Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Rachel's Poem

Bat's are cool thay
dot drol, Bat's flly
ate nite thay dot bite
bat's lived n threes thay dot snes
Bat's eet fes that is not a ly

Translation:
Bat's are cool, they
don't drool, Bat's fly
at night they don't bite
bat's live in trees they don't sneeze
Bat's eat flys that is not a lie.

We're The Kids of The Future

Hayden is working on his air guitar! He has been playing since he was about 2. We did have a real guitar for him for a while, but he was seen regularly smashing it over his head like a rock star. We have not replaced the real one, but he plays the air guitar all the time. Last night, he decided to rock to "We're The Kids of The Future" by the Jonas Brothers. I hope you enjoy this as much as we did...




Tuesday, October 30, 2007

PWOC Fall Focus October 2007

This past weekend, I experienced something I'd never done before. It was a PWOC (Protestant Women Of The Chapel) Fall Focus. This was a regional women's conference with about 500 women from Army Posts and Air Force Bases in the Southeast region. We took about 25 ladies from Wright Patterson Air Force Base, here in Ohio to Franklin, Tennessee. It was a 6 hour bus ride. I had never gone to Fall Focus before and it was a great experience.

I attended workshops throughout the weekend with topics like Preparing for the Bridegroom,marriage, being a better Bible study leader, preparing young hearts for Christ, mentoring and many more. I really learned a lot in just a few short days. I met some really great ladies and had fun getting to know some of the women from our group.

During the conference, we did create a bit of drama. We caught the carpet on fire in our prayer room and the hotel had to be evacuated. The fire department came... it was pretty funny. Some of our single ladies begged me to take a picture of this tall, dark, handsome fireman so they could have his picture. Thankfully nobody was hurt and we were able to finish the conference.

While we were there, Ronda's son,Toby,took us on a tour of the Franklin area. We saw a couple of homes of some Christian artists and then stopped at Sonic for a little snack. After that, we headed to Nashville for a quick stop. We had to be back for dinner, so we didn't have much time. We had a lot of fun!

On the way home, about an hour out of Franklin, we got a flat tire on our bus. Thankfully, we did not make the national news. I did, however, take pictures of the adventure. We were able to drive on the shoulder and get to the next exit where we stopped at a Cracker Barrel. I picked up a couple of my last few Christmas presents while we were waiting.


















Harvest Party







Last week, our church had their annual harvest party. We went last year and our kids LOVED it. They have great games and fun prizes. They have food, bouncy castles, ball pits & a hay ride. It is done as an alternative to Halloween. During the evening, families are encouraged to participate in the treasure hunt. You are given clues at various games and then you have to search for a person that has an answer for you. Once you fill all your answers, it gives you the ultimate answer for the treasure hunt. All the clues lead you to the GOSPEL. At the end of the evening, they do door prizes and have prizes from local businesses to give away. Hayden, as you can see, was Spiderman. He and his friend Noah made plans to dress up the same that night. They were so excited when they saw each other. Rachel, well, she had a gymnastic suit on with a skirt over it and her cow'girl' boots. She likes to be creative. Sarah was a cheerleader. We invited several neighbors to come and a few of them did. It was a lot of fun and the kids had a great time.

Monday, October 22, 2007

Clifton Gorge II

The dinosaur head

Hayden and his daddy

Rock climbing prohibited. (Like we were going to try that.)


The water below.


Blue hole


Wild Mushrooms


We did it, we went back! We took 2 extra kids with us, so we had quite the parade. We hiked about 1 1/2 miles up and back. We had a great time exploring and being outdoors. We saw some amazing things on our hike, but we did not see the falls. We did find a sign that said the best time to see the falls is in the spring when the snow is melting and running off. So, we'll go again. We did see some mushrooms growing out of the botttom of a tree stump; that was pretty cool. We also saw a U shaped tree. Rachel saw a rock coming out of the side of the cliff that looked like a dinosaurs head. There was moss all over the rocks and colored leaves covered the path. It was a perfect day for hiking and everyone had a good time. After our hike, we took the kids over to Young's Dairy for ice cream. Yum! What a day...

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Clifton Gorge

Audra, Dede and Becky

Colors of Fall


The water below

The trail...

The top of the Gorge

My friend Becky came out to Wright Patterson for a visit and we got to go to Clifton Gorge. Another one of Becky's friends, Dee Dee, lives here and joined us also. It was a beautiful day for a hike. The colors of fall were beautiful; the leaves are just starting to change color and fall off the trees. We just took a short hike, but had a great time. It was really good to see Becky and get to know Dee Dee.

Our family is planning to go to Clifton Gorge this weekend. The kids are very excited! I will take more pictures and post them. We were not able to see the falls, so we'll be sure to get over there this weekend.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

The Jonas Brothers

I have to tell you about our plans to see Hannah Montana before I tell you about the Jonas Brothers. You probably don't know that Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers are coming to Columbus and Cincinnati in December and we were going to get tickets. Apparently, large families are not welcome at Hannah Montana concerts because there is a strict limit of 4 tickets per household. Our kids were very upset to hear this. So...

We got a phone call from the Jonas brothers about 2 weeks ago (of course it was a recording). They were calling to let us know that they were doing a FREE concert in New Albany, Ohio on September 30 for kids 16 and under. All you had to do was buy an adult ticket. We went on to Ticketmaster to find out more information and found that adult tickets were $15 each. The concert was a part of The New Albany Classic Family Day. This was a fund raiser for the Columbus Coalition against family violence and paired the Invitational Grand Prix with a FREE concert in a festival type atmosphere.

So, Ticketmaster and Hannah Montana can keep their 4 tickets for $25-200 each. We took our family to see the Jonas Brothers for $30. It was such a great deal, we even invited all our friends to go. All together, we had 13 people! We had such a great time. Although, we do think it will take about a week for our hearing to come back after listening to 1000's of screaming girls.

If you are reading this wondering who the Jonas Brothers are, well, they are #1 on Radio Disney, #1 on i-tunes and in the top 40. They are Kevin, Nick and Joe. I have been told by my 12 year old that Nick Jonas is the cute sensitive one. I'll let you see if you can tell... Let's see, when I was 12, my crush was on Kirk Cameron. Does that bring back any memories for you?