Mother's Day :)

Well, you should all be proud. Rachel and I decided to take it upon ourselves

to put together the swing that we got Mom for Mother's Day!

Mom had been hinting around for a while that she wanted one, and so

us four kids finally got her one. Nothing like waiting until the last minute

though, we didn't go and get it until Saturday afternoon and so after Mom went

to be that night, Rachel and I snuck out to the garage and started working on it!Lets just say that it was a little more involved than we first expected it was.
And at first I thought "Oh, it will be easy. There are directions"
But no, they were very vague mini-instructions that didn't explain much :/

But hey, how hard can it be??Okay, really. It took us a half hour to figure out which set of legs was supposed

to go in front and which was supposed to go in back.

None of the stupid parts were even labeled!!! Grrrrr.

But finally we figured it out, and then the rest of set up went much better!

We only ran in to a few more problems...

But after a few more slight set-backs we got the majority of it

put together and the rest was childs play :) Or something like that...

(Slightly crazed laugh) We're done, we're finally done!!!

:) Switchfoot kept us good company for the time it took us.

And then the next morning we unloaded Crystal's trunk which had all the rest

of our little Mother's day surprises in it.

There you are, the finished product!

And Rach and I are about 2 hrs. wiser :D

Graduation Day...

Last Saturday, my Dad walked in the graduation ceremony at

Lincoln Christian University. He had been doing classes there for

a little over a year and got his B.A. in General Ministry.

So us 5, Aunt Pam, Uncle Ron, and Jared all packed up and left good 'ol Eldena at 6 a.m. Moannnn...
We got there 2 hours before the ceremony so Dad could pick up his tassel and get pictures taken with all the other students. Everybody walking down. Here's Dad.

The choir sang a few songs and then the official ceremony started.Standing in line waiting to go up to receive his diploma.
Gettin' the diploma. He graduated 'with high honors'. :)

Then afterwards, there was a little luncheon for the students and their guests.
Aunt Pam, Dad, and Uncle Ron.
Jared, Dad and Uncle Ron. :)
Him and his Diploma...
Dad and Mom with one of Dad's teachers.
Dad and another teacher.

And all of us :) Congratulations Dad! :) Good job!

Hello Everyone!

Hey lil' blog following!
I'm trying to keep consistent with posting so that I don't get out
of practice... So even though I don't have any pictures or anything I'm
still posting! I hope it doesn't bore you too much.

Today we (Crystal, Rach, and I) went Mothers Day shopping... :D
I can't tell you what we got, because it's still a secret since Mom hasn't
seen what we have in store for her tomorrow... (Muahahaha!)
I'm pretty sure she's got a pretty good clue as to what we got her, (mainly because
I asked her what she wanted and told her to let us know by Friday, and then she
only told me 3 things...) But hey!

Then after we got home I made supper! Chicken Fajitas! :D I loooove them...
And so now as we wait for Dad to get home so we can eat I'm blogging to you :)
And I'm sort of watching Mom, she's playing the Wii with Rachel and is SUPER
competitive. It is sooo funny to hear some of the sounds coming from the living room!

Well all, that's about it...
Oh, I bought a book today... Little Women. I saw it when we stopped at this garage sale
and it was brand new and a great cloth hardback for only $2!! :D

So anyway, I have nothing more to post...
I just thought I'd try to stay in practice with being faithful to post more frequently.
Have a great weekend everyone!

Shall We Dance??

Devyn (my niece) has now been living with Josh for 3 months.

Well, while Josh is at work, Devyn comes and stays at our house.

We come up with some of the craziest stuff to do, and I love hearing about

the stuff she comes up with and all the stuff she says is sometimes so funny!

It can sometimes be exhausting, because although I'm 19 and young

and supposed to be full of energy, Devyn is 4 and 4 yr. olds have wayyyy more

energy than their aunts :P
Well, one of the things she came up with for us to do was dance. She saw my boots
and Rachel's shoes out on the mat on the porch, but she looked at them and said,
"Hey, we should dance! And wear our dancing shoes!!" A close up of our 'Dancing Shoes!!'

