Narnia Fun

I took a quiz that was on a Narnia website to see what character I would be in the Narnia books and I turned out to be most like Susan Pevinsie! The description of me/Susan ran thus: As Susan, you are mature and respectable, yet with your 'motherly' role you can be quite bossy. Still, you can always be trusted to be loyal and faithful. Does that sound like me?! To take the quiz and find out which character you are, go to:
http://narniaweb.com/
and click on "Personality Quiz". Have fun!

Mr. Pegelow

Have you ever read the book Mr. Pegelow? I was reading it last week and it really blessed me. It is a story about a young man whose name is Bob Streblow. One night Bob was going to church and he walked past a man whose name was Mr. Pegelow. Now Mr. Pegelow was the town drunk and God had given Bob a vision about what would happen to Mr. Pegelow if he died and went to hell. So when Bob passed by him, he felt the urge to take Mr. Pegelow to church. Mr. Pegelow was not only drunk, but he had not had a bath in a very long time. That night God touched Mr. Pegelow’s heart while he was in the church service and he became born again. From that point on, Mr. Pegelow’s life was so drastically changed that people who knew him before hardly recognized him. A couple weeks later, when Bob and his dad went to pick up Mr. Pegelow at his workplace to take him to church, they found out that he had died that same day. One of his coworkers had heard him say, "Thank You, Jesus. I’m coming home." With that Mr. Pegelow went to be with the Lord.
I was very blessed to read this book, and if you have not read it, I would encourage you to read it. The book, Mr. Pegelow, is a very good book to give to people who do not know Jesus Christ. Just the other day I gave one to one of my friends that we have been telling about the Lord.

Gospel Coins

Today I would like to share with you about gospel coins. Gospel coins are about the size of a silver dollar and they look a lot like one, too. On them are written Bible verses such as John 3:16 or, it might say, “WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY?” Some of them have a cross behind a flag and around it it says, “Thousands died for my freedom... One died for my soul.” They also have gospel coins in Spanish. The purpose of gospel coins is to give them to people, or put them in places where they might find them. Personally, I have put them in places where people could find them. Once I balanced one on a parking meter in Dubuque, Iowa. One time I even put one on the floor in the library foyer when we arrived and when we left, it was gone. Another time, I was in the fabric store with my mom and put one on a shelf. As we went around the corner, a lady approached the shelf and we heard her say, “What is this?” The thing that is really neat about gospel coins is that they attract people’s attention and so they are a great way to tell people about Jesus. God Bless! Si

Spring, Spring, Spring!

When the snow starts to melt

And warmer breezes blow,

Trees begin to blossom

And farmers start to sow

I know that spring is here!

When I see the little violets poke their heads
out of the ground,

And the robins return to fill

The neighborhood with their cheerful sound

I know that spring is here!

When I see a frisky squirrel

Out gathering food supplies,

Or a bunny rabbit eating dandelions

And friends calling out "Hi"

I know that spring is here!

When I see all this beauty around me,

I think of what God has done for me

so undeserving of His love,

My heart fills with joy when I see

That spring is here!

-Written by Hanna

Smile!

Yesterday we went to the dentist to get our teeth cleaned. I liked it a lot! When my hygenist finished cleaning my teeth, she gave me a new toothbrush, some toothpaste, floss, a mirror and some pink sunglasses! I liked going to the dentist and getting my teeth clean and white!

Paul Bunyan

This week in English I read about Tall Tales. I really enjoyed reading about Paul Bunyan and his big, blue ox, Babe. Today I had to make up my own tale about Paul. Here it is:

Paul's voice was the loudest sound in the forest. His voice could be heard ten miles around. When Paul spoke, he was so loud that the animals shivered with fear. When Paul snored, five trees would fall down.

Loggers say that Paul built the largest pancake gridle in the entire world. Paul's griddle was 15 feet wide and 20 feet long. Whenever Paul made a pancake it would take 100 men to eat it. The griddle was so big that 65 men could lay on it!

Is this California?

You would have almost thought that we lived in California by the 5.2 earthquake that we experienced this morning. Much to my consternation, I slept through it and didn't even know what had happened. At 4:30 in the morning both of my parents awoke to their bed shaking and the glass candles on my mom's dresser clinking together. My parents got up and turned on the TV and the computer to find out what happened, only to discover that an earthquake had hit the Midwest. When mom told Chris what had happened he said that "he had been woken up early this morning to his bed shaking, and he called to Si thinking that Si was shaking his bed!" Soph and Lil share a bed and Soph said that she woke up about the time of the tremor to Lil bumping her. Anyway, the rest of us slept through the whole thing, but Si and I wished we could have been awake during the earthquake!
The following site shows a map of the US and where earthquakes have hit in the past hour, day, and week.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/

Take care and God bless!

Indian Teepee

I was outside playing with Rach the other day when we saw some nice long branches from our Magnolia tree that my dad had pruned. I thought that we could make a really neat teepee with the sticks. We had a lot of fun being Indians!

As a side note, big sister helped Soph type up this post. When looking up the word "teepee" in Wikipedia, she found that it can also be spelled "tepee" or "tipi." Neat, huh?

The Count Down Is On!

Hi, this is Si! I'm so excited because today, April 16th is exactly 1 month away from May 16th which is the opening day for the new Narnia movie, Prince Caspian.

This is the poster picture from the movie. I can hardly wait!

The Traveling Von Seven

In case you've been wondering what we've been doing lately (considering there haven't been any new posts) we have been -as always- very busy. A cousin of my dad's who lived in Arizona passed away recently so my parents decided to go to Phoenix for the funeral. This meant that all of us kids were able to go to our grandparents house for the weekend - including Sam! Sam is a very cute and sweet little boy, but as he is getting older, he is becoming more of a handful to watch. You literally have to watch him every minute to make sure that he is not getting into anything he shouldn't be!

My mom also has some relatives living in Phoenix so while they were there they visited them, also. The pictures are from their trip - it's really pretty there, isn't it?

We've been home less than a week now and this past weekend was Chris's birthday. Happy Birthday, Chris! Now we are back at school again. One other big thing is that Ri bought a new bike and we have been enjoying riding bikes together. Today is really warm and sunny out so we are heading outside to play. Have a great day everyone!