Final Couch Update

Don't worry - summer school will be over soonish and then I will stop updating you on MC library news ;) HOWEVER, at this point, I still live here, so here is my final couch update (I think...)heehee!

Well, I walked into the library yesterday to find that lo and behold they have done surgery on 'my couch'! And it is as good as new! I never thought about it yesterday, but today I was a bit nervous to sit down and set up station there, imagining what it would be like to have to go up to the desk and tell them AGAIN that I had broken their couch...but I got over it...realizing that it's not a good thing to live by 'what if's' (heehee!), and I am happy to have things back to normal. And so far, 'my couch's' new legs work spledidly! Although I must say (and I hope couch's can't read, so as not to hurt my couch's feelings), but I was kind of hoping to get a new couch out of the whole deal. O well, maybe next time...

Fireworks!!

Well, for some reason, I'm having problems with blogger and am not able to rearrange my pictures after I have loaded them, so rather than reload them in order, I will just leave them as is, I guess. These pictures are at Ward Park with some of our church family waiting for it to get dark enough for the fire works to start! Sophia & I

I let the kids use my camera to take pictures the entire time they were going off. By the end of the night I had over 200 pictures among the 7 kids of just fireworks! Some of them turned out really great. I posted the best ones on here along with a picture of what MOST of my fireworks pictures ended up looking like. Heehee! Haha!
It's so pretty over the lake!
ooooo! ahhhh!! (If Julie were there, she'd have been saying: "Wierd!" - J/K, Jules! Heehee!)
Here's my dear sweet friend, Charise! She brought her game catch phrase so we had something fun to do while we waited (besides take pictures - heehee!)
Waiting for the dark - the lake with all the lighted boats is so pretty!

Sara waving at the camera! :)
Josiah, Drew, Jonathan, Isaac, and Sophie
Jeremy & Amanda Barke
Micah, Heidi & David Jenson
Jason & Darlene Pankonin
The Sorensons!
The Zeulkes Here's some of my favoritist kids ever!
Anna, Victoria, Drew, Jonathan, Josiah, Isaac, and Sophia!

4th of July Picnic

Every year since 2001, our church has had a picnic on the 4th of July to celebrate our freedom! There is a grill out and everyone brings a salad or dessert as well. There is always a game of volleyball going on (usually half the people out there are little kids, but my skills are about as good as theirs, so I don't mind) and other games like boche ball, bean bag toss, card games, etc...

It's such a fun time of fellowship as we all wait for dusk to come and then pile into cars to head off to the fireworks in Fairmont! Mom had to work this year because it was her holiday on, but Doug and Julie came for awhile until they headed off early to IA (mom and I left for IA the next morning).


This is my dear sweet friend, Victoria

Library Couch Update

I walked into the library today after class to work on my summer school work after being gone all weekend and as I rounded the corner to my usual spot, the sight I saw made me laugh. The pictures actually don't do justice, but they're pretty funny :) This first one is me in my new ultra-comfy spot. It is now x-tra low to the ground - like it's made especially for short people like me! :) This is my view coming in - notice the skirt on "my" couch is completely on the floor. They must have finally needed the books they had previously used to prop the couch up after I broke it (I am now on a diet - J/K!) . So in order to be able to continue using it - they took all the legs off! Heehee! I guess breaking a couch is one way to keep other people from stealing "my spot."This is "my" couch's twin - what the couch SHOULD look like.
This is what it looks like now. Hahahahahaha!

(I've got my shoulder in the picture, but it's really hard to take pictures with my webcam and try to be inconspicuous at the same time...lifting my computer around backwards and trying to see what the picture looks like without getting my face in the way...snapping the picture as quickly as possible, and then trying to act like I'm doing something normal...I guess I should be thankful no one else in here is normal, either! Someday perhaps, I will blog about my fellow fairmont library-goers...Hahaha! See how much of a difference there is in level!?

Well, this is a silly post, but it just struck me funny - so I thought I'd give you all a little update on 'the couch.' Can you tell I spend a lot of time in here? heehee!

Kaden Loves His Uncle Jordan :)

Jordan has gotten lots of good expressions out of Kaden :) In the video Jordan is giving him a taste of the slushy punch. His taste buds don't react to the tart as much as they did to the lemon, but it's still pretty funny! He's so cute!This is one of my favorite pictures - Kaden likes to cuddle

(Jordan, this should be your new profile picture ;)

Jordan makes a silly face, but he really loves it. He's having fun being the only uncle (besides Uncle Julie, of course! heehee!)

Kaden has an infatuation with water bottles - they have the power to make him stop crying and keep him occupied for long periods of time. He just wants to get his mouth around it! It's so funny to watch him try! I think Aunt Jenny may have gotten that on video.

Awe - Isn't Kaden SO cute!? :) He is now 7 months old!...growing up so fast!

Kaden on Video!

This video is definitely worth watching - Kaden is SO cute!

(Jason and Julia are pretty cute in this video, too! heehee!)

