Catching up as Always…

Well, it looks like it has been a really long time once again since I updated my blog. I guess I will never, ever truly get into the habit of keeping it up to date. {{Sigh!!}} Even when I updated it the last couple of times I didn't go back and say anything about what we had been doing and I missed such an important thing…our vacation to Topsail Island in May 2008. I was so thrilled to be back at the beach once again. After taking a year away from the beach in 2007 when we went to the Smoky Mountains, it was so nice to be back at the beach. Instead of trying to type all what we did here, which would take me forever, I will just leave the links to the photo albums that I have uploaded to Facebook and if you want you can look at them. (You don't need a Facebook account to see these photo albums, but if you don't have a Facebook, get one…more on that in a second…) I didn't get the last few photos uploaded, but the best are here:

Topsail Vacation Days 1 & 2
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=28163&l=411df&id=618024210

Topsail Vacation Days 3 & 4
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=28504&l=48ce4&id=618024210

Topsail Vacation Days 4 & 5
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=29207&l=39ce6&id=618024210

Speaking of Facebook, have you checked it out? I am having a lot of fun there. I am not sure if you don't have a Facebook account if you will be able to see much, if any, of my profile page because I have most things set up for "Friends Only", but you can check it out anyway. http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=618024210#/profile.php?id=618024210
I actually opened up a Facebook account quite some time ago, but then really didn't get it and didn't take the time to do anything with it. I opened my account to keep up with what Nathalie was doing, but even then very seldom went there. Well, on Memorial Day at Potato Creek, Kim and Kassie kept talking about Facebook and how I need to get back there and do something with my account. Nearly all of their past exchange students are on Facebook too and it makes a great way to keep in touch with them. So, after that I went and tackled Facebook and figured out how it all works. I even invited Marica to join and both Adam and Jared now have an account as well. There are a lot of silly and not-so-good things on Facebook, but I you decide to join, just make sure you have your privacy settings set so not everyone can see your Facebook and be careful what applications that you add. If you do join, I hope that you will let me know so we can be Facebook friends!

After vacation of course, was Adam's graduation and open house, which I actually did write about on my blog, but here are some photos from that event as well:

Adam's Graduation
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=28435&l=a24e2&id=618024210

Adam's Graduation Open House
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=29165&l=4bb48&id=618024210




On June 11^-13^th I went and stayed with Grandma Eunice for a while. She had been in the hospital for hernia surgery which was supposed to be quite simple, but she had some complications and ended up having to stay for a week. When she got out she had to be on oxygen and lots of different medications, and they didn't want her to stay alone the first couple of nights. It was very nice to stay with her for a few days because I haven't done that in a very, very long time, but I wish it would have been under better circumstances. She is doing better now, but it is still in low spirits because she just doesn't feel back to normal. Being on oxygen really got her down, but I am hoping she will be off of it soon. (Maybe she is now, it has been a couple of weeks since I talked to her.)

June 16^th, Tucker had a moment of "fame" by making Grown Up Doggie of the Day on the site called Daily Puppy: http://www.dailypuppy.com/dogs/Tucker-the-Bichon-Frise_2008-06-16
Then one other day he had another moment of fame…a few months back Purina was having this call for photos to be sent in which would appear on Times Square for a special promotion. I received an e-mail from Purina a few days ago that said on June 19^th Tucker's photo appeared in Times Square! Here is a link, just type in "Tucker" and "Elkhart" in the search boxes at the top of the page and you will see him.
http://www.longliveyourdog.com/dogpark/TimesSquare.aspx

On June 20^th, Adam had his IUSB orientation. Mark and I went with him and they had separate sessions for parents and students. He got signed up for his classes that day as well. He had a bit of trouble with getting classes that worked for his schedule, but we finally got that all worked out. He wants to continue working as much as possible and with gas prices, he wants to take as many classes as he can at the Elkhart campus.
So his first semester as a college student looks like this, which equals 14 credit hours. The nice thing is he already has 9 credit hours from the classes that he took at Bethel during his senior year in high school.

INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTING- Mon. evening at Elkhart
ENG-A 190 - ART, AESTHETICS, & CREATIVITY- Tues. & Thurs. at IUSB
INTRO TO BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 1- Tues. & Thurs. at IUSB, with a 4 hour lab on Thurs.
ANTH-E 105 - CULTURE & SOCIETY- (Anthropolgy)- Wed. evening at Elkhart

Later in June we had VBS at church where Mark was in charge of Games, Jared helped with the preschool class as well as being "Captain Taylor" in a daily skit. I was in charge of taking photos and making a Powerpoint presentation for the final night. Adam wasn't able to help each night, but since the theme was Amazon Expedition, they wanted some "wild animals" displayed on the final night so he brought in some creepy crawlies from Martin's Pet & Garden for the final night when we had Parents' Night.

The day after VBS was complete; we left for New York and a week of WOL Camp. We left Friday morning June 27^th and returned July 6^th. We went to Niagara Falls the first day and stayed overnight in a church in Batavia, NY, Friday night. Saturday morning we got up for our final 6 hours of traveling to Schroon Lake, NY. We took the church van and had it filled to capacity, with 11 teens, including Jared, and 4 leaders…Mark & I, as well as Scott & Lori Hembree. When we arrived at camp, it was not great weather, cloudy and we knew it was going to rain. By the time we got the kids across the lake to the island it was coming down pretty good, so we quickly got back on the boat to get back the mainland and then it really broke loose and the rain was coming down so hard and the wind was blowing so much that the rain was coming across sideways! The waves in the lake were pretty big and the boat driver honked most of the way across because he couldn't see! We got so WET, we could have probably swam back and not gotten much wetter. When you get off of the boat you have to go up a hill to the parking lot and the water was running down the hill so fast it was like a river. What a mess, but something we will never forget!! Sunday afternoon, Mark, Scott & Lori and I took a day for being tourists and went to Fort Ticonderoga and a battle reenactment. It was a very interesting thing to see. Monday and Tuesday were Teen's Involved Days and Thursday was the Teen's Involved awards ceremony. Monday night we played carpet golf in the WOL Inn, where we tied for 1^st place but because Mark got a hole in 1 on one hole, we won! Hooray! On Wednesday we went over to the island to spend some time with the kids and all of us leaders did the high ropes course with the girls. Wow, okay, that was fun, but very scary and I can't say it is something I would do again. I loved the zipline, even though I screamed half way down. LOL! Friday was the 4^th of July and we went over the Island briefly and then came back for the celebration. We went to the parade, the Schroon Lake concert, which is hosted my WOL, and then the fireworks. They set them off right near the lake and there are literally 100s of boats that come in to watch, what a pretty, pretty site. We headed for home Saturday morning and spend the night Saturday night in a hotel in Ohio and arrived back to the church Sunday at about 11:30.

Here are some photo albums from camp:

Niagara Falls
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=31933&l=ea067&id=618024210

WOL Island, Inn & 4^th of July
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=32128&l=ea1a7&id=618024210

WOL Island High Ropes Course (Yes, there are even photos of me!)
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=32278&l=5940e&id=618024210

WOL Teens' Involved
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=32812&l=02f24&id=618024210

Our speakers for the week were Jimmy DeYoung, which we also heard last year, but you can never get tired of Jimmy, and Ray Pritchard. Jimmy spoke on Revelation and Ray spoke on love from 1 Corinthians 13.

Jimmy DeYoung: Prophesy Today
http://jimmydeyoung.gospelcom.net/pp/

Ray Pritchard's Site and his Facebook
http://www.keepbelieving.com/
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=766840206

Since camp, the boys crammed in their 4-H projects and we got those turned in earlier this week and now that finally brings me to today! Wheww!! The 4-H fair starts today, but we aren't going until tomorrow. Jill & Anna are in a production of High School Musical and tonight Jared and I are going to see them. Tomorrow evening Pat Benetar is going to be at the fair, (free concert!) and Mark is going to watch her while the boys and I enjoy time at the fair.

Not much today...

Today was our last day of homeschool bowling for the summer. Jared's team won first place and they each got a nice trophy. I will probably take Jared back on Monday's to bowl with Glenn, who has been teaching Joel L. to bowl. Glenn has been bowling for many many years and is very talented. He has been giving Jared some great tips and I think spending more time with him could greatly improve his game.

