He makes a great babysitter.

Matt and I took inventory.  How could we get that weld off?  We remembered the basketball hoop that we cut down from the front yard in Hidden Valley Lake.  That could be a really long lever.  We had a big block of wood we could use as a fulcrum.

Matt set it up.

Then as he pushed on the backboard with his feet I was supposed to lie under the trailer and hold the block of wood steady.  That was scary, but the trailer didn't fall on me and I didn't die.  We got some pressure on the fulcrum and it was steadied.  So I moved to help Matt with pushing our lever.  It was my job to keep him from slipping back while he was pushing.  He is large and lumpy and was pushing back very hard.  He kept asking me, "are you even pushing?" and I was.  He pushed and scooted and pushed and scooted and Clink! the top of the weld broke to one side! 

We now had room to get the wood under, do the screws and get in the car.  This whole process had taken an hour and daylight was burning.  We took time to kiss for joy, take a picture, thank the Lord for his provision, but it was time to get this job done!  We felt great urgency to finish and get on our way. 

Matt handed me the drill and drill bit.  I was to follow his instructions and stratigically drill holes through the wood in the trailer.  Then change out the bit and drill the screws into the block of wood.  He was under the trailer making sure my holes were in the right place.  And he was making me hustle.  I got as far as the first hole when this man walked up.

He was on oxygen and had a broken leg.  He asked us if we needed help.  Matt crawled out from under the trailer, thanked him for his offer, and said we were just about done.  The man asked what was wrong.  Matt told him the brief version.  The man mentioned he had a friend down the street that could fix it in the morning.  Matt explained again that we had everything we needed and were almost through, but thank you for the offer.  The man said he had a business card for the guy if we needed it.  Matt thanked him again and said we didn't need it.  The man responded, "Its just over there in my truck, I can go get it."  At that point, I didn't think the man was going to leave unless we accepted something.  So I piped up, "ok we'll take the card just in case."  The man hobbled back to his truck.  

And I got in trouble. "He was just about to go!  Why did you tell him we would take the card?!"  Matt was frustrated with our wasted time.  "I don't know.  I'm sorry."  I responded.  "Aggh.  I didn't think he was leaving unless we said yes to something."

Matt got back under the trailer and I tried to drill another hole.  The man came back with the card.  Matt climbed back out from under the trailer and thanked the man.  The man continued to chit chat with Matt.  We weren't getting anywhere.

I decided to get out of the trailer and do the conversation so Matt could get something done.  I asked the man where he was from, what he was doing in Evansten, how did he break his leg... As it turned out, we met that man for a reason.  The man's two children had been killed by a drunk driver two weeks earlier.  He injured his leg shortly after that.  He was self medicating with vodka, went to church for the first time in 20 years just that Sunday.  He was in bad shape.  

He used to live in Hawk Springs Wy and Torrington Wy which are the next towns over from Lagrange where we live.  He bought his property from Bear Mountain real estate office in Lagrange.  We shared some stories about the area and then the coversation moved to his life and current sorrows. He was tearing up.

I could see from his story he needed the Lord.  Our conversation opened up to God.  He was open and ready to talk about it.  

He said people were nice at church but that was all he got.  I shared with him that he didn't need a building to have a relationship with God.  

The previous owners of the van had put a bumper sticker on the van.  It read, "Acts 16:31 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved."  I pointed to the bumper sticker on the van and the man read it.  "Yes I know that," he said, "I just don't get the forgiveness part."  I shared with him 1 John 1:9, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."  I asked him, "Who are you to think you are unforgivable?"  "That is true."  He said thoughtfully.

About this time, Matt had finished the trailer.  He had gone in the trailer and under at least a dozen times fixing it while I talked.  He had heard our conversation and realized the opportunity to share the truth about Jesus Christ and encourage this hurting man was well worth the sacrifice of getting home late.

Matt had the boys load up our things and get back in the van.  He took the opportunity to also spend some time with the man and joined the conversation.  When we left, Matt and the man exchanged contact info.  The man said he had a Bible and we wrote down 1 John 1:9 for him to read later.  Before we left Matt and the man hugged.

We arrived home at 2:30 in the morning.  Matt made it to work. : ) Humanly speaking our trailer was a financial and physical disaster.  Heavenly speaking it was well worth the money.  

Proverbs 3:6 Lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path.