Painting Party Weekend

It was a whirlwind weekend around here when all of Wes's sisters came to help paint our old Drew Place house.

But first, on Thursday, Sandy and Elijah came to visit Julie, Thomas, and Estelle. He can walk all over the lawn with this little push toy, and any day now he's going to let go and toddle off on his own!

Friday morning we started getting ready for Grammie and Lisa's arrival. Heather and Estelle started the day off with a little excercise by running back and forth from Grammie's bedroom door and through the kitchen.

After their excercise was done, Estelle helped me vaccuum Grammie's bedroom.


Then they both tested out Grammie's bed to make sure it was suitable for her.

Mary arrived and read a book.


Saturday morning, the painting began. Wes and Thomas were in charge of rolling the walls and ceiling.

Mary, aka "Drippy" did a lot of the edge work.

Laura arrived from Massachussettes and got right to work taping and edging.

Lisa will probably need to see her chiropractor after this.

Martha cleaned and painted.

Wayne and Joanie cleaned all the windows.

Later, after the painting was done, we all came back for a big dinner that Joanie had prepared - pulled pork sandwiches, pumpkin soup, cole slaw, all kind of breads, and oodles of desserts. This picture shows Martha wearing her spiderman costume.

Laura belatedly celebrates her 50th birthday with all of her sisters and her Mom. She brought her own cake and party hats.

Here is Laura with the kids who can hardly be distracted from their cake.

Sunday was such a nice day, we had lunch on the porch. Estelle and Heather in their high chairs,


Cole with Lauren and Chelsea. He was so excited to see them.

Later in the afternoon, Susan and Cedric came by and we all went for a nice walk up Perron Hill. Cole with his Godmother Susan, Heather, and cousin Lillian.

Cedric pushed the girls in the stroller.

Then had to give Cole a ride on his shoulders. Cedric is Cole's godfather. Don't you think they look alike?

Wayne, seeing that Cole ws getting a ride, coerced Thomas into giving him a ride.

Then it was time for supper, each boy flanking Estelle's side, eating a hearty meal of leftovers from the weekend meals.

Thank you so much everyone, for all your painting work. It's such a load off of our minds to have that job done! We really appreciate it more than we can tell you.

This is What You Do When Your French Cousin Comes To Visit...

Color and draw with crayons in the basement...

play some music,

make a fort in Cole's bottom bunk,

and watch Madeline before bedtime.

It's all more fun with Estelle, Julie, and Thomas around!

Estelle is Here!

Wayne, Cole, and Heather have hardly been able to contain themselves for the past few days, knowing that their cousin Estelle, from France was coming to visit. At last, the moment of her arrival came this afternoon.

Here are Estelle and Heather playing with the doll house in Heather's room. They got along great. I thought Heather might be a little jealous of having another little girl around, but she's been very happy to play with Estelle.

Wayne and Estelle danicing.

Wayne, Cole, and Heather show Estelle the pond.

Cole could not leave Estelle's side all afternoon and evening and kept giving her hugs and kisses. We kept hearing him say to her, "Do you love me, Estelle? ...Estelle do you love me? I think you do."

What a tired bunch these kids were by the end of the day!

Leaf Jumping

Jumping into a pile of fall leaves - fun anywhere you live.

No winter hats needed this week. It's been sunny and beautiful. Hope you are all enjoying the fall.

One Man's Junk Is Another Man's Treasure

See this big, old maple tree on the edge of the hay field? It marks the spot of our new everyday afterschool destination.

And here's the reason. Long before Wayne and Martha ever built Elijah's Place, someone else lived here and used this spot as a little dumping ground. Martha? Joanie? Julie? You got any names or history on this?

Whoever it was that lived here years ago, left a lot of "treasures" to fascinate and capture the imagination of the little boys who would live here in 2008. Cole is convinced that this is all the remains of a shipwreck. Somehow there was an ocean here a long time ago and after scraping against these rocks (in a manner similar to scraping against an iceberg) the ship sank, leaving all this wreckage and artifacts to find. Here, Cole is using Wayne's metal detector to search for items buried under leaves.
Wayne too, searches for hidden clues as to what all this stuff could be and who it could have belonged to. He doesn't agree with Cole's shipwreck theory.

Wayne's searching pays off when he finds this old rusty thing that he says looks like a little milk can.

Here are some of the things they've found so far. Lots of broken glass, some metal objects and parts of things, and an old mail box.
Meanwhile, Heather plays in the leaves.

Wayne finds enough pieces of this blue glass bottle to almost put it all back together. We need to find one more piece to complete it.

When we were done and walking back home across the field, Cole said, "That was a really fun adventure!" Then when Wes got home, they dragged him out there to show him their findings too.

I'm sure we'll head over there again soon, We'll keep you posted on anything interesting that we might find.

Corn Maze

We spent this afternoon at a corn maze.

Wayne has a vague recollection of our visit to this same maze, in Coventry, a few years ago. He was probably about 3 years old and Cole was just a baby. Heather was not even thought of.

There was lots of running this way and that way, hitting dead ends and trying another path. We were in there quite a while. I was starting to get a little worried that we might never find our way out.

In the middle of the corn maze is this "tower" as Wayne called it. I'm not sure if it's so you can enjoy the panoramic view of the surrounding farmlands, or if it's so you can sort of get a bird's eye view of the maze in order to find the correct path.
Heather runs to keep up with her brothers.

When you finally find your way out, you get to ring this bell. This is one big, heavey bell. It took both Wayne and Cole heaving with all their might on the rope several times. They had to sort of get it swinging to and fro and the finally they got it to ring out loud and clear. When they hear the bell, one of the corn maze people come and get you with a tractor and hay wagon and give you a little ride around the grounds. This place is a youth bible camp in the summer.
I thought this hay ride was my opportunity to get a great portrait of the three of them together - maybe even my Christmas card photo. As you can see, no such luck. Please notice the root end of a corn stalk in Heather's little iron grip. She had it the whole time and would not let it go, in fact carried it all the way home in the car and we still have it out in the garage.

A cute picture of Heather and Wes, though.
One of the stops on the hay ride - we walked across this swingy, bouncy bridge to see some more of the camp.
Cole was getting hungry and Wes had his mind on bow hunting so we head back to the car and home for the day. And in other important news, earlier in the afternoon, before we even went to the corn maze, Brian cut the hay out here and gave Wayne and Cole each a ride on the tractor. I told him I wouldn't put it in the paper this time.