The Kelsey's

So much is happening I’ve been chasing my tail. Let me bring you up to speed on some of the things that have been going on around our place.

VBS Has Been Over for a Couple Weeks

We have video, we have pictures, I even made a slide show with music and showed it at church. But when I tried to upload it, it got rejected! It turns out they felt the music might be copyrighted. So I’m in the process of getting permission to use those songs! After that, I’ll post it and you can see it.

We Are Learning to Swim

We are half way through our swimming lessons at the YMCA. We have a great teacher and she agreed to be a part of our official "swimmer’s photo." Check it out.

She’s been a very good sport, and the kids are actually learning to swim!!

August is all about The Thirty Day Challenge

If you are going to sign up, be sure to use my super cool link so I get credit for you checking it out.
The Thirty Day Challenge is TOTALLY Free!

I did a video for part of the challenge, here it is:

And no film is complete without a blooper roll, so here it is!

I hope I win the contest with these entries! What do you think?

Things are very hectic around the Kelsey homestead. We are right in VBS week. But before the VBS pictures get rolling, I wanted to post a few snapshots from the church picnic last Sunday. I took the kids with me so Laura could concentrate at the church getting VBS decorations set up. So let’s take a look.

The Sack Race (Episode 1)

A picnic isn’t a picnic without some fun and games. Here are some pictures of the sack race. Here’s Nathan’s heat.

Joshua and Caleb were in the same heat, the age spread just barely included them both.

Hannah had her turn too.

There was also volley ball. I love that particular sand pit. I actually played volley ball there the day after I was baptized, 18 years ago. On this day, I had too much to eat and was exhausted from one run in the sack race. Times, how they change. Here’s a picture of some church friends, I just like the ball in the air.

Up some stairs from the pavilion was the baseball diamond where Joshua spent most of his day.

Nathan went sliding for pretty much 5 hours straight. He came over and had a few bites for lunch. But every once in a while he’d sneak off up the stairs.

Later in the afternoon he must’ve worked up a thirst. He got some water and then discovered the watermelon. You can see how juicy it was – on his shirt.

Afterwards we stopped by VBS preparations

The first night was last night and there were 33 participants – if you included the teen helpers, which we do! That doesn’t include all the adult staff and observers, which would add another 15 at least. Here’s a sneak peek of the room.

Stay tuned, we may have some sack race video. I missed recording the 3-legged race, the water balloon toss, and many other activities. And there will surely be some more VBS excitement. If you haven’t considered it, maybe you could sign up for our RSS feed. That’s the big orange button over on the right side. And there’s a video I did a while back explaining how to do it. If you do, our little counter in blue will go up! Yippee!

The House Situation

Today was a crazy day. I took Joshua over to meet an inspector to get an occupancy permit for the house we are trying to sell (the one we lived in from ’95 to ’03 or so). The back sliding glass door was open and the inspector said, “I hope you still have your copper pipes.”

He turned on the water and it worked. He said, “Naw, you’re ok.”

But I had go get my hair cut for my Job that starts Monday (more about that in a bit). And then I took Joshua home and went to take care of the house. I got some wood to brace the door shut. But while looking in the back yard for the stick that used to keep the glass doors secure, I found a chunk of a door frame… I figured it had to belong to me.

So I went through the whole house and I found the back door that leads to the car port had been busted through. Then they put the frame back up and even re-latched the chain lock and the deadbolt metal plate so it looked undisturbed. They just forgot and left the glass door ajar.

Well I’m not handy enough to actually fix the door – so what did I do? I took a long piece of wood and screwed it to the door frame. Now the door won’t open at all. So it’s secure, it just doesn’t function as a door right now.

So the question is, will this deter what is most likely mischievous kids, or will it make them more determined to break in to the point of breaking a window or something…? From talking to the neighbors, it seems that there was a party on July 4th at our house. We weren’t informed.

So that’s the excitement there, other than the fact that the people that were going to buy it aren’t going to be able to. And they were going to lease it, but it’s looking like they can’t afford to do that either.

So the house is still out there.

The Job Situation

So I took a 3 week contract to define a potential client’s needs, and then if they are willing, I would lead a team of developers to implement what we planned out. I’ve never been on such a short contract, but it sure beats sitting at home without a job. I’m being told that they are pretty confident that this short assignment would roll right into something much more stable if the work is done well. But they weren’t sure enough to sign a contract over it – now were they.

It will be an interesting stretch for me. It’s been a long time since I’ve been involved in requirements gathering that was planned and not due to a chaotic work environment. So it could be interesting. I guess we’ll know much more after Monday.

