Dear Ella and Elisabeth,

Uncle Andy found these really great giraffe chairs, but they are a little too small for us to sit in. Do you know anyone who might be able to fit in these chairs?

Thank you everyone!

Thanks to everyone's generous contributions, I am now the proud owner of a beautiful Yamaha guitar. This picture isn't quite as heroic and dramatic as the one dad drew for me in my birthday card, but it will have to do.

more picutures II

Pictures of us working on garage, Ella was supervising from the hammock.

More Pictures

Here are some pictures of the mighty builders and the Tower of Babel, just before the confusion of languages. Or maybe this was the garage, just before lunch, I'm not sure, it has been a couple of weeks.

Re: Garage

Barnhart Birthday Girl (we have two!)

Soon there'll be a birthday girl, whose name I shall withhold;
I'll write a little riddle and you guess who and how old.

She didn't use to smile a lot, when she was very young,
A pouty lip would often protrude well beyond her tongue.

And then would come a backward kick to ward off woud-be teasing;
Ah.....you know of whom I speak, but now she's much more pleasing.

In fact she wants to help mankind, Music Therapy to them bring;
And one of the ways to do so would by by gui'tar string.

So as you solve this riddle, and guess just who she be,
You also may be wanting a birthday ide-e (altered for rhyming purposes!)

She wants to buy a gui'tar and play with lots of soul,
And grateful she would be for contributions toward her goal!

Garage?

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm a little curious as to what the garage looks like right now. Does anyone have pictures of the almost finished product? Or could someone maybe post a pictorial story of the making of the greatest garage on Giles Rd?

Another Birthday Boy!

Today we have a birthday boy and David is his name,
The one who never would play by the rules of different games.

Bored he was with conventional, that describes this mister;
And so he took to creating anew, involving little sister.

Such a good sport was she, willing to play with big brother,
Unlike one who played precisely by rules; yes, that would be Mother!

Eventually he challenged himself with another kind of trick,
And taught himself to program computer in GW Basic.

Who would have thought that little ole David would end up (for now) like this,
Programming computer for Alcoa Howmet, with an IR degree, no less!

Hard telling where he’ll go from here, but challenge will be a part,
For our birthday boy likes challenge, that’s been evident from the start!

So, Happy Birthday David, unique and special are you;
Fear not to be unconventional, and “to thine own self be true!”

April Kayak Adventure

April...the month of sun, then snow (and school "snow days"), then sun again, and then some more snow, and then a bit of sun. The month that can't decide whether to be winter or spring, impetuously changing from day to day. Today it decided to be quite spring-like (as opposed to last Friday when we had blizzard warnings and the big kids had a snow-day from school). The temperatures ranged into the 50s, the sun shone brightly in a beautiful, blue sky dotted with clouds, the snow melted with a steady stream of dripping, and the ice continued to break up on the local bodies of water, namely the Portage and the Pilgrim River. Which brings me to the reason for this post.

Our kayak had it's first venture into the water today for the 2008 kayak season. Crazy though it may seem, we were able to kayak while there is still snow on the ground, and even ice on most of the Portage. Steve and I put our tandem kayak in on the Pilgrim River, right near Steve's new office, and paddled downstream out into the Portage, and then back upstream, spending a solid 40 minutes on the water. We were blessed with the opportunity to enjoy a beautiful spring day sans kids, thanks to our good friends Kit & Julie, who had them over to play with Cameron & Olivia (they got to splash in puddles and go for a walk). And since we get to get out and "play" today, we though we'd show you how beautiful it is here in Hancock/Houghton!

Here we are pre-kayaking. The kayak is ready to be off-loaded from the Subaru and put in to the Pilgrim River. I'm wearing my life-vest already so that I don't have another thing to carry down the hillside while helping to haul the kayak down.
And here we are, having completed our kayak journey along the Pilgrim River. The kayak is waiting for a lift back to Hancok via the Subaru, and Steve and I are ready for a late dinner. It was a beautiful day! Hoping to have many more like it!

Easter Darlings

Greetings, fellow Barnharts, from the land of Easter snow. We pray that you each enjoyed a blessed Resurrection Day celebrating the resurrection of our Saviour! In honor of the festivities, the girls got new or "new/old" dresses to wear to church. And they looked absolutely darling. So we're posting a photo for you to see them too. Please note, Ella's special doll "Jenny" got a new dress, too, and so got to go to church with us this morning.Here are a couple of "random" photos of the girls. Ella and Elisabeth both like to help with laundry, and to watch the clothes go 'round in the washing machine. Here they are "helping" out mom.
Ella is a great big sister, and she likes to play with Elisabeth. She's helping Elisabeth "drive" the car around the living room, and doing a great job of it! We start them young.

Noisy Pets

As I was working at my kitchen table today, I kept hearing tiny little smacking noises coming from the direction of the hamster cages. A little surprising, since they're usually asleep all day. Not quite. Chief must have decided to get up for a little midnight snack (err...midnight for him). He dug up one of the almonds he's been hording and sleepily sat there chowing down. He really is lazy - didn't even bother to get up from the little nest that he's made into his bed.

The New Haunt

Even our buildings are cold

It's so cold here that our buildings are growing icicles just to stay warm.

Okay, so that's not really true. This is a bar/restaurant just around the corner from Milkweed, which caught fire and burned last Wednesday. The firefighters doused it with water, which then immediately froze because it was -5 that day.

Nobody was inside the building at the time, though I heard that one cat died. I've told the arson detectives to check in with suspects in Muskegon, Michigan – two naughty dogs named Nikki and Twila.

