Sprinkler Time

We are back to the world of summertime fun in Centerville! In these pictures, you see a pretty typical evening at the parsonage. The kids play out in the yard, get all wet/muddy, come inside to change clothes, and get messy again while eating. After all their baths, they are really pretty clean for bedtime!

David got the sprinkler tube from our dear friends in Milwaukee for his 5th birthday a couple of weeks ago. It has worked really well! Even Michael enjoys playing with it. It cools everyone off without making too many puddles in the yard.

The indoor picture is of Dan's Father's Day present, a pizza board and pizza cutter from Grandma and Grandpa B.! The kids were very hungry after their sprinkler jumping, so they are working on their second homemade pizza in this picture. Thank you, Cousin Penny, for the excellent whole wheat crust recipe!

Today was pretty exciting for the Redhages. We thought it would be a very relaxed day, compared to last Friday, when Amy spent the day at the national Lutheran Women's Missionary League convention in Sioux Falls, then met up with Dan and the kids for an evening of VBS at a church in Sioux Falls.

Today's excitement involved the Department of Motor Vehicles, a 97 year old , and Pizza Ranch in Yankton. The kids and I were relaxing at home while Dan went to Yankton to do a shut-in visit and renew his driver's license. Suddenly, the phone rang. Dan said, "I just lost my driver's license. Can you come get me?" It turns out that he really does need his glasses to drive! His long-distance sign-reading glasses were in the van, but he had driven the Echo that day, and failed the vision test at the DMV. The DMV ladies were kind enough to pretend that he hadn't already failed, and let him retake the test once we brought his glasses down an hour later. If they hadn't done that, he would have been without a license for 2-3 weeks while they did the necessary paperwork. We're glad he wore his pastor outfit that day!

After Dan was licensed to drive, we all went to visit a sweet 97 year old lady for Communion. I guessed that she was maybe 75 or 80 years old--she is quite vibrant! The kids enjoyed seeing her room at the nursing home (it's very nice), and Michael even took a little ride on her lap in her scooter chair. Sarah was very interested in the bathroom, and insisted on going potty while we were there. David and Sarah sang a couple of Sunday School songs for her, then the kids and I played tag outside during the actual Communion service. That seemed wise.

After such an interesting afternoon, we were very hungry and could not resist the call of The Ranch. They even had our favorite Buffalo Chicken Pizza!

So, that is the current news from the Redhage house. We'll see if this will post tonight without crashing the computer....

Please do comment if you wish--we love reading them!

Fun with Grandma

We just got back from the wedding of one of Amy's childhood friends, where the kids had a great time dancing with the other kids and eating cake. They have also enjoyed Reading Time with Grandma! Here is a picture of Grandma reading Katy No Pocket, one of their all-time favorites.

During our time in the car, David and Sarah made up a lot of songs to entertain us. Here is one of our favorites. David sang it while bending a straw into various shapes and showing them to Sarah and Michael.

The Diamond Song

This is the Diamond

Happy as can be.

This is the diamond

Jumping up with glee.

This is the diamond

Jumping all around.

This is the diamond

Sleeping up and down.

Stream of Poems

The other day we had a family room cleaning event. While construction vehicles worked on the street in front of our house, all five of us gathered in the boys' room to give a thorough spring cleaning. Michael crawled around, Sarah climbed on the bed frame, I dusted and scrubbed apple juice goo off the crib, and Dan and David sat on the mattress, writing poems.
This is the result of several minutes of work on a sunny spring afternoon.

Streams of Poems

By David Redhage
Transcribed by Dan Redhage

Digging Digging up our road
Why are they digging up our road?

A fly went by
and got in my eye. (by Sarah)

Shmopping up our house.

Michael is a silly boy.
He makes us go....bonkers.

David is a silly boy.
He makes us go...bananas.

Robots are silly.
Robie Jr. is silly, but his batteries burned out.

Sarah is a cutie girl.
We put her in a Cheerio!

So now you have David's first group of poems. If he doesn't end up opening a bug museum that serves ice cream on Saturdays, maybe he will be a writer!
Wait and see.

Outdoor Fun

Hello again!

We are enjoying the summery weather so much that the blog has been neglected...

Here is a picture of Sarah pushing David on the round swing in our backyard. She can get him going pretty high! It doesn't go so well if David pushes Sarah, because that swing can go really fast, and Sarah likes to go "Not TOOOO fast, just a little slow."

The other picture is of the Hurley community-wide preschool Vacation Bible School that just finished up this morning. David and Sarah were both in the younger group (3-4 year olds) so they got to be together. Sarah seemed to enjoy almost all of the activities, even though she was the only girl in her group! I taught the missions class, where we learned about missions in Kazakhstan, Togo, Thailand, and South Dakota. The kids seemed to especially like the cross poster and stick puppet that Dan made so that they could practice sharing the good news of the gospel. Sin was stuck on the puppet guy with poster putty, covering him up, but then the cross took it away, revealing a happy blue person underneath!

Saturday is an all-day VBS here in Centerville, so we will be preparing crafts and more puppets for that today and tomorrow!