My daughter, the soon to be Sophomore...

Has received her first college recruitment letter! Ack! Okay, I guess if you count the stuff she received from Dordt when she was in 8th grade...maybe this isn't the first.
But if you count things that are mailed to her with the message of "Check out how we might fit into your life..." or something along those lines, this is the first! It came from Calvin, and includes a send this back and we'll send you more info...
**Sob,** my baby is growing up! She isn't even 15 yet!

DDD T-Shirt

Ain't it COOL?!?!?!?!?

A Cleaning Poem

I asked the Lord to tell me

Why my house is such a mess.

He asked if I'd been 'computering',

And I had to answer 'yes.'

He told me to get off my fanny

And tidy up the house.

And so I started cleaning up...

The smudges off my mouse.

I wiped and shined the topside.

That really did the trick...

I was just admiring my work..
I didn't mean to 'click.'

But click, I did, and oops

I found A real absorbing site.

That I got SO way into.

I was into it all night.

Nothing's changed except my mouse

It's very, very shiny.

I guess my house will stay a mess...

While I sit here on my hiney.

Dordt Discovery Days

Did I mention that I'm completely stoked? Peter is one of the kids featured in the promotional materials for this year's Dordt Discovery Days. Well, get this, they took the silhouette of him kicking and incorporated it into the design for this year's t-shirt! He loves it and we're blown away and busily telling everyone we know!

On the Move

As I was walking back to work after lunch today, having had yet another conversation with my wonderful husband about potential employment possibilities, one phrase and image was going through my mind. "Aslan is on the move... ." Yes, it comes from Narnia but the parallel is there to how God works, and I'm excited to see where we will be brought next.

"Coasting" Along

More like roller-coasting. This week has been a ride in the unemployment realm, and we're not sure where it will take us next. We're confident of this, no matter the outcome, or when it comes, God's name will be praised, and he will receive the glory due him. He knew this would happen to us before the world's creation, and he's known how it will turn out for "us." Bottom line, the Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.

Happy Father's Day!

Camping

We had great weather...no rain to fuss about (it did sprinkle a little)...though the wind did B-L-O-W vehemently one day. But I can say that our inaugural run for our little pop-up went quite well. We're home again, have things all cleaned up, and are getting ready to eat Wal-Mart take 'n' bake pizza. I enjoy the cooking outdoors thing, but when it comes to time and energy spent cleaning up, make dinner an easy one that night!

Here's some pictures for you...



Hannah decided her guitar would be fun to mess with...here she is sitting in the opening of her little tent.



Camping and fishing go hand-in-hand for this family (but mom excuses herself from the fishing).



Peter made a big bull-frog friend (and a lot of little friends when he came to show it to me)!



Hannah "bravely" showing off her catch (yes, that's Leah holding it on a flip-flop for her)...actually, I understand that the fish was the rather floppy one, so Leah stepped in to help, Hannah truly isn't that squeamish about fish--she enjoys it as much as any of the rest of the family (not including mom, that is).






I had Hannah fry the bacon over the fire--she enjoyed her frontier cooking experience...




The pond was like glass our last night--isn't it pretty?

Yeowch!

Good news, Peter had made it through his life thus far without requiring stitches or having a broken bone.

Bad news, last night he broke the "streak." Yep, that's his right index finger in the picture below sporting 2 stitches. He fought a ravioli can and lost. Ouch! His left arm was the not-too-willing recipient of a tetanus shot, so between the two he was a hurting unit yesterday, and was scheduled to play his first baseball game today.



Things I'm thankful for in this situation--a husband who is willing to go to the emergency room and stay with our child while he is getting patched up. I cannot handle being in the room with them when they're in such extreme pain, even though I know they need to be put through the pain for their own good. I'm thankful that Peter was in very little pain today, and was able to successfully perform in the games he played this morning. He was proud of himself (and it doesn't hurt that his team won)! I'm also thankful for expert care from competent physician and staff at our local hospital.

