People I Love...

Our friends from Tennessee, Dave and Shirley Cain. They are e-members of Faith Life Church. They make the drive every-so-often to join the services in person. We sure like it when they do that. They will be moving to Branson pretty soon, too. Isn't that nice of them?
The first time we met them, Shirley gave me a tip to remember their names:
"king" David and Shirley "goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life".

You don't forget something like that, do ya?

The sight of these folks makes me smile.



And then there's sweet Rose.


















And silly Rose!

That girl can do silly like no other!














Oh my, I love these people.

We had an opportunity to enjoy a meal with Dave and Shirley Cain on Saturday. These are good people!
Look, they brought a beautiful flower arrangement, and some raspberry roasted almonds. Man, those were yummy. No photo of the almonds is currently available, due to the extreme yumminess and quick digestion of them.

But they were yummy.

So good to see you guys, and we are so excited about your quickly approaching move to Branson!

Sequiota Park

Sequiota Park here in Springfield is full of fun stuff to do. It is located along the Galloway Greenway Trail, a trail we like to use to ride bikes. That's what we set out to do yesterday, and we also stopped to explore the caves and play on the playground.
This is the too-tall slide. I don't like it. Never fear, Daddy's there:The bike trail was not too crowded yesterday. Daddy always pulls the kids. I'm so thankful for that. The bike trailer is rated for a maximum of 100 lbs. How much longer do you think we have until our kids' combined weight exceeds it? They look kinda cramped, but that's just because they are so long we have to fold them up in half to fit them in there. OK, that was a lie. But they are long. However, they only weigh 73 lbs. combined. The scowls on their faces are not because they are uncomfortable in there. It is because they wish Mommy would just stop with the camera already.Sequiota has caves to explore. They are not that big, but they are dark. All those people followed us into the cave because we were the only ones with flashlights. It's a good way to make friends.















Maya found some rocks to climb.

New Additions

We adopted two hamsters.

They are brothers named Max and Gus.

Nobody can tell them apart except for Maya.





They are very gentle, and that's a good thing because Marky is sorta rough in the handling.



Please excuse the blurry pictures, these little dudes move fast!



I think it's funny when they crawl into the paper tubes. I wonder what they think about it? Perhaps it becomes unsettling when I lift the tubes up into the air?

Their tails gross me out.


Here's a short video. They are cute, huh?

Back to Busiek

We camped out at Busiek State Park last night. The kids have only camped in the context of staying in a cabin, but this time we were "roughing it" in out tent. We had perfect weather and a gorgeous campsite. We set up camp, then played in the creek before starting the campfire and roasting hot dogs and s'mores. The kids had a blast sitting around the fire.
























Then the most adorable little thief showed up! He snuck up to check out the trashbag, and I caught sight of his silhouette moving across the campsite. We weren't sure what it was at first so Mark shone the light on him. After we saw it was a raccoon, we pretty much played around with him all night. Mark took the leftover hot dogs and graham crackers and set them out so he would keep coming back, and he sure did keep coming back! We have several videos of him creeping up ever so slowly, gingerly reaching out his little arms to grab a snack, then waddling off. Shining the light right on him didn't slow him down a bit. After we called it a night and put the kids to bed, he showed back up - with a dozen or so of his buddies lined up at the edge of the underbrush watching him - to explore the camp again. They were cute!!



After the kids had gone to bed Mark and I were cuddling by the campfire when a large and freaky walking stick thing showed up.



First he crawled up Mark's leg so Mark tossed him back into the brush. About two minutes later he was crawling up my leg. Yuk, yuk, yuk!





The next morning we packed up early. The kids enjoyed pouring water over the campfire to put out the embers.