VBS and the Next Great Flood

In a little over a week our church is holding our VBS (for the non-churched or non-Protestants of my blog fan base, that stands for Vacation Bible School where, for one week, kids come to the chuch to participate in games, crafts, and stories based on the Bible). I have committed myself to being in charge of the preschool portion of this as well as decorating the preschool area. Since my artistic abilities are non-existant, I recruited my art-abled niece Brooke and also put Audra, Keith and Addison to work as well. The theme of the VBS is science, so we've made DNA strands, molecules, gears, light bulbs, magnets, flasks, beakers and Bible-based periodic tables to decorate the rooms. We found out the hard way that if you try to spray paint styrofoam, the propellent MELTS the styrofoam (and, hence, Nana saves the day by running to Hobby Lobby for more styrofoam balls!!). It looks like hard work, and a big mess, but we had fun doing it.

Making styrofoam molecules



The crafting mess


Some finished wall decorations (on top of my laundry piles!)


Now...for the real news of the week...THE RAIN!! My goodness! I really keep thinking I'm going to one day look out my window and see animals walking in pairs toward a large watercraft. Thankfully, I was able to get all my garden planting done before all this rain. As you can see below, the corn (and the surrounding weeds) in my front garden are doing great. This is because that garden is on a slope. The back garden is not fairing so well, with only part of the beans,beets, squash and cucumbers coming up through the puddles. As far as damage to our place from all this rain...I really can't complain. I've heard some of your horror stories of 4 day power outages or raw sewage backing up into your basement. While the softball diamonds just down the street from us has turned into a lake, we have only minor puddles in our yard. The wind blew down a down spout, but it was already loose from a previous windstorm earlier this year. And we have some leaks in our basement and garage, but thankfully the only damage to our stuff was mildew growing on our umbrella strollers in the garage. (and the basement is guaranteed, so no money to fix it! Yay!!)

Front garden of corn (and lots of weeds)


Back garden


Our downed downspout


Basement leak. It was actually coming from a leak in the chinking of the brick wall and looked just like a Dutch Dam Leak that a little Dutch boy could hold closed with his finger!! Thankfully there was nothing in front of it and the stuff around it was sitting on a pallet, so no water damage to our luggage collection.



Garage leak. Seems to be a result of bad flashing around that completely useless chimney. Yeah, thats right, we have a chimney in our garage. The dork that used to live here wanted a pot-bellied stove out there so he could work out in the garage during the winter. Unfortunately, it seems that he didn't know how to install it correctly. May result in a costly repair to the roof, so we'll have to get someone to look at it.



The coolest part of all these storms...last night about 9 p.m. there was a break in the action and a VERY BRIGHT double rainbow appeared. We had to pull the just-bedded kids out of bed so they could see it, it was so awesome! God must have known that we needed a little reminding about his promise!!!

Rainbow


Addy and the nighttime rainbow (it soon started clouding back over)


Keith and the nighttime rainbow


Until next blog,
Jen

A Fun Little Survey!

Well, every morning my routine consist of breakfast and then drinking my coffee while I watch an episode of Little House. Today, I got the notion for this survey...

QUESTION: Which Little House on the Prairie character do you see yourself most like and why?

Now, if you aren't familiar enough with the Little House character line-up to pull it from your memory then, I must ask myself, why am I friends with you?? ha ha. But, seriously, if you need a little help, go to this site for a complete list of characters: (sorry, I can't get the link to work in my blog for some reason. But if you highlight this text and then copy and paste it to your address bar, it should work)

http://littlehouse.sphosting.com/cast.html

My answer: I think I'm most like Ma. I was going to say Laura, especially since I dressed up like her for Halloween once, but I don't think I'm as stubborn as her character was. I think I'm like Ma because I regard my family as top priority after God, I like to make homemade bread, and whenever I get an infected cut by a rusted barbed-wire fence I have hallucinations just like she did in Episode 38 "A Matter of Faith"

OK, your turn! Please respond!!

Until next blog,
Jen

Our trip to New Jersey and THE WEDDING!!

We had a wonderful trip this past weekend! The drive was not too bad, especially compared to the one to Florida! We got to do some fun things on the way out, we had AWESOME weather the entire time, and no one got sick! (well, except until the very end, at 1030 p.m., after an entire day of driving, when Keith got carsick and puked. Yes, we were only 30 minutes from home.) The wedding was beautiful and God started them off with blessings of good fortune...the weather was PERFECT for an outdoor wedding! Here are some highlights:

Cabelas, in Wheeling, West Virginia. Like a Dick's sporting goods, but HUGE and they had an awesome display of animals that had been hunted and mounted.





Crayola Factory in Easton, Pennsylvania. There was a 15 minute demonstration on how they made crayons and markers, and you even got to "wrap" your own crayon by hand! The rest of the place was a "hands on" exhibit where you got to play with all the products that Crayola makes. It was a great time, and we got to stock up on crafts to do for the rest of the trip! The town of Easton, PA (where it was located) was a very quaint, historic looking town and we enjoyed walking around for a bit to take in the architectural details of the old buildings before hopping back in the car for the last few hours of travel.








Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island. The kids really enjoyed seeing the statue and they had a good time on the boat to get there. Just FYI, if you ever want to go to the statue, taking the ferry from the New Jersey side is the WAY to go! Not much of a crowd on that side. If I had to do it over again, I would have skipped the tour of Ellis Island, where the immigrants were first taken to be documented. Not much there for kids (or people who find things like that dull, such as myself!) and it added an extra hour and a half to our day. Needless to say, the kids were POOPED when we were done, and only had a short nap before the rehearsal dinner that night. Can you say WHACKED???



