Vegetable Garden

Last week Patty and I finally got around to purchasing some vegetable plants and vegetable seeds for our new planter bed. Of course we were able to easily obtain some help in the planting efforts! They had fun and a great time and will enjoy seeing the plants come up and grow and produce fruit!
Of course their is a downside. Too many seeds in a small area! Hopefully I will able to thin them out and move them around!
We planted quite a hodgepodge of items. Corn, 4 tomato plants, zucchini, cucumber, pepper, basil, radishes, cilantro. I may have forgot something!


I was able to hook up a sprinkler type tube system to the water hose bib and connect a little timer to it so the watering is automatic. This gives the plants a chance instead of relying on us inconsistent humans!

The Picture Above

What and where is that picture above from? It is from the Hippo Pond in Mikumi Wildlife Preserve park in Tanzania. It was dusk and I was waiting for a beautiful sunset to happen in order to add to my collection of beautiful sunsets from all over the world. The clouds were lining up just right to get a beautiful sunset.
It was quiet, only a handful of us people around. The only thing you could hear were a few birds and the occasional breath of a hippo as they came up from below the surface of the water. It was peaceful. To me it was a glimpse of the Creator of the Universe and some of His best work. This picture is a reminder of that moment. Every time I see this picture I smile. It is a image of the Creator that reminds me of my new birth and the hope I have that I now can share with others.

Random Musings and Thoughts

One day recently when Patty was helping out at Kids Club at Canoas Elementary School, a girl she didn't know came up and asked Patty if she knew Cosmo (our Golden Retriever)! Our dog is more known around the neighborhood than we are. We can be walking Cosmo down the street and the kids will yell his name out and not say anything to us! We recognize he opens doors for us. He is a lovable, very gentle dog and the kids love him. Below is a picture of our neighbor Mario enjoying Cosmo. This little boy used to be afraid of Cosmo but not anymore.

One of the things that Patty does is sell soda and chips from our apartment. We found this to be a great way to keep the kids in contact with us. Some are no longer involved with the Center but they still come by to buy chips or soda and say hello. (Hot Cheetos is our biggest seller by the way!) I also found out today that there is another lady in the neighborhood who also sells sodas but she is more expensive. So does that make us the Walmart of the community?

For Patty's birthday I bought her a Wii game console. We thought that it would be fun for us older people to be able to enjoy some gaming that is at our level. Over the almost 2 months we have had it, Patty and I seldom have played it! Not much time but as you can see below the kids love it and are over often to play. (there is actually a kid here now playing while I am writing this! He doesn't want me to play with him since I am so bad.)

To help raise some money to go on various trips, we have been invited to help at the snack shop at the Saratoga Little League. It is run by a local Kiwanis Club and when the kids work there, the Center gets a portion of the profits. Its a lot of fun and and exciting to watch the kids learn how to sell. (I am writing this portion on another day and just got interupted to do some first aid on a cut! never boring around here!) Below are a few of the kids at the snack shack with Gary.

To get to the Saratoga park where the games are played you have to drive through some of the really nice neigborhoods of Saratoga. Patty was commenting to the kids how nice the houses were. One kid responded that he wouldn't want to live there. There was nobody outside. It would be boring compared to Farm Drive where there are always lots of people out and about!

One of the exciting things/changes we have seen happen recently is in a teenage girl. She would have been described as a person you don't really want to have around. She was very disrespectful, used bad langauge, was loud, was always getting in trouble and helped incite others to get into trouble... just not a very pleasant person.
She has dramatically changed recently. She says she wants to change and no longer live the way she has. She now is a very pleasant person to have around. It is like night and day. God got ahold of her heart and is forming her into a new image! Wow, God is performing a miracle right before our eyes!

One of the things that Patty and I are learning to do is use every moment and opportunity that comes by. How can each encounter with another person be used to show the love of Jesus?

Younger kids Swim Party

Last Friday night we rewarded all the Homework Club kids (1st-4th grades) with a swim party at Gary's. These kids have been so faithful at coming to homework all year that we feel they deserved some fun! We brought 18 kids plus several leaders for 5 hours of fun and homemade pizza. All I can say is.......those kids never get tired!

Yup, that's me, Patty in the pool. We bought 40 water blasters at the dollar strore. We had a major water fight which was really fun. Even though I look like I am hiding, I am not. I kept up with the best of them and was pretty darn fast at loading that gun. Next Friday we have the same exact party but with the older kids.



