our first fire!!!

we just decided one day that we would put in a wood burning stove. the idea came from me just mentioning that my parents had a stove they wanted to get rid of. kendall said let's do it and started making the plans before he even looked at the stove or had any idea if it would even fit in our little house! well.... he went and measured it, hauled it to our house, and started "playing" with the wall he wanted it to go on. much to our surprise there was a chimney behind the plaster wall!!! now for a little history on our house, it is very old! the chimney is actually from the coal bin that is in our basement that was once used to heat this house. so... we decided to chip out some of the brick to see how much room we would have because this changed our whole plan of how to make the stove fit. so long story short, our furnace pipe had been put through the chimney so we had to re-route that (behind the wall and into the hallway) so we could fit the stove and use the chimney for the stove pipe. we have worked on it only a few days here and there when we have had the time and with much help from dad jaussi we are just about done. kendall and i positioned it on the platform tonight and started our first fire!! here was the progress. THANKS MOM & DAD FINDLAY FOR THE STOVE AND THANKS DAD JAUSSI FOR ALL THE HELP WITH THE STOVE AND GETTING OUR HOUSE DIRTY WITH COAL :) !!

a few things...

we were so blessed to have such a great garden! we thought this year would most likely not turn out really good mostly because the soil didn't seem that good and it's our first garden but WOW it's been amazing. we have been so blessed!! this picture is one of the carrots from our garden. the hand is kirsti's NOT kendall's, but still it's a good sized carrot!

this next video is of the dogs in our house playing with their rope. it's so funny to watch them play tug o war with each other. we are mostly putting this video on for mckade and gage. we figured they would get a kick out of it! we miss you boys!

have i ever told you how i feel like a little girl in her daddy's shoes??? i wear kendall's shoes around the house (of course because mine are put away... :) ) a lot of the time and i can barely walk! this was a fun picture just to show the major difference! of course his are the new bright whites! mine are my camping shoes.

once again...

unfortunatly kendall is hurt once again. he has torn all of his ligaments and possibly fractured his ankle, but it is still too swollen to tell. he has an appointment later this week with his doctor to check on his shoulder (which of course he isn't released from yet) and he will look at it again then. bet you can't guess how he did it!! anyway, here are some pictures of the damage.