Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Brian and Becca


We are all still in the process of going through all the pictures everybody took at the wedding, but I wanted to upload at least one. This picture was taken at the reception. You can also go to the photographers site to see a few pictures they have uploaded. http://www.stringerphotography.net/

Friday, July 13, 2007

Tessa Walking and Talking...

Also, Drew saying Happy Birthday Pop Pop!

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Disgusting...

So, I go into Drew's room just now.  He's been playing quietly while I work on doing some laundry and putting Tessa down for a nap.  He's in his bed playing and I ask him what he's doing.  He points at a lump wrapped in his sheet and says, "It's a present!" 

I say, "Can I come play with you in your bed?" 

 Drew:" No, it's wet" 

Me: "Where is it wet?"

Drew: "On that covers"

Me, after noticing a wet spot: "Why is it wet?"

Drew (with perfect pronunciation):  "It's disgusting"

Me (laughing): "Who taught you the word disgusting?"

Drew: "Daddy"

I then proceeded to "unwrap" his "present"-- his box of wipes.  Of course he wrapped it after he took all the wipes out of the box and they were all wrapped up too!

Becky

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Darlene's Graduation

Darlene had her 8th grade dance on June 8th and then graduated on June 10th. We decided to go to the park the day before graduation to take pictures of her in her gown. The school collected the gowns as the kids walked off the field so we would not have an opportunity to get pictures with the grandparents. After graduation we went to a Japanese steak house. The chef did all kinds of fun tricks while cooking the food on a grill in front of us. He threw food at all of us hoping we would catch it in our mouths. Dad and Tom were able to catch the food. The rest of us were not as fortunate. You can see more pictures here.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Mud hole Fun

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Does anybody recognize these children? Who are their parents?

Monday, June 18, 2007

Dad, you would have loved it!

HPIM0018 While in SC over the weekend, I had the opportunity to meet with a friend of RMI. He is an amazing taxidermist.  Deer are up there in terms of my loves. God, Family and Deer! What else is there?

This guy, Dave Strafford is an award winning hunting guide, speaker and taxidermist. He had animals (mostly deer) from all over the US. And they were huge!!! He probably had 100 deer mounts.  I saw some animals that were way up there in Boone and Crockett points. He had both typical and non-typical.

HPIM0019This guy was truly a deer enthusiast. He currently has 6 deer in a pen behind his house so he can watch them, learn, and grow in his ability to mount them. He used to have more than 20. I had the opportunity watch these deer for awhile. What a great time we had. It was great to meet this guy that is using his passion to serve the Lord. Not only is he amazing at what he does, but he travels around sharing his 2 passions, Christ and deer, at sportsmen's banquets, camps, and seminars. Very cool.

In an earlier post, I mentioned SC is different? Well, we drove 20 miles to Laird's BBQ. the BBQ sauce wasn't BBQ sauce as I knew it. They just didn't have the typical sauce. It was this amazingly good mustard based sauce. yum! The buffet included hash, fried chicken, fried gizzards, fried Liver, fried Okra, hush puppies, and some other stuff I didn't recognize. A truly great, but very different experience. I think I fit right in with the guys wearing their mossy oak camo hats and denim overalls. (I can at least pretend I fit in, right?).

Rob

Thursday, June 14, 2007

We're Home Owners

These are the pictures we've taken of our new house. We had settlement yesterday (Wed. 6/13/07) at 3pm. Thanks for the prayers, it couldn't have gone any smoother. Who knew getting into debt would be so easy! (Tongue slightly in cheek) We are very excited about our home. We have a month to move in all of my stuff from the apt. I am currently living in, and the Massanari's would love us to get Becca's mountains of "stuff" out of their basement. In all seriousness, both sets of parents have been very gracious through this stressful and exciting process.

Last night, Becca's parents and Sarah and Johnny came over. We had pizza and sat on our floor. Although we don't have anything moved in, I slept there last night. I'd brought over the air mattress. I just felt like I had to claim it or something.


Becca and I are very excited about making a home together. We want to make this a place of hospitality, graciousness, kindness, friendship, love, and care. That was our prayer last night.








Come Visit Soon!

Saturday, June 09, 2007

Old House, New House


Our house was built in the 1870's. It was sided (at least some of it) in the 1880's... and we have the newspaper to prove it. In early April, we started to have our house re-sided. As the old cedar and pine clapboard siding was removed, it revealed the original wide plank sheathing... not plywood. And it was all dry. Not only that, but as part of the vapor barrier, our contractor found a piece of newspaper with the date of 1881 on it. Unbelievable, huh? The siding job took forever, but it has now been replaced. It's a little sad to think that we just tore off 130 year old siding to replace it with vinyl, but then I think about the former owner who used to re-paint the house EVERY fall... all of a sudden, I'm not as sad anymore.


The siding job is now complete! Next up... landscaping!



Happy Birthday, Zach!







Thursday, June 7th, was Zach's 1st birthday! We celebrated by having Dad take the day off of work and making a day of it. We had our pictures taken as a family, turned Zach's carseat around (which he found very entertaining), went to the park, played in the back yard, and finished off the day with some ice cream.




Oddly enough... we bought our house on the day Chase was born, just over 3 years ago. On Zachary's first birthday, our siding project came to a completion. I'm not sure Zach appreciated the new gutters for his birthday, but his parents did!

Happy Birthdays!





On Saturday, May 26th, Chase turned 3! Since it happened to be Memorial Day Weekend, Grandmom & Grandpop Thompson came up to visit and we had a birthday party for both Chase and Zach (Zach turned 1 a week and a half later). It was a Sesame Street themed party and the boys had a great time! Happy Birthday Chase and Zach!







