My life is pretty great... :o)

First of all, thank you all for the prayers and encouraging words. I really do appreciate it. One of my blogging buddies (yes, you, J!) helped me to remember that it's not my life that has problems, but mainly my attitude. When I'm stressed and tired, I don't react well to much of anything. Especially when I'm tired (what can I say, I am my mother's daughter! :o)) (LOVE YOU, MOM!)

The state inspection of my preschool was today and it went really well. I was even complimented. The lady thought I had done a wonderful job of gathering the documentation I needed as well as making charts from scratch that I should have been able to fill in from her charts that she forgot to give me. Anyway, it is over and it went well. We can start preschool!
I've gotten a lot done in the way of stuff to get ready for school, too. I had to refill my printer twice on Saturday because I was printing so much stuff out. My co-teacher and I have decided that at least for the first month, she will teach the 4 year old class and I will teach the 3 year old class. This way we can learn each other's style of teaching, see if either of us is "better" at one aspect of teaching than the others, etc. I offered to teach the 4's since they are a 5 days/week program and the 3's are only 3 days/week...I didn't want her to have the heavier load, but she said she LOVES teaching 4's and would prefer that, FINE BY ME! So, at least for now we have a game plan. We still need to gather all 4 teachers for a planning session, that will come...
I think I'm going to take tomorrow almost entirely off from school to get this house worked on. It has completely fallen apart with me being so consumed by school stuff and that is one thing that stresses me out! I'm no neat freak (by ANY stretch of the imagination), but when the house is THIS chaotic I can't think strait. I can't cook, I don't even know where to start in the cleaning. So, tonight I got the kids back on their chores from the school year. Abbie vacuumed (and then I 'helped' finish it up) and I shampooed the dining room carpets. Whoever thought it would be a good idea to put carpet in a dining room needs to be SLAPPED! Tomorrow I'm going to shampoo the living room. Plus, I plan on finding my kitchen counters, and that floor could use a GOOD scrubbing!

If you are the praying kind (and I know almost all of my blog readers are!) please keep my aunt Marilyn in your prayers. She fell this past weekend and broke her elbow. OUCH! It's a clean break, but she's in a cast from fingers to shoulder. I can only imagine how painful and INCONVENIENT that must be. Her typing skills have certainly taken a turn for the worse (;o)) Love ya M!

We will be seeing family this weekend because my parents are celebrating 40 years of wedded bliss! I'm so blessed to have such wonderful examples of what a marriage is and can be. Are they perfect? No. Do they fight? Well, yea. But do they love each other more than anything. YES! And that is what a marriage is made of. Love, Patience, Forgiveness...Thank you Mom and Dad for being that kind of example to me. I love you guys!!

Well, my favorite Hubby just walked in the door with a DQ Blizz*rd for me! YUMMY! I'd better go eat it before it melts.
Thanks again for all your love and encouragement. Today is a new day, and tomorrow is yet another one!

Blogging Break

I know I haven't been blogging much, and I'm sorry. I'm in a stressed, tired, frustrated place right now and I just can't put the extra energy into writing something "happy" for my blog. I'm going to try to get myself out of this 'funk' and when I do, I'll be back.
Love to you all...Andie

Happy Birthday to ME!

