Meet Pierre

We stopped by Josh's house last week to meet the newest

Pasley... His name is Pierre, and I have to say, I really find my

new NephewCat quite fun/cuddly/adorable and all around GREAT!

No I'm sure it 'couldn't' just be an Aunt thing... :D

He curled right up and wasn't camera-shy.

So here's Pierre!
Oh how I love being an Aunt!

Sugarfest!

Last Saturday, Mendota Hills had a Sugarfest!!!

(an all dessert potluck!)

Yeah, I know, way too much sugar...

But its only once a year, and boy, it tasted great!

There were about 20 different desserts!
These were really neat, they were peanut butter cookies that were
cooked in mini muffin tins, and then a Reese's peanut butter cup was

in the middle!! Chocolate and peanut butter... GOOD!

Lots of campers were there, and it was lots of fun.

SUGARHIGH!
MoreSugarMoreSugarMore SUGAR!!!!!!Yeah, it was a really good thing...
(and after 4 days, my eye actually did stop twitching...) :P

Just Messing Around...

The other night I messed around with these pictures...

I really liked how they turned out!

I love my twin!
And my personal favorite...

BIG foot in mouth moment :P

So, we're in at Grandpa's, ( me and mom ) And he asks me to get him a yogurt for a snack before bed... There was no more in the kitchen so I went to get some from the fridge in the garage...

I come back in and say..

" Grandpa, you got a raspberry one, a orange one, and a strawberry one. You're set for life!!!!"

Then I realized that sounded kinda bad, and mom started laughing, and Grandpa didn't know why :P My Bad...

-Rach

:) :) :)

CONCERT TIME!!!

Last Night ( Sunday ) Drena invited us to go to a Lincoln Brewser Concert in Rockford with Her an Reid. (GIANT thank You to her and Reid. )

Mom and dad were busy, but they let us go.

Drena invited My cousin Jared to go as well.

The concert didn't start 'till 7:30, so we decided to go out to dinner first, then go to the concert. We couldn't decide where to go, so we first went to cracker barrel, ( that's where the rocking chair picture is from ) then we decided once we got there to go to Old County Buffet instead.

this one's from cracker barell too! they had a neat little shop in front of the restraunt.

At dinner, they had a whole table just for condements! ( which was awesome ). They also had a ICEE machine ( which was AWSOMER! )

Well, after we were all done with dinner, I challenged Reid to a pepper eating contest.

( not advised ) we each took 2 *hot* peppers, and had to eat them ( whole with no food )

and we had a icee in the middle. The first one to drink it lost.

Neither of us would cave, and both of our mouths' were on FIRE, so we called it a tie, and at the same time took a drink of icee.

Thankfully our mouths only burned thru half the concert :)

The concert was at the SummerWood Ampitheater.

It was Really neat to get to listen to the concert and be outside and watch it get dark and the stars come out. It was a beautiful Night too.

The show was GREAT.

We got to hear a lot of favorites, and Lincoln Brewster told a few funny stories about his family.

He also told us a bit of his lifestory, and how far God's brought him in his life.

It was a good time.

During one song, he said for everyone to hold up there phone's. Drena's had a 'lighter' on it :D

It was such a Great night.

and So fun.

After the concert we got in the signing line early, so we only had to wait like 20 mins. ( last time we were in a signing line we waited for a hour and a half )

I got a poster signed, and we got pictures :)

Reid wasn't in the first picture, so he got a single.

And this picture, we were all in, but when the picture got taken, Becky had a funny look on her face, jared looked like he was in pain, and I wasn't looking at the camera, I was saying something to Reid... So, At least Crystal got a nice picture.... :)

Thanks Drena and Reid for letting us go with you.

And thank You God, for a Perfect night to praise you.

-rach.

Boring...

Well, this is going to probably be a boring post.
I'm actually blogging about not really having anything to blog
about... We have done a whole lot of stuff but haven't taken
pictures of any of it.

Taffie went to the vet for her check-up on Wednesday.
She has lost 1 pound since last year!! (HOORAY!)
The poor thing had to have a blood test (just to make sure she
doesn't have heartworm) and it must've bruised or inflamed
the muscle (or vein or whatever) so the poor thing was limping :(
She's better now though!
Oh, and I got to drive home from the vet's office!!! :D

Grandpa is doing really good!
One of us (mostly Mom) stayed with him around the clock for the
first few days after his surgery, because his oxygen level would drop so much
when he would get up and it would take quite a while for it to go back to normal,
but he's doing better now and Mom's back home with us!

We went and played tennis with some friends last night...
I'm afraid I was awful! I had only played one other time, but still, you would have
thought that I could manage to get a few good shots!

Tomorrow is the Sugar Fest at Mendota Hills!
(Basically a dessert potluck, and there are judges to decide who has the best
sweet thing)

Crystal, Rach and I went and played music at a Nursing Home in Dixon yesterday
afternoon. Its always fun to go there because the people remember us, and are
very kind :) I love hearing their little comments, or their talking to each other while
we play, and their smiles... Its well worth it!

We had zucchini galore (and Grandpa has jalapeno galore) so I made a
zucchini/jalapeno casserole for supper tonight.
Well, actually I made a zucchini casserole, and made a small pan with jalapenos
(I love you Mom).

Our water softener is fixed now, so we can do laundry, and use the dish washer!

I found that I really like this dumb little game of Facebook called Farmville...

Well, I don't want to be boring... Rats, I probably already was!
There's so much more stuff that we've been doing, but without pictures sometimes
it just gets boring to read about it.

I hope all you people in blogland have a great weekend!
I'm looking forwards to mine!