Pictures and stuff

So here's a few things that have been on our camera for a while, and I thought it was time to post some of them...

Here's one of Hannah receiving her gold cup for scoring 15 points throughout her years as a participant at a local piano festival. Participants can receive up to 5 points (a superior rating) each year they participate. Perhaps tomorrow I'll post videos of the girls playing their duets.

Here's one of the chairs my dad made for us in place around our kitchen table. We just love them!

Here's a cool shadow that caught Mark's eye on Sunday. It is falling onto a rock that he and I collected from near where my grandparents lived while I was growing up, so as rocks go, it holds special meaning.

And here's the source of the shadow. I just think that it was so cool that the shadow was perfectly centered on the rock that is part of our landscaping!

And I don't have a picture of it, but our town held a flag burning ceremony to reverently dispose of about 90 worn US flags. It was so neat! I'd never been to one before.

Let the summer begin?

Baseball practice is in full swing (ha ha, no pun intended), softball begins play tonight. Baseball was supposed to start today, but the game got moved to Monday instead. And where will I be? Back in the office, trying not to remember that I'm missing out on things. :( I'm grateful for the work, but I am sad that it will have to cut into my family time.

Good Stuff

I received an email this morning that attributed this to Bill Gates, upon further inspection at Snopes.com I found the true source... . It is a bit crude perhaps, but still true!

SOME RULES KIDS WON'T LEARN IN SCHOOL
San Diego Union Tribune -- Charles J. Sykes

Unfortunately, there are some things that children should be learning in school, but don't. Not all of them have to do with academics. As a modest back-to-school offering, here are some basic rules that may not have found their way into the standard curriculum.
1. Life is not fair. Get used to it. The average teen-ager uses the phrase, "It's not fair" 8.6 times a day. You got it from your parents, who said it so often you decided they must be the most idealistic generation ever. When they started hearing it from their own kids.
2. The real world won't care as much about your self-esteem as much as your school does. It'll expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself. This may come as a shock. Usually, when inflated self-esteem meets reality, kids complain it's not fair.
3. Sorry, you won't make $40,000 a year right out of high school. (This was written a few years ago...) And you won't be a vice president or have a car phone either. You may even have to wear a uniform that doesn't have a Gap label.
4. If you think your teacher is tough, wait 'til you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure, so he tends to be a bit edgier. When you screw up, he's not going to ask you how you feel about it.
5. Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word of burger flipping. They called it opportunity. They weren't embarrassed making minimum wage either. They would have been embarrassed to sit around talking about Kurt Cobain or Britney Speers all weekend.
6. It's not your parents' fault. If you screw up, you are responsible. This is the flip side of "It's my life," and "You're not the boss of me," and other eloquent proclamations of your generation. When you turn 18, it's on your dime. Don't whine about it, or you'll sound like a kid.
7. Before you were born your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way paying your bills, cleaning up your room and listening to you tell them how idealistic you are. And by the way, before you save the rain forest from the blood-sucking parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your bedroom.
8. Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn't. In some schools, they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. Failing
grades have been abolished and class valedictorians scrapped, lest anyone's feelings be hurt. Effort is as important as results. This, of course, bears not the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.
9. Life is not divided into semesters, and you don't get summers off. Not even Easter break. They expect you to show up every day. For eight hours. And you don't get a new life every 10 weeks. It just goes on and on. While we're at it, very few jobs are interesting in fostering your self-expression or helping you find yourself. Fewer still lead to self-realization.
10. Television is not real life. Your life is not a sitcom. Your problems will not all be solved in 30 minutes, minus time for commercials. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop to go to jobs. Your friends will not be as perky or pliable as
Jennifer Aniston.
11. Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.
12. Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you're out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That's what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for "expressing yourself" with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.
13. You are not immortal. If you are under the impression that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven't seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.
14. Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school's a bother, and life is depressing. But someday you'll realize how wonderful it as to be a kid. Maybe you should start now.

Scot A. Shier