I should have been doing more things to get ready for Adam's Open House today, but somehow hardly anything got done. It is always hard when we are gone most of the afternoon for bowling, but really that is no excuse. I guess I know what I will be doing tomorrow!

Tonight Jared and I picked Jill up from work because the rest of her family had other things that they had to be doing. After we picked her up I took them to Steak-N-Shake and bought each of us a milk shake and it was very good!

Adam has graduated!!

Adam had a very nice graduation ceremony yesterday. There were 10 homeschoolers that graduated, 3 boys and 7 girls. Today at church was Senior Sunday and the youth group ran the service. They showed the Senior power point and recognized each Senior. It has been a very emotional weekend for me and I have barely held it together. I knew yesterday at the ceremony at today at church if I started crying I probably wouldn't be able to stop and so far I have done fairly well at not letting more than a tear or two escape.

Besides Adam's graduation, we had 4 open houses that we attended. Our neighbor Courtney, who lives across the street, Cara Aksel, Logan Springer, and Luke Anspach. Cara & Logan, (of course) both graduated with Adam and I am Cara's prayer partner for RUSH. It was a long, but very fun day.

Today we will be working more out in the yard and around the house to get ready for Adam's open house next Sunday. I hope who ever might be reading this will be able to attend! :)

Just Stuff…

Teens' Involved went really well and all of our entries but one will be going onto Regionals which are in Crawfordsville, IN, on April 12^th. It was an exhausting day, but I am so proud of all of our Word of Life kids. They really put their heart in their performances and did such a great job for the Lord. That night we ordered Pizza Hut for dinner because there was so way after that long day that I wanted to cook dinner. Jared still was running a pretty high fever so he ended up staying home. I know how badly he wanted to go, but it was a good thing he stayed home cause he said he slept most of the day.

Sunday he still stayed home from church in the morning, but by the time we got home he wasn't running a fever and was feeling much better. I let him play with Brandon in the afternoon and then he went to RUSH that evening, but it turned out that by the time he got home from RUSH that he was running a fever again! I was part of worship team on Sunday and it was quite a hard one for me. We actually sang 2 songs for call to worship and then sang 3 more for worship team time. They were really great songs, but two were brand new so that made it a lot more challenging for me.

Monday even though Jared was still running a low grade fever we decided to take him to get his hair cut because it needed it SO bad. I don't think his hair has ever been as long as it was this time. Afterwards we went to homeschool bowling and then ran some errands. By the time we got home, he was pretty tired and still running a low grade fever! When we got home, I was surprised to find Mark curled up on the couch with a blanket…guess who is sick now?? Yes, Jared passed it onto Mark and he has been home from work for the past 2 days and I am not real sure that he will be going in on Thursday either. It is the same thing Jared had…just a fever which I assume is all viral.

Tuesday we had a bit of an accident. When Braden's grandpa dropped him off, when he backed out of the driveway, he hit Adam's car!! Thankfully it was only the mirror and actually the mirror itself is okay, but the case is nearly cracked in half and is dangling. We dropped his car off at Jerry's place tonight on the way to church and he is supposed to get it fixed tomorrow. Adam is not thrilled about driving our van to work, but at least he has a way to get there and I don't need take him.

Last night the boys had a 4-H meeting and I had to go and sign their sign up sheets so afterwards I went and ran some errands. It was really snowing and the roads were icy underneath and we saw a van turn sideways in the road in front of us. That was kinds scary, but nothing else happened, thank goodness.

Mark still wasn't feeling well this evening so he stayed home from Word of Life and since he had the lesson and Scott wasn't prepared to teach we did Quiz Blitz for the evening and the kids had a lot of fun with it.

I guess that is all for now…time for me to get my pjs on, pop some popcorn and go curl up on the couch with my book and my puppy!

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!
  

A Nicer Week

What a much nicer week this week than last…very uneventful, which makes for a nice change! We still have water in the basement, but there are dry spots and really the only standing water is in the shop and the back corners of the playroom. Most of the rest is still damp, but we are making progress. I have only done a couple of loads of laundry in the past week and a half, out of necessity, but I really need to get down there and do more. It is just not pleasant to be down there with everything being damp.

