My accident, tornadoes, and homeschoolers

Once again I have a day off, and once again I have so many things to do that blogging seems like the least priority. Still, events of the week are slipping by and I need to take just a few minutes to recount some of them before they are ancient history.

We've been taking Jay and Joy to Driver's Ed every day because Illinois laws require it, which really cramps our homeschooling style. Since I work a lot of 2-11s, it works best for me to drop them off there at the high school and for Erick to pick them up. Usually one of the kids drives since they need to get their hours in. Tuesday, a day before my 35th birthday, I stopped by the Petersburg Observer to drop off a press release about a homeschool meeting we are hosting (more about that later). As I was pulling out, I noticed the traffic was all backed from the light. I couldn't see what was going on, because there were semi trucks and oil tankers there, but the light was green and nobody was moving. Instead of turning right, where the traffic was, I decided to just go straight and go down to the next block to turn. When I did, a car coming from the light hit me. I was driving Jay's car. It pushed me into a pole and busted the radiator. The police came out and Erick drove over from the church. I wasn't hurt and neither was the lady that hit me, but both of our front ends were smashed in pretty good. I had to go over and pick up the kids from Driver's Ed and break the news to my son that I wrecked his car. He graciously forgave me. I ended up getting a ticket because it was my fault, too.

Jay is going to part his car out and sell it, and I think he'll be able to make his money back on it. We bought a Suburban from Erick's brother so we would have another vehicle to drive. So overall, it wasn't that big of a tragedy, especially in light of the tornadoes that happened Sunday. They devastated several towns in Illinois and Washington. We were all at church when the storms rolled through. During worship, Erick took off right about the time for offering, and I wondered what he was doing. When he came back, he let us know there was a tornado warning, and he prayed for safety and let us know that one of them was out spotting and that if there was a tornado we were to get under the pews. Then we kept on with the service. We have big glass windows and so we could see it was pretty ugly outside. We had a guest speaker, and halfway through the service the power went out. He was speaking about storms of life, which seemed rather appropriate. Since it was too dark for him to see his notes, he moved the pulpit down by the window to get enough light. After church, we had a potluck, and the food was all still hot. By the time we were done eating the storm was over but the wind was still blowing very hard. It was surreal driving to work because leaves and pieces of corn stalks were dancing all over the road making everything look like an optical illusion. Although there wasn't much serious damage in our area, many places were hit hard.

So as for the homeschool meeting, I mentioned earlier (at least I think I did) that Erick met some other homeschoolers in this area at the library, and we are going to have a meeting at our church tonight to try to organize. We've been handing out flyers and I put an ad in the paper, and we've had a great response so far. I went to a Mom's Night Out with nine other moms last Thursday and we had a great time. We met one family from Colorado with five little ones that live on a farm near here, and our oldest two babysat for them. We are going to watch their farm for them when they go back to Colorado for a week in January. We also met another family last night that owns a pizza place in town. We'd heard they homeschool, so we stopped by with a flyer. They have seven grown kids and ten grandkids, and they just graduated their last daughter recently, but we had a great time talking to them. They invited us to come back with all of our kids and gave us free pizza. It's just been really neat meeting our neighbors here lately!

 

News about our old house, Betty Snellenberger, volunteer fire department, and church play.

I really should be doing schoolwork right now, but I'm tired of reading about the respiratory system of insects. Besides, if I don't ever catch up on my blog I will get much further behind than I already am.

The biggest news is that we rented out our old house in Jasonville. After having it on the market with Hunley for six months and he only showed it one time, we finally listed it on Craiglist for rent or sale. We had so many calls in the first two days that Erick was getting overwhelmed. We took down the ad two days later because we couldn't keep up with the inquiries. The people who are rent it may also be interested in purchasing it, which would be really great. Erick drove back to Indiana last week to show it and sign the rental agreement with the tenants.

In other news, the treasurer of our old church, Betty Snellenberger, passed away a couple of days ago. She has a massive stroke and died a few days later. She was the mover and shaker of that church--the one who kept it going all of these years. She singlehandedly raised $10,000 for a new church roof a couple of years ago. It doesn't seem real that she could be gone and I honestly don't know if the church can survive without her, especially since they still don't have a pastor. They had voted a new one in and then he wasn't able to come after all because of financial reasons. Betty made the best meatloaf in the world, too.

Another thing that's been going on is that Erick joined the volunteer fire department as chaplain. He's going to be going through firefighter and EMT training, too. He has a two-way radio that gets the dispatcher signals, so sometimes that wakes me up in the middle of the night. So far he's only been on one call, though, and I guess it was a false alarm or something.