*Oh, and in case anybody was wondering from the pictures, no,

Devyn did not wet herself, she spilled her juice on herself at breakfast

and it hadn't dried yet.*

Hangin' Out

The first Saturday in April (yes it has been that long since I've blogged),

found us out at Mendota Hills for a cleaning/workday. For some reason

they guys decided that it was us girls' jobs to do the gross cleaning of

the bathrooms and some of the campers... But since there were 3 of us

and we ended up roping Jared in with us so that made 4 it was fun because

like the title says, we just got to hang out.
:D Ready for a big day.

It was nice though because all of the campers had been cleaned last fall so we

were mostly just freshening them up. In a few of them, mice had made some

not so friendly visits over the winter, but it wasn't to bad.And we all took different jobs so it didn't take too long.

Annnd it made the time go much quicker too since Crystal's phone

had a bunch of music downloaded onto it.

And Crystal enjoyed showing off her new 'ride' also. She had just signed the

papers for it two days before...

And last but not least, we got to clean the bathrooms... Oh yay...

So many chemicals, so little space and venhilation...

But let me tell you, I can't even begin to guess how many brain cells were killed

in those 3 hours it took to clean the rooms thoroughly.

Yes, thoroughly. We even mopped the ceilings! :D

Just kidding, only for the pictures.

And it always feels great to see all the hard work done and see how nice it looks. :)

Easter Egg Hunt!

So my fine bloggy friends, I'm FINALLY posting now! I haven't posted

anything lately because basically there hasn't been anything to blog about.

We've been doing lots of stuff, but our little camera is kind of acting up I haven't

taken many pictures and I didn't want to make anybody bored with just a bunch of

word posts. Well, that and I've been lazy... :P

Anyway, the Saturday before Easter was the 3rd annual Eldena Easter Egg hunt!

There were 1 thousand handfilled easter eggs (that took a while to do), and we hid

them all over 3 backyards for the 30ish kids that showed up!

Everybody congregated in our yard to start off and then they all dispersed into their

designated age appropriately hidden areas!

For the younger kids (like the 1-6 year olds) we didn't hide the eggs very hard.
Actually we really didn't hide them at all... They were sort of just laid them out
in the grass. We hid some of them but there were 600 eggs to hide in two
yards and there are only so many hiding places... So I hid as many as I could
but when I ran out of spots to hide them I just started to scatter them on the
grass. Plus, they're so young they enjoyed just getting to harvest them :D
A close up...I don't know if you can see them or not, but this is what I meant about it being
part 'easter egg harvest.' They are just scattered all over the yard.

The little kids were all just so excited! They loved finding each egg and it was

like a major discovery for them even though you saw how I 'hid' them.

And I think the parents enjoyed it almost as much as the kids :)

Even though there were 600 eggs the kids found all but about 25 of them

in just about 15 minutes.

It was fun to see all the families together also. Most of the people in Eldena

all have grown children with kids of their own so it was like grandparents,

their kids, and then all the little grandkids running around.

Cameron and Karley got to come, and it was so nice to have them be there.

The parents were giving clues to the kids ;)

Cannnndyyyyy :D

After all the eggs were found we had snacks set out for everybody.

Chips, vegetables, sandwiches, and rice crispy treats!

And we had little goodie bags for each of the kids.

We made them all. And they were supposed to be Easter Bunnys.

I felt sorry for the parents of the kids who found THIS much candy.

After putting on the Hunt in Eldena we went to Lee Center which is about

15 minutes away from Eldena, and put another hunt on for them! Twice the fun in one day!

There we had 1000 eggs also, but a way smaller space to hide the eggs in and

a lot less time to hide them also, so it was a churchyard that they were

all in this time and by the time we were done it looked like a rainbow!

A little mini 'staff meeting' or something like that :)

There was a great turn out over there! And all those kids found the eggs in even less time than the Eldena kids did!

Yes, they all had a little 'help' but hey, they're young yet...

It was a great day, and warmer this year than last, so all in all

it was a wonderful day! I can't wait until next year!!