Introducing...

Rachael and Shawn! You might have seen Rachael before on my blog because she is a co-worker of mine and Haley's teacher, but this is Shawn's premiere. I told them they are very special to get their own blog post! Shawn and Rachael have become quite special to Jeff and I, and our family. Shawn has joined our church as worship leader, and he brings such energy to our church. He has 25 guitars (I think that is accurate-correct me if its not Shawn) and loves music, his love for Christ and music comes out when he plays and leads worship. Jenna, who has a love for guitar playing also has really connected with Shawn and on his first Sunday leading worship had her up there with him playing and even gave her her first guitar solo!

Rachael and Shawn met this past summer in Tennessee on a bike trip and it was "love at first sight" and after 2 days Shawn told her "she was the kind of girl he could marry," Rachael wasn't quite sure about that, it took her MUCH longer, a whole 12 days to decide that he was the right one for her, and the rest is history. He moved to Iowa, the worst winter ever to live in Iowa, to be near Rachael and they have set their wedding for July 12th. Jeff will perform their ceremony, and he is truly honored to do it.

We have grown to love Shawn and Rachael and I am sure you will hear a lot more about them as time goes by. They are a very special couple, and we are truly blessed to have them in our lives.

Beauty School Dropout

Last night we had Shawn and Rachael over to watch basketball, actually Rachael and I worked on assembling her wedding invitations, their wedding is July 12th. So here is the story of Shawn dyeing Jenna's hair. I bought a hair highlighting kit and highlighted my hair on Saturday night, so of course Jenna wanted her hair highlighted. Well, it got a little too highlighted and it got a little too blond, I thought it was cute but she hated it. Soooo...Sunday afternoon I stopped and bought another hair dyeing kit to redo her hair. Now, why do you say, is Shawn qualified to dye Jenna's hair. Well...Shawn used to, in a former life, be a part of a Christian rock band that traveled all over. He and his band mates would dye their hair every color of the rainbow. Bright red, blue green etc. He had long curly hair. They would change their hair color every few weeks or so, after totally stripping all color off of it with bleach. Well after many many months of this, one day, as Shawn was bleaching his hair all his hair started falling out! It literally came out in his hands. That very day he pulled all his hair out and since then has shaved his head bald. So we decided that he is qualified to dye Jenna's hair, but only one time!! I did tell him that we would come back to him in about a month for a root touch up! Shawn is such a good sport.

A Real Princess

Haley's all time favorite movie is The Princess and the Pauper. She has watched it a gazillion times. This past weekend she got the idea that she needed to prove that she is a real princess also. In the movie, there are 2 girls that look exactly the same- the real princess has a birthmark of a crown on her shoulder. So Saturday morning, before she was even totally awake-as you can tell by her sleepy eyes, she had me drawing a crown on her shoulder so she could prove to all that she is the real deal. She is such a little sweety, with a vivid imagination.

Record Setting Attendance

Yesterday was our first double service Sunday on a "nothing special going on" day. It wasn't Christmas or Easter so we were actually worried that we would have like 80 in the first service and like 2 in the second. (Jeff had a dream that happened!) The day was phenomenal! Total attendance was 125! We have never had that many on just a "normal" day. We were very excited. Our worship music is just awesome, especially since Shawn has come our way,(more about Shawn on a later post- there is quite a lot to say about him!) and EVERY week we have at least one new couple/family there! Yesterday we had one of each. We were exhausted when church finished at noon, but we then went to Steak and Shake with Shawn and Rachael, I then ran to Walmart, came home and found my neighbors outside. I talked to them for quite awhile and finally went inside to realize that company was coming in 20 minutes. A young single guy name Ryan and Shawn and Rachael were coming over to watch basketball. I had to hurry to get my house looking in order. I didn't do much- as with good friends I am not trying to impress. I made white chicken chili for us all to eat. Throughout the course of the evening pool was played, wedding invites were made and Jenna's hair was dyed! (by Shawn!- I will include that story when I tell you all about Shawn and Rachael later-hopefully tonight.) S & R left around 10 and I realized that I hadn't even brought my school bag in from the trunk of the van from Friday! Oh well...I decided to blow it off this weekend...only 9 weeks to go- 45 more days! But, who's counting! :)

More Easter Pictures

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY WONDERFUL MOM TODAY! (I won't reveal her age-but its somewhere above 40! :) Thanks for being a wonderful, supportive, loving mom! I wouldn't be able to make it in this world without you!

