Sunday, February 28, 2010

A blog that is way more important and meaningful than mine.

Today, across the ocean, in the African country of Uganda, lives a 21-year-old young lady named Katie. Jesus called her to leave her comfortable life in the USA and she obeyed. Now she is a single mother to 14 adopted African girls and pours herself out for hundreds of other children there. Her life is not easy at all, but she has such tremendous JOY. She is living out the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And... she has a blog. It's inspiring and fantastic, but very challenging. So consider yourself warned. But read it anyway.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Illinois's First Mountain Range!

What do you get when you put together: 1 fresh snowfall of great packing snow + 1 morning with no pressing time commitments + 2 girls itching to build something really cool? Answer: Snow cones?
 
Valerie and I have been wanting to build something (reliving the good old days) for the past two years, but we never had the "perfect snow". We also discovered that it is hard to build giant forts and such without the boys. (Good packing snow is heavy!) So we did our own thing. It took about two hours to make 22 cones and we were too tired to do the other side of the driveway. ("Tomorrow", we said.) Of course the next day it was colder and the snow was horrible for packing!

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Project Proverbs 365 - The Blog!

I started a new blog! Don't worry, my little readership, it won't replace this one. In fact, it isn't about what I have to say at all. It's simply a directory of all the Proverbs I'm memorizing, one a day. I think it will be a useful index, and typing them in will be a nice reinforcement. (Speaking of typing them in, I should mention that I am not caught up to today's verse yet. Hopefully that will not remain the case for long.) Though it was made mainly for my personal benefit, and I do not expect a horde of followers, I thought I'd make a mention of it.

As our pastor says, "May the Lord add His blessing to the reading of His Word." Amen.

Monday, February 15, 2010

More Grand Prix Car Pictures

 
Brian and David arranging the cars.

 
Center: Mine ("The Dice") Clockwise from top: Michael's "Clothespin", Laura's "Icecube", Brian's "Speed Van", Mom's "Upside-Down Flower Basket", David's "Like-the-sample-instructions Car", Stephanie's  "Skateboard". 

 Michael's was my favorite.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Grand Prix 2010

This was our first year doing the Awana Grand Prix at this church, and despite some differences, I think everyone had fun! There was a clubbers' and a leaders' division. Our family's cars are never big speed winners so we tend to go for Best Design, often with non-car designs. I didn't know what I wanted to do until the eleventh hour, because I really wanted to do something rectangular (a tradition starting with "Butter"), but Laura came up with a great idea the day before - dice! And then Chris and Michael did the drillwork. So all I did was sand and paint. But I am happy with how it turned out.

Before paint and wheels / After paint and wheels














The ribbon is just for participating. Sadly, the leader division had no Best Design judging.

If I can, I'll get a picture of our family's other cars. Stephanie made a skateboard and Michael made a working clothespin! (I think David was the only one that made a "real car", lol.)