A little more TFS!

I know Rachel already posted about Tools for School,

but I thought I'd give you all my version :)
We got to Camp Renoldswood around 8 a.m.

No its not that "early" but we all still have the "I'm tired"

look in our eyes...

I was on the Purple Team.

We were the coolest!

The orange team was our self declared 'arch rivals!'

We would play tug-of-war against them, "argue" with them,

(all in fun), it made it more eventful, and the kids all thought it was great.

Purple Team! Unite!

Everybody Hi-5 the pencil!

We had fun playing the giant parachute game!

It took us a few tries to catch on, but once we did, we were flinging

the balls high in the air, and the kids all had a great time running

underneath it too.

Tug-of-War against the UGH! Orange Team...

The leader of the O.T. was trying to walk against the pull of the rope

and got knocked down by the sheer force of our strength! :P

Letting everybody know where to go to get their backpacks!

It was cool. Each kid had a ticket that had what grade they were going

to be in on it, and then there were lines that they would go through that

led to a table with all the backpacks for their age group, someone stood

at the front of the line and had a sign on their shirt that looked just

like the ticket that the kids would hold, and that way no one would

be confused... And the kindergartners wouldn't get a high school backpack...

I got about a 15 minute lunch break.

And I sat in the grass drinking water for the most of it.

TFS provided all the workers lunches.

They had it catered from some place in Dixon, I just can't remember where.

Everybody got a wrap, a cookie, and a little bag of chips.

I had a Turkey wrap, chili fritos, and a chocolate chip cookie.

I had a lot of fun! I got to meet some new friends, have a great time with the kids, and I hope they had a good time too!

There ended up being about 700 backpacks given out!

Great News!

Hey everybody!
I've got some great news!
Kathrin (Wolfgang's daughter) now has a blog!!!
There's a link to it over in the My Blog List thing on the side.

Check it out!
It's so cool that we can keep up with her even though she's all
the way in Germany!

Tools For SCHOOL!

Today we helped my Aunt Amy, with Tools For School.

T.S.F is a program. where low income families could can and get free backpacks full of school supplies for kids!

Mrs. Hemmer, made the mascot of the day, his name was E.RASER.

Me and Melody H. switched off being the pencil every hour, so neither of us would sweat to death.

Here was a picture of E. RASER with all the sponsors of the program.

Backpacks Backpacks EVERYWHERE! there were a total of 647 kids that signed up, and there was 720 backpacks that were filled. :D
School buses picked the kids and their parents up at Dixon High School, ( the registration place ) and brought them out to Camp Reynoldswood, where the event's were taking place.

Becky was a 'Adam's wrangler' she got to ride on the buses and follow and take care of kids. She was on team purple!!! Jared was a runner, and would bring more backpacks when one station ran out of them. And I...... got to be E. RASER. with Melody as my sidekick. We would switch off, and one of us would wear the costume and get high fives from the kids, and the other one of us would hand out candy to them. :) we had the best job :oP

There were lots of activities for the kids including one of those parachute things. The favorite game with the parachute, was to put a bunch of balls on the parachute, then pull it tight and lift it in the air, than on 3 they'd snap it down and the balls would fly like 30 to 50 feet in the air. It was pretty cool!

Tug of war was pretty fun too. They had a MASSIVE rope to play with. Even helpers got in on it. ( And Aunt Amy the star of the day )

The kids and the backpacks were really cute. here were a couple of kindergartners at the Thank You table. They'd sign their names on picture frames to give to our sponsors later.

This was Melody being E. RASER and she was the smart one. She posed by the Culver's people.

The Culver's people were AWESOME!!!

They gave out Free UNLIMITED custard for everyone. THis was the owner and his daughter, and another helper of his. They worked hard All Day.

It was a good day.

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D D: D: D: D: D: D: D: D:D :D

rach

Maquoketa Caves!

Today we went to the Maquoketa Caves in Iowa.

Its a State Park, and you don't have a tour guide!

Drena and Reid went with us!

They had been there a long time ago, and we'd been wanting to go

do something together before school started.

Plus, when we were on vacation, somebody told us we should check

the caves out and we never got to it so we decided that

today was the day!

We got there about 10:15.
Mom and Drena didn't go in very far because claustrophobia
set in quickly... :P

It was so cool!

(as in awesome and temperature too)!

It felt air conditioned down there!

There were a lot of really small caves, but one of them,

the Dancehall cave was huge! And it had passages in the walls

that you could go back pretty far in!

Of course Criky found some spots for us to pose ;)

Its amazing how small one feels when surrounded by huge

rocks (or underground...)

And then there were pathways between the different caves.

It was so pretty!

I may have found my 'Prince Charming' today!

But, alas, I couldn't work up the courage to kiss him so I guess

we'll never know will we? :P

It was sooo neat when you'd get to the end of a cave and see

all the light and green above you.

Hey, Crystal got in a picture!

She's the little blob on the rock on the left...

Lunch break!

By then we were SO muddy...

There was a big passage that we went into. Crystal waited outside,

we told her it'd probably only take us 10 minutes and well, it was

a lot bigger than we thought and took at least 30. Oops!
That was the neatest thing I've done in a LONG time though!

We had 2 small flashlights, had to crawl or slide on our stomachs

most of the time, and although it was hard work, it was wonderful!

Oh, and I had a bat fly about 6 inches over my head! AAhhhh!

We got REALLY dirty, like you can't see our pants because

they're covered in clay/mud dirty!

And well, the lower part of our legs are really bruised up,

but it was totally worth it!

Aaaahhhhh (contented sigh).