Happy Easter!- I know its taken me a week to get these posted. Better late than never. We had a great Easter day-celebrating our risen Lord. Church was awesome! We have begun to go to double services from Easter until Mother's Day. A 9:30 and an 11:00 service. It is always very nerve racking to do this. Double the people to work in the nursery and back in Children's worship. We got it taken care of. Overall everything went great, and the total for both services was around 170! Probably about 15 of those were people that had to stay for both services so our total would have been 155 or so. We thought that was great! In the first pic in the second row you can see that Jeff has collapsed on the couch after lunch, people don't realize, including Haley-who jumped on top of him to eat her Easter candy, how much work a pastor does, in preparation for and on the actual day of any normal service, let alone double services on Easter.

After the service Jeff and Jenna went up to the airport to pick up my parents, they were flying back from San Antonio where they had been all week. Their plane was late etc. so we didn't eat Easter lunch until about 3:00. My parents stayed for awhile after lunch, in the very middle picture you can see all the girls piled around my mom and Jenna as Jenna works on her new paint by number.
She loves those things!

After a quick nap, we went up to the hospital to visit some friends that had a new baby girl the Friday before. We took their new little baby, Sariah, her first Easter basket. It was then time to go home and collapse after a busy busy weekend!

This morning I was up at 6:30-on a Saturday!!! Jenna pulled her first all nighter last night. The Middle School lock-in was last night. I was on the planning committee but I told them I'll plan,plan, plan but I am NOT spending the night! Jenna woke up Friday morning at precisely 6:15 because she wanted to stay up for exactly 24 hours, and 6:15 this morning was when everyone had to get packed up and get ready to go from the lock-in. I went and picked her up this am and she said she did it! Her first all-nighter! Oh to be young again!

I haven't included any pictures of the house lately because it doesn't look any different. For the last 2 weeks they have been working on the heating, plumbing, and all the wiring. All the boring work where you don't see much progress. They will be done on Monday with all that, the inspector will come on Tuesday, they will probably have to change a few things on Wed. and then they will start dry-walling Wed. afternoon or so. That should take them about a week to dry wall. Today we have to go and pick out the floor tile. We picked out the hard wood floors- THAT was a tough decision. After the tile, next is the carpet and the lighting. We have most of the paint colors picked out. Jeff's dad and brother are coming the second week in April to paint the whole house so we have our colors finalized and bought by then. To sum up this whole building process in 5 words: A pain in the butt! As of right now I wouldn't do it again. We'll see how I feel after we are moved in and are actually able to enjoy all our work. It truly is AT LEAST a part time job! Most of that has fallen to Jeff, which has added soooo much stress to his already stressful life. We are hoping that this last month and a 1/2 of the process goes smoother than the first 5 months or so. Normally it takes about 3 months to build a house, but with all the problems we had with our land-remember the dump underneath our back yard!- and also the TERRIBLE weather we have had- oh by the way, we had another inch of snow yesterday morning on the ground when we woke up- this building process has lasted WAY TOO LONG!

I hope you all have a great Saturday!

House Offer!

Don't get too excited...we did get an offer on our house, but not on our present house, on the NEW house. A man called our builder and said he wanted to buy our house! He must have walked through it and liked it and wanted it... the kicker is is that there are not even any walls up yet. Only the frames...it takes a lot of imagination to figure out what all the rooms are. Jenna did say, "isn't the blueprint nailed up on the wall for the builders to follow- he probably looked at that as he walked through." She's probably right, but for all the time we have put into that thing already...it isn't for sale!!!