I've also been working on our church's Christmas play. It is going to be really good this year. It's exciting having people to work with instead of just doing it all ourselves. Everyone does such a great job. It's a Skit Guys play and so its funny and profound. It's called Casting Call and the idea is that it's a tryout for a living nativity. The actors in each role are really, really good. Also, we are going to put a special between each scene, such as an angel dance, a violin solo, a children's choir, and a few songs. I can't wait!

Seeing the Booth Brothers

On Wednesday, Erick took the older kids to my parents' house because they were going to the Student Action Trips with Generation Joshua again. This year they are going to Virginia. So we just have Rachel and Tim with us for the week. When he got back, one of the guys from our church, who is the father two of Erick's sibling's spouses, called to let him know that his mother was dying. So Erick went to the hospital and spent all night with them. His sister and her husband came out and stayed overnight, but because I closed at Walmart that night and opened the next day, I never even laid on eyes on them. The grandmother passed away the next day, but before she died, Erick was able to pray with her for assurance of her salvation.

On Friday (yesterday), one of the other ladies from church took Rachel and Timothy to an event at Lincoln's New Salem State Historic (which is still open even though we are in a government shutdown because it is a state site) for a candlelight walk. They are having another one tonight, so if I have time after I finish my school tonight I would like to go, too.

Then last night, some other friends from church took us to a Booth Brothers concert. They are a southern gospel group, and apparently they've won a lot of awards. One of the guys had lost his voice and wasn't able to sing, so there were only two of them who sang, but they did a very nice job. They used to tour with the Gaithers at one point, they said.

Mark and Pam Fisher, the couple that brought us, have a music ministry, too. They sing at a lot of churches and they are really good. They also lead worship at our church, and singing with them on Sunday mornings is one of my absolute favorite things. Anyway, the Booth Brothers got to one song that people wanted them to sing--I don't remember the title for sure, but it was something along the lines of "Welcome Friends." They said that they didn't think they could do it without their third member, and asked if someone knew it that wanted to sing the other part. Someone called out Mark's name, and they invited him to come up. Mark said that he knew all of the other songs up until that point but didn't know that particular one, so he declined it. They sang it anyway, and just hummed when they got to the other guy's part because they didn't know the words. It was funny.

Afterwards they took us to Cracker Barrel. It was so late by the time we got home--like nearly one in the morning, but we had such a great time. They even bought us one of their CDs so we could hear what the Booth Brothers sound like with all three parts.

Family Reunion

Trying this again...I have a few minutes here at work so I thought I would update from my phone. Blogger has an app although this is the first time I've tries it. Typing on a phone is so slow and auto correct can be tricky sometimes.

Usually at work I bring schoolwork but I didn't bring enough today. I'm in my third week of this semester and although it started out slow I have a feeling it is going to get intense.

A couple of weeks ago we went back o Indiana for a family reunion on erick's side of the family. It was pretty hot and sticky but it was neat seeing everyone. Some of them we hadn't seen in years. He did have one sister who wasn't able to make it due to her husband's health but altogether there were 31 family members as well as two guests. I attached a few of the many pictures I took. We camped out and it rained some but we didn't get too wet. We also played in the creek but I didn't get pictures of that.

Well I think that's about it for now. There is a GenJ trip coming up that we want to go to but we don't know for sure yet.

Our chore chart

I tried a few days ago to use the app on my phone to write a blog post but I never could get it to upload. It wasn't a very long post, anyway--just a few words about the Luper Family Reunion and some pictures. I'm not crazy about typing on a phone anyway. So at the end of this post I'm going to just add some of the best pictures, even though I already put them on Facebook.

But this post is about our chore chart. I have resisted a chore chart for years because I don't like to put energy into making charts that will just fall by the wayside. I've seen my mom and other moms try chore charts, and they just didn't seem to last very long. So our way of doing chores was that every day, I would assign jobs, and then we'd do them, and if one child was finished with their job before another job I'd assign them to help another child until everything was cleaned. Usually I chose the dishes. The kids would usually try to call their favorite jobs (or should I say "least hated" jobs) first, to avoid having to help in the kitchen. I usually gave the younger kids easier jobs, like having Timothy move over the laundry from the washer to the dryer.

Of course, like all kids everywhere, my kids complained about doing chores. They all seemed to be under the impression that they were overworked and had to do everything. If you would ask any of my kids whose turn it was to wash dishes, they would all claim that they had done them last, even though I almost always chose that job for myself.

