Home School Day at the Capitol

Today was Home School Day at the Capitol in Denver. We attended the rally on the west steps of the capitol. We didn't get any crowd shots this year, but these few pictures. Jeffrey was helping some people move today, so he didn't get to go. We took our niece, Hadassah and our friend, Ephraim with us to fill up our empty van seats. Thank the Lord for a cloudy, not rainy or snowy, day. Here is a picture of Hadassah, and in the background, Ken Buck, our County District Attorney, who is running for Senate for Washington, DC, visiting with people in the group. This was before the rally.

Zooming in on Ken in the middle:

Our family with Ken Buck. We are praying he will be our next Senator from Colorado. He's a really good guy who loves the Lord and will do what is right for our country!

Cory Gardner, currently a State Representative, is speaking in this photo. He is running for 4th Congressional (our district) to go to Washington as Representative. The others standing behind him on the steps are the homeschool- and family-friendly legislators in our state government. One of those men spoke who is a homeschool dad of four. We are thankful for a good homeschool law in Colorado and appreciate those who keep it that way!

The speaker at the rally was Bill Armstrong. He has been representative and senator for our state and in Washington in past years, and now is President of Colorado Christian University. He also received the Statesman Award from Christian Home Educators of Colorado. He is one of our heroes for his godly leadership for Colorado! He said several times, "Thank God for homeschoolers in Colorado!"

Some fun recent pictures

Beth and our friend, LeighAnna Kaus.

Trampoline fun with Lincoln and the Kaus kids.

Emily and LeighAnna

Emily, LeighAnna, and Lincoln

Popsicle break after trampoline playing.

The Johnstown-Milliken homeschoolers at the Celestial Seasonings field trip this month. Notice the cute hairnets!

A lineup of kids and helpers at Federal Heights Sunday School ready to number off to play a game. Jason is the tall one!

Lincoln, the 3 year old sweetie that we babysit, made a parade of cars and trucks, then lined up the bugs to watch the parade go by!

Painting Projects over Spring Break

When we moved in here in August, 1989, we painted everything Country White, even the baseboards. If you have been a recent reader, you know that during Christmas Break, we started painting parts of our house that had been Country White for 20 years. After taking a "break" from painting, we again painted during Spring Break, March 29 through April 1. Rowen's and my bedroom was the first project, then the entryway and stairways/landings down to the basement. In our bedroom, we decided on a raspberry accent wall, with 3 walls a light pink. Here Emily and Beth are helping with the pink rolling. Rowen also gave the ceiling fresh paint.

Rowen rolling pink.

The finished pink walls and white ceiling.

Doing the baseboard in white next to the raspberry accent wall.

Rowen cutting in up high in the entry way. We primed everything before putting the color on.

Cutting in on the low parts with Nevada Tan, which is also the underneath color on the upstairs hallway under the scone fauxing.

Rowen painting white ceiling paint in the tight triangle. It is shaped this way because it is below the stairs going up to the upper level.

Rowen cutting in the Nevada Tan base color in the entry to the family room.

While I was gone, some people did some experimentation with different colors and fauxing techniques. My advice: don't try this at home! Thankfully, it was painted over before I saw it!

Plain wall before fauxing.

We decided to use the double paint/double and textured rollers for the fauxing. We used a butterscotch type color and a scone color for the fauxing colors.

Entry way above the front door after the fauxing was completed.

Going down to front door from the main level. In this picture, you can see the adjoining wall of the upstairs hallway with the sea sponge fauxing using just the scone colored paint, and compare it to the double roller fauxing using two colors that goes down the stairs. The wall texturing is totally different for this part of the house compared to the upstairs, so we think it was a good choice to do the double roller technique here.

Entry way going downstairs. The small plaque on the wall says: When you are here you are family.

Finished pictures of our bedroom: We changed our bed back to the direction we had it our first 17 years in this house. Rowen really enjoys it in this position and I am sleeping better too!


Our Raspberry accent wall.

Next project is the living room. We're accepting suggestions for what color to do. We also want to repaint the pink upstairs bathroom.

Easter Weekend in Colorado Springs

Our family went to Colorado Springs the weekend of April 2-4. The main thing we went for was the Arms Around the World Missions Conference. We really enjoyed the services and benefited from getting together with some of "God's wonderful people." It was refreshing to our souls.
There were times of eating together in the parsonage/fellowship hall. This shows some of the crowd.


Pastor Philemon Wachara was the special speaker for the evening services. Here we were visiting with him after Saturday evening service. He is from Kenya, but is in the US attending God's Bible School at present. He was telling us that our nephew, Aaron Profitt, is his statistics teacher!

We stayed with Rowen's cousin, Katie, and Uncle Alvin Gafford.

They are so kind to let us come and stay with them, and we enjoyed meals and visiting with them. Friday night we went to The Mason Jar for the evening meal.

Jason played the piano for the enjoyment of Uncle Alvin and Katie.

On Saturday afternoon, our kids went with the young people from the Immanuel Missionary Church to a mini-golf place. They had a great time; here are some pictures from that.

This is everybody who was in the group, except for the photographer, Steve.
We do have a picture of Steve, shown here with Tonya, whose birthday was being celebrated with this group activity.

This outhouse seemed to be one of the harder stations. I heard that Steve had to climb in there several times to rescue balls!

We call these guys "the two Jeffs". They and their families spent last summer in Ukraine helping the missionaries do VBSs! Wonderful folks!

We had a family picture taken before church on Easter.

Kassie Reynolds caught in a cute pose!

Emily and two of the girls she is friends with in Colorado Springs

Picture we took while driving through Garden of the Gods on the way home on Sunday afternoon

A picture we received as an Easter email gift when we got home! Our "adopted" son, Seth Stevenson and his special friend, Alesia Pruitt.