Sometime...

You might be asked to put a bridal bouquet together.

I agreed to do it because I have always liked putting flowers together - and how hard could it possibly be?

A large mound of assorted flowers reposed on my bed that evening.


But some of the flowers were dirty and needed to be washed. Then I thought it would be nice to bleach some of them.


Then they had to dry.


The bride wanted white and gold flowers. I had the white flowers but needed to paint some other flowers gold.


Painting them by hand wasn't hard at all, just time consuming. The flowers had to be pulled apart, each layer painted, and after they were dried, put back together.


They painted easily enough, but the color was wrong - more of an off-brown than true gold. A spray bottle of gold paint was gotten hold of and it did the trick, covering both flowers and fingers until I had the sense to put a glove on.


Then, I suggest you get a creative aunt to come and help you, since you may have now realized that you don't know how in the world you're going to do this. Pack up all of your stuff - not leaving anything behind. This will prevent you from having to send family members back for some items.

Make a mess, of course, as you try to create a lovely bouquet for a bride halfway around the world.


Find paintbrushes, hot glue gold beads onto flowers, eat some carrots for lunch, stick pearls onto floral stems and rip fake foliage from flowers while your extremely creative aunt works on the bouquet. She will have many good ideas - like creating a long bouquet to be carried over the arm. This will make it easier to be packed in a suitcase.


After a while you might have come up with a pretty bouquet, like we did... although, your bouquet might not be going to a bride in Sierra Leone.

Ours is.


In Sierra Leone things are not readily available and the bride, Tina, asked my grandparents, who travel on mission trips regularly, if they could bring some flowers for her wedding. White and gold flowers.

Isn't it interesting the way things work sometimes? How incredible to be a part of preparing for a wedding in Africa - never having met the couple!

Yet, I can do things like this for unknown persons because of the love of Jesus that connects the body of Christ, no matter how many miles separate them.

Art meets Home Ec

The other day Rachel and I wanted to help my mom pick green beans. After we were done with that, we took them inside, washed them, and then started cutting the green beans so my mom could can them. We had a great time together and had lots of fun spelling with our green beans!

Tagged... Again!

I was tagged by Moriah:

The rules are...
1. Pick up the nearest book- it has to have at least 123 pages.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five other people.

The book that is closest to me now is my Science book, titled Science of the Physical Creation, by Abeka. The four sentences read,

"These reactions may be described as A +BC - AC + B. In a single-displacement reaction, the element B in the compound BC is replaced, or displaced by element A; the result is a new compound, AC, with element B left on its own. For example, the bromine in the compound sodium bromide (NaBr) may be replaced by chlorine (Cl), yielding sodium chloride (NaCl) and bromine: 2 NaBr + Cl2 - 2NaCl + Br2. In a more spectacular single-displacement reaction, aluminum (Al) displaces iron from a type of iron oxide ("rust," Fe2O3) when a powdered mixture of rust and aluminum is ignited: Fe2O3 + 2 Al - Al2 O3 + 2 Fe.

My science book isn't always so hard to understand, its just that page number 123 fell into the chemistry unit! I don't think I'm going to tag anyone else.

*Note* I recently went to Florida for a few days, and I'm hoping that tomorrow will give me a chance to post about my trip.

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.

Bella!

Isn't she adorable?

Over the past weekend Ri watched a dog for her aunt. She's a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel puppy, only 2 months old and her name is Bella. As you can see, she is so adorable! Her floppy little ears and big brown eyes are really cute and her fur is so soft, the minute you see her you want to hold her! Excuse the scrap of me in the background; the zoom in wasn't working on the camera.

Here's Ri holding Bella. No, she's not choking her, merely petting her!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go e-mail these pictures to Ri.

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?

Farewell!

I may have mentioned in other posts that my best friend, Ri, was house-training a dog named Rose. We called her Rosie and she was so adorable, fluffy and soft with big brown and white spots and brown freckles on her nose. Rosie is Toby's "aunt" - her sister, Sadie, is Toby's mom. You can see from the picture that Rosie and Toby actually look quite a bit alike. When Ri first got Rosie she was so excited because now we both had dogs and we walked them together and let them socialize with each other. After a month and a half, the time finally came when Rosie was ready to be sold and her last day with Ri came. I had wanted to take some pictures of them together so before she left I took Toby over to Ri's house and tried to get a picture of them together. I say "tried" because they were not cooperating and it took one of us to hold the dogs and the other to take the picture! Here is the result. Aren't they cute?

Winter Fortress

About two days ago I started to make a a snow fort. It started with just a tunnel that led out into the open air on top of the snow, piling snow balls on top to make a tower. Then, on Saturday, Sim, Gabe, Nate, Chris, and I built two more walls, and started to make two more towers and another wall. I was hoping to work on it some more today, but then it started raining.

Signing off, Si.

Out West

What a great weekend! Our whole family traveled to Nebraska - it was a terribly long drive but I was glad when we finally arrived. While there, I saw my friends, Erica, her sister Merrill, and Lydia, in Nebraska and had a lot of fun with them. Our family was preparing to leave on Sunday afternoon after church but Merrill and Erica asked their parents if I could spend the night with them and then leave the next day with some other people who would drop me off at my house. My parents gave their “yes” and what a lot of fun we had! I had never been to my friends’ house in NE so this was very exciting! They live on a farm complete with cows, riding horses, draft horses, a dog named Mollie and two cats. Oh, and not to mention a pet hedgehog! That evening turned out to be very interesting since the family had quite a lot of other people in the house for dinner. After we ate, most of us kids trooped down to the basement to play a few card games. We played a game called Apples to Apples (which, by the way, is a very fun game in case you have never played it!). This kept us laughing the whole time. When the game was over we all decided to go outside and play Red Rover, Hide and Go Seek, and Fruit-basket Upset. When every one had gone home, we girls slowly made our way to bed at midnight and promptly fell asleep! The next morning I expected that we were going to be leaving only to find out that we would have a whole other day there! Yippee! That morning we all took turns riding the horses that they kept there. Out of all of the horses there, I would have to say my favorite was Jackson, a dark brown horse who was skittish when first brought out of his pen. He was so pretty when he started running and his mane and tail blew freely in the strong wind! The rest of the day was spent leisurely, most of us feeling pretty tired. Later on in the evening we had a ride on a wagon down the road and I even got to have a turn riding in the front seat! The next morning we left and I was very sorry to leave my friends but grateful that I had the opportunity to stay another two days and have tons of fun! Well, now I am back home and must leave off lest I should not be able to get up in the morning! Hanna

The Big Sleepover

Wow! What a weekend! Let me start at the very beginning... my uncle and aunt went out of town to attend a wedding and all five of my cousins came over to stay at our house for three whole nights! My brothers, sisters and I were very excited to have them and when Thursday night rolled around, it found our bedrooms ready and clean (an unusual thing for me :). Our first night together was great except for the boys waking us up at six-thirty in the morning by having pillow fights with each other. The rest of the day was spent out at the farm helping pick produce for the farmer's market and playing with the adorable kittens out there. All too soon our second night was here and it was my turn to sleep with Ri, who happens to not only be my cousin, but also my best friend. We talked with each other for half-an-hour and then rolled over to go to sleep. Saturday morning arrived with the boys up even earlier - five o'clock this time! I don't why it is that the boys always want to get up real early - and of course they are not very quiet either! Anyway, we had lots of fun together having a picnic, playing football with the boys, and watching Sense and Sensibility with Ri, Rach, and my sisters. It seemed to me that the weekend flew by fast and already our aunt and uncle were home. It was a very interesting experience living in a family of ten kids for 3 whole days and I am so glad that they could come stay with us!