A Learning Curve

The beauty of painting a derby car. It used to be brushing the paint and lettering it. Then it turned to Allen spraying it and myself lettering it. Now its vinyl lettering and applying the paint with a paint gun. My how times have changed. Allen let Gage have a painting session last Thursday evening with his Oswego derby car.

Allen explained everything from pouring, stirring and mixing paint and thinner with the paint to the proper way to hold the gun and how to apply just the right amount of pressure. I'm sure glad I could care less about learning how to paint with the gun. Gage listened to it all, not me I said forget it, I'll take pictures. Too bad my pictures turned out grainy and crappy.

Anyways, Gage was so excited to get to paint.

Not what a typical 5 year old thinks of painting I'm sure.

Allen did participate in the 100th Labette County Fair Demolition Derby. He broke his steering right off the bat in his heat but was able to pull off a win. In the finals his carburetor continued to malfunction the ENTIRE derby. After putting up with it though and fighting his car all night he did pull off a 3rd place finish overall. Not too shabby.

Vacation Bible School

Gage attended the First Baptist Church's VBS last week and really enjoyed it. He was very insistent that he attend every night that way he could be entered for a prize. He went Tuesday thru Friday evening every night from 6-8:15p.m. On Friday evening I went and attended the program night with him. They took each class individually to the front and one child from each class was awarded a prize for memorizing the most verses. Much to my surprise Gage won. The prize was a huge assortment of beach toys. (Right up our alley)

 I would ask him every night what he learned or did and he wouldn't tell me much. Then Friday standing there he re sited what he learned. Who is this kid up there standing in front of everyone in church, resiting his verses he had learned? I would have believed he was there only playing but he actually absorbed what was being taught!

He came home with new sand toys, a t-shirt, large sand bucket, toy dirt bike, hot wheels car, sunglasses and other misc. stuff. No wonder kids love VBS.

Camping

We purchased a new camper a couple weeks ago and pulled it out to Big Hill Lake for our first camping trip Thursday evening. 104 degrees and camping for fun isn't really the greatest idea. Especially when the beach says to swim at your own risk. I took a kiddie pool and sprinkler to let Gage play in since we weren't going to be visiting the lake water (Blue Green Algae has been detected in the lake but not to where they have to shut it down so its swim at your own risk).

The pool wasn't as big as I remember. Maybe because the last time Gage used it he was a baby. Now he can barely sit in it at 5 years old.

It was just Gage and I Thursday night and by noon Friday we were bored.

The pool was a flop, we did a couple puzzles, read books, watched a movie, ate breakfast, and went for 2 walks. Starting the day off at 7 am was too early. We came home and ate lunch with Allen, swam in our clean Algae free pool and then Gage finished his last night at VBS.

When we returned to the camper we ate supper and watched our rented movies before calling it a night.

Home by 9 am Saturday morning. Quick camping trip but we now can say we have learned how to:

level trailer, hook water and electricity up, dump grey and black tanks and all the fun stuff in between. We are now ready to go camping and have a great list of what is needed and not needed.

Playing Dress Up

Gages friend Shanler come over the other day to play for a while. Gage absolutely loves Shanler and will play whatever she wants to play. Today it was dress up. Fortunately, we have a boy version of that. Gage has cowboy, Spiderman, Superman, policeman and fireman outfits.

This time they picked the policeman and fireman. He likes to pretend to put out fires and write tickets.

I got out real walkie talkies and they ran around the yard talking about fires and who was hurt.

 Its so cute to see them in action. I took advantage of the pretend play and got a couple cute pictures.

Summer Time Fun

Seems like we've been doing a lot of swimming this summer. Gage is getting better and better every time we get in the water.

Mr & Mrs Trevor Willems

A couple weeks ago several of our family members traveled to Sedona AZ to attend the wedding of Trevor & Amy Willems. The weather was great, wedding looked awesome and couldn't ask for anything nicer. It was an outside wedding at a church camp that had neat primitive buildings and cabins. Both wedding parties actually stayed on the camp grounds and used the facilities. Gage was asked to be the ring bearer and no way would he let Amy & Trevor down. This was his 3rd time so he thought he knew exactly what to do. By Saturday afternoon he was a little upset that his mom wouldn't let him run freely with "the guys".
If you didn't know this already he does not like to have his picture taken. You may think he's photogenic but I guarantee you he is one of the worlds worst about photo's!
We had a nice trip and enjoyed swimming, a wedding, swimming and a plane ride. If you ask Gage he will tell you it can't get any better than that!

Fourth of July Review

Wow! It's been a while since I last blogged.

Our fourth of July was great! We went and watched Cars 2 Friday night and purchased Gage some fire crackers, Saturday we went with Allen to fix a water leak and enjoyed an evening with friends, Sunday was a great day at the lake and Monday was another trip to a friends house for fourth of July celebrations. Sounds like a lot to do but we actually took it pretty easy and enjoyed our three day weekend.

Gage was able to light fireworks this year and there were no tragedies. He wasn't much into the step n smash fire crackers. After 3 days of booms and bangs I was ready for the weekend to be over. He wanted to go buy more fireworks but we stuck to our guns and didn't make a second trip.

The pictures will tell the rest.