Joplin Tornado

I don't want to go through it all over again, but I thought I would share here some photos of my families homes that were lost that day, May 22nd.

My sister lost her home and my parents lost theirs. 

What a time of change in their lives, and not welcome change!

My mom, sister and her son were all away from their homes that day so they were just fine.  My dad was home and rode the storm out in the hallway.  

My sister's house

My parents

What is left of the kitchen ~ this was taken a month later

My old room

The hallway

~~~Kathy~~~~~

Bathroom Renovation Project, Part 2 (finally!!)

 Well, after 4 months (mainly because I forgot about filling y'all in on how the project worked out) I can finally show you what the master bathroom looks like! It has turned out beautifully! You can see what it looked like last time I posted about it here: Bathroom Renovation Project, Part 1.

So here's a list of everything that happened in the Master bath:

- We stripped wallpaper in the bathroom and the powder room.

-We repainted everything a cheerful yellow.

-We (I use that loosely :) got rid of the carpet in the powder room and re-tiled that floor. 

-The boys re-tiled the entire shower area. 

-The boys refinished the front of the bathtub.

-Becca refinished the doors and trim.

-We hung cute new curtains! 

We still want to pull out the green carpeting and replace the flooring, but that will happen sometime in the future. 

So here's the powder room now. 

And here's the rest of the bathroom!! Doesn't it look wonderful?! It turned out so well! Mom and Dad love it.

That's it for now!!

~Sarah

Bagpipes

Well, we now have an official "Piper" in the house.  Becca has been taking bagpipe lessons for several months now.  When you start bagpipes the instrument that you start with is called a chanter.  So she has been playing that for some time.  Two weeks ago during lesson time her teacher told her that she is ready to graduate to the bagpipes!  She was VERY excited.  Today we drove over to her teacher (she lives almost an hour away and her normal lessons are done over the computer) and she presented Becca with a loaner set of pipes.  So now she has the official title of "Piper".  :)

I know it is not a great photo, but it shows her total excitement to be able to hold the bagpipes for the first time!

 

~~~Kathy~~~~

July 20, 11

Here are the zinnias that I picked the other day.  Love, Love, love having flowers to cut from the yard.  :)  Makes me happy.

~~~Kathy~~~~

July 12th

The boys and I went to the garden this morning.  It was already in the 80's at 8 am!  UGH  That would not be bad, but the humidity! 

We are definitely having problems with something eating our produce.  My guess is that it is deer, but I don't know.  Since the garden is so far from home and we only go out there 1 or 2 times a week I have no idea what is doing it. Today there was a shell of a pumpkin laying there.  I would say that about less than 1/4 of it was left.  :(  And we are getting beans from the bush beans, but the pole beans are getting eaten like crazy!   And we put in more pole beans than bush beans!

I know that you aren't supposed to pick the sunflowers yet, but I wanted some of them to put in a vase, or in this case a coffee pot. 

Just a few feet bigger than Josh and he is 6 foot 6 inches!  They are huge.

Some of what we picked today.  I wish I had more gardening knowledge as to what stuff is and when to pick.  I know whats what in the stuff that we planted, but the volunteers.....??????

 Today we picked sunflowers, pumpkin, zuccini, green beans, okra, tomatoes, those bumpy yellow things, some white cucumbers, and banana peppers.  I can't wait till the tomatoes really start coming in.


~~~Kathy~~~~~

July 5th ~ a look at the flowers in our front yard

This is a trumpet vine.  It is not ours, but it grows over the fence every year and beautifies our yard too!  :)

Daylillies

Hostas

Impatiens

Clematis

Lilly of some sort

Something new that we planted this year ????

We planted Zinnias on the side so that we can pick them to bring in the house.  I have always wanted a "cutting garden" and now I have one!

I will try to post some soon of the flowers in the back yard.  These are all in the front or on one side of the house. 

~~~Kathy~~~~

July 1st

We have had some major work done here at the Gentzler homestead lately.  We have known for a while that our front step was sinking and the advice that we received was that mud jacking would not be sufficient to fix the problem.  :(

So here are a few pictures of the before and the middle of the project. 

More later.

~~~Kathy