It's not just me!

I'm kind of a big kid. I may have mentioned that somewhere in this blog before or you probably have just noticed on your own. I spend the majority of my time with kids between the ages of 1 and 5 and they rub off on me. Apparently this is normal. Here is Marc while on vacation.



And here is take two. Once he found out I was videoing instead of taking a picture, he became a little upset that he didn't get to fly the dragon around. :)

Vacation Pictures!

Marc, Jill, and Bethy














Jill's kids














Pillow Fight!














Baby hiding from the fight IN the pillows. :)














Marc and Lori














Zach and his chocolate














Marc and Lori's kids














The Girls!














Vacationing :)














Marc and his little brother David

Na Na

Here is a little clip from leadership training weekend at Camp Thunderbird with Jaden, my pregnant sister, and me having some fun during the dinner program. :)

Road Trip!!

I'm on vacation this week and it's oh so relaxing! Marc and I drove 12 hours to Boise on Wednesday to see his sister Jill and her family. For those of you wondering, yes it should have only been a 7 or 8 hour drive. We hit two passes with lots of snow. I spent most of my time playing with "baby" who is absolutely adorable and super quiet until you set her down at a table to eat and then she won't stop humming. Marc played quite a few games of Trouble with Luke and Jakey, built a fort, played with some legos, and had a pretty intense pillow fight. It was really fun to hang out with Jill and Mike too, talk faith, and watch some movies. I, however, have lost my ability to stay awake through a movie. Marc is a pretty good sport and is learning to watch the end of movies twice. :) I feel less bad when I'm watching movies by myself and kind of lame when I'm with others. We watched Roman Holiday the first night (and next afternoon) and a Christopher West Theology of the Body thing the second night.

We had some great CD's on our drive too. We finished up Theology of the Body, listened to Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover (awesome!), and we are now in the middle of The Passion of Christ in Light of the Holy Shroud of Turin by Fr. Fracis Peffley (very interesting so far!). I givinng my recommendations to the first two. I'd throw out a third one, but I should probably finish listening to it first. I also started reading St. Teresa of Avila's autobiography and that is pretty amazing as well. I'm really excited to keep reading it, but haven't quite found the time yet.

Yesterday we drove up to Chewelah, which is about an hour north of Spokane. We are here visting Marc's oldest sister Lori and her family. That means 5 more kids to play with! I'm happy to see that I'm not the only one who starts acting like a little kid when I've been around them for awhile. I have a nice little video of Marc playing (with no kids around) that will be making it's appearance soon. Lori runs a pretty sweet homeschooling program that attaches to different school district, which means parents are getting tax money to fund their children's education as they should be, schools are getting a bit more funding for increased enrollment, and the parents stll have the freedom of curriculum and activities that comes along with homeschooling. It's pretty awesome and the program has doubled in size every year since it started, which I think was back in 2003. If any of you mommies and daddies want some information on it, let me know!

The only downside of the trip has been that I'm a bit injured and a little less able to get or play i forts and jump into pillow fights. I partially tore my medial meniscus Tuesday night in our championship game for indoor soccer. As if that wasn't bad enough, my team did not play very well, and it was kind of a let down. The upside of the injury is that it happened before vacation so I haven't been struggling to take kids up and downstairs at work, I was able to have Marc's doctor brother-in-law Paul look at it for free (always a bonus with no insurance...Dave Ramsey says that's bad), and it's just a partial tear that will heal. I've been doing lots of icing, even on our long drives, and it's now all wrapped up nicely and on the mend! I'm the most disappointed because it means that I've lost a week of my Body for Life program that I was so determined to finish! Next week I'll just be spending time in the pool so I'm at least getting some activity in and not falling totally out of shape. It's a bummer, but at the end of the day, I don't really have much to complain about. God is amazing and he blesses me more than I feel I deserve. Even in my injury, I'm blessed (and forced) to slow down and take it easy. It's a break from my crazy, busy life that I've been complaining about and trying to get away from. It's nice.

I'll be back on Sunday, hopefully rested enough to take on a few more weeks of my crazy life. See you soon! God bless you all!

Weekend - CHECK!

I made it through the weekend, I'm exhausted, and I'm pushing through with the hopeful thought that after tomorrow night's soccer game, I'm on vacation! :)

I just wanted to say hello and add a quick update so I feel like I'm keeping up on my blog and you won't all give up on me again. :)

Please say a prayer for me that I can stay awake long enough to get my to do list done tonight. :)

PS I put a lot of smiley faces at the end of my sentences/paragraphs, huh? .... :) I couldn't help it! :)

To Do - CHECK!

I have a ridiculous day-by-day to do list going right now and this is one of many things on it. It was actually on Monday, but I had to de-prioritize it as things kept getting busier and busier.

