What A Weekend Part 2 ~ Off To The Races!

The second part of our busy weekend, came exactly 8 hours after the first one ended...back at church. It was our annual Awana Float-A-Boat and Derby. Remember how I said I'd drank a pot of coffee on Friday night? Well, because of that, I only got about 2 hours of sleep. I was sooo tired, but that's okay...

all I had to do was sit and sell donuts, muffins and SunnyD at the concession stand.

My husband, Ray is the Awana Commander, so he had lots more to do. He even had give a "sermon"...which he was busy writing when I got home at 1:00AM that morning.

The younger kids, ages K - 2nd grade do the float-a-boat. They each get a boat kit and make their own boat to certain size specifications. We then fill rain gutters with colored water, and the kids use their own "wind power" to blow on the sails and make the boats race to the other end.

We had a pretty good crowd for this event this year.

Here you can see all 4 lanes in action.



And here's a close-up of two of the "captains"...

One, of which went home with the 1st place trophy for speed. Way to blow, Raymond!

After (big) Ray's message, the crowd turned their attention to the Awana Derby.

This is where the big kids race cars that they've made out of blocks of wood, down a long track. The 3rd through 6th graders participate in this event.

Molly was one of the design judges this year.

She had her work "cut out" for her, here are a few of the cars...check out the second car from the left?

It's got a LIVE GOLDFISH for a driver!

And...they're OFF!

Rick Heitke was our announcer again this year. He always makes a point of interviewing the racecar drivers...he asks them about the designs and if they did anything special to make their car faster. He sometimes gets some pretty hilarious responses from the kids.
Here, he was not only interviewing the "driver", but also the "team owner".

Design Trophy Winners: 3rd place Joel O.; 2nd place Ryan W. (with the goldfish) and 1st place Abbie J., with her "pronto pup" car.

Speed Trophy Winners: 3rd place, Hayden W.; 2nd place, Jacob O. ; 1st place Morgan Z.

Yay, Abbie and Morgan! Anything boys can do...girls can do better!

Monday Musings and Meanderings

It Looks like a very nice day outside again, even though I have not yet stepped outside my door today. I should go for a walk. The only thing is, I told my grandson I'd take him with "next time", so it won't be a very long walk...I don't want to have to carry him back.

Ray is working on a project for some friends of ours this week. He's finishing their basement bathroom. Thank God, (and Dan & Jody) for this job opportunity. If any of the rest of you (in our area), have any remodeling, home repair, room additions, painting, siding, etc. jobs that you have been meaning to hire someone to do, just give Ray a call. He really can do almost anything! And he does it very well.

I'm feeling very old this week. My oldest son, Jeremy will turn 30 on Wednesday! I need to go through a bunch of pictures, so I can do a Happy Birthday post for him. I was thinking this morning, that if we had more money at the moment, and I had only realized that Molly had 5 days off, we could have planned to take a trip to Phoenix, to celebrate with him. Hopefully, he and his son, Alex can come visit us in Minnesota when the heat gets unbearable for them this Summer.

We have a busy weekend ahead. First off, Friday night is our monthly Ladies Night Out! That should be fun, and does not require a whole lot of preparation for me. However, I probably shouldn't stay long because...we have our Awana Derby and Float-a-boat on Saturday morning. I usually run a small snack shop during the derby, so that the racers and spectators can purchase something to munch on during the races. I need to get to Sam's Club sometime this week to pick all of that up. We also have to locate the Pinewood Derby track (that we borrow each year from the local Cub Scouts), and pick it up and get it to church and set up by sometime Friday evening....which should work out well, since I will be ready to hang out with the girls at LNO after we get everything set up, and I'll be there already.

After the races are over, (around noon), we'll have to clean everything up, and come home and pack up all the karaoke equipment, grab some clothes for the night and head to St. Cloud for the first annual "Cousin Connection" get-together. My sister Kathy and our cousin Marty have decided to get all the first cousins (there are about 35 of us in all) and their spouses together at a local hotel. We're going to have dinner there, and we're bringing the karaoke/DJ system so we can all make fools of ourselves have a great time dancing or singing. We're planning on staying overnight, and having brunch together in the morning too, so that should be a nice break for us.