It’s getting close to sundown on a Friday night, so I think I’ll just sign off for now. Gotta get you more pictures. Oh, one more thing… I incorporated a new commenting widget called Disqus. Give it a try and see what you think.

So what do you do on a holiday where the big event isn’t until after dark? Does the rest of the day feel like any other day? It may have seemed that way in the morning.

But soon after lunch time, we did something a little different. Laura suggested we stop laying around the house and go outside and play.

“It’s the 4th of July and it’s beautiful outside..!”

So we decided to do ‘some activity’ outside. Joshua grabbed his glove and mine, and a couple of baseballs. Hannah grabbed her iPod. Caleb grumbled a bit about having to put on socks and shoes instead of just flip flops. But I demanded if we were going to do some running around, you would need more than those.

So we were going to go in the back yard and play catch. After all, the yard still looked like it had been mowed. (That reminds me, I need to do something about the fact that I don’t own a working lawn mower – this fact will become noticeable to the whole neighborhood very soon.)

I thought we could walk over to the near by high school and run around the track. But instead we settled for walking a few blocks to the park and throwing the ball around. We got there and Joshua and I started playing catch. Hannah walked over to the swings and Caleb decided that doing that was better than watching.

It was only about five minutes when Caleb came running back over to us. I thought he had forgotten to go to the bathroom before leaving – he looked a little agitated. When he got over to me I asked him what was wrong. In an agitated voice he said, “Dad, there’s bees out here!”

I looked around and we were in a vast field of clover with the puffy white flowers poking out everywhere. I bent over and looked down.

“You’re right! Why this right here would be called a bumble bee.” I took a few steps and said, “And here are two more.”

This wasn’t helping.

“Caleb, you’ve walked all the way across this field twice now and they didn’t even notice you. Besides, this is why I told you to wear shoes instead of flip flops, you’re just fine.”

No consolation. By this time Hannah is on her way over because it’s looking like there’s a conversation that she’s missing out on.

We walked over to the sidewalk and considered just going home. But instead we decided to go on over to the track. Hannah wasn’t interested, so she took the balls and gloves back to the house. Only after we got home did we find out that she decided to take the long way home and even stopped off at the Haakenson’s to visit for a while. Freedom from the supervision of parents is becoming a “thing” with her.

So we walked over and ran up and down the bleachers of the soccer field. I was sure there was a track around somewhere. So we walked all the way around the back of the school and found it on the far side.

We ran one lap. This was enough to leave some of us gasping for breath! OK, Caleb was ready to go – but the rest of us were through. I did manage to jump one hurdle that was on the side. But that took it all out of me.

But before we left, I lined the boys up in one end zone and we pretended to run back a kick off. We did the 100 yard “dash(?)” for what would be considered a touchdown. However, a touchdown isn’t a touchdown when there is no defense. But there were all these metal stakes in the ground, but I don’t think they counted.

After a leisurely stroll home, it wasn’t long until dinner. Not a bad way to mess around while waiting for the big 4th of July feast that was being prepared for us.

Usually on the night of the 4th, we go to a local Steak -N- Shake and order milk shakes for all and sit on a hill and watch 3-4 fireworks displays. We discovered this worked better for our toddlers because they were far away enough from the booms. And the Florissant display was close enough that we could still enjoy some booms during the finale. Plus no crowd and we could just wander back home as soon as it was over.

But this year the 4th fell on a Friday night. We don’t buy anything from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday to honor the Sabbath day. So this year we just stayed home. We were pretty pooped from running around in the afternoon anyway.

It’s amazing how the prosperity of this country has allowed us to become so very sedentary! I’m not complaining! Just observing.

I think things will be changing around here soon… …Laura bought a scale this week.

It’s been one week since I had my contract terminated prematurely. To say I was fired has too much emotional baggage and it makes you think its worse that it really is. My contract was expected to go through the end of August and it ended on June 24th.

So last week had a few surprises. On Tuesday, the job ended. Then during the week we found out that the people that were going to buy our old house (anybody want it?) couldn’t get their financing. They were supposed to close on June 30th. That didn’t happen. So the money crunch is still on in more ways than one.

Then on Thursday, I was getting ready to go to our Peacemaking weekend in Ottumwa, and I was mowing the lawn. Well I did something to my lawn mower and broke it. So I borrowed our neighbor down the street’s mower to finish – and broke theirs too!

We did have a good weekend, and I think we were able to bring some fresh insights about conflict to the people we met. The hard part is all in the application.

Just a little blurb to keep you up to speed (that’s what blogs are all about, right?).