A Few Embarrassing Moments:

Caution: this is a very long post. But my whole day was actually kind of funny how everything played out, so if you want you can read - if not that's fine with me cause it's actually kind of an embarrassing post. Meant for laughs :) Yesterday morning I awoke in a normal mood, went downstairs for breakfast, chatted with my mom and jules, got ready for the day and headed off to school. In class we watched an upsetting 2 1/2 hr. video of which I won't go into detail and during which I eventually got very bored. I headed to the library at 1:30 and worked endlessly on tests and assignments until 6. (During that time, I leaned back into the couch I was doing my school work on and it almost flipped backwards! The couch had broken! I BROKE A COUCH!? I ashamedly went up to the front desk and said "I feel really fat right now, but I just broke your couch" They came over and put a bunch of books under it to prop it up and assured me I couldn't have been the one to have broken it. Someone probably already broke it and propped it back up. I smiled gratefully, but was thinking, "right - whatever" So beware if I come to your house, make sure you have reinforced the legs of your furniture) (I took these pix with my webcam, so they're not the best - but they're original!) :) When I came home I was in a bad mood, I knew it, but a minute after I would apologize for being crabby I'd go off and say something else crabby! I think I apologized to my mom at least 3 times on the way to church and we only live 1 minute away from it. She was too sweet and understanding and got me to laugh about it before church started. God is very gracious to me - I think this next part may have been my punishment for having such a crummy attitude: I went up front for opening to lead songs for the kids. It can be a bit intimidating since all the adults are with us for the opening and closing, but usually the kids sing out and I don't even think about it. However, this week was different from most because the majority of our kids are gone to camp this week AND I had promised to teach them a new song. It was new to the piano player, Mrs. Clay, as well, so she gave me the starting note and then her and I were - on our own...the song was much higher than I remembered and soon my voice was shaking and cracking whenever I had to go up high. I felt like Danny Kaye when he's nervous or Jamie Kagol (for those of you who know our former KEYC weather man) I wanted to either hide behind the decorations up front with me or burst out crying or laughing at myself (I'm not sure which one). Neither seemed to be reasonable solutions, though, so I just kept singing and asking God to please start singing for me or SOMETHING! Help me stop thinking about myself - but that always seems to make me think about myself more somehow - probably because it's a very self-focused prayer intended to save face...Anyway, I think God was probably getting a kick out of it, along with everyone else! Haha! Thankfully the kids joined me for the second verse - how they got the melody out of what I sang, I have no idea! :) When the song was over I said - "Wow! You guys did a great job catching on so fast! We'll go over it again (meanwhile in my mind: AGAIN! did i just say AGAIN!?) at closing time (at closing time!?) so we can know it really well when we have to teach the teens next week, too!" When I got done with my part up front all I could think was, "Why did I say we'd do that again tonight?" haha! I sat down and Jules was like, "you're sweating!" And I was like "I KNOW! What's up with that!?" During activity time I found out that Mrs. Clay was a little nervous about it, too, so we went through it afew times and were laughing about it - it turned out to be a very good thing that we went over it cause we - or I - messed up plenty while practicing. I then "taught" it to Mr. Clay for practice :) Heehee! Thankfully, it went much better at closing time. At the end Mrs. Clay and I looked at one another with smiles of triumph and relief :) Haha! Needless to say, I got my share of embarrassment last night. It's funny how something you can be so used to, can suddenly be such a big deal. But I learned my lesson - ALWAYS be prepared! I think the kids were clueless cause none of them were embarrassed to come up and talk to me or be associated with me afterwards. Haha! The adults on the other hand I'm sure were NOT clueless, but were still very kind to me and acted like I didn't just make a complete fool of myself. Which I was grateful for and played right along with them. What? Me? A fool? Nah!!!

Mom, Jules and I went home and were ready to crash by 11. I was in my bathroom getting ready for bed. I closed my door and saw a big black splotch on the floor and thought - that can't be....no, please just be a giant fuzzy! But much to my dismay it started moving - it was a big scary hairy black spider with FANGS! okay - no fangs, but very scary! So I just started yelling, "mom!" I soon found that the more I screamed, the faster he crawled, but I also found that the more he crawled, the more I screamed, so soon it was "MOM!!!!!!!!!!!!" ...."crawl, crawl, crawl, crawl..."...."MOM!!!!"..."crawl, crawl, crawl, crawl,"...I grabbed everything up off the floor so he had no where to hide and jumped up on my little bathroom counter - still screaming. Mom soon came to the rescue. But it was one of those clever spiders. He had crawled under my hamper and I had been watching the whole time so I knew he was there even though he was no where to be found when mom lifted it up. She left the room and I balanced myself on the counter while reaching out to tip up the hamper to see if I could find him. Suddenly I saw him crawling up toward my hands! I dropped the hamper and started hyperventilating!...and once again mom came to the rescue. This time she got him crawling again. He was heading out of my bathroom, but I am sure he was on his way to my room! "MOM! Stop him!" Mom stomped on him with only a flip flop on her foot! And then while he was struggling to get his hairy legs untangled, she squished him in a kleenex and disposed of him. THANKS MOM! I had the jitters for the rest of the night - which I rarely have, so Julie kept taking advantage of it and coming in my room to scare me. I finally fell asleep and actually ended up having sweet peaceful dreams :) God really is good - all the time :) Heehee!

Congratulations to Mr. & Mrs. Kimbrough!

SO CUTE!

The Reception

These aren't in order by any means - but just some fun random picture from their reception!