6 States in 3 Days

 This past weekend we took off Friday and Monday to go on vacation.  Naturally, our co-workers asked where we were going on vacation.  We told them that we were going to Niagara Falls, NY and Chicago.  They looked puzzled, trying to figure out how we were going to do this in a weekend.  Our answer...day trips!  On Friday, we got up at 3:30 in the morning and headed out of the house at 4 for Niagara Falls!  We spent the day there and got home at 1:00 in the morning!  Saturday was our day to rest, except that Josh helped a friend landscape all day, so he didn't get much rest...  Then, Sunday morning, we left at 4:30 and headed to Chicago, only to return again at 1:00am.  Our co-workers laughed and laughed when we told them we were trying to save money on a hotel and just come home instead.  They thought that was the funniest thing!  They joked about it all day and when we left work, they gave us a packed bag of leftover camp snacks to take with us (so we wouldn't have to buy food) hahahaha!  They packed chips, frozen pizza, muffins, granola bars and anything else they could find in the kitchen.   It was pretty funny! :)  Everyone we tell about our mini-vacations laughs equally as hard, but hey, we had a great time!!

This is our bag of snacks!

 Cave of the Winds Tour

 Millennium Park

Kayaking on the Chicago River!   This will right before the women in the kayak behind us almost ran into us and tipped us over.  Close call!

Man, life has been pretty exciting in the last few weeks!  Two weeks ago we did a high ropes course with my family in Frankenmuth!  Balancing on wires 25 feet about ground doing really hard maneuvers!  Freaky.  Even my parent did the course.  Very impressive! Life is good!

Apartment Dilemma

Our apartment lease is up at the end of September and we've been struggling with where to live.  We have been praying about staying at our current apartment, hoping that God would soften the hearts of the ladies in the office to keep our rent the same.  We went in to talk to them last week and they predict that our rent will go up about $100 per month...  Ugh...  So, now we're left to decide what to do.  Yes, we can afford the pay $100 more dollars but this prevents us from paying of college loans as quickly as we'd hoped and saving up for a down payment on a house.  We started looking around this week at other apartments that are cheaper.  We found one that we liked, is significantly cheaper and had decided that this may be the one BUT there is a waitlist with 8 people before us.  God is not really giving us any direction and nothing seems to be falling into place.  We're kind of discouraged about all of this and could use your prayer.  I know God will work it all out but it is not fun waiting! :)

Mud

Last weekend was Josh and my first camping trip.  We were going to a wedding of a college friend on Sunday and decided to camp near the wedding in Battle Creek.  We looked at the weather and by the time we left, there was practically no chance of rain.  Wrong.

We got to the campground and found our site, which was a bit smaller than we imagined.  Josh's mom had let us borrow a screened in porch kind of tent that was 12x20!  That's huge!  It was a bear to get up, too, with just the two of us trying to put together 6 poles and raise the tent in sync.  It took a good hour and some frustration on my part, hah!  Finally we got the big tent up and then we put our picnic table and real tent under it :)  That was the easy part.  All was well for the night except that it was about 80 degrees and 80 % humidity all night.  We were so hot that we used a big window fan (which was blowing right on Josh's face because our tent is small) and by the middle of the night we were freezing!!

The next morning went well until the grease fire at breakfast.  Let's just say that our bacon was charred and we will no longer be using high flames when cooking grease over a fire, hahaha!  Supposedly coals are better.  We were really excited about the coffee pot percolator thing that my parents had given us.  I got out the creamer poured a cup of coffee and it only made a 1/2 cup of coffee!  For both of us!  It tasted like plastic (because I had the coffee grounds in plastic bags to save space) and a spoonful of grounds with the coffee poured nicely into my mug.  Ooops, must have done something wrong!  So off we went to the coffee shop in town (20 minutes away).  It was really good coffee :)

That afternoon we went kayaking, which was very fun!  The lady at the boat rental warned us that there could be storms that afternoon.  We weren't concerned.   After we got back from our trip around the island in the kayak it started to thunder.  It thundered around for a long time and then it started to sprinkle.  The lady next store was just setting up her tent, so we offered to help her since it was about to rain.  Josh had no longer said, "I don't think it'll be a big storm or anything...." when it started to pour.  Though it only poured for 20 minutes, we laughed as the water began filling our campsite.  We kept thinking it would stop any minute.  It didn't.  We stood on top of the table as the water pooled inside our big tent and then under the small one.  I know this sounds like an exaggeration but it's not.  Our entire campsite was 2 inches under water!  I sloshed through to the real tent to see if our sheets and stuff were getting wet.  Surprisingly, even though I could feel all the water under the tent, nothing inside got wet!!  After all of this, we were considering going to Josh's mom's house to spend the night.  BUT, after 30 minutes, all the water had receded!  We spent the night comfortably.  UNTIL, we heard scratch, scratch, scratch, in the middle of the night.  We had left two bagged bagels on top of the picnic table, under the zipped tent!  A raccoon stole our breakfast!  So off to the coffee shop we went again before taking everything down and going to the wedding.

