8 Years Old

Melissa turned 8 on Sunday!! We had a fun little family party for her. She will be having her "friend" party in another week, then in June will be baptized and officially become a member of the the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We had to put it off until then for a lot of reasos, but she doesn't mind as long as it means lots of family will be here for her. She is very excited for that, and we are so proud of her. We love you so much, Melissa!

Yes, my yard is a mess of weeds. No worries, the flower order is on it's way.

Anyone notice a Thumbelina theme going on? She is all girl! Her dad finally got her hooked on Legos now, though, so I guess we don't need a boy.

I've Been Published!!

Ok, so it's only the local newspaper's opinion section, but it's still fun to see my name in print. Here's the letter I responded to:


Faith in politics
Although I carefully read Maggie Gallagher's recent rant ("Gay marriage and the future of religious liberty," The Daily Item, April 9 ) against gay and lesbian marriage, I came away just as confused as before. What I simply cannot understand is, "Why does she care?"
Indeed, why does anyone care? It is no skin off anyone else's nose if that gay or lesbian couple down the street want to marry.
How is Ms. Gallagher or anyone else, for that matter, even slightly inconvenienced by someone else getting married to whomever they wish?
Perhaps by way of argument, Ms. Gallagher writes, "... God himself made man male and female and commanded men and women to come together in a special way to image the fruitfulness of God."
Be that as it may, she is certainly free to believe it or not as she sees fit. So am I. And so is everyone else in this country. She, and everyone else in this country, is even at liberty to live her personal life by that rule, if that is what she wants.
But in this country religious belief is entirely a private matter. And what neither she nor anyone else is at liberty to do is to attempt to impose, by force of law, their private religious beliefs on other people.
Dale Hurliman,
Beavertown

And the link to my letter!:
http://www.dailyitem.com/0109_opinion/local_story_110000041.html

My Easter Girls

Easter Eggs

Hooray for the Jorgensens!! We were able to have another great visit with our great friends and colored Easter eggs together. Melanie and I worked an entire day shoveling rocks out of the garden while she was here. It's not finished yet, so those pictures will come later. Thanks for the help, Mel!

New Playhouse

Our neighbor loves to build things and had built this cute playhouse just for the fun of it. He doesn't have little children and thought our girls would enjoy playing with it, so he brought it down into our yard. It's got shingles and siding and real double-hung windows. The girls were so excited when they saw him bringing it! Maybe this will make up for the lack of a pool.

Random Pictures

This is a common sight in my house. Forget about Barbie dolls and Little People toys, my kids want to dress up dolls on their favorite computer game! I thougt it was cute that Rachel and Sara happened to be dressed alike as well as sitting alike.

After removing our pool, we found lots of little creatures including several of these redback salamanders. They are fun! Ashley is holding this one.

More Before and After

While this isn't a completely fair representation of the "before" basement bathroom, it's pretty close. All the junk was removed and we had the sellers install a sink before we moved in. Lucky for us, though, they kindly left he snake skin tacked to the wall for us to remove. You can see the tail end of it in the top left of this picture.

And here's how it looks now! No one would dare use the bathroom before I finished it because it was so creepy. Even my piano students would rather go upstairs. Now it's the prettiest bathroom in our house.