D2S-10 video

Here is the video of Dare to Share that Terry made for church. It's got a lot of stuff that wasn't in the pics I put up, though it is like 7 minutes long. For instance, you can see how full the Pershing Center was, how many kids there were!

spring teases

So, global warming has been giving us a really cold winter. And just so you know, my tongue is in my cheek on that one. If I wasn't clear, I think global warming is bogus. Lame.

Anyway, it's been cold here. We haven't had our typical warm ups in between the snows. It's just stayed cold.

But since March came in, it's really starting to feel like spring is coming. I hope it stays, but usually it teases you. Like this day was 50-some degrees but I'm sure it will snow again soon. Then it will get warm and repeat until the snow is truly gone.

Anyway, Tuesday was busy but we HAD to get out. Good thing I thought of boots as a precaution b/c it was very wet and muddy.

Evie wanders more than her brother and in no time she had her UNwaterproof boots soaked.

Noah was learning about the different sounds the playground pipes make when struck with a stick...

Evie prints

Slush

Here she's standing in a slush puddle. Shortly after this she slipped on the ice under the slush and fell into an ice cold puddle thus soaking herself. Poor little sausage. We went right home for a warm nap =)

braiding it all up

For church on Sunday I changed Evie's typical hair style up a bit - usually it's half up in a side pony-tail. I figured it was long enough for something more so I pulled it half up but braided it. It was quite cute.

Monday morning I woke up thinking that her hair is capable of even more than just half of her hair being braided. So I tried my hand at a french braid.

I'm no expert at this though so it's good we have plenty of time to perfect it.

You'd think I'd get tired of lamenting at how big this girl is, but it still surprises me. Look at how gorgeous!

Although, when we were looking through baby pictures together last week, I was reminded that I guess I really am okay with them growing up. Certainly it's very nice that they're not babies anymore! They're becoming more them. And Evie is talking SO much - Our parents are both going to be visiting in the next week and will be so surprised at her progress.

She's so cute.

And I'll throw a shot of Noah in too. He came in while I had the camera out b/c he needed help putting his shirt on =)

Dare to Share

Well, Dare to Share was last weekend. D2S is a traveling nation wide youth conference (Friday night through all day Saturday) that is amazing. We had never heard of it before we moved here and it was already a tradition to go. So Terry signed them up 3 years ago for it and has been going to it since. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger as far as our group is concerned.

We took 72 students and 12 leaders. We also partnered with Terry's fellow youth pastor friend Darwin, who owns a bus. They brought like 6 or 7. We also met up with our friends from 1st E-Free back home! They brought like 30 and then a group from the reservation brought some. So all in all, we had like 135 I think. We had so many that we had our own section to ourselves, which was great (In years past they've had to separate).

Oh yeah, what is the point of this conference? It equips students to share their faith, to share Jesus with their friends. In the past when Terry would come back all fired up, I was just indifferent. I didn't understand it. I thought that D2S would use guilt and condemnation to get everyone to share, b/c that's how I've always felt in the past. Having been there myself now, that's totally not the case. Everything was very biblical and just amazing. I came away saying that I wish we had something like this for adults. It was so inspiring and moving. Of course, whenever you worship in a huge corporate way like that, it's bound to be moving. You don't have to worry about how bad you sound or what anyone else thinks b/c it's dark. But even if it wasn't, we probably wouldn't change b/c it's so great.

So anyway, I'm totally on board and want to keep going!

Here Terry is giving instructions just to our and Darwin's group. No PDA yo!

Yes, lots, right?!

Here's Darwin's sweet bus!

Even though we had the bus, we still had to have have separate drivers. Only the junior highers were on the bus. The senior highers were divvied up between the other leaders. Here is our group of girls: Kenzi, Emily (who's behind Kenz), Danielle, Kendra and Siera. We had SUCH a great time with them, totally bonded. WHAT EVA?!

Just getting in to the Pershing Center (like a civic center I guess) which is across the street from the capitol.

Here is our worship leader - Tim Neufeld from Starfield. I. LOVE. Starfield!

Here is the one pic of me. =) I like it for a change.

Here are the shirts Terry spend days (and nights) printing. Awesome yeah? Get this, they glowed in the dark! And the conference this year was called "Blaze." Yeah, nice!

Here are the 33 pizza boxes that we completely consumed. And that's Brent there, one of Terry's lifting buddies!

More of our leaders: Jill (a cop!), Curt, Kevin (another lifting partner), Brent, Frank, Chris and Terry.

Here is the founder and president of D2S: Greg Stier. Terry printed a shirt for him and fellow D2S dude, Zane Black (whom the girls love =)). Cool trivia: Brent went to the same church in CO as Greg in high school =)

Here is our packed our section #21!

We were challenged to share our faith and here are my girls texting away =) I was so proud!

Terry praying with a student.

Our group in front of the capitol on our way to do a prayer walk around a school.