We babysat for Emma twice this week, once on Tuesday as normal and she is here again today. (She is napping right now.) We also had Braden both of those days and today we went and picked him up from preschool since his grandma and grandpa are going out of town.

Adam has had a very busy week this week. He is now taking two classes at Bethel, Written Communication II which is Monday evening and Psychology which is Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Logan is taking the writing class too, but he is on his own in the other class. I guess it is good for him so he can get more used to going there on his own next year. Yes, I am pretty sure he is going to go to Bethel next year. He has been accepted and even has been offered a scholarship from Bethel, which he has a chance to increase if he attends a scholarship day at Bethel. We haven't actually turned in the acceptance letter and paid the fee yet, but that is definitely the way we are leaning. Adam also had a Nat's Honor Society meeting this week as well as a busy week with work. This week was the deadline for the 4-H scholarships, so that was kinda crazy trying to get those finished and turned in….then we forgot to sign them and he had to drop of new signature papers the next day.

Yesterday we had Joel L. here for a couple of hours while Julie had a dentist appt. and lunch date with Jay, and then last night I had worship team practice. Tonight after Braden gets picked up, we are going to meet the Hembrees for dinner at Rulli's to go over plans for tomorrow night and have our monthly meeting. Tomorrow evening we have WOL Parent's Game night. We will have a short parent meeting and then play games. Lori is making a giant Trouble game where the kids and parents will be the "markers". We are also going to play the brand new WOL Quiz Blitz…parents against kids. It ought to be a lot of fun.

Tomorrow morning we were supposed to go to church and do follow up for the Jesus Film Project. http://www.jesusfilm.org/ It is a great movie that was distributed in part by our church around our church neighborhood and tomorrow we were going to go out and ask if people had watched it and get feedback. Unfortunately, it is supposed to be well below 0 wind chill tomorrow and we are also under a lake effect snow advisory. Right now the sun is shining, but it is very cold! (Wind chill currently is 17, but is supposed to drop throughout the day.)

One month from this weekend, is our annual scrapbook retreat at Potato Creek and I am all ready very excited about it. Same ladies as always are going, but this year since the weekend we are going falls over President's Day, we are staying through Sunday night as well. I need to get busy and start pulling together page kits because as long as it takes me, I will need the whole month to get it done. I think what I may do is start working on some of Adam's baby photos and younger years' photos, so I will have some of them done for when his graduation open house comes around.

Flood!!!

(The following posts span a few days, and were things that I posted to Praisebooking, so the tenses and formats may not be quite right for my blog, but I want to get this up and don't have time to fix everything to have it in the right perspective, so I hope it makes sense!)

Thursday 1/3, we woke up to freezing weather, -2 and by mid morning is had warmed up to a whopping 8 degrees! The nice thing was, the sun was shining and with all the snow that we had it made for a bright and beautiful day.

After all of the snow and cold that we had in the last week, Sunday it got up to 51 degrees and the snow turned to mush! The Sr. High youth group were supposed to go to MI to go tubing, (Echo Valley), but they were closed because of the warm temps so they had to cancel.

By Tuesday it got up into the low 60s, we had severe thunderstorms Monday evening as well as a tornado watch. (And a week ago we were under nearly 2 foot of snow!) Now that all of that snow has melted, the Elkhart River, which is behind the homes across the street, is nearing flood stage. Our neighborhood is known for water, sometimes up into the streets, but more often in people's basements. Our sump pump has been running extra times today so I know the water is starting to come in, but when the basement gets really wet it simply seeps up through the floor so there is nothing that the pump can do to stop that. One good thing is that our home is higher up than most of the other homes in our neighborhood so we usually have some warning since the neighbors start pumping water out of their basements before we get wet.

Well, we got the water, much to my disappointment. The boys and I spend quite a bit of time Tues. morning/afternoon picking everything up off of the floor in the basement, and trust me that was no small task. UGH!! There was a small river flowing from Mark's shop through the laundry room into the sump pump, which was dragging saw dust with it. How pretty! The water is just flowing in and I have no idea how bad it might get, but even this is too much for me. Normally, when this happens we only get an inch or just a couple, so hopefully this time won't be any worse than before. We have been very lucky and this is the first time we have had any water in the basement for a couple of years.