Easter egg dyeing

Happy Easter! We dyed Easter eggs today on our last day of Spring Break! Boo Hoo! It went waaayyy too fast. Jeff and I were up at the new house so much this week, especially Jeff, so many decisions to be made. Exciting things, like where we want the light switches, outlets and cable. Boring! I never realized that those decisions really are difficult and the electrician is like standing there waiting on us to make it! Scooby got a new hair cut yesterday and is a new man. He is all decked out in his Easter best from the groomer.

Haley celebrates 5 years!

Haley turned 5 yesterday! Our baby! We began celebrating the night before (the 18th). We were at the mall and we let her create her own puppy at Build-a-Bear. The first picture is of her getting her puppy stuffed. While she was stuffing her puppy Santa came up behind her. Ok, Ok...I know what you're thinking....Santa in March. But it REALLY was Santa. (or at least the santa that visits our mall) He was in "street clothes" and said that he was just down here making sure that kids were acting good after Christmas. He chatted with Haley and wished her happy birthday! Now I hate to admit this, especially since my sister will laugh and laugh but as soon as I pulled out my camera to take a picture of Santa with Haley MY CAMERA BATTERY DIED!!! Leah is ALWAYS teasing me about this. There is a commercial where a guy is getting ready to take a picture of a UFO and his camera battery dies. That is SOOOO me! So...I have no picture of Santa with Haley. (Leah, you can pick yourself up off the floor now!) My problem is this...I always keep my camera in my purse, so I always have it with me but...then I have a hard time remembering to recharge it! Ok-enough on that. Haley had a great time picking out her puppy-"Princess", she picked out a cute dress and purse to complete Princess' look. While she wasn't looking I bought her a Little Mermaid outfit for Princess, L.M. is her favorite movie. It comes complete with a red wig. Very cute. Jeff also bought her a "Beararmoire". An armoire for all her Build-a-Bear clothes. That was the main thing that she wanted for her birthday. When she opened it she was very excited.

Haley was awakened on her birthday (the 19th) to breakfast in bed from her sisters. (2nd pic) It was complete with toast, scrambled eggs and yogurt. I think she took about 2 bites. In the 4th picture she is helping mix the white and choc. cake mix to marble it. And the 5th pic. is the final cake. We went to the Par-Tee Zone with some of her friends. It's a place where they have all those climbing tubes type things. We had her party there. It was so nice to not have it at the house. They had a great time. We drove all the girls home and Haley spent the rest of the evening playing with all her new toys. All in all it was a great day for our Princess Haley.

Celebration!

Haley got to celebrate her 5th birthday with her grandparents and great grandma this past Friday night. All three girls stayed overnight with my mom and dad. They went down to Wellman to visit my grandma and have her 5th birthday party there. She opened lots of presents and played pin the tail on the donkey, which I heard was quite "wild". Grandpa had new baby lambs so they enjoyed petting and holding them while they were there.

Spring Break

Well, we are officially on Spring Break. Today our spring break weather got up to a whoopin' 35 degrees! Heat wave! On Sat. when the weather was in the 40's the girls went through their shoe tubs of all their shoes from last year and hand me downs. They pulled out all their flip-flops! Jenna actually wore flip-flops to church- she left early with Jeff and snuck out of the house before I saw what was on her feet!

Today, we had to run to Menards, that place and our family are very familiar with each other during this building process, then we ran mom and dad up to the airport. They are flying out to San Antonio today-90 degree weather.

On the way home from the airport I stopped to get gas and asked the girls if they wanted to go in and get some ice-cream at the A & W attached to the gas station. Mikayla yelled from the back seat..."who are you, and what have you done to our mother?" I guess I should let them buy ice cream more often...

FOUND!!!

IT HAS BEEN FOUND!!!

I have literally had the whole school looking all over!! Outside on the playground, in the parking lot, all over the halls etc. All day!!! My kids have been obsessed with looking for it, sweeping, moving all the desks, on their hands and knees!