Speaking of karaoke, we just ordered 78 new discs off of ebay. We should be getting them some time this week. This will add around 875 new songs to our collection. I've been busy this morning trying to get a list of them typed up...very time consuming.

Just Another Wacky Wednesday

As I begin this post it is 1:42 Wed. AM. Don't ask me why I'm still up. I have a busy day ahead of me...after I sleep for a few hours that is. I won't be on the computer much today...if at all.

1. First of all, Molly has to get to school by 7:45am. (she's got some overdue work to get done)
2. Next, Ray has his Contractor's Breakfast at Menard's in a city that's about a half hour to the South of us. That ends at 9:00am.
3. At 10:00, I have my doctor appointment for my physical, which is in town, (and we are not anymore)...and I don't have a car that works yet. That means we all ride together...I go to the breakfast, (but I don't get to eat anything if I want lab work done at this appointment). I'm going to drink black coffee though, I'm pretty sure that won't hurt anything. I can always go back to do the labs if I have to.
4. Then I guess we'll run home for lunch...(I may have time to pop online for a few minutes).
5. Today is also the day we say goodbye to Pastor Tom. Visitation begins at 1:30pm and the funeral is at 3:00pm. This is going to be the hardest part of the day. Oh...and the funeral is in another town a few miles to our NORTH.
6. After that, we'll stop back home, and probably have just enough time to change out of our funeral clothes, and into our AWANA uniforms, pick up Molly and Christian and head to church for AWANA and Youth Group!

When I made my doctor appt, I had no idea there was going to be anything else going on that day, (other than Awana at night of course), so I was planning on having Jess drive me. But since there is now so many other things going on, Ray has decided to take the day off. After all...he did work Saturday AND Sunday this weekend. He deserves a day of "rest". And speaking of rest, I'd better get myself to bed. It's now almost 2:oo am! Good night.

What Child is This? You know, THAT Child!

CJ was telling his mom and I about the movie they watched in Cubbies last night. It was all about the birth of Jesus. He said that someone told Mary she was going to have a "child". Jessica asked him what the child's name was. "Jesus", he replied. Then he promptly ran over to my nativity set and pointed to the baby Jesus figurine and said, "You know, THAT Child! It was pretty cute.

Picture Tag Game

My step-daughter, Sarah tagged me to play this fun game. The rules of this game are as follows:

*Go to the 6th picture folder in your documents.

*Find the 6th picture in your 6th folder.
*Pray that you remember what it is about.
*Blog about it.
*Tag 6 people to do the same.

Here's mine:

These are my "Puggles", which is the newest and youngest AWANA club, added just last year for pre-Cubbies age boys and girls. I think they're all absolutely adorable. And look at all that blonde hair! The little girl on the left and the boy farthest to the right are siblings. The cutie with the curls in blue is Movers4 life's "Middle C" and the guy with the biggest smile is one of Jody's joyful noisemakers, "C". Jody helps me in the church nursery on Wednesday nights, so we also have baby "K" in there, but she didn't get in the picture. Middle C's little brother has recently joined us too. We have lots of fun, and learn some basic precepts in there too, like "God Made Everything", "God Saw That It Was Good", "God is Love" and "Give Thanks". Below is a picture of me reading a book to the kids on another night. I see by this picture that I still have a double chin to work on.

Let me see...now I have to tag 6 more people to do this. Hmmm...Jody, (Make a Joyful Noise), Lisa, (QTPies), Sarah (Sassyfrazz), Nikki, (Movers4Life), Cindy (Canoearoos), and Christina (DaisyCrazy). Tag, You're IT!

Happy Birthday Patty, Happy Birthday Jesus!

Today would have been my late sister Patty's 49th birthday. Patty went to be with the Lord on April 27th, 2003; after a 2 year battle with breast cancer. She was a great sister and a wonderful mother to 11 children. We all miss her very much, but I know that I'll see her again someday in heaven. Every year since she passed away, most of her remaining 9 siblings have gotten together on her birthday to remember Patty and celebrate her life. I suspect we will do that again this year, but not until later on this evening. There's something else we have planned to celebrate first tonight.