I'm in the midst of trying to get ready for Leadership Training Weekend at Camp Thunderbird, scheduling high school leaders for our first weeks of camp, and also getting ready to head out of town with Marc to meet his two oldest sisters and their families. Then there is the usual every day stuff and everything else that some how pops in. So far, thanks to some late nights and early mornings, all is coming together just fine. I'm even managing not to be that stressed. Praise the Lord!

I had a great weekend with some much needed catch-up time with some family and friends. I do wish I wasn't always in "catch-up" mode with the majority of friends in my life. I do apologize. One of my goals is to come up with some better criteria to help me discern committing to new activities and responsibilities. I'd like to be less busy, have more time for the important people in my life, and the occasional moment to just sit without feeling guilty. I even feel a tiny bit guilty blogging right now! It's on my to do list though so fair game, right!?

On Sunday I went to a really great birthday party for two of the girls I nanny. One is 5 and the other will be 3 in just about another week. I can't believe I've already been nannying with their family for over 2 years. Time just keeps flying by. I'm so blessed to be with such wonderful families though and I am still enjoying all of my kiddos. Anyways, I've digressed. This birthday party had more pizza than I have ever seen in my life! Each of the kids got to make their own pizza. They all had on cute little chef hats and got little rolling pins. Adorable! I'll have to put some pictures up when I get a hold of them. For such youngins, they did a fantastic job making their pizzas. :) Also, a little shout out to a fabulous mom - Kristin made not one, not two, but three cakes! There was one white castle cake, one chocolate cake, and one "pizza" cake. Again, I'll have to put up a picture of them all. I of course had to try a little of each and they were all so yummy. For all of my mom friends out there, I strongly encourage the pizza-making party idea. :) They just called their favorite pizza place that has a large room for parties and asked if they would be willing to put out a little bit of dough for each child and toppings to make up the pizzas.

I better move on to the next part of my to do list now. I'll try to come back again soon. Have a wonderful weekend! I'll be praying for all of you on the young adult lenten retreat!!

Surprise!

While it was snowing here this weekend, I was ever so fortunate to be enjoying the sun in California. :) I'm even slightly burnt, mostly on my face, but also one strip on my arm with a matching strip down one of my calves. Awkward!

I spent the weekend visiting my friend Melissa and supporting UW's Ultimate Frisbee team at a tournament. It was pretty fantastic to sit out in the sun for two days and quite exhausting might I add. The best part of the weekend was surprising Marc. He had no idea I was coming. I was super sneaky, flew out just an hour before him, and after convincing him that he should let me order his tickets so I could get triple mileage points, I was able to access his flights, move one of his seats and book tickets home sitting next to him. :) In his words, I "just showed up in the middle of California."

The sport is growing on me a little, but just a very little. Mostly I can get into almost any form of competition and as long as I have a team to cheer for, someone worthy to give support to, I'm good. I still think some of the rules are weird, don't understand the lack of refs (and even when they do have "observers" they don't get involved half of the time), and the structure of tournaments is just bizarre. After losing 1 out of 6 games, against the nationally ranked first place team (UW was at #9), Marc's team only made it to the 5th place game. They were bumped out of the 3rd place game, by a team who won all 6 games in tier 2 (tier one is the top 40 teams, tier two is the rest of the teams). I appreciate that tier 1 teams can do well and play in to better competition, but all the way to the 3rd place game!? One day I would like to reorganize Ultimate Frisbee, but not really. As it turns out, I'm not actually that passionate about it, I just, not so humbly, think I could do it better. I think all of the players actually kind of like the lack of organization though, so turns out my way probably wouldn't really be better at all.

In other news, my dad and Perry (the big one) are now each a year older. Happy Birthday guys! The previous weekend we celebrated as a family at Pasta Freska for my dad's birthday. You absolutely must go there! For dinner, there are no menus. The head chef asks you what you don't like, what you won't eat, and then the food starts rolling! It's about $25 for dinner, including salads, appetizers, and just yummy goodness. Wine and dessert are extra, but you usually get three different desserts that are well worth the extra money. It seems pricey, but for the amount of food you get, and again, the yummy goodness as well, it's so worth it! Sure, I wouldn't go there every weekend, but for a special night out, absolutely! After dinner, we then moved on to a surprise party for Perry. There were some pretty major kinks in the plan, but when all was said and done, it was a really fun, great night.

The night before, we also had a family game night including Bananagrams, Cranium, and Apples to Apples. All quite fun! I'm trying to spend a little bit more time with my family during the Lent season since I'm always so busy. So far, it's been really fun!

Not too much else to report at this point. I'm just enjoying the sunshine, as busy as can be, and trying to keep in touch with you all. Feel free to get on me about hanging out. I miss my friends!