2 July 2017

For family night this week we joined another family to pick up trash along a country highway.  Our friends recently signed up for our county adopt-a-highway program and they are responsible to pick up trash along the road twice a year.  The county provided the bright vests and garbage bags and took care of getting the collected trash to the landfill.  Best part of the night: using the grabber tools to pick up trash.  Worst part of the night: Ticks!  They were everywhere along the road and several tagged along home with us.

Helen has been working hard rehearsing for The Lion King, Jr.  She's going to be a lioness in a community production of the musical.  Becky, Helen and Gibson have been helping in the costume shop-- sewing elephant pants, hot gluing hyena manes and painting the cheetah costume.  Here's a photo of one of the wildebeest shields.  We're excited to see the show this week!

Becky took Abe, Helen and Gibson to play at Lost Creek Lake this week. We rented a  paddle board and a kayak at the marina.  Abe and Gib paddled the toys over to the swimming area of the lake.  It was a longer distance than we thought and took them about half an hour.

Here's a photo of Helen kayaking.

The lake was a great temperature for a hot day.  

 Abe has spent a lot of time this week helping our neighbor, Matt, get ready for his annual firework show.  The man in the red shirt, Spencer, is Matt's firework partner and has helped with all his shows.  The other people in the photo are Spencer's relatives.  Abe is mounting the mortars on sheets of plywood.  After the mortars are mounted, they run fuses between the fireworks to help Matt and Spencer light the fireworks quickly and safely.  After years of practice, Matt and Spencer know how to set the fuses for 30 minutes of nonstop fireworks.

 Matt ordered 7700 mortars this year.  He watches demo explosions on youtube to pick the fireworks to order.  Here are a few of them. 

 More fireworks.

Helen made a t-shirt inspired by Hamilton: An American Musical.  This is the back.

This is the front.  Angelica, Eliza and Peggy are the names of the Schuyler sisters in the musical.  Eliza Schuyler married Alexander Hamilton.  There were two more Schuyler sisters, Cornelia and Catherine, but they didn't make it into the musical.

Gibson started a new woodworking project on Saturday.  He's making a wooden sword.