The capitol. Thank the Lord it was a pretty nice day. Last year they freezed their bums!

Our small Catholic school that we prayed for.

This is the very last song of D2S. It was amazing. There's Zane with this SEND ME sign.

And a final one of Zane and Danielle. Awesome. We love you Dare to Share!

How would you like THIS for dinner?:

Yeah, me neither. But Evie thought it was pretty good. She knows she's not supposed to get in to Snap's food, but she succumbs to the temptation occasionally. This evening while I was working on dinner I turn around to see her chucking the food onto the kitchen floor from the pantry for Snap to get and eat. You know, kinda like fetch. But then someone ELSE picked it up, assuming it was chocolate. That person shall remain nameless, but it wasn't me!

After a good laugh, I went back to work on dinner and when I turned around, Evie was babbling on but had the distinct look that she was sucking on something. You know the look. Yep, it was dog food. I went and changed my facebook status b/c I like to keep it interesting:

why is it that Evie will suck on DOG FOOD no problem?!! but when it comes to lunch or dinner, she'd rather not?

Still, it's not as bad as the time Noah ate dog poo as a toddler. I was at my parents house and only knew what he had done based on the smell emanating from his mouth...

Anyway, a little while later, I was talking to my brother on facebook chat when Evie came up to me and said, "It's cold." (Yeah, she's talking SO MUCH these days). I took her hands and sure enough, they were cold...and wet... She had been playing in the toilet.

This one, right here.

So, she had an interesting night.

LOTR is the coolest

If anyone actually reads this, I apologize in advance for the boringness. I'm a huge dork. But no one will probably ever find out b/c no one reads this!

I love The Lord of the Rings. I had never heard of them until the first movie came out while I was in college, Christmas of 2001. I happened to be in Chicago at my Gramma's house. After we got back from the movie, I borrowed my uncle's copy of The Hobbit and devoured it. When we got home again, I borrowed LOTR from the library and read all three in just about one or two weeks.

I remember finishing Return of the King at school and being really depressed for like a week b/c of what happens to Frodo in the end.

Terry and I started dating about six months later in 2002. In fact, one of the first conversations I had with him on a sled behind a four wheeler was about these books =). For Christmas, he bought me The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings on CD! It was the perfect gift, I tell you what. I have listened to them so many times.

But alas, they are getting scratched up. So for 2009's Christmas Terry got me an MP3 player! He spend countless hours downloading all the CDs into Windows Media Player on our old laptop. Then he got them on the GPX easily enough.

It was a great gift, but the GPX was so hard to use. Terry felt bad and got a different MP3 player - a Sansa. So we went to upload the CDs from WMP to the Sansa and it would not work.

None of the CDs or audio tracks were in order, no matter what we did. Frustrated, we gave up these last two months.

But last week an ipod presented itself. It's used, like a 3rd generation I think. But it works. So Terry set to work downloading the CDs into iTunes. But then when he went to sync (upload) them, they were out of order! ARG! I did not give up though. I found a wonderful website that solved all of our problems. Aldo is a genius.

So I've got everything working. It's taking a while to upload everything, but then again, I do have 56 CDs to get through. And these babies are long. But I listened to what I downloaded on the ipod while I worked out this morning and it worked! YAYYYYYYY!

valentine tradition in the making

Terry came up with the brilliant idea of combining Valentine's Day with a high school fundraiser. He organized a progressive dinner where the students serve couples. The proceeds will help send them to a week long conference this summer called Challenge in Ohio. I helped a little with the logistics, as a sounding board to Terry (he's says I'm invaluable in this role =)), and the games by drawing on a friend's experience with this sort of thing.

We had a sign up for the food required. We even did a video to promote it at church. 17 couples originally signed up. But several kids/people were sick and one couple had a baby! So I think we served 13-14 couples.

It was very confusing how we got everyone through their houses so I'll leave that out. It's enough to say that we had two soup/salad houses, two main course houses (lasagna) and one dessert "house" which was at the church.

Terry and I were at the church for the dessert so that's all I have pictures of, for now.

Doesn't it look awesome?! For the record, I didn't decorate. This is out of my ability!

Here are two boys that took coats and opened up the door.

Here is our combined first group.

Here are the kids pouring drinks. Nice pinky point Ben. =)

Cheese cake was the winner of the night. Here is a cake that didn't really get eaten but was pretty nonetheless. It will find a home at youth group on Wednesday though.

We provided childcare on the other end of the church. Apparently it takes three girls to look after Evie and a baby =)

Here is the first group again, this time with ambiance =)

Here is the second group, and overlapping group one who just finished.

Here are a couple friends, Shawn and Becki.

More service to Dale, Myra, Jeremy and Trish.

Heidi, Bruce, Joyce, Terri and Lane, who looks just like my dad

Having finished serving dessert, the boys help themselves.

I'm totally making this Terry's new profile picture. Look out!