It's my birthday....no big deal. I'm getting older by the minute, hubby keeps reminding me! :) Andrew surprised me this morning by bringing me breakfast...in the bathroom! I was showered and dressed, but not finished getting ready. I opened the bathroom door and there was Andrew with a pop-tart (I normally don't buy these!) and a glass of milk. He even toasted the pop-tart, poured the milk (and didn't spill!). How sweet is that?!!?!
Abbie and I spent the morning at 4-H judging for our county fair. This is her first year in 4-H. She entered two ceramic pieces and some pictures in photography. She received a purple (best) and a blue (next to best) in ceramics. On her photography she received two purple, a few blue, a bunch of reds and one white (lowest ribbon). Overall, for being her first year, she did awesome!
While we were at the 4-H judging, I found out that an important piece of paperwork was FINALLY finished for preschool. We've been waiting on this paper for months. We can't get our state certification until we have this paper, an inspection, and then get the paperwork back from the state. I'm afraid we'll not be ready to start when we would like to, but I'm trying! It's been out of my hands (board and church trustees have been working on it) for so long, just waiting and waiting (I'm not good at that!).
VBS is over for another year. It was a great time, LOTS of kids for our small church. We normally have around 10 kids on a Sunday for Sunday school...and we had 52 children for VBS!!!! AMAZING! We are thrilled with the turn out! Most of the children are from other churches, but there are some who are unchurched, so we are planning some follow-up for those families. God is good!
We had our annual church pool party last night. It's always a good time. Lots of good food and fun with God's people! I actually was having so much fun that I forgot to take any pictures.
We've had some late nights with our busy week...I think I'm going to curl up on the couch with my little one and take a birthday nap! I will try to post pictures later...ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ...

We love Glenda

Many of you might remember that my neighbors are moving. The days are dwindling, and we are trying to love on Glenda while we can. Anytime we see her outside, we head over for hugs. Last night when we arrived home from VBS she was outside trying to take a picture of a spider, silly thing wouldn't cooperate! Glenda is a very talented photographer. Her sprinklers were running, and I told my kids to go ahead and have fun so I could chat with Glenda. They were all hot and sweaty and I was planning to shower them when we got home anyway! They ran and had fun, Glenda and I chatted a bit, and she snapped away. Before I even got myself to bed, she emailed me the pictures. Like I said, she's a very talented photographer...when she moves I guess I'll have to get my camera out more often!

Glenda called them over and whispered something in their ears, and soon they all came running, DRIPPING over to me and gave me WET hugs...what fun!

Glenda has a BIG frog/toad (HOPPY THING...ICK!) living in her srinkler box, she wanted to show the kids, so I took the camera and snapped a few, I'm so thankful they couldn't find that nasty hopping thing! (Have I ever told you how much I HATE frogs?)

We will live next to this wonderful woman for only about one more week, then she will move to Ohio to join her husband who began a new job there 2 months ago. We already miss Terry, and now we know we will miss Glenda, too. The family who will be moving in is going to be fun to have around, though. They have 3 kids, a daughter Andrew's age, a son Bethany's age, and a 1 year old daughter. We know this family and like them a lot, it will be good to have more kids on the block...and it will be fun to get to know them better. But, they will never fill Terry and Glenda's shoes!

VBS night 2!

Last night we had about 40 kids, tonight....51! Yes, 51!! We usually have around 10 children in Sunday school each week, so this is totally awesome! I was so glad I had a second craft prepared for the little ones, just in case (I only had 48 of the original craft available)! We did, however run out of t-shirts. A wonderful company here in our town makes t-shirts for all the VBS programs for FREE! We just get some clip-art to them and tell them how many you want, they give them to us. What a wonderful ministry! I'm going to call them in the morning to see if I can possibly get 12 more shirts! I told each of the parents that we ran out and would try to get more, they were all really understanding, most told us not to worry about it because their kids "don't need ANOTHER t-shirt!" which I can totally relate to! But, the kids all want one like their friends, so I'm going to see if she can make us some more. We have so many people just showing up and asking "What can I do?" Which is totally awesome! Thank You, God, for providing all we need! Please bless all the children, parents, and volunteers....THANK YOU, GOD!
I am taking lots of pictures, we usually make a CD with all the pics for parents to purchase at the closing (to help defray some of the costs!), so I'll try to post more of them later in the week! Thanks for your prayers.

ND Pictures

Here are the long awaited pictures from our trip to North Dakota...at least a few of them.

The cutie with the curly hair is my niece, Addison...isn't she just about the cutest thing you've ever seen??? And just ask her any question and she shakes her head "NO!"...it's so adorable! The only question she doesn't answer "NO" to is "Do you want a raspberry?" She'll come running from the other end of the house to answer this question with a mouth open wide! Again, I say...ADORABLE!

