Our Collins Clan: May 2015

Friday, May 22, 2015

Ava's Confirmation

For two years this young lady has studied, prayed, and worked hard in her community service to make herself ready for the strengthening of the spirit and graces instilled at baptism. She made her confirmation last night and is now ready to begin her adult study and life in the faith. Congratulations sweetie!

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Spring Camping

Our planned camping trip to Tyler State park was almost a disaster. Reports were coming in of flooded camp sites and 70-100% chance of rain the entire 4-day weekend we'd be there. Not so fun being stuck in a tent with 5 children. Good news is I was able to find a last minute camp site in Witchita Falls at Lake Arrowhead. Temperatures were predicted to be in the 70s during the day and sunshine all weekend. So at 6:00am that morning I called the other two families traveling with us and begged them to change venues. By 11:00am that day we were making our camp at Lake Arrowhead.

This time we had an additional family with 8 children coming with us. Ava was super excited because most of them were teenage girls. It was the most fun, relaxing trip I have ever taken with all the kids. I absolutely LOVE camping! The weather was as predicted and while my fellow friends and family back home were soaking in the constant down-pouring of rain, we had beautiful sunny weather. I even came home with a sunburn..oops. The kids literally played together the whole time. I actually read and finished an entire book in one day. Ok, enough on how wonderful it was, here are some pictures of our trip. Keep in mind that the lake in the pictures was 20ft low, is now 2ft above (last I heard.) I'm so glad the rain eventually got to them (after our trip of course.)

who's ready to fish?

we have a couple of amazing dads that took on this whole crew!

park ranger talking to us about prairie dogs

Matthew walking over and around the prairie dog town

Can you believe this lady has 8 children???

Remodeling

Its has been too long since I posted anything. All I can blame is this crazy thing called remodeling we're going through. We, for so long, wanted to buy land and build our home. We even had a floor plan designed. Unfortunately, we never found that "dream" piece of land, and as our children grew, we found that dream slipping further and further out of reach. We have a need to stay closer to the city for recreation activities, education, field trips, and our jobs. It was just not meant to be. Therefore, we decided to remodel/update our current house and make it "like new."

In February, we started with the windows. Home Depot put in new, energy efficient windows to help with our energy bills. So far, I've seen an improvement, more so in the noise level. It is so quiet in our house. I can't even hear the dogs howl when sirens go off.

March, we closed in the back with a covered cedar patio and stamped/stained the concrete to look like flagstone. Because of all the rain, we are just now soon to be done. We're lacking 1 more of the colored stain it needs so it can be sealed. We need to have 3 days of 0% chance of rain in order to do that...not looking good.

New carpet was replaced in our bedrooms and commercial grade vinyl plank flooring was placed in the rest of the house. What a crazy mess of a project. Had I known this, I would have taken a week off work, put all my furniture in storage, and spend the night at a parent's house. Stubborn as I was, I stuck it out at home and tried not to have a panic attack the whole time. You'll see what I mean when you see the pictures.
Our final project thus far is painting our house...bricks and all. It's been no secret I've never liked the color of our brick. I looked into staining it, but there was still a risk of it not looking right and I really liked that look of a painted house.

Here are some pics of our remodeling process:

View from the back at the last snow storm