Haley came to my classroom at 3:10 from her childcare, she walked into my room, looked at my ring, and said "you haven't found it." Very sad acting. Literally 30 seconds later she came over to me with something in her hand and said, "is this it?" I thought, oh surely that's not it! But it was!!!! She found it right underneath my desk chair! We looked there a million times today! This is what I think. Today is "Blast from the past" for spirit week. I was wearing leg warmers. (80's) I am thinking that when I put them on this a.m. my ring snagged on it and the d. came out, and got stuck in them. I took them off around 2:30 cause my legs were hot. So 40 mins later Haley comes in a finds it right where I took my leg warmers off. Amazing! Thank you God!!!
Thanks for praying!

P.S. Haley said, "will you give me $2 for finding it?" I'm thinking, " hmmm...$2 or hundreds for a new diamond? " I assured her I would give her $2. :)

URGENT!

I JUST NOTICED THAT I HAVE LOST THE DIAMOND OUT OF MY WEDDING RING!!! PLEASE PRAY I FIND IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oreo Cookie (Dec. 2000-March 2008)

Well, today was the day. Today at 11:30 Jeff kept the appt. with the vet for Oreo to be put to sleep. We all said good-bye this morning. A very teary good-bye. We will miss her very very much but it was time, she was really struggling to breathe and was totally blind. Jeff came to my classroom at noon and his eyes were all red rimmed. He took it really hard, but of course he was the one who was in there holding her while it took place.

Last night the girls painted the sides of the box that Oreo would be put in and buried. And we took some final pictures last night and this morning. After school we all went to the new house, where Jeff had already traipsed back into the woods and had dug a hole. We buried her there. We all cried, of course.

Row one- Oreo and Scooby- BEST friends, Oreo, Oreo with Mikayla and Mikayla decorating the box.

Row two- Haley decorating the box, Haley with Oreo, Oreo with her all time favorite toy that usually was only reserved for grandma and grandpa's house, they brought it in for Oreo to enjoy during her last days. She sure did enjoy it, I really think that that toy was the only thing that actually got her up and moving for the past couple weeks, Oreo with Jenna this morning before school.

Row 3- The box that we buried Oreo in- all painted and looking pretty. Jeff out in the woods behind the house putting the box into the ground. If you look way up at the top of the picture you probably can see the house at the top and Jeff down at the box by her grave. The last picture is a close-up picture looking at the back of the house.

Row 3- Repeat of row 1

We will really miss her and as Jenna has been saying all along, she is just a dog. Jenna has been very brave, but when she did see Oreo in her little box she did break down quite a bit. We are letting the girls know that it is ok to grieve but yet she IS only a dog without a soul.

We found out some very terrible news today that really puts things into perspective. A very sweet couple from our church in Madison Heights, Michigan had a little 2 year old beautiful baby girl that died of childhood cancer yesterday. Her name was Alleta Lopez. Her parents, Dan and Flor Estella, and Alleta's brother, have broken hearts far worse than we can even imagine. This puts our sadness of losing Oreo into CLEAR perspective as we grieve with this family. Dan and Flor you are in our prayers and the tears we cry are for you also.

Spirit Week

This week is Spirit week at school. Yesterday was college team day, today was "Twin Tuesday", all the teachers decided to dress alike and we chose the Hawaiian theme. Here we all are after school in the snow in our Hawaiian outfits. I have a huge purple flower in my hair but you can't see it because my head is turned. We were all looking at different cameras.

Tomorrow is Wacky Wednesday. I have no idea what to wear. Personally I don't like Spirit week because then I have to actually plan ahead what I am going to wear instead of just putting on the first thing I grab in my closet. I will have to come up with something wacky by tomorrow morning!

House update

Here are a few more pictures from inside the house. These are the girls' window seats. The each will have one. The top picture is Haley's room, the second is Mikayla's-she has a Bay window, and the third is Jenna's room.

