Scrapbooking & More…

We had a great time on our Potato Creek Scrapbook weekend. I completed 14 layouts, 13 of Adam's baby photos and one layout of Tucker. I had hoped to get more done since we stayed an extra day, but it was still pretty good for me. While we scrapped we watched some movies in the evening so I had a hard time staying focused on my layouts, plus you know…I had to take time to talk! (We watched "50 First Dates", "Amazing Grace", and "Mr. Bean's Holiday"…it was pretty silly!) I am all ready looking forward to our next year's retreat. We have all ready decided to do all day Sunday again next year. It was so nice having that whole extra day. It just make the weekend much more relaxed. We started and ended our weekend by eating out so that was an added bonus. We ate lunch on Friday at Panera in Elkhart and then on the way home on Monday, we went to Pages in Time in Granger and then to Applebees for lunch. I didn't get home Monday until just after 4:30 and left again shortly after 6:00 when Anna picked me up for the first night of our new Beth Moore Bible Study. There was also a WOL team meeting that night, but since it was the first night of Bible study and I didn't want to miss so Mark went to the meeting by himself.
Following is a photo of my scrapbooking friends, but Donna is missing from the photo as she had to leave on Sunday evening and we forgot to have our photo taken until Monday morning. Sandy, Bettie, Anna, Ester and Me.

While we were away, the water came back up in the basement, since it rained quite a bit over the weekend. It had just started to dry up after the flood from the last week and then got wet again. As usual, there wasn't much water, but since it stayed wet for nearly 3 weeks this time, we had two toadstools grow in one corner and some mold on other places. GROSS!! Things are back to normal by now, but we need to get some bleach and spray on some of those spots and get it cleaned up.

2/28-2/29 Jared has been running a fever for the last couple of days. I am not real sure what is wrong as today, his fever was up around 103 most of the day, yet he said he felt better today than he did yesterday even though yesterday the fever was only around 100. Tomorrow is WOL Area TI and Jared really wants to go with us but if he is running a fever like that he should probably stay home. I guess we will just see how things are in the morning. Mark has to leave early to head over to First Baptist in Goshen as Dave Eger has asked him to be Quiz Master for the Quiz Blitz competition which is first thing in the morning.

TI ought to be interesting…the Hembress are out of town, so Mark and I are on our own this time around. I was very stressed out on Sunday trying to figure out what to do to get all of these entries ready to perform for our congregation on Sunday night, but it all came together very well. We had practice all day Sunday, after church, but the Hembrees weren't able to be there until around 4:30. Then they went out of town this week leaving on Wednesday morning. So, it has been quite a bit of learning for Mark and I trying to pull things together. The teens are doing SO well on their performances, and so as long as I have all of the paperwork together correctly, I think we are all ready for tomorrow morning.

I know there is probably lots more that I should be writing about the last couple of weeks, but it is nearing midnight and I need to think about going to sleep so I can get up for TI in the morning!

I Have Been Tagged!

Okay, this is the first time I have ever been tagged...probably because not many people have the link to this boring blog. LOL! I was tagged by my friend Jessica and quoting from her blog here are the rules: "The point of this fun game is to answer the questions, then tag 4 of your friends and post their names on your blog. Might want to leave them a message telling them they've been tagged. Oh, and I make a new rule: absolutely no retagging."

Where Were You 10 Years Ago?

10 Years ago…hmmm… Feb. 1998, if I remember right that was our first winter in this house and the boys would have been 8 and nearly 5. (My goodness it is hard to remember that long ago….) I think that would have been the first year that I was homeschooling both of the boys…Jared in Kindergarten and Adam in 3rd, we skipped around some back then which is why he never really knew what grade he was in! I also was selling Pampered Chef at that time.

5 Things On My To-Do List:

Only 5? That is funny!!!

1. Get everything ready for Word of Life Teens' Involved, which is next weekend, March 1st. We need to get paper work around and get copies made among other things.

2. Start getting things around for the Word of Life sleepover which is in a 3 weeks. Yes, Word of Life keeps me busy!

3. Try to figure out how to keep Jared on task and motivated to get his school done before 5:00 PM every day. This is an ongoing thing for me and would appear on my To Do list each and every day!

4. We just started the brand new Beth Moore Bible study at church on Monday, "Stepping Up: A Journey through the Psalm of Assents", so I want to be able to keep on top of my homework. I can all ready tell it is going to be an awesome study, and I don't want to get behind.

5. Work on more layouts for Adam's graduation open house…specifically baby and toddler photos, actually any photos before about 1999, which means I only have about 10 years of photos to go through between now and June! YIKES!! Okay, I don't have any aspirations of scrapping all of them, but I do want to go through them and pick out the highlights of those times.

3 Bad Habits:

{Gulp…once again…only 3? Okay, maybe there are only 3 that I want to tell about!}

1. Jessica, this one ought to make you feel better… I get up between most days between 7:00 and 7:30, but with the exception of Tuesday when I need to get in the shower and ready to go before 7:15 since Emma's dad drops her off, other days I am lucky to be in the shower by noon! (I can't really believe I am admitting this here!} We start school and once I get started on it I don't want to stop to get myself around so don't end up getting out of my pjs until later. I guess that is one advantage of being a homeschool mom, but it just sounds as if I am lazy!

2. Not posting on my blog more often. I tell myself ALL OF THE TIME that I will post at least once a week, but it never seems to happen.

3. I am a packrat, but I get it naturally, from my dad and from my grandpa before him. I am an organized messy, and I hate getting rid of things cause you just never know when you might need them. {blush}

Places I Have Lived:

1. Kewanna, IN: little tiny town where I live for my first year, so I don't remember it at all.

2. Rochester, IN,- from the time I was 1 until the summer before my 8th grade year.

3. Argos, IN: bigger than Kewanna, but not much! This is where I went to high school and graduated from and lived until Mark and I got married in 1985.

