Nothing much to say, that is. But it will come...
The kids had this past week off from school. President's Week. I don't think we thought much about the presidents, quite honestly. But we did have a nice win for the Killer Bees Basketball team. Class D Champs. Its was a great game, too. (Not a great picture)
So next week they go on to play Upstate NY to win Title VII or something like that. I don't really follow how it goes.
After the game, Caleigh and I raced back to try and make our first tap class. We are taking it together. Isn't that cute? Here's the kicker: our class is held in the basement of the old Polish Hall which is now... A BAR. HAHA. Its actually a pretty cool place, but is it ironic that I'm bringing my 10 yr old to a bar for tap class? Furthermore, the bar is actually open for business during class and the bartender seems to get a kick out of watching us struggle to learn the steps. Ah good times. I may try to convince the Clique to meet there one night for Karaoke. It would be a rip!
The Presidents Week break from school also means its the Youth Group Winter Retreat. Terry found this little mountain in PA... Shawnee. He then proceeded to find a youth hostile (which really means an old church fellowship hall that is also the pastor's office, sunday school rooms, rummage sale storage, and basement space for dinners and whatnot. It was... interesting. And old. And full of character, of course.
The boys got to sleep on the old gymnastics mats in the basement. They were also used for jumping on and doing various tricks and wheelchair stunts and playing hide and go seek and for stacking up to a tall tower for reclining during free time.
Lizzy and Anika got into the storage of 1980s clothes which were in the closet of their room. There were also some walkers and wheelchairs for us to use at our own discretion. heh heh
Of course Raul came along. He knows how much fun we are and would never want to miss out. (Gotta love Anika's jacket).
These outfits were AMAZING!! And the room these two slept in was painted the very same color purple as that outfit. I'm not even exaggerating. Plus its florescent lighting added to the effect.
Pictured below was one of the rooms the girls and I slept in. That little couch was a pullout bed. Three of the girls slept there and I slept on the floor. We also met here for our meetings and to watch movies. We had the kids watch the Left Behind Series and talked about end times. I so wanted to play a joke on the kids by waiting for a few of them to come out of the bathroom to find everyone else having "disappeared" (we'd be hiding, of course) and we would have left piles of the clothes we were wearing in various places all over the hostel for them to think they were left behind. hee hee. (If you saw the movie with Kirk Cameron you'd know what I mean). But alas, I was not feeling well on this trip and couldn't pull myself together to create certain games and tricks for laughs. Booo.
We did go on a small hike, just Terry, Raul and I while the kids rehearsed their skit.
These two youngin's were privileged to come on the retreat because their daddies are two of the group leaders. They think they are so kool.
The youth performed the Lifehouse Skit at the East Stoudsburg University's Christian fellowship group. That's where Artur attended college and became a Christian. It was really awesome to be so close to his campus for our retreat and to be invited to perform the skit.
The kids made a huge impact, too. One young guy decided, after watching the skit, to give his life to God and start serving him. He'd been attending the fellowship for over a year but not ready to surrender his life to God until that night. It was a special thing to hear. Jesus continues to set us free from the entrapments of this world.
So... this winter retreat was also a ski trip, but there wasn't any snow, besides what they made on the mountain. I wished I had taken pictures of that. We went snow-tubing one of the daze and that was hilarious. Sooo much fun actually. It was about 50 degrees out, so the runs were quite slow and the guys who were working had to work extra hard to get the tubers down the run to the bottom. They would spin us around like crazy or ride on the back of the tube 1/3 of the way and then jump straight up so they could come down on the back of the tube and send us flying down faster. They were in tee shirts and sweating like crazy.
By the end of our tubing session they asked everyone if we wanted to beat their yesterday's "train record". They had 75 people attached to each other to go down the run. Of course we wanted to beat it. We connected 98 people together. It took about 20 minutes and everyone went down in a train. It was crazy!! One guy, who was helping to get the whole group moving by pulling the pushing the tubes along, actually fell down at the halfway point and got run over by several inner-tubers. I have to say, even though I was scared for him, it was one of the funniest things I'd seen in a while. It should go on funniest home video, but I wasn't video taping. He survived.
Anyway, our last day was planned for skiing/boarding. That's the day it was pouring rain. >:-/ Anika and I drove up separately from the bus, to have an extra car for errands. So, at that point we decided, because we were both sick, we would not stay to ski in the rain. Everyone else wanted to go for it. We said our goodbyes and left while they stayed to sky and had a blast. The rain actually stopped for most of the day (so they claim). I just wonder why their stuff was so entirely soaked when they got home. Good times.
Now that school's back on, Lizzy is sick. Different sickness though, the stomach flu. Eww.
Q: Do you have your kids trained to make sure they hit the toilet when they throw up?
Is it uncompassionate for me to mention this? My kids rarely throw up, so maybe I never had the opportunity to teach them properly NOT TO MISS!!!! I gave Lizzy an empty garbage can. She looked at me with horror in her eyes. I told her to do her best to either get it in the can or the toilet. She never once during the night used the garbage can. And she missed the toilet on that first attempt, but at least she made it to the bathroom. But for the rest of the night, she just laid on the couch and aimed for the outdoors whenever necessary (which was a lot, mind you). She usually made it pretty close to the outside, but dang, if she fell asleep at all, it would just creep up on her suddenly. Poor girl. She's better now and we are all hoping and praying no one else gets a turn. I must have gotten up every single hour last night to help her in her misery.
So... now that I've grossed you all out, what have you been up too lately?
