Busy, Busy, Busy!!

As summer comes every year, I always think that THIS summer I will have more time to do things....take picnics, relax, just enjoy the summer, but every summer it is just busy, busy, busy and it seems like there is no laid back summer time.

So a recap...

June 14-25th- Jared had drama camp each morning and then at the end of the 2 weeks, they performed, "Horror High: The Musical".

June 23rd- We had a VERY BAD storm in the evening. Jared had gone with Sarah to Dairy Queen because it looked like it would be a while before the storm got to our area, but it moved in fast and by the time they could get back home it got really bad. Just as they turned into our addition, a large part of a tree came down across DeCamp taking the power lines with it. God obviously was watching out for them because of they had been just a few minutes sooner the tree may have fallen on Sarah’s car! She had to park her car in a drive way on the other side of the tree and then they had to run home in the rain. Mark went out to pick them up, but they were nearly home by the time he got to them. By this time it was raining and storming so badly we decided we needed to go to the basement…and of course thanks to that tree, we had no electricity! Sarah stayed until the worst of the storm passed and then we drove her back down to the tree so she could get to her car. Our power ended up being out until nearly 10:00 Thursday night and what a pain it was! You can no idea how much you use electricity until you no longer have it. I felt like I was Amish and I didn’t like it very much! I thought I would just go into work early Thursday so at least I could use the electricity there, but power was out in the church neighborhood too! A tree had also fallen there and taken out power for several homes! So….Jared went off to drama camp and Mark and Adam went t work and since I couldn’t do anything at home I went and spend some time at Panera and took my laptop. I guess there were several 1000s in Elkhart County without power!

June 27th- Jared I were on worship team, and since there was no power we practiced without mics and lights! ;) At least it was a sunny evening and there was quite a bit of light coming in through the windows.

June 28th- Well, here it is Friday and still no power at the office and we were wondering if it would come back on before Sunday. What would it be like to have church without a bulletin or maybe even church without power at all??? However, the power came back on around noon on Friday. So I worked late on Friday and came back in for a while on Saturday to get things finished up with the bulletin! What a week!

June 28th- Jared & I went to Pottawatomi Zoo.

June 30th- Jared had gone sailing with Larry & Judy Miller and in the evening they invited Mark, Adam & I to come and join them. Judy came up and brought dinner for us. Jared had gone sailing with Larry a few times before, but this was the first time the rest of us had been sailing and it was a lot of fun!

July 1st- July 11th - Friday morning….left for Word of Life Camp- Schroon Lake, NY! I have an album of photos for each day uploaded to Facebook about our adventures at camp. We had a great day trip this year to Lake Placid where they Olympics were held in 1980 and 1934. We got to go to the Olympic Center where all of the ice skating took place and it was SO, SO neat to be there where those awesome skaters had skated. This is also where the Miracle on Ice took place the US Hockey team defeated Russia. Another fun thing was the pile of SNOW they had outside of the Olympic Center! This was one of the hottest weeks on record in the Adirondacks, but there was still snow there as they make a pile to bring in every day! I even got a great photo of Jared and Lori having a snowball fight!
The boys did excellent in Teens’ Involved and all but 2 placed on the top 5….which is awesome!
On the way home from camp we stopped on Niagara Falls!

July 12th-16th- Vacation Bible School at MMBC…where I was the photographer and Mark did games with Shawn. Jared was part of the nightly drama team.

July 17th- Jared & Adam went to Cedar Point with RUSH and Mark and I went to Don & Michele’s 25th Wedding vow renewal ceremony. Afterwards we went out to dinner with Shawn and veronica to Papa Vino’s in South Bend.

July 19th- Hosted a Lia Sophia Jewelry party.

July 23rd- 31st- Elkhart County 4-H Fair. Jared took 2 herbs and received a blue on his Oregano and an Honor on his Tarragon. We went to the fair Friday night as a family, but it was an extremely HOT HOT night so we didn’t stay long.
Tuesday- Mark, Jared and I went to see Huey Lewis & the News. It was a great concert! Mark and I had seen them back in ’85 and Huey still sounded great!
Wednesday- after another bad storm came through Elkhart County, Jared and I decided to go back to the fair again…just the two of us.
Thursday- Mark and I went back to the fair and ended up spending some time with Glenn & Mary as well as Shawn & Veronica later in the evening.

July 25th- Jared & I were on worship team again.
Mark had a youth group reunion at Harrison Center. It was really nice to see John & Karen and lot of others back from Harrison Center Church

July 26th- Aric came over last night and spent the night and then spent the day with us. Later in the afternoon Braden come over too. It seemed funny to have them both here for that time because we used to babysit each of them regularly, but neither one had been here for a long time.

July 29th – Ethan Quiram is home to stay for a few weeks, with Grandma and Grandpa Miller and so today Jared and some of the other MMBC kids all went sailing with Larry again.

August 1st-6th- Jared left for Checkpoint Bible Camp in Buffalo, IN to be a councilor.

August 1st- We had our first WOL meeting of the year to plan our kick off party. Shawn and Veronica are joining us this year as WOL leaders and I know it is going to be a great year! The big news at MMBC is that we are making a switch this year and are taking on the WOL Olympian & Gopher Buddies program instead of AWANA! It think it is going to be a very positive change for our church in general!
That evening Adam took me out to eat at CiCi’s…Mark didn’t want to go so it was just Adam and I which was kind of nice!

August 6th- Jared got back late in the afternoon and then we went down to Kim’s for a cookout. Tracy came up with Ashlyn, Trey and Lynnea for a long weekend so it was nice to be able to see them and the family for an evening.

August 7th- Jared went with RUSH for a lake day at Perry’s

And that brings us up to date!! Wheww!!