4th of July

We had a great 4th of July! We started the day with a patriotic breakfast. The girls and I made pound cake yesterday, so we had cake for breakfast with strawberries and blueberries on top. Then they colored pictures for decorations. We went to camp to see a girl from our church get baptized at noon. She was a camper here this week, and she was so excited that she was being baptized! After the girls' afternoon nap, Hannah asked, "Is this the day we get to go see fireworks?" I said yes, and she replied, "Ohhhh, this is the moment I've been waiting for!"

We took the girls to Franklin's Masonic Home where they had a huge celebration on their front lawn. The girls got to watch a short 5 minute parade with kids and parents riding their bikes/wagons all decorated for the 4th. They picked up all the candy their little hands could hold and stuffed it into my pockets. The Masonic home's front lawn is HUGE and they have a fountain in the center, the girls had fun by that.

And they played on the big inflatable slide and bounce house. They watched a Silly Safari show with "Amazon John" who showed off his pets: a huge python, a cute little hedgehog, and a gigantic frog. We sat next to a family that was in our small group this past year, we had fun chatting with them. Then, finally, the fireworks. They didn't start until about 10:15 or later! But all three girls stayed awake and watched them. Hannah said, "I didn't know they would be this beautiul!" We got home about 11:15pm, the girls went to bed, and slept until 7:30 this morning. They're taking a good nap now, thankfully, because everyone was a bit grumpy today.


Thursday the girls and I were walking over by Mike's shop at camp and they started splashing in the puddles. Here's a look!
And a few weeks ago, they had giant lollipops. Just thought it was a good Kodak moment.

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.

Hello out there!

Since I've written last...Alli's fever broke the afternoon after we took her to the hospital for labs, wouldn't you know. The labs ended up coming back negative on everything, too. She's getting her energy back slowly, she still seems a bit tired and cranky--more than usual.

We've been trying to be patient with the weather. It seems like it rains two days then it's dry two days. And the temerature isn't that warm yet either--around 63 degrees or so. But today it's actually pretty nice out.

Today we had Angie's two youngest kids here for part of the morning. I was already planning to have another mom from church here with her 4 year old and baby for a VBS meeting, so we had a houseful of little kids. There were two 4 year olds, two 3 year olds, one 2 year old, one 1 year old, and one 6 month old! Actually, it was a great morning. The kids played together so well, and the other mom and I got a lot of VBS planning done.

Tomorrow is a community 5K walk/run where I'll have a booth set up for VBS registrations. That will be fun! So I'd better get some work done for it.

Alli's fever

Sunday night Alli felt warm as we were getting ready for bed. She woke up in the night burning up. In the morning ther temperature was 103 degrees. She didn't have any other symptoms, but she was tired and "shiver-y". She had the high fever again on Tuesday, so I took her to the doctor to check her ears since we just got through with a round of antibiotics for ear infections a few days before. The doctor said her ears were fine, but her throat was red. He did a Strep test, but it came back negative, so he thought it must be something viral. (As a side note, the kids did great in the dr's this time!) She continued with the 103-104 degree temp all day Wednesday and Thursday. But around noon on Thursday, I found a tick in Alli's hair. It was a little smaller than a pencil eraser, so I must have not seen it for a day or two! Then I got worried that it might be Lyme's Disease, so I called the doctor again. He said he thought it wasn't related, but because of her fever he wanted to see her again, this time to take a urine sample. Luckily she had to go before we left the house because I don't think we would have gotten the sample from the doctor's office! He said the urine was fine and a second strep test was negative, so he ordered labs. We all got buckled in the van to drive a block to the hospital to get the labs done. They behaved so well! The lab technicians had to swab Alli's throat again and take some blood from her arm. She was brave, and they even gave her a purple teddy bear with a bandage on it like her own. Hannah and Carrie got matching teddy bears (without the bandage) for being good helpers. The nurse called with the results this morning. She said the blood work showed nothing bacterial, and the throat culture won't be done until tomorrow. She still had a temp of 104 today, but this afternoon it started to go down. By this evening she only felt a little warm and she was getting her appetite back! Thank God, because I don't think I could have gone a whole weekend of worrying and assuming the worst.

And my long, drawn out story about a fever being a problem is nothing. My friend Amy is at the hospital now with her 5 month old daughter who had open heart surgery yesterday. She is recovering well. Isn't it amazing to see how God can be watching each of us and He knows what we're worried about. He reveals himself to us as our Great Physician in times of great and small health problems.