4. Warsaw, IN: From the time we got married until 1988.

5. Elkhart, IN: Fall 1998 to present. (2nd house though.)

As you can see I am true Hoosier at heart since I have lived her all of my life, always moving a little farther north with each town where I have lived. Hopefully the next move will be south…..way south…where there won't be snow!

Things Most People Don't Know About Me:

I don't know how many people know these things, but I guess they are worth mentioning.

1. I inhaled a carpet tack when I was just a toddler and had to be rushed to the hospital, but no damage was done.

2. My dad was Chief-of-Police in Argos, which is why we moved there, and so I had to be a good girl. :)

3. I got married less than a year after I graduated from high school and didn't have our first baby until 4 years later.

4. We have hosted 2 incredible exchange students, who I both count as daughters…Marica from Serbia, (2000-2001), and Nathalie from Germany, (2001-2002, and has come back to visit twice, Aug. 2003, (or was it 2004 the first time?), and Aug. 2006.)

Here Are The Lucky People I Tag:

1. Gena

2. Heather

3. Sharmin

Now, remember, no tag backs, girls!

Here we go again!

Well, once again we have water in the basement. Just a month ago, we went through this! UGH! The Elkhart River is currently at 10.4 feet, (flood stage is a 7 ft), and it has officially made the #5 spot for all time high historical water levels, effectively bumping our Jan. #10 spot, record of 10.07, off of the charts. This is just crazy! We had some snow, but not nearly as much in Jan. and then a couple of days of rain and, up came the water again. At the moment, the water is just starting to creep through the cracks in the basement floor, but the water is just as high or higher in our neighborhood as it was the last time and it came up a whole lot faster…just over the course of today. We just got the basement back in order from the last flood and today we had to get everything up off of the floor once again.

Here is the chart of Historical crests for the Elkhart River from the Nat'l Weather Service site. You can see our Jan. measurement at #10, but as soon as they update this list it will be gone and our record from today will be at #5.

Historical Crests
(1) 11.94 ft on 03/14/1982
(2) 11.87 ft on 02/24/1985
(3) 11.03 ft on 12/30/1990
(4) 10.46 ft on 03/17/1982
(5) 10.33 ft on 07/10/1951
(5) 10.33 ft on 03/05/1979
(7) 10.27 ft on 10/11/1954
(8) 10.20 ft on 06/09/1993
(9) 10.15 ft on 04/04/1950
(10) 10.07 ft on 01/09/2008

The weather in general has been pretty crazy. Twice last week, schools closed due to snow and ice, (Wednesday and Friday) and then Tuesday of this week, they postponed 2 hours due to dense fog. Tonight most of the area churches cancelled their evening services, but since we didn't have church last Wed. we decided to go ahead and have it this week. Halfway through the day today it started to snow and it got pretty bad, but it started to taper off and the roads didn't end up being as bad as what we originally thought. (so tonight our flooded neighborhood is covered with snow!!)

On a good note…we booked our vacation! Hooray…we are going back to the beach! Officially to Topsail Island, which is about 30 minutes north of Wilmington, NC. We are going the first week of May and I can't wait to go. (Now would be really good!) We aren't 100% sure what we will doing along with it, maybe DC, Gettysburg, or who knows, but we have time to figure that out before we leave. I am just very excited that we are going back to the ocean. The home which we have rented is right on the water once again and has its own walkway right to the beach. It is also pet friendly so we will be taking Tucker to the ocean with us! Here is a link to the home which we are renting:
Our Rental House

Here are a few more things that have been going on in the last few weeks, (since I got behind on my postings once again!)

• Jan. 19^th- we had Parent/Teen game night for WOL. We played life-sized Trouble and were able to play our new WOL Quiz Blitz too.
  

  
  

• Jan. 25-26, Mark and I, along with Pastor and Nancy went to Kokomo for the WOL Leaders Training Seminar. (Scott and Lori weren't able to attend.)
  

  
  

• Jan. 27^th, Grandma Eunice's birthday and we met everyone for dinner at Logan's Roadhouse in Mishawaka and then everyone came back to our house afterwards for dessert and just spending time together.
  

  
  

• Jan. 28- I started to come down with a scratchy throat and ended up by Thursday with a fever of 102 and sick on the couch all day. I am still not completely over it, (have a cough and a runny nose), but am feeling better than I was last week.
  

  
  

• Jan. 30^th, even though the roads weren't great today and I was not feeling the best with my cold, Jared and I took Tucker to get his hair cut and Jared and I ate lunch at Burger King. Before we went back to pick Tucker up we went and got Jared a new pair of jeans at Kohl's.
  

  
  

• Feb. 2^nd, we had FIF dinner at Jim and Willa Floras, also with the Wieses, and we had a very nice evening. It was the first time I had been out of the house for a few days since I hadn't been feeling well.
  

  
  

• Feb. 3^rd- Superbowl Sunday. The guys went over to the Jordan's, the ladies went to Chevalier's, and the teens had a Superbowl party at church. Tucker came with me and got to have a play date with Lucy and Peanut, even though he wasn't too thrilled with Peanut, but he and Lucy got along great! (Lucy is the Chevalier's new Bichon which they got after Chloe died.)
  

  
  

• Feb. 4^th- homeschool bowling started up again and Monday evening I went to Hacienda with Julie for dinner. We had a nice evening, but the fog was so dense on the way home, it was quite a challenge seeing the road!