Beth and Kyle's Wedding. The day was a very good start to the rest of their lives together. Beth looked stunningly beautiful and had a gorgeous gown. The site of the wedding was on a cute little lake with a beach. Addison finally cooperated and got her hair looking adorable and KEPT it that way! Keith actually stood still for the camera man and smiled! Even George and Boomer (their dogs, for those of you not familiar) were on their best behavior as fellow attendants to the wedding (yes, they wore bow ties and stood at the front!). Keith and Addy actually made it down the aisle, but I believe it took as long as the rest of the entire wedding! Addison finally got to get her groove on on the dance floor. And Keith didn't miss a second of his precious sleep as he soundly slept on the floor while the dance music blared.









Hope everyone else had as an enjoyable Memorial Day weekend as we did!
Until next blog,
Jen

Wedding preparations

Its hard to believe that in a little over a week is Aunt Beth's wedding! We'll be leaving a few days before the big event to give us some time to get there and then see the Statue of Liberty. Today we're altering the wedding attire for the kids. Aunt Beth was interested in seeing them in their outfits, and they look too cute to not share with everyone else, so I thought I'd blog it!

Here's Keith handing me the pins while I turn up his hem (can you see that our furniture is STILL in the middle of the room after 1 week?...we are waiting for the painters to come do some touch ups. UGH!)




"I'm handsome!"



Addy in her flower girl dress



Of course, she has to pose with a littlest pet!


Until next blog,
Jen

Addy "graduates" from pre-preschool and Brian runs mini

We are proud to announce that Addison has successfully completed her year in preschool, 2 days a week. She has graduated to preschool, 3 days a week! Although she had a great time at school, I know I won't be sad to take a few months off of prodding her out of bed and dragging her to school (much like me, she is NOT a morning person!!). When asked how she is going to spend her summer vacation, she replied "playing and playing and playing, and catching butterflies" Sounds like a full agenda for the upcoming months. Here are a few of the pictures that turned out from the closing program ceremonies.

Addy in her classroom



Keith waiting for the program to start. He wasn't heavy enough to hold the seat down!



Not a very clear picture, but hopefully you can make out how Addy was frozen in stage fright for the first few minutes of the program!



Addy's friend Maggie. Throughout the last month, the kids would practice the closing program at school. After school, us parents would try to pry information from them about their part in the skits. When Maggie's mom kept on questioning her about her part, she finally sighed and, with disgust, said "I just hold the flag, Mom!!". Well, she did a good job!!! (note: Addy is STILL FROZEN!!)



Addy stands as "Bear number 4" in the 10 Little Bears song



Addy dressed up as a duck in the 3 Little Ducks song. Although she had her waddling like a duck down pat at home, I think she was too nervous and barely waddled on stage!



After a few songs, Keith lost interest and spent the rest of the program playing on the floor!



Addy, the graduate (and perhaps future valedictorian??)



Switching topics...on May 3rd Brian ran his first mini-marathon with his sister Beth and her fiance Kyle. He had a good time and says that he's gonna do it next year for time!! I continue my no-run stance, but will gladly cheer him on. Here are the runners...post-run, post-shower...showing off their shiny new medals and celebratory cake.




Beth and Kyle spent the whole weekend with us and we celebrated Mother's Day with the Billmeiers while they were here. Since the guest bed has now been turned into Keith's "big boy" bed, we had to do some moving around of the sleeping arrangements. So, for the first time ever, the trundle bed was used and Keith had his first sleepover in Addy's room! They were so exhausted from the days festivities, that they fell asleep almost instantly!!



Until next blog,
Jen

Happy Birthday to the gal who inspired the start of this Blog!

Since she was the one who gave me the boost to start this blog, I feel it's only appropriate to wish Stephanie Raelyn a very happy birthday!!!

Here's Stephanie several years ago in front of a Chihuly exhibit at Chicago. She hasn't aged a bit!!



We'll miss you tonite at book club...hope Mark takes you somewhere good!

Until next blog,
Jen

Our cracks are showing and we are passing less gas

Yeah, I know, its been awhile. There just hasn't been much excitement here. As you can tell from the title, I've even resorted to corny phrases to try and jazz my life up!!

CRACKS
So...yesterday 5 men showed up to repair the cracks in our plaster walls. For those of you that have examined our walls, you'll understand the depth of this job. Here's an example:



They were all here working pretty much non-stop from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. It was a little frustrating trying to keep the kids out of their way, and live with all of our furniture piled up in the center of rooms! But it was well worth it since I am tired of looking at those cracks!




They did a great job repairing but, apparently contractors just aren't the tidiest of folks. I know this shocks most of you, but their idea of clean and mine were completely different. They DID NOT put drop cloths over anything, so last night I spent the entire night wiping, sweeping, shaking and mopping dust off every surface! Here's what our walls look like now...painters are coming next week for an estimate on the downstairs.



GAS
Well, the prices of gas are NOT going down. Since Brian drives the FJ for work, he was having to pay quite a bit more to travel. Its getting close to coming out of our pocket, so something had to be done. But, alas, the bartering system has come through for us once again! Our friends, Guy and Rachel, needed a bigger vehicle for their growing family, and they happened to have our old Honda Accord (which I used to drive to work before the kids were born. I loved that car!). So, today Brian and Guy did the swap. Brian was a little sad to say goodbye to the van, but I'm sure he'll be smilin' the next time he has to fill up his gas tank!

Here's Brian having a little alone time with the van on their last night together...




...and here's the "new" ride!!



Keith and Addy have never seen such a small vehicle up close! They were excited to explore a car "their size".





Until next blog,
Jen