Heres Gary with Eric and Marcus. Notice all the water guns the boys have.

New Planter Bed and Retaining Wall

A Men's small group at church asked if there were any small projects they could do for us at Farm Drive. Gary and Patty had been talking about doing a planter bed so the kids can learn how to grow vegetables and flowers. Next to where they wanted a planter bed, there is a tree they thought would be a perfect place for a nice bench. The guys came last Saturday with materials and plenty of workers. They enlisted some of their sons to help. Below is the early stages of digging in the hard ground and moving the soil.

The finished project!

They even put a bench on this area for more people to sit on the edge!

Our new raised planter bed. I brought home some soil mix and so we are ready to have some kids plant some vegetables next week!


Below is some of the team. A few left before I could take a picture of them. Below is Colin, Conner, Tony, and Brad. The rest of team was Matthew, Mike and Steve. Thanks guys!

SJ Sharkie

Fun! Fun! Fun! The San Jose Sharks put on a hockey clinic at the Center recently. The best part of all was that Sharkie the mascot came. All the kids got to play some hockey with Sharkie and then they all got pictures of Sharkie and cards of the players. There is a link at the bottom of this blog where you can see a video of Sharkie and the kids.

Here is a link to a video he did and posted on his facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?sid=d7e4812aaea4f9bac5bdf14c475a33f2&id=1340162384&hiq=uy%2Cut&ref=search#/video/video.php?v=1133283618818

Galveston Trip

During Spring Break, April 12th thru 18th, a team of 9 of us from Hillside Church went to Galveston, Texas to help the cleanup and rebuilding from Hurricane Ike (September 08). Four people from our team were from the Farm Drive Center, 3 middle school boys and 1 high school girl. Hurricane Ike hit the area in September and did quite a bit of damage but the EFCA Crisis Response is still busy helping rebuild homes and lives. Below is a picture of an apartment complex that has been abandoned and nobody has touched it since the hurricane hit. We worked right down the street from this apt. complex.

Galveston is an island on the coast of Texas about 40 miles south of Houston. The island has a seawall that is about 20-30 feet high which was not enough for the 60 or so foot sea surge from the hurricane. Most of the flooding actually came from the other side of the island, from the bay side. Here is a pier that is on the Gulf of Mexico side. Note the truck. That was crazy!

This is one home that the owner had called about, asking help to have it demolished. This is going to be a hard job for someone since the flood waters pushed the house off it's foundation and right next to the house next to it.

A lot of work has been done already and there are a lot of beatiful homes in
Galveston. Here is one completed.

Some of the worst damage was to the Bolivar Pennisula which is directly east of Galveston. We spent part of a day looking around there. We took a ferry from Galveston across the bay to reach the pennisula. We found this house driving around. We guessed it was maybe 1/2 mile from it's original foundation but we have no idea. The original house can be found on Google maps and you can see how far it is away since it blew across the highway and landed near a cemetary! Not in Kansas anymore!

Most of the houses in this area were beach houses and most were on stilts. Did not help much. Notice the rooms upstairs still have furniture in them.

We were planning to gut houses like we did in New Orleans. When we got there we found out that there was not much gutting left to do. The gutting left to do was with rentals and until the owner requests help, we couldn't help. There still is a lot of work to be done rebuilding and skill is not required. We were sent to a house that the previous team had hung new dry wall and now needed to be taped and mudded. We put our expert tapers to work, Chuck and Julie while the rest of us mudded over the tape and then sanded it down and repeated the process 3 times. Below are our FD kids actively working over Gary. They were awesome, hard workers.

Taking a Cal Trans break!

One of our best mudders!

Helping cut dry wall to do some last minute patch work. These guys really were hoping to do some demo work. Near the end of the week, the owner decided to gut one of the bathrooms so they got their wish. I will post a video of that work later.

Our FD kids with the owner of the house, Rose.

Our Team! It was a great week of working on this house and spending time together traveling, sleeping, and eating together in Galeston Texas! We'd all love to go back!

Boys Dress up

Here at The Center I, Patty have a huge assortment of dress up clothes. Here's a few pictures of the kids dressing up. The guy that is not a kid is Gary Johnson the Director here. He is amazing and has lots of fun with the kids.

Angie, Inez and Lesley, my 5th grade girls


Marcus and Gary
Marcus, Eric, Fidel and Angel

Eric and Marcus

Eric (gotta love that face!)