It was an adventure for sure!  We were planning on camping quite a few times over the summer but now we're thinking the family reunion campout my be enough for this summer, hahaha.  Too much work and you can't depend on the weather!  Overall it was fun though.  We got in some relaxation and had an experience!  Funny memories!

Big God

It's been really neat this year to go about discussions a little differently.  I guess I've been thinking about how I am with these kids for 7 hours a day (more than some of the parents) and how God would want me to teach them in the way of Lord.  This is tricky of course because I'm not allowed to bring up God, Jesus or faith.  I don't think this has to completely close the door though because they are allowed to talk about it if a student brings it up... 

I have a series of Big Books about science.  Some are about how plants and animals grow, some are about recycling, some are about life cycles.  When we talked the other day about the life cycle of a butterfly, I mentioned how it's so cool that no one taught the butterfly how to be an egg, form into a caterpillar, create a chrysalis, and bust out a butterfly!  It was just created that way to do that specific purpose.  If I act really excited about those things, then they get even more excited!  They have an  amazing sense of wonder.  I regularly  talk about things like how awesome it is that flowers  weren't taught how to break through their seed or push through the dirt, or bees weren't taught how to pollinate, or that the Earth is only 1 of trillions of other planets, they were just created that way!  Usually a student will say that God created it to do that.  Then I just smile and sit back while they finish their little discussion about God without me saying a word.  Yesterday in learning about space, the students thought it was so cool that if Earth were a little closer or farther away from the sun, there would be no life on Earth.  They also found it interesting that that little Earth in the picture is just one of trillions(?) of other planets and other solar systems.  At the end of the lesson, Noah said, "Wow, He's a really big God!"  The 5 year olds get it.  Most adults don't...  So strange.  I've learned a lot this year about appreciating (or even noticing) little things in nature from this group of kids.  We could all take a lesson on being appreciative of God and his creation from these Kindergarteners!

Green Beans in the Living Room

This Spring, Josh and I decided to plant a garden.  You may be wondering how we'll do this in an apartment.  Well, we saw an add for $10 plots in the community garden right around the corner from us!  So we went to the store to get seeds and starter plants for our garden (that we hadn't purchased yet...).  Our second stop was at the community center to buy a plot for the summer.  Unfortunately this was in early April and we weren't allowed to plan until they had designated the plots this week.  Therefore, we have green beans (rather large climbing plants!), squash, broccoli, carrots, spinach, lettuce, cilantro, basil,  parsley, rosemary and corn growing in our living room.  It's quite embarrassing when people come over.  At first we tried moving all the planters into the bedroom when people came but it was too much moving around, so we just leave them out for visitors.  Definitely a conversation piece!  Last weekend we tilled up the garden (by shovel and rake!) and we're hoping to plant them this weekend.  We weren't exactly sure how much to plant in a 10x10 plot so we did a little of everything.  Maybe we should have researched some more before jumping into all of this!  Anyway, I think we're going to have a ton of produce!!  Let me know if you want any! :)

Hollanders

These are some pictures from our mini-trip to Holland, MI!  Details to come later :)

The Future Cowboy

The other day I was trying to inspire the kids to want to read and see a bigger purpose in reading.  I was trying to explain that they need to read in everyday life.  We started talking about the different jobs that they wanted to have when they grow up.  Some students wanted to be a firefighter, so I explained that they would need to be able to read the street signs when they drive the fire truck.   Some people wanted to be a cashier, so I explained that they would need to read the receipts.  Some students wanted to be a teacher, so I explained that they would need to read books to the children.  I was feeling quite proud that I'd gotten around to almost all the class and found a purpose for reading for every job.  Then...I had to get extremely creative.

Me:  "What would you like to be when you grow up?"
Student:  "A COWBOY!!!"
Me:  "Hmmmmmmm (hahahaha)  well..............cowboys ride horses, so I guess you'd have to read a book about how to train a horse!

A bit far fetched on that one!