(Thursday morning…..) Wow, what a night we had last night! Adam drives to Awana since he comes from work, so goes home a bit earlier than us. Just as we were leaving church, Lori, my best friend who lives across from the church comes out and says that Adam has been trying to call me on my cell phone and to call him right away. Uh oh...has our pump given out while we were away? Do we have 3 feet of water in our basement? We continue on our way home and my cell phone won't work. ARG! I can see that Adam is still trying to call and now Lori is trying to call too, but I can't get anything else on my phone. How frustrating and what a tense ride home, not knowing what was going on. Thankfully, we are only about 10 minutes from church. We finally get home and Adam says the Red Cross has called and the police and/or firemen are going to be around our neighborhood in about 45 minutes to evacuate everyone and then they will turn off our electricity!! What?? Why in the world would they do that? Don't they know that those of us that aren't completely flooded out need the electricity to keep our pumps running so we won't be totally flooded out?? How crazy is this? So I went into panic mode...moderate panic mode, I guess you could say. Mark and the boys started bringing up stuff from the basement, especially his woodworking equipment since he has a lot of money wrapped up in that. So far those things had just been up on tables, but if they are going to turn off our electricity, who knows how much water we might get. Meanwhile, I see the firemen pull up in front of our house and I go out to see what is going on. They don't really know much about the evacuation or the electricity; they say they are just there to rescue those in the back of our neighborhood who truly are stranded. All of the neighbors started coming out of their homes, everyone trying to figure out what was going on and what we were going to do. In the midst of all of this, Lori called to see what was going on and assured me that if we did have to be evacuated that we had a place to stay, as our church has two empty parsonages right now and she had talked to Pastor and he said that was no problem at all. At least that was one less worry. After that our evening turned into a waiting game. We watched 3-4 fire/rescue vehicles come into our neighborhood, including the rescue boat. The neighbors all congregated in another neighbor's yard and one sweet friend, (Leah), even went into make coffee for all of us!! It ended up that we didn't have to evacuate or have our electricity turned off, thank the Lord! They were only going to turn the electricity off in those homes where they had rescued the people that they knew were all ready flooded out and the electricity could cause a problem. About 10:30 everyone decided to go home and pray that our pumps all ran through the night and nothing else happened. Mark decided to take part of the day off from work today since he still had some personal days to take and is at Lowes right now to buy a new pump…just in case. Ours has held up so far, but it has run constantly for at least 36 hours and we are worried that it is going to die. Several other neighbors have had this problem and have gotten more water in their basements.

Flood Photos

Here are some photos of the flood. You can click on each photo to make them bigger.

Our wet basement. You can see all of our junk piled up to keep it dry.


The river across the street. Obviously the trees, picnic bench and lightpost, (in the 2nd photo), are not supposed to be in the water. Normally, they have 4-5 more feet of land after the light post before the river starts! This is Jared and Braden, (the little boy which we babysit.)


Our neighbor's car in his driveway. (This is just 3 houses down from us!)


This is a photo from the Holmes backyard shooting down the street...you sure can't see the street though since it is covered with water. That bush is about 5 feet tall.


Boat ride anyone?


The view down the street in front of the home where the boat is. See the mail box?


This is the end of our driveway by the later afternoon, Wednesday. Notice the car parked in the road...that is the car from one of the homes around the block, and the car in our driveway belongs to the Holmes, 2 doors down.


Our Wednesday night adventure.


The neighbors were all trying to figure out what was going on and what we were going to do.


The photo is a little blurry, but here you see Mark enjoy the coffee that Leah, (in the green jacket), made for all of us. This is in front of Mindy's home, who you can also see in the photo.

Happy New Year 2008

Wow, 2007 is gone all ready. The years just keep flying by faster and faster. Everyone always said that when I was young too, but I never believed it. I remember when the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas felt like it would never end. I even kept a countdown on my calendar, counting down those endless days until Christmas.

