~Muskrat detected by William~

Tea Party

I belong to a home ec club called the "Pin Pals" which is part of a larger group from New Castle called the Purdue Extension Homemakers. You could look at our group as 4-H for mommies. The Extension Homemakers host a Tea every spring for all the Henry County clubs as a membership drive; we bring our own tea cup and saucer, have tea & crumpets, and invite a guest speaker. This year I was on the committee to plan the tea but I was in England during their meeting. So, I just made some desserts for the event and arrived early to help set up the tables and decorations. We held the party at the New Castle Public Library's auditorium/meeting room. Over 60 ladies attended to hear Celia Burns speak about her trip to Tunisia. Celia and her ex-Courier Times photographer husband, David Burns, put together a nice slide show presentation about their guided tour of northern Africa. She does a fine job of telling about the history of the area and not going into too much detail about each individual photo. After she was finished I wanted to take a trip right away to Tunisia to see for myself the caves, oases, camels and colorful tapestries.

Valerie turns 12!!

On March 2, Valerie turned twelve on a very cold day. She had a family party with grilled steaks (Drew stood out in the chilly, windy weather), fruit salad and chocolate cake with chocolate ice cream. For gifts, she received summer clothes, cards and money. She is saving her gift money to buy a new iPod Touch.

Valerie has improved greatly at her public school studies. Her reading and writing have improved the most. Last semester she almost got on the honor roll for sixth grade. By the end of the school year she will be on the honor roll. We are very proud of all her hard work and her positive attitude.

Hannah's Miraculous
3-Point Shot at the Buzzer!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6JRdEf4Law

At the junior varsity game in Yorktown, the Raiders were tied 19-19 near the end of the game with the home team Tigers. The Raiders had 10 seconds on the clock and possession at the far end of the field. The ball was inbounded, Hannah got up the field to about four feet behind the three-point line and she just heaved the ball toward the goal in a last ditch effort to try for a goal. The ball banked on the backboard and went into the basket for three points just as the buzzer went off. You can't hear the buzzer on the video. The Raiders won the game 22-19; it was very exciting.

Hannah actually did the same thing when she was put in for the last seconds of the Sectional game in Knightstown from the bench. Unfortunately we were behind more than three points and we lost the game. I guess she needs high pressure and she can make any three pointer.

~Addison getting ready to wash dishes~

Secret Keeper Girl Tour

Valerie and her friend Leah after the presentation.
(Sorry not so good cell phone photo)

The Secret Keeper Girl Tour came to the Middletown Church of the Nazarene in February. It was a fun evening of singing, praising God, and learning about dressing modestly. The tour presenters showed up around noon to set up the stage and organize the evening show. Hannah and I volunteered to blow up the 200+ balloons. We tied two purple and two red balloons together and then tied 30 long balloons together. Later the organizers put together the display seen behind the girls. It was pretty neat. You can see other pictures from the local tour at http://blog.secretkeepergirl.com/?m=200902.

Secret Keeper Girl Valerie posing in front of the balloons Hannah and I helped to blow up.

Pretty blooms

UPDATE:

Addison admitted to ER Sunday night,

returns home Monday afternoon

Addison is ok, but they admitted her to the hospital and kept her overnight. She has been throwing up and having diarrhea for four days and wouldn't drink anything. She was getting dehydrated. Joey and Audrey went to visit this morning and Addison ate a whole doughnut. We hope she keeps it down and then she can come home.

PS Addison came home Monday afternoon after pulling out her IV. The nurses decided it would be better to send her home than try to put the IV in again (they had tried six places on Sunday night to get a vein before they were successful, with lots of tearless crying and struggling).

We woke to fluffy snow

Hannah and Kinsey at Ft. Wayne Tourney

Snow Sculptures

Hannah's "woman" snowman.
With 8" of snow how could they not build something?

William's dinosaur.

Twins Watch Boys' Basketball Game

Audrey in the foreground and Addison with her mom in the background.

JV Wins Tournament!

Hannah has played all season on the Junior Varsity basketball team at Shenandoah. This past Saturday her team played in a three way tournament at a neighboring school. They won the tourney by defeating both teams that afternoon and thus finished their season with a winning record (12-4). Later that night Hannah learned that she will get to dress with the Varsity squad for the Sectional. They play their first game on Tuesday night in Knightstown against Knightstown.

Another FIRST Haircut!

Valerie before the haircut.




Having a shampoo before the big event.




Partly finished.

The finished product! NICE!!


Results of our most recent 12" of snow



Where's my little buggy?




The sidewalk out front of Joey Cooper Photography and The News offices.

The funeral director/Yorktown's newest Nazarene pastor shoveling.
Doesn't that look like a great Christmas-y photo?

Two Birthdays, Three Books

My two oldest grandchildren, Matthew and Jonah, had their birthdays this past week.

Matthew turned five and started a new school. In Minnesota he can start kindergarten, so Bobbe and Justin enrolled him in a Waldorf school. According to Wikipedia, the Waldorf school "approaches learning through imitation and example. Extensive time is given for guided free play in a classroom environment that is homelike, includes natural materials and provides examples of productive work in which children can take part. Outdoor play periods are incorporated into the school day, with the intention of providing children with experiences of nature, weather and the seasons of the year. Oral language development is addressed through songs, poems and movement games. These include daily story time when a teacher usually tells a fairytale, often by heart. Waldorf kindergartens discourage exposure to media influences such as television, computers and recorded music, as they believe these to be harmful to cognitive development in the early years." Matthew plays outside in the snowy, cold weather, listens to stories, and, according to Matthew in a phone conversation with grandma, "plays hide and seek with 100 girls and two boys."

In the mail this week, Drew and I received our certificates showing our designation as Matthew's Godparents following his baptism.

