Visitors from California!

This past Wed-Mon we were blessed to have four tall, cheerful, musical people from California visit us in our Spruce Grove home: Marilyn, Mariann and Mitch! They came bearing gifts, as you can see below.
Hope still remembers how to open presents...
...and show them off too!
Having devotions their first evening here. Everyone was trying to win Hope's affection by being creative with the toys. See the piece of Duplo on top of Marilyn's head?
Deciding what to think about Mariann.
While here, they blessed us incredibly by digging into projects needing attention in our back yard, as well as other places around the home here. Josh took Friday off work, so here you see him and his good buddy Mitch starting on stripping the deck so it could be re-surfaced with a better kind of paint, as the old stuff was peeling terribly, though it looked like it had just been put on before we moved in October.
Hope helped by staying out of the way. Josh picked up Tim Horton's to give our American friends a taste of good Canadian coffee! Thankfully, Hope knows that the drinks which come in those cups are "hot" and she's not supposed to touch them.

After helping me clean and freeze strawberries for the freezer and make lunch, Mariann took after the poppies that weren't doing so well beside our garage. She thought they had too much soil around them, (poppies are the CA state flower, so she should know) so she carefully removed some soil and thinned the plants, keeping the soil for us to use elsewhere. :o) I later found out that she is recovering from a broken wrist, which made me all the more grateful for her sacrificial work!

The guys again - this time with a smile for the camera. After a couple hours of work with one metal brush and one scraper, the decision was made to go back to Home Depot and invest in some chemical stripper for the deck. The smell of it made me feel sick, but it did it's job. And, as of this morning, our deck is now painted!
Since the gang were rather muddy from working outside, and since it was such a beautiful day, I decided to serve Taco Salad outdoors! Three cheers for disposable dishes!
Hope didn't like her high and lofty perch for too long when she saw that Daddy and Mommy were sitting down on the lawn, so Mitch unhooked her seat from the chair and set her down near us. I had made iced peppermint tea with fresh leaves from the garden for lunch, and Hope decided she should help me drink mine. :o)
But that wasn't the only thing she did with it!
From this point on I decided it was her cup of peppermint tea, not mine!
Yes, she did eat the chip after dipping it in the tea!

Stay tuned for more pictures...