Saturday, June 02, 2007

Tessa's Standing

Tessa stood up, let go and did a free stand that lasted 5 seconds yesterday-- twice! She's growing up too fast.

Rob took this picture yesterday as well. Her hair is messier than her Mom would like, but it was too cute of an expression!
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Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Pictures In The Park





We took some Pictures in the Park in Kearney on Memorial Day and wanted to share them with you.






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Monday, May 28, 2007

Our Memorial Day Weekend



We had a very full Memorial Day weekend. We started Sunday with an amazing Church service with over 50 people getting baptized. We then spent the afternoon at the Ocean City boardwalk playing Miniature Golf. Christopher got a hole-in-one and Tom got 2.




We then surprised the kids with a free concert at Ocean City Tabernacle. This was the kick-off of their Summer season. The concert featured 4 bands, Nevertheless, Krystal Myers, DecembeRadio, and SuperChic[k]. In case you do not know who these bands are, they all have hits on the top 40 Christian Bill board. DecembeRadio just received a Dove award, Krystal Myers was nominated for Best Female Vocalist, and SuperChic[k] has released several albums dealing with the way Christian girls should live their lives and their self esteem. We were able to be right upfront. Darlene and I were actually in the mosh pit. (I got a compliment when Darlene informed me that I proved I was not as old as she thought.) Darlene even got to sing into the mic during the Superchic[k] set. Both the kids met and got autographs from all band members. What an experience!!!!! I don’t know if I had more fun at the concert enjoying the music or watching Darlene and Christopher and remembering all the concerts and Creation festivals we attended as teenagers.










Nevertheless and Krystal Meyers















DecembeRadio and

SuperChic[k]





These are a couple of pictures of getting autographs with some of the bands.

















Memorial Day started with Darlene marching in a parade in Absecon. She has signed up to be in the high school band for next year and was invited to carry the banner for parades for this spring and summer.

After the parade Tom and Christopher put together our new grill. This was a very frustrating project because the directions were as Dad calls them “Mickey Mouse Directions”. It took a total of 3 1/2 hours to put it together. But as Christopher said “It was worth the work.” Our first grilled dinner of the season was Steak and grilled potatoes.




Sunday, May 27, 2007

"Engagement Photos"

As part of our wedding photo package, yesterday was our "engagement" session with Lori and Neville, our friends from church who are our wedding photographers. It was a good time. We went to Winterthur in DE. This is DuPont's estate now turned historical park. It was beautiful. Lori, who does most of the post-editing, will be going on a cruise with her family for a week. However, before she left, she put 5 pics up on their blog. We are really excited to see the rest of them. Take a look. We are really excited about having them do our wedding. If you want, take a glance at the wedding photos on their main site (more than on just the blog). They are really impressive.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Happy Birthday Sweety!

Happy Birthday to my best friend...  I love you!

Happy Birthday Song

Sunday, May 13, 2007

We dedicated Tessa today...

In total, there were 50 children dedicated today.  Tessa was all smiles!  Today was great!  Becky's Mom is here visiting for about a week and Becky's brother and his wife and child (plus 2 friends) came for the day.  We had a great time.  See our website for pics...

Rob  

Saturday, May 12, 2007

New Pictures...

Click here for Pictures from our Beach Day with Mom Mom and Becky's new Haircut. 

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Things are going great!

Praise the Lord! Things are really going well for Becca and I right now. After deciding to buy a home, and searching for awhile, Becca and I just had a bid accepted and are signing the contract tonight. We expect to settle on June 13th! These are pics of the house. It is basically equidistant from both of our jobs. Unfortunately (and Fortunately), she works in a fairly affluent school district. This means that we really can't live that near to her job. The house is in Phoenixville, PA. We will be 35 minutes from both jobs, 20 minutes from church, 20 minutes from the Massanari's.

In addition, wedding plans are really moving along. We just got the invitation ordered. We are ordering them from this really cheap but cool place in India called AllWeddingCards.Com. We just got .jpg proofs and are in the design finalization stage. There are tons of other wedding details that we are really starting to make progress on.

I'm becoming a Mennonite. I currently attend Frazer Mennonite Church and will be accepted as a member there late June or early July. I have really appreciated learning about the incredibly rich history of this faith. A group who has its own roots beginning just after the reformation when they, the Anabaptists, were persecuted horribly by those heroes of the faith that the rest of us lift up, such as Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli. I have been very excited by the incredibly high importance the Mennonites put on living out our faith and trying to live up to the first two commandments, while fully affirming that we have all fallen short of the glory of God. The Mennonites have a few other signature beliefs/customs that are very exciting to me also, such as simple living, refusal to make oaths, a pledge of peace and non-violence, and embracing theological, spiritual, and relational diversity while being grounded in a desire to serve the Lord. Anyway, I could go on and on, but it is all very exciting.

Lastly, Becca is starting to wrap up school. It will really be a blessing this summer when she has the time to plan details of the wedding, begin the moving in process, etc.

Oh, and I'm down to 198 lbs! Look out Rob, I'm coming down!

God Bless

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Happy Birthday Toby!





Toby celebrated his 14th birthday by taking his first turkey. He shot this bird at 43 paces in light rain and thunder. We set up in a blind with our decoys. About 10 birds walked by just before sunrise. This gobbler was the last one. The hens were closer but the Gobbler stayed further out. I called a few times to get him to stop but he kept walking so Toby shot when he turned slightly to walk away. The Bird weighs 20lbs, has a 9.5" beard and 7/8" spurs. A real trophy in our books. We are excited to kill our first bird. After several years of trying I have not killed one yet. I believe this Bird is an Eastern Turkey due to the dark tail feathers. We have Merriams around also. Sam was with us in the blind as well. He is excited to hunt turkeys next spring after he turns 12.