A Busy, Busy Week

    Hey, everyone!
    So, this last week has been probably the busiest week of my life (so far).
    In the mornings (Monday thru Friday) we attended a Vacation Bible School at the Grace Church of Orange, 9:30-12:30. Annie and Jonathan participated in the classes, and I volunteered. This year, I volunteered in Snacks. Yum!
    For me, it's was pretty interesting. I worked with 3 moms and 2 college-aged girls : none of my friends. It was a little out of my comfort zone, but I think it was good for me. Everyone was super nice, which helped. Sometimes we were super busy, and sometime we were just standing around doing nothing.
But it was a nice place to volunteer at, because I got to see everyone who came through, including my friends. We had a blast!
This is the Snack Team:

 

If you can't tell, I'm on the far right with the name tag. It was spy-themed. =)

    On Tuesday, I volunteered at our local library's Summer Reading Program from 3-5pm. My (and 3 other people's) job was to sign up kids 0-12 years old for the program. It was also Festival Day, so I expected a lot of 'business', but there was actually a large amount of time just sitting and people watching.
    After VBS on Wednesday, Annie, Jonathan, my mom, and I went swimming with some friends of ours. We had a bunch of fun. It was also Water Day at VBS (they had a huge water slide!), so we got lots of water that day.
    Thursday afternoon, I had a dress rehearsal for my ballet performance which took place Saturday. It went really well.
    Emily and David came home from their week at Worldview Academy up at Master's College on Friday. Mom and Dad left around 6:00am to pick them up. So when Annie, Jonathan, and I woke up, there were no adults in the house! It was exciting for me, because I have never been left alone in the house with my younger siblings when our parents (or Emily & David) weren't there. At 8:30am, a lady from our church drove us to our final day of VBS. (Thank you!!) We had a lovely last day of Vacation Bible School and we are quite sad to have it end.
    Finally, on Saturday, I had a BethEl Ballet performance from 2-4pm. My class danced to a song called Forever Reign by the Newsboys. I really enjoyed dancing and glorifying God! The whole performance was beautiful and I enjoyed it immensely.
    After our ballet performance, a friend of mine (from ballet) and I went and got haircuts! We both got side bangs (hers on the right and mine on the left).
    So, it has been an extremely busy week, but I have had so much fun and wouldn't mind doing it all over again (just not too many times)!

Bean-Bag Fun

This past week we have been having an extremely fun creativity spree.
My mom found a project on Pinterest and brought it to our attention. We schemed a little bit, sewed a little bit, and then made a trip to Walmart and Home Depot (one store on one day, and one on another day). It took a lot of time to find the pieces we needed at Home Depot and figure out how to put them together, but we did it. We drove home (in our new car) and congregated in the backyard. There was a bunch of cutting tarp, duck-taping, drilling little holes, and tying string for the next hours.
It took two days, but we did it, and had a bunch of fun in the process.

Here is what we made:

                                                                         (Front)

 

(Back)

 

       Annie and I sewed different bean bags for each team.      

                                                                  This is the Blue Team:

                                                 

                                                                   And the Red Team:

                                                   
                                                              And the Blue & Red Team:

The point of the game is to throw your bean bag through the holes. You gain points depending on which hole your bean bag passes through (such as 50, 25, 10, and 5). Once everyone has used up all of their bags, whoever has the most points, wins the game.
The game has also turned into a wack-a-pest game. But that can be very painful and get quite wild. Which introduces our next project . . .
Rather then  bean bags, we plan to bunch sponges together and soak them in water. We'll use them like water balloons, but reusable ones that leave no mess. Then the painless summer fun can begin!

Pluckin' Away at a Piano in Front of a Crowd

    I've been taking piano lessons for around 4 years, with two different teachers (not at the same time, of course). Our latest piano teacher, Ms. Christy, lives just on the next block in our neighborhood, so we (being David, Annie, Jonathan, and I) don't have a long way to walk to our lessons every Thursday. Which is very nice!
    This Sunday, we had our spring piano recital. We kids have never really enjoyed recitals . . . well, except for the snacks afterward. =) But this time we weren't as nervous, thankfully, and it went really well with few mistakes. I played a song called Jessica's Theme from the Man From Snowy River. It was hard and took a lot of work, but it sounded really pretty!
    I have really enjoyed playing the piano and plan to continue!

Vroom, Vroom!!

    I was surprised when my mom and dad were brought up to the front of our church this past Sunday. I thought the church was just going to thank my dad for being such the wonderful pastor that he is by giving him a card or something. But I was even more surprised when they were then presented with a car key!
    Our mouths hanging open, we were then all led outside to see our new car!! The church had all pitched in and got us a used, but looking very new, red Dodge Grand Caravan!!!
    We were (and still are) blown away by God's goodness to our family! It feels like we're on 'vacation' with a rental car, but it's actually ours!!
    We are all so thankful to God and our church! We can never thank them enough!!

THANK YOU!!!!!