Now, 2008 is here and everyone is talking about New Year's Resolutions. Do I make any or just forget about it. It seems like it is very rare for a New Year's Resolution to actually take hold and get carried throughout the year. I could make the traditional resolutions to lose weight, exercise more, eat healthier, etc., but who am I kidding. I am not even going there. Even though I may not keep them, I am going to make some anyway, and here on my blog I am going to put them into writing. Okay, I know…that sounds really bad to all ready be saying that I won't keep them, but hey, I know myself and actually living by them and keeping them for a whole year just probably won't happen, but even if I can improve and do a bit better on those things that I am making my resolutions is better than nothing at all. So, with that said, here it goes:

My 2008 New Year's Resolutions

* To be happier every day and not take out bad things that happens on those around me.

* Work on having more of a quiet and gentle spirit. (This will be a tough one for me.)

* To go along with the one above… Be careful what comes out of my mouth. I really need to just learn to keep my mouth shut most of the time. Not everything that pops into my head needs to be said out loud.

* Be faithful in my quiet time. I have done great this WOL year doing my quiet time every day, but I want to make this something that I do all of the time and not just for WOL.

(edited 1/4 as i thought of a few more I wanted to add)

* Post to my blog more often. I did really well at the beginning of 2007, but then things started to fall apart during the summer. My goal is to post at least 4 times a month, but more than that would be even better.

* Keep the house cleaner, (which will make Mark happier!) I have been following the FlyLady plan for several years, but never very well. This year I want to try to do better by following her Daily Missions and my own personal Flight Plan.

http://www.flylady.net/pages/FlightPlan_Missions.asp

In the Scrapbook area:

* Scrapbook 90 Layouts. (Less than last year, but I really want to make my goal and I know trying for much more than this is definitely going to set myself up to fail.)

* Finish my ABC Scripture album.

* Continue working on my journaling.

* Continue working on showing more of my faith in my layouts.

We had a nice New Years Eve; we spent it at the Jordan's house, with the Springer, Chevaliers and the Burns. Springers didn't get there until late because they had a family thing with some of Brads relatives. Burns had to leave early because Tiffany wasn't feeling well. The Jordan's got the kids a Wii for Christmas and instead of spending the evening playing board games like we normally do we took turns playing the Wii. It was a lot of fun. We bowled and I played baseball with Veronica. I actually won in bowling…something I never would do in a real game, but in baseball Veronica won by the mercy rule…no, I wasn't doing very well. HA!

The days leading up to New Years Eve, weren't too great. I started coming down with a cold on Christmas Night and I have been fighting it all week. I am on the back side of it now, but it still isn't quite gone. We had Jean's funeral last Thursday and that same morning my hard drive crashed on my new laptop. Oh, was I mad!!! I spent an hour on the phone with Dell tech support and they determined that it needed to my replaced. They said that I wouldn't have the new drive until today, but unbelievably it came the next day. I am back up and running on my laptop now, but am still waiting to see if any of the data can be recovered from my old drive. Mark Kerk is looking at it and is going to try to get as much of the data off of it as he can. One of these days I am going to learn to keep everything backed up so I don't lose things. Thankfully, right before Christmas I backed up all of my photos, so I didn't lose any of those this time, but there are other files I really hope to get back.

Back to New Year's Eve….they were calling for snow, but not a lot. Adam came right from work so we had two cars there. About 7:00 it started snowing and did not let up all night. By the time we left at around 1AM, it had snowed between 6-8 inches and Adam didn't want to drive home so I drove the van and mark drive Adam's car. I really didn't want to drive, but I followed Mark and it was okay. It snowed like crazy all night and most of the day New Years Day and by now we have close to 2 feet of snow!!!

Here are a couple of photos that were taken on New Year's morning.

New Year's Day we took down the big Christmas tree even though I wanted to leave it up for a few more days. Oh well, at least all of my snowmen are still up and that helps it from being so dreary. We watched the Rose Bowl parade in the morning and in the evening I watched the HGTV Dream Home show. It is an incredible home that they built in the Florida Keys. You can enter a drawing to win the home, wouldn't that be awesome??? http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/dream_home_2008/text/0,,HGTV_30596_65296,00.html

Tonight Jared is spending the night with Turner Hanson and so it is a little on the quiet side around here right now. We are having chili for dinner and I think it is almost ready so I guess I better go and get the rest of the things ready for the meal.