The Hair Disaster

Have you ever felt like you had deja-vu, or that you were relieving a nightmare from the past?  Well, that was our experience one night as Addison called Amy back to her room after being put to bed (which actually is fairly common) and as Amy walked into the room, she looked down to see Addison......like this.....with a baby's fine-toothed comb (the kind that has tines on both sides of the comb) that she had combed through her hair starting from the very bottom and then rolled it up all the way to her forehead, as tight as one could get it.  Why was this deja-vu?  Because Zachary had done the same thing as a young child with the VERY SAME COMB (why do we have this comb after the first experience?).  His hair was short, but he couldn't get it out and he was so stinking strong he just yanked the comb and the hair....all the way to the roots....out.  To this day, he has a spot in the front of his bangs where the hair doesn't grow as thick.  So you can imagine Amy's dismay as she walked in to the room and saw the same drama playing itself out again!

The tears started when Amy walked in

We could not for the life of us unroll the comb, the hair was tangled in there as tight as could be.  Addison's hair does NOT grow very quickly - in fact she has only had her hair trimmed off by about an hour each time maybe 4 times in her whole life.  So this was not something that we could just cut out and say "c'est la vie" without knowing that she'd have a huge hole in her hair for years to come.  So we set out to work.  Having the world's handiest husband that has lots of tools is a blessing at all times, but never more so than this time.  We strategized and decided that the only way to get it out was going to be cutting it out - and the only thing that was strong enough to cut it was Karis' wire cutters.  So we started, one millimeter/tine at a time.  We'd cut out a tine, and then work to free those few strands of hair, and then cut off the next.  It was painstaking and it took hours.  We also put in gobs of grease/Crisco in her hair trying to make it slippery - that didn't work other than to make her hair super greasy!  

After about 2 hours that night, we finally had to just send her off to bed with a rag wrapped around her head, wanting to be sure that she didn't accidentally yank on it in the middle of the night.  At this moment, we weren't full of hope that we'd get this thing out, but determined to keep trying.

The next day, Amy's mom came over with crochet hooks, that we could use to help grab the hair and slide it off the tines.  Another 2 hours.....and her hair was finally freed!  It took just about four hours in total of working on her hair and this dumb comb.  The comb is now in 100 tiny little pieces as it was cut off tiny piece by tiny piece - thankfully not to worry about that comb ever again!

The joy on Amy's heart was huge - so thankful Addison's hair was spared!

After showering, her hair was still greasy from all of the stuff we put in it!

Addison had one last school year celebration around the same time - in which she got the chance to go to her teacher's house and get a reading trophy for reading over 40 books!  And a sweet gift of a t-shirt, mug and a few things like chalk from Mrs. Finch. 

We also popped over for a "drop-in" baby shower for our friends the S-family.  The baby is coming in July, and Amy has gotten to know Alicia through mutual friends, school (Addison and their daughter are in the same class) and we have enjoyed forming a friendship.  It was so nice to celebrate her!

Instead of putting our arms around each other, we did the "social distancing" thing and just touched elbows! :)

 The kids had a fun outing with Grandma and Grandpa Lyle as well - going miniature golfing!

Random pictures:

These baby pictures that Jennifer keeps finding on Facebook are just too precious not to post!

The four musketeers!

Snuggle time with her big brother!

We finally upgraded our mailbox, the other one was falling apart!  This one is huge and has no nooks/crannies for bees to build a nest - yahoo!

A Soccer Field Begins to be Born

Well, we have a very large back yard that is largely under-utilized, and with two boys who love/enjoy soccer (depending on which one you're talking about!), we decided that maybe putting in a soccer field in the backyard would be a good use of the space and a way for them to exercise.  The journey has begun.  Karis has been researching the various elements to the field now for a while, and execution has now launched.  It started with leveling everything out.  As the field progresses, we will post pictures!  It will be a smaller field obviously, and it will have turf instead of grass (easier maintenance for sure), and we think that we'll put eventually lights up back there along with nets on the ends to keep the balls from careening into neighbors yards.  Hopefully it is something that will be used with enjoyment for many years to come!

Dragging a pallet behind the tractor to move the dirt around

While Addison isn't old enough to actually drive the tractor to cut grass (no blades allowed at this age), she has been driving the pallet around - and loving it!

It will likely take much of the summer to finish unfortunately, but at least it will be ready when the weather cools down a little bit - so that it won't be so beastly hot out there when they are using it!

The kids enjoyed fishing at our local retention pond with some friends - you can see that we haven't had a lot of rain lately as the water is WAY low.

We enjoyed the historic space rocket launch to the international space station while out on the lake - the kids had fun watching it - unfortunately we were too low to really see the rocket fire, but we combined watching it on the phone and then up at the sky when it got high enough!