About three or four weeks ago, I finally decided to make a simple chore chart. I divided the daily tasks into seven jobs. Then I rotated everyone through the list on a daily basis, so that each day a different person would do each job. Erick and I share a job, because sometimes he is home and sometimes I am, and if we are both home we just do an extra good job at our job. It looks like this:

Amazingly, this has worked extremely well. Everyone loves it. The older kids love it because they only have to wash dishes one day a week. Everybody knows that it is completely fair because everyone has the same amount of work. I never have to listen to anyone argue over whose turn it is to do anything. At the very first, we had a couple of arguments over whose job it was to clean up a mess that encroached on someone else's area, such as crumbs from the countertop knocked onto the floor, but after that the arguments died down. Nobody complains if the job load is uneven one day because they know that their day is coming when they get the easy task. I love it because I always know who to hold responsible for something. If laundry needs to be moved over, I can easily check the chart and see whose day it is. If the table needs to be cleaned off, I just check the chart and call that person in to clean it off.

I expected the younger ones to complain because they have to do more work than they are used to, but they even seem to like it. Timothy enjoys being treated as a bigger kid and getting to do dishes instead of always moving laundry over. Sometimes the younger ones don't do as good of a job at something, but since all the jobs are rotated, that means I can do a thorough job at it when it gets to my day. Plus, I can see that something wasn't done well and call that child back to redo it if necessary.

The older I get, the more I am finding that schedules are very handy. I didn't used to use any sort of schedule for anything because I thought they were a waste of time that nobody ever followed. I guess if it's kept simple enough, then we can follow them!

Okay, now for some pictures of the Luper Family Reunion...

...on the other hand, it might be easier to try it from my phone again, since that's where they all are, so hang on and I will try to get them up in a bit. Maybe I can even figure out how to publish the post I made that didn't upload right.

Sarah's birthday and getting ready for school

Last Thursday was Sarah's 14th birthday, so we went up to Lake Michigan to swim. We've been having some cool weather the past week or so, so it really wasn't great swimming weather, but we went anyway. The water was cold and so I mostly just stayed on the beach. I waded in it a little bit, but that was it. On the plus side, the beach wasn't crowded. Joy and Sarah's friend Tiffany came with us.

Here is a picture of Joy, Tiffany, Sarah, and Abby. Rachel and Tim were somewhere playing in the water, and I actually didn't know where Jay was when I took this picture. Erick and I had found a spot at one end of the beach, and all the kids decided to go down to the other side of the beach. After awhile I walked down to find them and saw everyone but Jay. I asked where Jay was and they said they hadn't seen him. Trying to think like Jay, I figured that he was either climbing around the rocks past the beach, or was way out in the deep water somewhere. In fact, I could see a figure way out in the deep water and thought maybe it was Jay. Just then Erick texted me asking where I was going, and I said I was trying to find Jay. He texted back and said that Jay was still at the other spot that we had been at first and had been there the whole time, building a sandcastle.

After only about an hour, the kids got cold, so we went to the Museum of Science and Industry since we still had our membership. We spent a couple of hours there, and then met my sister Emily and her husband at pizza place south of Chicago for dinner. They had officer's training through the Salvation Army and so were spending a week in Illinois. I was planning on bringing them my old Professor Phonics book for my niece, but forgot it so I had to mail it the next day. It was just Matt and Emily though, since my parents were watching their little ones. We ate pizza and had cake, and Sarah wore her birthday hat and we had a grand old time.

This week I don't have quite so many hours at work, and so I'm working on last minute stuff for school. We start next Monday, and Erick is going to be doing most of it. Today he took the youth group bowling. Erick learned to bowl with his left hand, because his right arm still gives him trouble after his surgery a couple of years ago. They had eight teens today. They came over for spaghetti afterwards, which was fun, but now the kitchen is a mess. Oh well--I can clean it tomorrow. I'm tired right now.

I finished up getting the kids' transcripts caught up, and I think the only thing I need to do is create new spreadsheet pages for this new semester's grades. We are going to be a doing an art curriculum that looks pretty neat. It should be coming in the mail in the next couple of days, and we are going to see if we can get together with some other homeschoolers to do it because it would be great in a group setting.

Tomorrow we are doing back to school shopping, and then I think we will be ready for school!

I'm going to be an aunt again!

I'm going to be an aunt again! My sister that just got married at the beginning of June announced on Facebook today that she is pregnant. It is getting hard to keep up with how many nieces and nephews I have. Let's see--on Erick's side, Daniel has two, Christa has one, Liz has three, Ben has two, and Joe has three. On my side, Chris has one, Emily is pregnant with her third, and Susie is pregnant with her first. So all together that's sixteen nieces and nephews! Whew!