Here the kids are waiting for the 4th of July parade to begin...and the raining of candy, which of course is the best part of ANY parade! The boy in the chair behind the kids on the curb is my oldest nephew, Hunter (he's too old for chasing after candy...yea right!)...and his younger brother, Braden, is sitting next to Andrew (Braden is 8 months older than Andrew...they are the best of friends!). Addison is their baby sister.Here Bethany is a bit saddened because she didn't get one of the candies thrown out from a float, the other kids are much quicker than she...but they all shared in the end! (WAY too much candy anyway!) What would the 4th of July be without sparklers and fireworks? My new camera has a cool "fireworks" setting! Very neat. Got some cool shots of the kids with their sparklers and the fireworks. We had 8 children, and 4 "grown" men who shot of literally hundreds of dollars in fireworks...WHEW! Can you say NERVOUS! I am always so worried that someone will get hurt. Then when one of the guys lit a roman candle, and put it in the pipe (stuck in the ground to hold such an item!) UPSIDE DOWN! (it was an accident, he thought that was the right way!) It flew out on the first round and then shot it's fireballs right where all the children were...THANK GOD no one got hit! We all were pretty freaked out, but all went well from then on. Bethany did back into Abbigail's sparkler, but only got a tiny red mark on her shoulder, but I think it scared her more than anything.

While we were in ND, the church where hubby grew up celebrated their 125th anniversary! We had picnics, horse carriage rides, games, a balloon release, and lots of other fun stuff. Here are a few pictures from that! It's literally a little country church, dirt roads and all! This is what the church looks like from the back of the horse carriage.

Here is a very rare picture of my mother-in-law. I think this may be only the third or fourth picture of her that I have, not including wedding pics. She doesn't know I took it! ;o) She did a lot of the work for the anniversary festivities.

These other cuties are my other niece and nephew (Bailey & Maddox). Their dad is in Iraq serving in the army...actually he should be HOME right now for his 2 weeks of R&R. Originally we thought he would be home over the 4th, so we would be able to see him, but the army postponed his leave for a few weeks, so it didn't work out. Prayers for his continued safety are very much appreciated!

OKOKOK...so there are more than a few, but hey, it's MY blog! Besides, they are cute kiddos, what are ya gonna do? :o)

First night of VBS...whew!

Oh boy Oh boy...it's VBS week. I'm exhausted and it's only the first night! We had almost 40 children tonight, which is just about what we had last year, and we have a bunch more who registered and just couldn't make it tonight...we'll have more tomorrow. One wrench that was thrown to me was a new baby! NOT MINE! :o) One of the ladies who was leading one of the centers had her baby on Saturday (a full 4 weeks early!...both mother and daughter are doing wonderful!) and I had to BEG in church for replacements! Two women came forward able to cover the week, He always provides!
If you wouldn't mind...please pray for all those involved in our VBS, the children and the volunteers. That we would all grow to know Jesus as our "Forever Friend" Thanks!

We're in the south (ok, center) again!

We made it home last night around 11:00 pm. We're EXHAUSTED! We had lots of fun, took lots of pictures, and had lots of fun (did I say that twice?? :o))

To answer one question from the comments in the last post, yes, there is Internet UP there in the NORTH country, and my brother-in-law actually has high-speed now, last year it was dial-up (I DO NOT have the patience for dial-up!)...but we were too busy chasing the 6 kiddos, shopping with my sis-in-law (LOTS of good clearance deals!) and just hanging out and having a good time to sit on my computer all day. I'll try to get the pictures off the camera and post them soon. I'm going to be a bit busy this week getting ready for VBS which starts on Sunday, but hopefully I'll have time to do the pictures this evening!

The trip home was much less eventful in the area of wild life (are bulls wild??), but it got interesting toward the end when my dear hubby started feeling sick. My niece had a bit of a tummy bug for a few days during our trip, but we all thought she was eating too much fruit (little fruit monster!) and teething...but apparently not. I ended up driving the ENTIRE way from North Dakota to Kansas! I have bragging rights now! Hubby hasn't ventured much out of the bedroom today, so back from a trip and he's already taking sick days! Poor guy!