Wahoo and Away We Go!

Okay - this is for all my loving friends and relatives who enjoy reading my yearly KappenChronicles and want MORE!!! You might not get a LOT more because I lead an exceptionally busy life, and I don't always have time to blog away, but I am going to try!

What's new around the place? Well, let me tell you!

First, Elly is getting braces. We are currently in the "mouth-widener" cycle. This consists of a little piece of metal fitted near the roof of her mouth. Every three days, we put a little "key" in the center hole of the appliance and give it one turn. This slowly spreads her top jaw a little bit. Sounds painful, but it really isn't. I had one when I had braces several millenia ago. It was kinda cool - by the time they were finished widening my top teeth, I could put a pencil between my two front teeth! They then used all that extra space to move my teeth around. Anyway, that's the same plan with Jo - to try and create more space without removing any teeth.

Isaiah goes to the dentist today to start getting fillings. He has a horrible problem with cavities. The rest of the children don't...but he sure does!

I finished my first children's reading book, and I'm waiting for Alyssa to finish up my illustrations - this is a family project! I'll be sure and post a photo of the completed book when it's published.

Elly had a great idea for a really neat Bible Journal for young ladies, and I helped her design it. It's been selling really well - it's available in three colors. The best part about it is the missionary section. That section contains clear plastic sleeves into which you can place missionary prayer cards. Every two pages is divided by a sleeve, so you can write all about a missionary family, their birthdays, prayer requests, field of service, etc., and see them at the same time you are remembering them. Then turn the sleeve over, and view a different family and the page adjacent has all that family's information. Neat, huh?

We are still trying to sell our house. We were not getting any nibbles with the real estate agent, so we are doing it on our own again, and we lowered the price a bunch. Curt really wants the house to be sold this summer so we can finally get some land. We've been playing around with the idea for years, but now he's serious about wanting to move.

I went to see my niece's new house yesterday. It's about 50 minutes from here. Huge 80-old boarding house, 8 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms! They want to eventually make a stairway up to the attic because you can walk around up there, but the only entrance right now is through a tiny hole in a closet. Remarkably, there doesn't appear to be any flooring or anything up there, so for the past 80 years, I guess no one has stored anything up there. They have an enormous crawl space, and part of that was divided up into "rooms" per se, so I guess that's what they used for storing stuff. They have a tiny yard, but it's filled with all sorts of flowers. She even has peonies and a spirea bush!! I haven't seen spirea since we left Illinois. Peonies aren't all that common around here, either, though people do have them. They seem to grow much smaller here. Must have something to do with the heat? In any event, her house has inspired me for a new children's book series, so I'm hoping to start on that this summer....maybe while we are on vacation.

We are planning a trip out West this summer - complete with my mother-in-law!! We are very excited about having her go camping with us. The kids can't wait - I'm sure they will be arguing over who gets to sleep in Grandma's tent each night!

Well, this is it for my preliminary blog - don't want to write all I know the first time out or it'll be three weeks before I think of something else!