Round the 'hood

This guy/gal and his family have lived over our neighborhood for almost the whole time we have lived here; although, we have not seen them recently.  In fact, we are pretty sure they had a nest in our neighbor's tree and some crows chased them away from it.  We found a huge nest on the ground under the tree last year.  Though, now that I see his size again, I wonder if it was the crow's nest - we have some large crows around here.

 Pretty sure his is a red shouldered hawk.

 A neighbor hired a face painter for their daughter's birthday.
 Face and arm painter that is.
 And the Walkabout.  This is a bit of a hodge podge post, more for my benefit - just some little scenes I want to remember that remind me of other things.  The Walkabouts happen four times a year.  All the businesses stay open late.  There is often live music.  This trolley runs from one end of the neighborhood to the other.  We usually walk one way and ride back the other.  For some reason Mike could not go with us, probably sermon prep, so we rode the trolley both ways.



 And this is Carlos' gigantic squash.  It weighed more than Henry at the time.  Carlos lives three doors down and leaves bags of avocados on our door step about 10 times a year.  Awesome, huh?
Just some stuff around here.

Summer Vacation

I think it was actually summer break, not spring break like I said previously.  I can't remember now where we met up with the cousins...Huntington Beach maybe?  Somewhere up the coast.  Sometimes I can't believe we live so close to such beauty.


 Camille and Rachel flew out with their grandmother to stay with her cousin, Sherry.  Sadly, I failed to take a picture of all of them together.  For some reason I was just taking pics of the kids.  We probably spent 3 hours at this park, everyone found something to do.  Henry even walked a stranger's dog.




 I would suggest that these two were separated at birth, but look at them - clearly they were not.  But they are two peas of a pod.
 Thumbs up and peace!  Who knows??





 They wanted to take a picture with just Henry, but I wasn't willing to let him loose.  This was the compromise. 


Personality

Last year we met up with the cousins for Spring Break.  I have more pictures of that, but wanted to post this little photo shoot (oldest and youngest girls) because it is so representative of Greta's huge personality.  I still do not quite understand her - What makes growl and stomp her foot and burst into uncontrollable tears and what makes her skip off yelling, "I love you so much, I just can't stop!"  It is easy to over think your parenting with one like this, constantly wondering if you are doing something wrong.  And it is easy to focus entirely on their behavior and forget that there are rough edges the Lord is intending to rub off of you through this kid.  










These girls.  Let them love the Lord fiercely!

Helpin' sorta

Some of my most favorite things we have found dumpster diving.  And mostly they only need a little care to make usable.  Thankfully Mike doesn't (mostly) mind being in charge of that.
But this post is as much about these curls as it is about the cute chair!
 I always wanted one with curls.



 Airplane




 Not sure why Sister is helping nakey.

 "You do realize this chair is mine?"