Call of the Wild

At first it was only a whisper, then I could hear it louder and louder until it was so loud that I couldn't ignore it. It was a rather high pitched voice or maybe the sounds of many small high pitched voices. I listened at the stairway, nothing, then at the basement door; no, the sound isn't coming from inside. I went to the outside door and as soon as I opened it I knew what it was. It was the sound of millions upon millions of freshly fallen snowflakes. They were all crying in unison saying they wanted someone to play outside, someone needed to wrinkle up the smooth blanket they had formed over all the earth. To bust through the monotony of their world and make tracks and piles and holes in the white canopy they had been building all day long.

As soon as I was outside, I could hear other voices, these were farther away and more mechanical. They were not the voices of nature, small and high pitched, these were deeper, more solid, voices. They were calling for help, they were cold voices, they were voices that said they wanted to be warmed, and they wanted to move and free themselves of the stillness that made them cold. Daniel and I got in the car, I had a good hunch where the second voices were coming from, and sure enough, as we pulled into Mom's old driveway the sound was unmistakably coming from the barn.

We found them in the barn, shivering, with skis and tracks frozen to the cold concrete floor. We broke them free and dragged them outside into the deep snow. "Please" they asked, "just a little gasoline?". And then, ever so timidly they begged for us to pull their starter cords. When we did, their engines roared to life and all modesty left them. They belched out foul smoke and screamed for us to pull hard on the throttles. When we did, they chewed into the fresh white snow and threw it far behind them as their skis plowed ahead cutting deep gouges into the path that their headlights blazed in the dark night of woods and fields. "Faster! Faster!" they screamed when we raced down the empty dark road with only the light of their headlights and the white billowing snow following behind. Finally after crisscrossing paths through fields and woods we ran them back into the barn, the noisy engines died as we hit the kill switches. They were hot and dripping wet, I could hear them huffing and puffing as we closed the overhead door and a whispered "thank you" from a tired and once again timid voice came from inside the barn as we walked away.

The snow was quiet now as it surveyed the damage done to it's beautiful coat. No longer smooth and soft, it had been chopped and cut and diced by skis and tracks going every which direction. But it was not complaining, it had asked for someone to play in it, and besides, it knows tomorrow's forecast calls for 3-4 more inches. By then the small voices will call again for someone to break the monotony of the white smooth blanket.

Birthday Boy Stevaroni!

Today we have a birthday boy, and his name would be Steve;
Twas twenty-nine years ago, when my womb he did leave.

Arriving on his due date, the only one of six;
Still puzzled how he did that, of all the little chicks?

But come he did, that cold Feb. night, with this unique distinction,
At -37 below, Alpena was the coldest spot in the nation!

So "Happy Birthday" our dear Steve, we hope it's fun, tis true!
May this last year of 20's, be special, just like you!

Sowing the crops early

While doing some cooking a few weeks ago, I pulled a nasty-looking potato out of the bag. Full of eyes and a little mushy, I was about to toss it into the compost bucket when I instead decided to burrow it down in the old herb planter I have sitting on our window sill. I'd mostly forgotten about it (written off as a dud), when I noticed a little shoot had popped up. I couldn't believe how fast it happened. Granted, I wasn't examining the soil EVERY DAY, but the thing pretty much popped up overnight.



Interestingly, I must have also planted a small quarter plant. Actually, I think it was a nickel at the time.




I also bought a peanut-growing kit as a Christmas present for a friend of mine. He recently sent back pictures of his luscious peanut tree, which excited me enough that I went out and treated myself to my own peanut kit. It comes in a tiny plastic cup, with some yawn and four peanuts. You get the yawn soaked with warm water and then rest the peanuts on the top. After a few days in the sun, voila!

Snow, Sleds and Statues

This past week has brought great fluctuations in the weather here in Hancock, though our snow has managed to mostly stay on the ground. One week ago, we had "life threatening blizzard conditions" according to the National Weather Service (and that lasted for two days - Wednesday and Thursday) with a high temp of 2 and windchills of anywhere from 15 to 30 degrees BELOW zero. We (the girls and I) didn't leave the house. Friday was a veritable heat wave at 16 degrees and sunny, and Ella asked to go "play in the snow", so out we went, donning snow gear, grabbing a sled, and heading for the nearest hill...our front yard. We spent about half an hour outside enjoying beautiful blue skies and sunshine and white sparkly snow before heading in.


It continued to warm up over the weekend, reaching 32 degrees (and thus melting weather) on Sunday and Monday. Today it took another dive, predicted to reach 2 again tonight. But in spite of the cold, Winter Carnival is in full swing, with the theme of "Scary Creatures with Icy Features." And this was the 3rd annual installment of our youth group's All-Nighter Statue Build in the Barnhart yard. After about 3 hours of snow, water, slush, ice and much fun - we have a very large rendition of Jaba the Hut gracing our front yard.


In addition, the sculptors decided to leave their mark on our front snowbank (next to the road) and made their own version of Mount Rushmore. This one is much more interesting than the real thing.





And since everyone seems to enjoy them, here are a few random photos of the girls, Fletcher and Noelle.

Snowy Scenes from Muskegon!

About a week ago, we had a couple of good snowfalls, and it was interesting to see how deep the snow got, in places. Thought you might enjoy a few pictures. Also, they've lost the "battle" on Giles Rd. The pictures tell it all! And finally, a lovely sunset over Lake Michigan (Pere Marquette Park.)