chaos with a light at the end

we are making progress! despite the chaos that surrounds me in the living room and dining room, we're happy to see how the kitchen is coming together. the red walls and pink tile are gone. the new wall color is toasted walnut, which in ryan's words is military green, personally i think toasted walnut has a better ring to it. even though its more green than walnut colored, who names colors anyway. we hope that the whole project will be complete in a few days. so stay tuned for the completed and clean kitchen photos to come.

summer fun

playing in the backyard pool with the slide made life exciting and then we ended the fun with a popsicle. good times!

our little dare devil

malachi's greatest trick these days is jumping. if you count to three he'll pretend to jump from where he is standing. well ryan thought it would be fun to have him jump into the pool,not just from the side, but from the highest ledge. thankfully he seems to only jump when someone is there to catch him...but that's today. we've enjoyed a hot week and lots of fun time playing outside.

our kitchen is slowing transforming

the new tile is in and already the kitchen looks great, ok there is dust everywhere still and we're only half way done, but getting rid of the pink tile has made a huge difference. if anyone wants a pink cast iron sink i have one sitting in the backyard, and i'll even let you have it for below market value, free. our next step is sanding the cupboards, putting up molding and painting the cupboards and walls. our goal is to finish this by next friday before we leave for MI. more pictures to come soon!

a visit from our old neighbors and friends

well the running joke in bellflower is: move next door to the verwys' if you want to leave california. our friends rob, erin and gracie moved last summer after living next door to us and then this summer the copelands who lived around the corner moved too... so i guess we do a really good job of helping people discover their calling away from california, or maybe we drive them away, anyway.

the vandelune family now with the addition of karys came to visit california for graduation celebrations and vacation. we had a ton of fun hanging out with them and are thankful for the continued friendship we share across the miles. since we saw them in march its amazing how much the kids have changed already. karys started crawling all over the place while visiting us, malachi loved giving the girls kisses, and we all had fun playing together.

we did make a crazy decision to start remodeling our kitchen while they were here, but they were troopers and dealt with loud tools ripping tile off the counter and having dust fill the rooms. so despite the chaos of the house we enjoyed reconnecting and sharing life together for a few days.

father's day

on father's day morning malachi and i made french toast for breakfast with erin, gracie, and karys vandelune who are visiting us from iowa. after breakfast we all crashed for naps and then headed to the nature preserve next to bolsa chica. we watched birds dive bomb into the water and catch fish, we were all pretty impressed. on the way out we also saw a giant slug in the water. what an adventure. it was a great day hanging out together and appreciating ryan being an amazing dad.

malachi trying to be like dad

enjoying summer watermelon with aunt annika