A little Random....Ok, A Lot of Random

I thought of a metaphor to describe Joey the other night. It was kind of late and so maybe a bit odd.... but I think it really works. Joey wears responsibility like a lycra suit. It fits him like a second skin but is a little too binding to relax in.
Here is Mr. Lycra himself with JB. I'm not even sure why I took the picture but I guess its pretty cute so I had to add it.
....& here I am. I guess one of those times I couldn't sit down to eat....I don't know...but my closet door is opened and that really bugs me.
OK so if you haven't figured it out....That's Crowdin's eye. Don't ask. I have no idea.
So Joey brought home this perfectly nice blow snake. And then let Crowdin torture him right while our home teachers were visiting. Crowdin just barked and barked at it and the snake was all coiled up and hissing and striking at him and blowing. That was the great part....the blowing. Blow snakes expell a huge lot of air out of their bodies when they hiss. It is very intimidating and our hometeacher Bishop, President, Doctor Besendorfer pointed out to us that you could actually see the snakes whole body contract when he blew. Naturally Joey did what all real men would do. He picked Crowdin up and dropped him on the snake. The result was that the poor snake was so traumatized that we had to let it go. This is a picture of him severely mad. He is very tightly wrapped around Joey's wrist and wants to bite his face off. I'm pretty sure he won't ever like humans again....Or little barky dogs either.

Mr. Fix It!!

Joey has been working hard at remodeling our old home. I know he gets very tired of it, but he does such a good job. Here he is putting in our new flooring in the Dining Room. We tore out very ugly, old, sickly dark brown carpet. Underneath that was the old green linoleum squares from before the 1960's I think. This new floor looks so nice.
He finished the dining room and into the kitchen, under the pantry, and then the entire laundry room. We were only able to do a portion of the kitchen because we are remodeling it as well. We'll finish the floor after pulling out cabinets and putting in all the new ones.
Yay! We were able to put our first section of cabinets in!! They are so pretty compared to what we've had for these past 12 years. I will feel so pampered when we get this all done. I actually found these online, a company from KC Missouri. I was impressed with them after all my research and I am still impressed with the product. I put most of these cabinets together by myself...(that means they were very easy.) I couldn't have done the pantry without Joey's help though. Someday I'll have to remove the old border on the walls...but that project won't be for a while yet.
This is a close up of the pantry. I was hoping you'd be able to see the pretty grain of the maple and the chest nut glazed finish. We were able to put in our first section of cabinets where we didn't have any cabinets before. That way when we start pulling out the old ones, we still will have a little bit of storage space. I'm still not sure what we'll do about counter tops. I haven't decided. (If you want to compare these to my old cabinets, there's a little shot of them in a couple of Delila's pics with Crowdin in an earlier blog.)

Big Bear Lake, CA

We were able to take Snook and Papa Joe with us to Luke's blessing in California. They have been visiting from South Carolina since the first of May. We had so much fun. Fortunately I took these pictures at Big Bear Lake. Unfortunately, I forgot to take any other pictures or I didn't have my camera when I wanted to.

My boys and I....All my family thought it was such a bother to be in a picture. You should have heard them complaining because I wanted to take an assortment of pictures. No wonder I didn't get my camera out again. What a HUGE ordeal! But I thought the pictures turned out really cute. Even if we were all a bit scruffy looking.

Big Bear Lake is actually the name of the town where we stayed for two nights before getting to Lacy's and Jason's. It is in the San Bernardino Mountains about three hours away from their house in Santa Ana. I would imagine that it is named for the beautiful Big Bear Lake that we are taking our pictures next to. I think this is a great three generation picture of the Ellison men.




DeDe and I and our sunglasses and a sparkling lake and a beautiful mountain day. And Life is Fine...