jared, kim, lillee and conner came to visit us friday evening thru noon yesterday. we had a pretty good time hanging out. dave made us all "homemade" donuts for breakfast.

yesterday afternoon we went and got mark's pickup. dave's going to rebuild his transmission for him. they were watching adrian and blake so we both got to hold little blake. what a cutie! mark gave us some advice on what to do to the house to sell it. he's going to let dave borrow some of his home remodeling tools in return for fixing the transmission. he says he doesn't mind lending dave tools cuz he knows he takes care of things. we love bartering. :) and i'm so proud of my david for making a good reputation for himself. he says that is the neat thing about living here. people know him for who he has become not for being the son of phil neer. :) not that it isn't wonderful that phil has such a good reputation that it is being passed onto his sons, but it is nice for dave to build that for himself here. i guess that in itself speaks volumes about his father. he must have set a really good example for dave to follow so that he knew how to be a good man in the first place........ok. i'm just rambling now.

well, i better get going. i have to leave for church in a few minutes. dave went on ahead. he is working the nursery right now. i am supposed to be with him, but i'm a little under the weather. my nose is running constantly and my throat is scratchy. i didn't want to make the babies sick. i'm not even sure i'm "sick" though. i think it's allergies. we slept with the windows wide open friday night and it got really cold and then last night we built up a huge fire together and burnt a bunch of stuff and i was breathing in all kinds of smoke and allergen filled air. we had fun building the fire. we learned a lot about each other.

we had some wet 8 ft x 4ft pieces of plywood that we had to burn. we had to stack them up like a teepee over the hot burning wood, coals and furniture. it was a challenge and not something i wanted to do. i don't really like getting that close to fire. and the boards kept falling over and the fire would come wafting out under them at us. it was scary. i threatened to go back inside several times. dave got really upset and starting yelling and hitting the ground with the shovel, knocking dirt clods all over the place. i decided then i better stay and help. he said we'd never be able to duplicate a fire that hot the rest of the time we live here {because we had 2 christmas trees and a bunch of dried out wood and lots of papers} and it was our only chance to burn the plywood. in the end everything burnt up nicely. it was very cleansing to work together on it (in the end) and to get rid of all that junk forever.