Monday, August 1, 2011

This morning, Joe headed into town to work on getting his car papers back.  Martin, one of the guys who was a teenager in the Siekberts' church when we were here five years ago, has an uncle who is the chief of police.  Martin talked to his uncle about the policeman that took Joe's papers.  He said that Joe did not need to go to court and that he would get our car papers back.  Meanwhile, the policeman who confiscated the papers called to try to get Joe to go to the police station to "settle up" with him.  He certainly did not want Joe to go to court after he found out that Joe knew the chief of police.  The chief of police told Joe that all that other guy wanted was money and that he did not need to go see him.  Martin's uncle got our car papers and gave them to Martin.  We will get them from Martin in the morning.  It took all of that to say that Joe did not have to go to court today.  

Joe got home about 10:00 after all of that.  He brought home two of the three dressers that we had made for the kids' bedroom.  We are going to have some wicker drawers made for the dressers.  I am excited about having a place to put their clothes.  Their clothes have been on a table in their bedroom for the past six months.  

Around 10:30, we all headed into town.  We are going to do some canning tomorrow.  We needed to get vegetables for canning.  Martin went with us and was able to get much better prices than we would have gotten by ourselves.  We got five kilos of green beans, ten kilos of cucumbers for pickles, and lots of tomatoes.  The Siekberts have all of the canning supplies; so, we got the food supplies.  

We ate lunch at a restaurant where we had not been since we lived here five years ago.  The inside of the restaurant had changed completely.  It is much more fancy now.  The food was good.  

Then, we stopped at the grocery store to get groceries.  From there, we headed home.  On the way home, somehow we got into a discussion about marriage.  The boys both said that they weren't going to get married.  Kristine said that it would be nice to have a recording of them saying that so that we could play it back to them in years to come. Then, Danny asked, "Mom, are you married?"

After we got home, the Siekberts brought the canning supplies over.  Jackie and Naomi helped Kristine snap beans while I worked on soaking and washing all of the tomatoes.  Gilbert came in to help snap.  He enjoys helping.  When the other kids saw him helping, they wanted to help too.

The grocery store had a new thing today.  They now have a big rotisserie out front full of chickens.  We brought a couple chickens home for supper.  

After supper, we worked on cleaning up.  The boys were supposed to be cleaning in their bedroom.  As they were putting their tools away, they decided to see how their little plastic ax and saw would work on a cardboard box.  Gilbert had to come and get us so that we could see what wonders could be done with a plastic ax.    

A demain,

Joe, Laura, Gilbert, Danny, and Bonnie