It's Wednesday, which means it is AWANA club night at church. My husband is our church's Awana Commander, and I help out in the nursery. Every year around this time, we celebrate another birthday too. We have a "Happy Birthday, Jesus party", with cake and ice cream for all of the kids, their parents, and AWANA staff. Seeing as how I'm the Commander's wife, and a former professional cake decorator to boot, I get the honor of decorating a birthday cake for Jesus each year, and then I usually ice a couple more sheet cakes to serve to everyone. This year, I opted to bake and decorate one cake and 12 dozen cupcakes. Sound like fun? It actually was. And as an added bonus, it warmed the house up nicely too, having the oven going for about 5 hours straight.

Here's this year's model. The only thing is, I used a "Christmas Red" paste food coloring, that turned out a little more like "Barbie Pink". Oh well, pink poinsettias are pretty too.

Another successful AWANA year all wrapped up!

My husband, Ray has been the AWANA* Commander for our church's program for 4 years now. In addition to helping him out with the behind the scenes stuff, I started out helping with the Cubbies, (3 and 4 year olds), for a year and then moved next door to the nursery 3 years ago. My favorite age of kids has always been from about 18 mos. up to 3 years old. They're just sooooo cute and lovable at that age! And now, as a grandma...I really enjoy giving them back to their parents when our time together is through for the night too ;).

This last Fall, AWANA clubs started a new program for pre-Cubbies, called "Puggles". We didn't want to completely open it up to the public, since we have a rather small nursery, and just two of us also need to watch the babies that are in there. We decided that we'd try out the Puggles program on our toddlers that were already going to be in the nursery on Wed nights, (due to their parents helping out with the older AWANA kids). We had a fun year, and the kids learned about 4 simple precepts: 1) God made all things, 2) God saw that it was good, 3) God loves us, and 4) We thank God. The little ones don't have a very long attention span...but we tried to get at least a few "teaching moments" in each night. We had anywhere from 2 to 7 "Puggles" throughout the year, but ended up with just two of them there for our awards ceremony last night. Here they are:My dd, Molly just finished her very last year of AWANA. She loved it when she was younger, but the last couple of years, we pretty much had to drag her there. After all, we figured if we were going to volunteer our time and energy to this great program, it wouldn't kill her to stick it out and maybe even "accidentally" learn a few bible verses ...whether she wanted to or not. I think she actually did have fun there most of the time...but she'll never admit to that...she's waaaaayyy too cool for that! She did look pretty excited to finally, (after 3 yrs), get her 1st T&T book award though...but she'd never admit to that one either. Our annual awards ceremony was followed by ice cream, cookies and lemonade for all. (I had one M & M cookie and black coffee).

Here are a couple of pictures of Molly accepting her award from her leader, Yevette:

And look-- there's our friend, Sarah, (Sassyfrazz), behind Yevette too! She's our T & T director. As you can see by this picture, Molly is at least a head taller than most of the other girls in her class. My "baby" is now 5' 7" at 11 years of age! I've still got about 3/4 of an inch on her, but she's bound to pass me up by 6th grade.

Yevette told her twelve 5th grade girls last Fall, that if they collectively learned 500 verses throughout the year, she would take them to a movie and buy them candy. It worked, they did...in fact they exceeded the 500! Rumor has it, they even got Molly to contribute a few of them here and there. Thank you, Yevette for putting up with my daughter for the last 3 years, even when she didn't want to be there. We never really gave her a choice in the matter, and appreciate what you were able to do with her. She's very excited about youth group next year!

I get to go along to help chaperone and drive them to the movie this Sunday. We're going to The Chronicles of Narnia~Prince Caspian! WooHoo! I'm as excited as the kids are I think. I've wanted to see that one ever since I heard they were going to do it. I'm reading the book again, just to refresh my memory about what happens in that one.

*Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed