Jon's Birthday, Family Visits, and New Cabinets

August has been a whirlwind ending to the summer. We start back to school tomorrow! 

Momma cat has been staying away except to eat and is very testy with her kitlens. New babies coming soon, I'd say. 

We have here Shawn/Barak, Little Blackie/Gus, and Rochester.

Jonathan had a friend birthday at the church building. He is now 20. 

Whew.

I love this picture, but so many of them are gone/leaving soon for college. 

Bittersweet.

When we got back from our July trip to Louisiana, Phillip had taken this kitchen heater out.....

...... and put up wall-board.

We bought a few cabinets from Lowes and picked a red color that matched our kitchen curtains.

Phillip got them all painted. At first it looked pink, but after several coats it was a deep red.

Waiting on the counter top....

So we have a coffee station and more space for all our drinks! This is the first time we've kept our bottled waters somewhere other than a bathroom, dining room corner, or some other living space out in the open. Jonathan's description is Cherry Pie ~ that works for me!

I went through and got rid of three pretty big boxes of books. There is a family near St. Louis that has a home library that they share with homeschoolers in their community. We met up, and I passed these on to her. So anyone near St. Louis who would like to check out great books for homeschooling or just for reading, email Carrie Naglak for information: naglakfamilylibrary@gmail.com.

We had five days of family! Galen and her daughter Alicia came to visit. They had a lot of people and family to see, and they were busy the whole time they were here. It had been a year or two, so we were glad to spend some time with them.

While Galen and Alicia made a weekend trip to Jefferson City, Amos and Lanaya E came to stay! They had a wedding in Quincy, so that was a good excuse for them to come and say goodbye to us. They are leaving for Boise, ID in a week. Tears.... 

They are excited about the adventure though!

We went to the town's 150th Charter Day celebration. They opened a time capsule from 1974, had Amish homemade ice cream, a photo contest (Jonathan won 3rd for one of his entries), and lots of other stuff going on. There will be more Sesquicentennial celebration during Prairie Days in September.

Harrison, Silas, and Avery at the park for Charter Day.

Jonathan invited me to a game of Scrabble before he leaves for Florida this week. I thought I had him with my 54 point words: teeth, hue, die. Then he came back with his own 54 points from teether, seed, and died. We were still neck to neck until he got 60 points with jeux. He won by 40 points.

Playing Minecraft together.

The boys made a crash scene in Autumn. 

Nice.