The next day, we watched as they docked at the ISS - that was pretty cool to see the beginning and finale!

Random pictures:

Blast from the past - this came up on Jennifer's Facebook memories - this had to be about 5-6 years ago for the four boys - they had a great time playing with paint guns in her backyard!

Hallelujah - Zachary made supper and did a great job of choplets!

Addison had a dear friend Ivalee who was well into her 90s (part of Addison's "old lady gang" :)) and she passed away probably 6 months ago - and Grandma (who was also very close to Ivalee) took Addison to put flowers on her grave - so sweet!

Nope - Not Another Year Passing Us By

AHHH, May is terrible - we come to the end of another school year which marks another year closer to our kids flying the coop, and WHY do the birthdays keep on coming?!  This is painful!  No more please!  This was an unusual school year for sure, so it was a strange way to have it end.  We pray for this Covid-19 to be behind us.

For Addison's class, they were able to build a fort and watch a movie "together" through Zoom.  she thought it was great fun to have her popcorn and be in the fort on the couch!  Kaleb did an "at-home" scavenger hunt and then poor Zachary in 7th grade just did school work until the very last day.  

The church hosted an "end of the year water fight party" that was supposed to be drive-thru, but many of us ended up getting out and standing apart to chat for a bit.  The kids don't social distance well, but the parents did our best

Throwing water balloons at old classmate in the back of his truck as they very slooowly drove by

A water gun was no match for the water hydration truck that the Landers brought!

the older boys just wanted to hang around and talk - so happy to see each other!

And these two "sisters" walked around arm in arm - so delighted to be together again.  Praying for safety from Covid but thankfully each family has done pretty well with staying at home so hoping we don't have the germs!

Seeing other classmates brought big smiles!

Pure joy

As school ended, we did a drive-by to the school to pick up school supplies etc.  Afterwards, the Cs invited us to come to Sweet Frogs with them for a treat.  We did social distancing, but it was fun to eat ice cream together!

May also has Amy and Karis' birthdays as well.  Karis was so sweet and put paper written with a message for Amy on the floor when she got up.  He is amazing!  That Saturday, our extended family with Mom, Grandpa Lyle, Jeff, Niesha, Sadie and her mom came over to celebrate - we ate out on our back deck (outside seems safer) but it was so miserably hot that eventually we came inside.  We are decided that we are getting new fans that will be a wind storm out there to keep us cool!

With the fact that we've been trying to stay within the social distancing safety boundaries, the last few months have been very quiet for us.  But we've enjoyed getting to do family games and time:

Only Addison could convince Zachary to dance with her - he did have a smile on his face, not just somberness! :)  He was trying to look formal!

 And then we got Kaleb a new desk for his room to make Legos on - he was looking forward to that for a long time!

 And then of course there is Skip-Bo and Clue!

Zachary is the undisputed master at Clue - he wins most of the time!

Sad, it has come to this - TWO pairs of reading glasses on Amy's head!  

She was practing her spying this day looking around the corner to where Amy was working

One day we went to Tijuana Flats and ate supper outside....

Sibling love.... these two are sweet.

Mother's Day

We had a lovely Mother's Day, it was a full one starting off with Keke's on our back deck with Mom and Lyle and then visiting.  The afternoon saw us out on the lake and then a supper in (thanks to Uber eats, which is a little more expensive than I would like...) from BurgerFi.  End the day with Little House on the Prairie and it was a success!

The family did a prayer for Mothers for the Church Mother's Day, so am posting it here

The Saturday before Mother's Day, the church had a mother's day parade / drive-through.  It was wonderful to be able to see the church family and friends outside.

Getting a birds eye view through the sunroof as we drove up.

First stop - a plant!

Talking to our pastor's wife

Second stop - Cupcakes!  Third stop - Children's bag for things to make for mom and Fourth - a prayer stop (beautiful, Amy almost cried!)

Twins - some good friends of ours, the Reiner family, have the same Expedition as we do (although they have light colored seats).  We stopped to take a picture together! :)

While hanging out at the house we discovered that Grandpa Lyle can play pool, so he played a game with Zachary!

Mom and Grandpa Lyle came boating with us

 In other news, Kaleb has grown a TON this year, and is just soooooo close to being taller than his mom!  He is so anxious for that last little bit!

Stretching his neck as tall as he can!

While out at the park, we went for a bike ride and came across this fence with different people painted all along it - it was super cool!

Random pictures:

One afternoon we went to the park and shot rockets with the Cs - super fun!

Addison loves to figure things out, so she really enjoyed the rocket!

Umm, a very 'water balloon pregnant' Addison.  Who knew.

As rare as a the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, all three of our Z kids in the pool!

Sweet - sibling love!