Nine!

Happy birthday Sophie! We all hope you have a wonderful day on you're birthday- nine years old! We all love you so very much, sweet girl!
-Hanna and all of you're siblings

Ramblings of a 13 year old

I am finally taking the time to post, lest you think this blog has been abandoned. I'm really sorry we haven't been blogging lately and I know that you've probably heard this before but, we are literally swamped! School takes up a fairly big chunk of my day, and afterwards there's always something to be done: laundry, cooking, cleaning and school corrections. Plus, our dad finished the master bedroom in our house, and then, much to the delight of my siblings and I, he started working on our 2 bedrooms upstairs. My dad decided to start on the boys bedroom first so they had to move into my bedroom, which included them taking all of their numerous belongings into my room (a.k.a. two hefty dressers, two boxes a piece of items that were too precious to throw out, two twin mattresses, and all of their extra paraphenalia.).
It was actually okay and very livable, but I can tell you it was a relief when they moved down into the living room for a while. Then dad thought he might as well do both of our bedrooms at the same time, so out we went into the living room, dressers, beds and all. Now the boys had to move down to the basement and we took over the living room, which is where we are at this moment. Dad has almost finished mudding the walls so we will soon be able to prime and then paint the walls which means that soon we will be able to move back upstairs! Hooray! - because the living room does all very well to sleep in, but it is rather crowded and when you have 3 little siblings who tend to be very destructive, and your "bedroom" is the first thing people see when they walk into your house, um, well, let's just say it makes for an interesting life!
Well, I think I'm going to head to bed now, seeing as there is school tomorrow. I am earnestly going to try to post a little more often, but I'm not going to make any promises! Until the next post (whenever that is!).

Camp!

We had a totally awesome time at camp! My mom was able to go this year and she brought Sam with. The theme was Pilgrims Progress- which I think is a good theme. Plus, a lot of my friends were there, and it was great to be with them and to talk with them. We had great meetings, fun activities such as water balloon throwing, races, volleyball, kickball, bean-bags (which I'm horrible at :), charades, a bonfire, talking, staying up late in our cabins (and I mean late!), we had wonderful food- did I mention dilly bars? Group pictures, Camp shirts, God's word, life lessons, I could go on and on about all of the things we did at Camp, there's so many!
Something that really blessed me- when we came to the end of the Wall of Salvation, there was a cross and, like Christian, we knelt in front of it and had a quiet moment with the Lord. It was at this point that we were freed from our burdens. It was great experience and when I knelt down and prayed a wonderful feeling crept in, like I had just done the best thing I've ever done. Anyway, this picture is of Viv, kneeling in front of the cross. (special thanks goes to Mrs. W for this picture :)

Overall Camp was great, I learned a lot, had fun, and was blessed. Hopefully more posts will start to come... we're swamped right now! Maybe as school starts back up again I'll have more time to post.

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!