Jonah turned four in the middle of the week in Lafayette. His celebration had to be postponed due to the fact that he and his father, Andy, were sick.

Over the past few weeks, I have been reading a series of books "Tales of the Forgotten God" by Dan Hamilton, a living Indiana author who Drew and I know from Bobbe's days at Taylor University and the C.S. Lewis club we used to belong to there. Mr. Hamilton has edited some of the Scottish author George MacDonald's novels into everyday English. Along the way he also wrote these books of his own. They are very MacDonald-ish and Lewis-ish in the way they are written and in the fact of them being stories with God interwoven into them. One needs to read them in their order of "The Beggar King," "The Cameleon Lady," and "The Everlasting Child." They were easy and quick to read. The plot isn't transparent so I didn't want to put the books down. There are a lot of characters but they are given names during the story to help one remember who they are and what their position in the story is. I bought the books in 1998 at the local Christian book store, four years after they were published, for less than $10 for the set. I am glad I finally got around to reading them.

Minnesota Miscellany

Grandson Matthew Paul C. M. was officially baptized on Sunday, January 11 at the 9 o'clock service at the St. Christopher's Episcopal Church in St. Paul. Drew and I stood up at the baptismal fount with Matthew, Bobbe and Justin; also my dad, Robert, and his wife, Ann (who live just over the St. Croix River in Hudson, Wisconsin) came to give support.

This is one of the gifts Matthew received after his ceremony.

Matthew before the ceremony with Great Grandpa Robert and Great Grandma Ann.

Matthew and his proud parents.

Matthew forcing a smile for grandma's camera.

Matthew and Bobbe showing grandma
and grandpa his new Wii Fit exercises.
Matthew is very balanced;
grandma and grandpa aren't.

Ann with her new dog, Maddie.

My dad giving the tour of his remodeled
mower/snowblower repair shop out in his garage.

We saw a lone picnic table at a rest
area on the way up to Minnesota.

Cold, Cold, Cold, and Snowy

It has been very cold and snowy in Middletown lately. The temperatures have been in the negatives and the wind chills have been in the -30s. At those temps one can get frostbite in under thirty minutes. School was canceled on Friday due to the extremely cold temps. Above is a view from our big room window facing southeast when it was snowing.

Dishwasher Ramblings

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my kids got together and gave me a gift card to Lowe's for me to buy a new dishwasher. Since I don't already have a dishwasher and since my kitchen isn't exactly set up to have one introduced, Drew and I put our minds together and decided that maybe getting a portable machine would be the best route for us. Portable dishwashers come with a top, back and sides already attached so we wouldn't have to build a cabinet for it to be installed, as opposed to the built-in models which just have insulation around them when you take them out of the box and are meant to be installed under a kitchen counter top with the cabinetry around them. Also, most portable models can be installed permanently, which is what we planned to do after trying out different locations in our kitchen with the machine still on its wheels. Handy, huh?

Well, Saturday we traveled to Lowe's to look at the portable dishwashers with the intention of buying one. Of the ten or so portable models listed online at lowes.com, only one machine was available to look at in the store. I guess portable dishwashers aren't as popular as I had imagined. I was disappointed. We decided to look at the built-in models to see if they compared to the portable ones we saw online. We figured out that the portable ones cost $150 to $300 more than their built-in counterparts and the models that turn into portable units are the lower end models. This was also disappointing.

I told Drew that I just wanted to stop thinking about the portable units for a while; I wanted to look at each built-in unit and see what I liked. As I took time to look into each dishwasher and scrutinize on its features, Drew waited in a little demo kitchen and thought. I didn't even look at the $198-$300 models. The $300-$400 models were ok but I didn't like the latches on the doors or the soap dispenser doors. The interiors seemed cheaply made and the racks were flimsy. I found a $400 model that was ok; the silverware rack wasn't in the middle of the bottom rack (I think that takes up a lot of space that could be used for bigger dishes and pans), and it had a mesh-type drain at the bottom. Then I got to the $500 Bosch model and I really liked how the door opened and how the racks were adjustable. I continued on to the $600 machines and stopped. I didn't want to spend more that that. Did you know you can spend $1,200 on a regular dishwasher at Lowe's? No me.

Then I introduced Drew back into the perusal of the machines. He found that he liked the $400 Fridgidaire and said it looked a lot like Joey's machine in his newly remodeled kitchen. He looked at my preferences and then we decided to go home and think about the purchase some more. On the way home Drew suggested we stop by Joey's and see what machine he has. We did and it turns out to be the $600 Fridgidaire. Drew said he would build a cabinet for the machine and we should stop looking at the portables. I agreed that he could build something for a lot less than $300, and we would get a better machine for our money.

So the search continues. I will look at some reviews online this week and continue to look at more options on the machines that we liked at Lowe's. Will let you know when we decide something.

Daughter's First Haircut

Saturday, Hannah (16) had her first haircut in a salon. For Christmas, Santa bought each of the kids (boys and girls) a gift certificate for a haircut and style at the local hair salon.

Curls the day before the haircut.

Right before going to the salon.

Hannah made her appointment for early Saturday morning before basketball practice. She had decided to donate 12" of her hair to Locks of Love, "a public non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children in the United States and Canada under age 18 suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis," according to their website. She also printed out a photo with the type of bangs she wanted.

First Jackie, the stylist, straightened Hannah's hair and cut her bangs.

Then she gathered the hair into a ponytail and cut off 12" or so.

The ponytail for Locks of Love.
(See the photo of the haircut she wanted in the background?)

Finally she styled Hannah's hair to finish the hairdo.
What a cute haircut, Hannah! And, mommy didn't even cry.

Wintery Scene in Madison, Wisconsin