Monday

What a busy last few weeks we've had here. Mike's folks came to visit two weeks ago. They stayed in Plainfield and were planning on watching Mark and Julie's younger two while the rest of their family went to Ohio to work at a special needs camp for the week. As it turned out, Julie came down with strep throat! So just Mark and Ben went to the camp, and Gene and Kathy took their girls for the daytimes. They came to play here at camp with our girls, so that gave Julie a chance to rest up, and it gave me a chance to finish up last minute details for VBS the following week. We swam, ate at the dining hall, played at the sandbox and playgrounds, fed the fish, and rode around on the golf cart. We had a great time.

Then the week took a turn for the worse. We got a call Wednesday evening that Mike's grandpa (Kathy's dad) had died. Gene and Kathy rushed back to Iowa. We followed on Friday morning. We noticed we had a tire going bad, so we bought two new tires on our way through Macomb, IL, and had them put on in La Harpe. We spent the night with Mom and Dad, and left Saturday around noon to go to Iowa to be with the family. Mike's grandpa will be missed immensely. He and Mike had a common interest in tractors and mechanical things, and Mike really looked up to him. He always had a dream to spend a couple of weeks in at their place helping his grandpa restore his old John Deere "B". It's thing unfinished that make it difficult, but we know that we will see him again soon.

We came back a day late for VBS at our church. I was the director again this year. We had a great VBS, 230 different kids came through the door, with our biggest day being 210! That's a record, last year's highest day was 160. And we had around 80 helpers, half of them youth! The Lord was definitely glorified through the week. I think the kids really got the message, and didn't just try to win silly prizes. We supported the local school system as our "mission" this year. They have a program that provides school supplies to kids who need them. The kids raised $2222.00 for them, and they wrote notes to put in the back packs that told about Jesus. They also completed three other service projects and commited to do one more during the summer. Now that it's over, I feel like the summer is just beginning. I want to do all the summer things we've been putting off because of VBS planning like going to parks, having friends over, going to the zoo, or whatever.

Wish I had some pics to post, maybe later!

Dirt Drying & Dentist Drilling

Actually, no drilling from the dentist, it just sounded good. The dirt is drying, though! The people who were affected by the floods this past weekend are still trying to dry out and clean out. It's on the news every evening, the prosecuter's office, the hospitals, the police station, and lots of homes were flooded, and we are under a boil water order all week. Here, the ground is beginning to be a little less squishy in places, but it will take a while to get all the puddles dried up.

The Dentist...I took Hannah and Alli to the dentist today for the first time while Carrie stayed with Angie. They did great! The dentist said they both have identical crossbites (that's where on one side of their mouth the upper teeth fit over the lower teeth, but on the other side, the lower teeth go over the uppers). He said that at age 8 or 9 they would recommend a palate expander that would push the uppers out over the lowers. He said Alli's front teeth were a little crowded, and that maybe that expander would prevent her from having to have braces, but all this is on a 3 year old, so when the permanent teeth come in we'll see. Anyway, they had a good time. On the way home we celebrated by covering their teeth with sugar at Dairy Queen! But they came home and couldn't wait to brush their teeth with their new tooth brushes. They even remembered Carrie and got her a new toothbrush from the dentist!

Rain, rain, rain!

We just had the longest thunderstorm I can remember! It started storming at 9:00 last night and didn't quit until about 2:30 this afternoon...let's see, that's 17 hours of storming! And it was a downpour through all of it. I've heard different reports of how much rain we got, at 9:00 this morning a town nearby had already received 9 inches of rain. Our rain guage overflowed at 5 inches, but that was early this morning. Our yard is clearing out now that the rain is done, but we have one tree down from the storm. At camp it's another story. At least three trees down, and the lakes were WAY out of bounds. They were both going over the dams with such a current that a car could have been swept away if it had tried to go through. And now that the water has gone down a little, you can see that the gravel is washed away from under the pavement. Mike's been at camp trying to get the trees cut up and all the buildings swept up and dried up. He has a lot of work to do, and five people have come down to help out, so hopefully they will have it somewhat ready for camp tomorrow! Our county is in a state of emergency and no one is supposed to be out on the roads. But I'm glad the rain is over. Now everything will dry up a little, and people can clean up a little. I was thinking about the flood of 1993 when the Mississippi was 20 feet above flood stage! Thankfully this is just one long day of rain and our house isn't covered with water.

Warm weather at last!

It seems like this spring has been unusually cool, but finally it's summer-like! Yesterday and today it has been around 90 degrees and humid, but we'll take that just to be able to get outside and play.

Carrie loves playing outside! As soon as she's done eating breakfast in the morning, she wants me to open the door for her. It doesn't matter if her sisters are out there playing or not, she will play alone for a long time outside. She's such a goof. You can see the ornery-ness in her. She teases her sisters and acts silly just to get a reaction out of them! And she says all kinds of things--loudly! She yells to Daddy when she sees him around camp like this, "AAAAAAAAAAAAA DAAAA DAAAAAAA!" And she says, "Bye Bye Dada" and "book" and "baby" and "Hot! Hot!" and "juice" and "shoes" (which she loves to wear, just like a girl!). She's so funny to watch while she's walking. She kinda waddles, and she keeps her arms bent at her elbows. But she never stops for long. She is so active and busy all the time!

Alli was playing "super hero" today. That means she was dressed in her floaty swim suit (panties showing out the back!), dress-up high heels, and a bright red cape! At lunch we were talking about flying in a plane through the clouds and she said, "If I was in a plane I would open the window and JUMP OUT (as she makes a gesture with her hands taking a flying leap into the air) and I could fly because I would have on my red super hero cape!" When she says silly things like that, Hannah says very seriously, "That's a great imagination, Alli, but that could never happen."

Hannah can draw just about anything! When Daddy leaves for work she quickly draws him a detailed picture "to remember me by" and tells him that if he thinks of her he can pull out the picture and be happy. This is a picture of a bird!

Camp started this week, and it's so much fun to see the campers running around and hear them playing again! There was a tornado a few miles from here the other day, and yesterday a huge branch fell out of a tree at camp just as a group of kids was walking under the other side of the tree. It would have been a bad situation had they been walking under the side that the branch fell out of. God has no doubt been watching out for us, with disasters just missing us by a hair.