Art imitates life

Sometimes life imitates art. And sometimes art (specifically the make-believe acting my girls indulge in) imitates life.

Two examples:

Last weekend the girls went, for the first time, to a wedding. No idea why this was the first time, but it was. They were over the moon excited, especially since they got to see pretty Lee, a dear friend, all dressed in white. It was also a good warm up for this coming October when they will be flower girls in my brother's wedding (excited doesn't come close to how they feel about that!). To make it even better (and help make their play more accurate) they also attended the rehearsal where I think Hannah was making mental notes. This afternoon they put it into practice when Hannah married her new stuffed Giraffe with Abby playing the role of pastor and officiating. I must say, the wording was quite accurate and the main part they forgot was the little mini-sermon (what is that called?), most likely because that was the part they paid the least amount of attention to. I find it amusing that when they do the "Here's comes the Bride" song they have to be color accurate, so our bride was "all dressed in blue, with silver and some white" because Hannah's princess dress did not fit the traditional white wedding gown.

Another example from today's play was when the girls played "Let's take the car into the auto shop and I'll pick you up!" I didn't find this game funny. Especially when Abby was saying that the car was shaking and driving funny. One drove the broken car while the other one followed and pick up the stranded sister at the auto shop. Guess what we did on Thursday?

Summer Fun Part 4

Family reunion at Herron Island!

Fun times spent with extended family, time spent on the beach and camping.

We met some new friends there

Bambi

Daddy-O

Momma

Abby gives the deer (nicked named "Greedy" for a good reason) a saltine

Cousin Grace has an interesting way to feed "Greedy"

Hannah, feeling brave, gets in a pat

The girls are always thrilled to hang out with Grace, the daughter of Kevin's favorite cousin, Amy

Hanging around

Our beaches in the Coulee are nicer (sandier) then this beach, but who can beat that view?!

Summer Fun Part 3

I had mentioned before that we'd be going on a family vacation to Whitworth for a week for the Whitworth Institute of Ministry. We had a blast but didn't take many pictures.

Hannah in front of my old dorm, Tiki. We called it the "love shack"!




End of week children's program. They learned a lot of cool songs.















(these are the type of pictures you take when you just have your phone. does anyone have any certain apps that they like to use with their IPhone 4 that helps out with the pictures?)

When Abby saw these, she immediately said, "I miss my friends! I hope I get to see them again next year!" That is something echoed by us all. We were lucky enough to go on a scholarship and know that it was, most likely, a one time occurrence. But, we will try to maybe budget it in for next year. We found, once there, that we were in desperate need of refreshment and are so grateful that we were able to find it there. I think, in the busyness of life, sometimes I forget that this calling on our lives is a bit of a challenge and that we need to make sure that we do things to prevent being rundown and dried out.

It was a week of fun, learning and renewal. Most likely my favorite week of the summer.

Flashback!!

I know I'm currently doing a series on Summer Fun, but while perusing my pictures, I realized that I neglected to post the ones from Hannah's Kindergarten play. Oops. And she was so cute!! So, here they are. Technically, it is sort of summer--at least it happened in the month of June!

They did a "Down on the Farm" play which was like a collections of little farm stories and songs. Pretty cute. But at this age, everything they do is cute.

Hannah was in the "Three Billy Goats Gruff" and played the Littlest Billy Goat. Her teacher had to work on her saying her lines loud of enough (only time she's every been too quiet?), but come crunch time, she did great! :) Meeting the Troll

The Three Billy Goats

I'm not brave enough to get this many 5-6 years old to behave and perform! Her teacher, though, was more then up to the task. On our way to 1st Grade! (Mom shakes head in disbelief)

(BTW-she has on two different outfits because this took place on two days. One was dress rehearsal for the school and the other was for parents. I went to both.)

Summer Fun Part 2

Back by popular demand (Julie), here is one of the highlights of the summer, VBS!

Our Vacation Bible School happened way back at the end of June, but the girls are still singing the songs. It was a community bible school, which means that pretty much every church in our area helped out and participated. It was great to see the Body of Christ in the Grand Coulee Dam area coming together to minister to the children of our community. And talk about kids! Wow! 75 kids were able to come! We were daily impressed by the numbers!

Our girls helped lead songs... Well, they were supposed to, but Abby backed out (that surprised me a bit-I thought she would be more into it then Hannah). Hannah's BFF Pyper also helped out, along with some good buddies, Maeha and Aehsley (and their little brother, Emry). Elizabeth, who led it, did some work with the kids so that they would be able to help demonstrate all the motions to the song.

Kevin and I ended up leading the 1/2 grade group, which was perfect. I had 5 students that will be in my class in just a few weeks now, along with a bunch of kids from Hannah's grade who Kevin knew from his volunteering.

Abby didn't feel too left out because Miss Becky, her preschool teacher, was one of the teachers for her group. (In the picture below, she is cuddling with Miss Becky during story time.)

All in all, it was fantastic and a great time to reach out and minister to the kids of our area.

(In case you were wondering, we did the "SonSurf" from Gospel Light. The beach theme was perfect for our community that revolves around our local beach for the summer.)