our weekend -

        Last week Brent and Kayla had gone to Byron and Cyndi's to help with a particular project. That project ended up not happening due to ... well, anyways .... but they did do a few other things. On Friday they took the Jetta that Byron had been buying from Brent into a place to get the emission testing done. In the state of Ill., your car must pass an emissions test before you can get a legal license for it.  The car did not pass. En-route home, Brent was calculating in his head how much it would cost / what all needed done to get it passable. And then this happened.

       While they were driving down the street, the hood lock broke free and the hood came up and cracked the windshield. (No, the testing place had not opened the hood.) The hood came up far enough to break the windshield! In automatic response, Brent had put his arm up to block his face. His arm got cut bad enough to bleed. Other than that, they were okay. Scared!  Shaken!  'In need of clean pants'. But okay.
       After pulling to the side of the road, Brent was able to get the hood down. The rest of the way home he was trying to see clearly, plus figuring if the car was worth both the cost of a new windshield and fixing the emissions part ... $.  They are still debating all of it.

      Also Friday, Cyndi's car went from occasionally making this weird noise, to seemingly having troubles with one tire. Brent took it for a drive, took the tire off trying to determine if it was a tie-rod going, or just the tire itself, and if so, what about the tire, etc.. It seemed to be the tire itself, and yes, he thought it was safe to drive here.

       Both of those things had happened Friday, and Cyndi had to close at work, and then ....  They ended up not arriving here till about 5 a.m.. After unloading the car, most of us gathered in the living room. Analyse had been visiting with different ones of us. At one point she was with somebody on the brown couch. But she decided that she wanted her daddy whom was sitting on the little couch closest to the front door, so she started walking towards him. She got about three fourths of the way there and realized that her "mum!" was sitting next to him. She decided to change course, and by taking one side step, then headed excitedly towards her mom.
        All of us started laughing!! Byron was wearing a look of combined shock and impreesedness. He could not believe what had just happened. His young daughter, whom is tottering in her walking, had just clearly took a side step and changed her course. Impressive! Amazing!
       Analyse was ever so proud of herself for getting to "mum!!" (her one clear word)

   (this picture is one I hadn't yet posted of her from her B-day party o;-) )

       We only got a few short hours of sleep before it was time to get up and out. Cyndi, Analyse and I were heading to Jeannie's bridal shower. The 'guys' had been going to attend our block party. Now they were trying to figure out whether new tires had to be bought, if a tire could just be put on a different rim, etc..
      Thankfully, between what we already had and the help of Kayla's dad, they were able to get everything switched around for the price of lunch at Wendy's and a pack of cigarettes. :-)

        Sat. afternoon all of the 'kids' hit the pond for awhile before we went out to dinner to sit in some air conditioning.  Sunday everybody but me went to church and did a grand 'show off the baby' time after the service. We then headed down to Brian's folks for the rest of the day.

       Well, that's what's been happening here .... what's been going on in your life?