Today they were working on the plumbing and heating in the house, they also got my kitchen window in. The date stamp is wrong on these pictures, for some reason it keeps switching dates, we are using one of our old cameras, babying it along, so it doesn't surprise me that it keeps messing up. One of these days we will break down and buy another camera.

No time to breathe!

I had originally planned on updating my blog with pictures this weekend and I literally sat down 2 times all weekend and that was at church and to do lesson plans on Sunday night from 8:30-10:30. Here was our weekend.

Got home from work Friday afternoon with 2 extra girls in tow. Mikayla and Haley both had friends over to play. Jenna went with a friend to her house and then to a University of Iowa Gymnastics meet. I began cleaning as soon as I got home and also did laundry. The 2 friends ended up staying the night, I stopped cleaning and went to bed around 10.

Saturday, our guests left around 9, I then went to my school to do some work. I got home around 10:05 and my high school classmate/friend Jenny was there waiting on me. We were meeting at 10 to plan our 20 year high school reunion taking place this summer. (For any of you reading this blog in my h.s. class- to give you a head's up, it will be on July 19th!) After she left around noon the girls and I all went to the mall and ran a ton of errands. We got home at 3 and then I worked for over an hour on a project I had to have done at 4:30 that afternoon. The project was for our school banquet where all of us teachers have to have a booth to showcase our class for prospective school attendees in the future. Jeff got home around 4:15-he was in Decatur, Illinois since Friday- his pastor passed away from his growing up years- our babysitter arrived at 4:30 and we were off to the banquet. Josh McDowell was the speaker. We got home from that at 10:00p.m.-actually 11:00p.m. "Spring Forward" time!

Sunday, we got up and went to church, we didn't leave church until 1:00. We grabbed a quick bite to eat. We don't normally shop on Sundays but JCPenney was having a huge sale on their curtains/drapes so we went there and spent over 2 hours (with the girls!!!) picking out curtains for all 4 bedrooms. So over 2 hours later- major headaches, and a couple nervous breakdowns later- we went to Wal-mart where I had to grab a few things. We got home at 4:30. At 5:30 I had 15 people coming for a "Welcome" class for church. I had to straighten the house and cook all in that hour. Believe it or not, the house looked good and the food was ready and waiting. Our last guest left around 9:00. Luckily she is a co-worker, so I began my lesson plans while she and her fiance' were still there shooting the breeze with Jeff. I went to bed around 10:30 and woke up this morning feeling like I had been hit by a truck!

I have a meeting after school today because I am on the "Lock-In" committee. This committee just realized that we need to get planning the Lock in since it is like 3 weeks away! The other day it just kind of hit me, "I'm on that committee and its the 28th and we haven't done anything!" None of the other committee members even remembered about it! Yikes! We're in trouble.

We are putting Oreo to sleep tomorrow night- none of us are doing to well about that. It will be hard! Pray for us!

Enjoying the snow!

Well, the weather finally "warmed" up enough to go outside and "enjoy" the snow. Yesterday and today were the first days in about a month that it has been above freezing. It was by no means warm, but we tried to get outside for a little bit anyway. In the first picture, Haley had dropped the raisins that she was using for the mouth and I teased them telling them that it was snowman poop!

Pouring Concrete

Finally the day arrived-it actually has warmed up enough to pour the concrete in the basement. They weren't able to pour the concrete because the basement was full of snow. We had to rent an actual household heater and run the heater for 6 weeks or so, to melt the snow, then they had to haul in dirt and gravel to soak up the water, flatten that out and then wait for a "warm" enough day to pour the concrete. They just had to build the house up on top of the dirt (snow) basement. Today we went to the house and walked around deciding where we wanted cable and light switches, yippee! Now, that was exciting. The next two weeks they will do the electrical work and plumbing work and also frame out the basement. In the above pictures- you can see huge truck in the street, we thought that they would drive the truck around to the back of the house, but as you can see by the 2nd picture they just stretched the huge concrete pump over the top of the house!!! Then you can see the men in the basement working on the wet concrete. It is dry now and fun to go walk on and envision the basement.