I actually found out the news on Facebook because they didn't have our new numbers. We recently switched from Verizon, which we've had forever and a day, to AT&T. We were able to get smart phones with data and will be paying just a few dollars more than what we are paying now with dumb phones and no data. But I think we can afford it. I didn't get the department manager job, because someone else transferred into the position from another store, but I did get CSM again (Customer Service Manager) which meant a .70 raise. I've also been getting lots of hours. The plan is for Erick to take over the bulk of the homeschooling this fall since I'll be busy working pretty much full time and finishing my last semester of school.

We also did close on our house finally. There was always just one more thing, but we finally were able to sign the enormous stack of papers and so we can call it our own now. Still hoping that the old house in Jasonville will sell, though. I need to call the realtor Monday and give him my new number.

Three of the kids want to join the Civil Air Patrol. Jay and Abby really like it. Sarah said she'd join if her friend joined, and it looks like her friend is going to join. Joy said it wasn't for her. We met another homeschool family there, and they helped me get on the waiting list for the Springfield co-op group. So far we've been meeting with the homeschoolers in Lincoln, but they don't have co-op there. They just hang out at the park for a couple of hours once a week. It's kind of a drive and the last time I went I got completely lost.

The older three girls have been gone all week. They went back to spend a week with their friends in Indiana. They come home tomorrow. I'll be glad to see them, but I'm glad they had the chance to go.

Our new pool and stuff about my job

Last week it started to look like we weren't going to be able to buy our house. The underwriters decided that they weren't going to count Erick's income from the church because they didn't want to count the signed statement from the board as proof of income. We finally got that figured out, but had to reapply for the loan since they had denied it. They've also required a few piddly repairs to the house, which we've finished and we're just waiting for the appraiser to come back and say it's all good. Anyway, in the process of all this, the closing costs were recalculated and are much less than we thought they were going to be.

Since we had some extra money that we'd put back for the closing, and since most of the public swimming pools and beaches around this area have closed down (an accidentally drowning death prompted a new law specifying safety features that a lot of pools just can't afford to implement), we decided to buy a pool for the kids. I bought it off Walmart.com and got an 18 foot pool for $199. I'm pretty sure we paid more than that for the smaller Easy-Set pool we had a few years ago when we were at Shiloh.

So the kids have been having a blast with the pool. The water isn't warm enough for me to try it out yet, but maybe soon.

In other news, we are thinking of trying out the Civil Air Patrol for the older kids. We have to attend a few meetings first before they can join to see if it's right for us, but according to the website, they would have the opportunity to fly an airplane. There seems to be a lack of good homeschool groups in this area, so this might be something we could do instead.

At work, I had an interview the other day for department manager at the pharmacy, and I'm supposed to interview soon for another CSM position. There weren't any CSM positions opened when I transferred so technically I'm at the service desk, but I've been doing a lot of CSMing and cashiering as well as service desk.

I'm also trying to get on at the State of Illinois. The government jobs pay quite well here. Of course, I'm also still looking for jobs in the communication field, since that's what my degree will be in when I graduate this fall (woohoo!) I only have one more Spanish class, my capstone communication class, and I'm also taking Intro to the Animal Kingdom to fulfill my last science requirement.

But I'd better go. They are going to watch The Amazing Spiderman without me if I don't.

My new china cabinet

Today we got a beautiful china cabinet for our house. A couple from our church were getting a new dining room suite and gave us their old one. It's really pretty, and even lights up. Here's a not-so-great picture of it. (Since the patio door is opposite it and it's a really bright day, I had trouble getting the lighting right. It's also just a smidge blurry.)

I wasn't really sure what to put in it at first. I've never owned fine china. I do have eight plates that match for special occasions like Christmas, but they aren't even fancy plates. There really isn't much point in trying to obtain fine china when you have kids, in my opinion.

But I had to put something in it. I do have a little figurine that was my Grandma Haley's. It's a little girl who holds a spool of thread in her hands, wears a pincushion hat, and carries a pair of scissors in her porcelain pocket. I was fascinated with her when I was a little girl. When she was in Grandma's care, she never got dusty, but since I've had her the scissors and thread have both disappeared and she hides dust in the creases of her dress. Still, she reminds me of my Grandma, and I love her even though Grandma would be probably not be happy with the way I've cared for her.

I also added a couple of small buildings fashioned from scrapbooking paper. Joy made these for school. One is a pueblo and the other is St. Basil's Cathedral. She's very talented with her hands and has a great eye for detail.

I also added various pictures of family members--my family singing Handel's Messiah, another of most of my siblings and my parents striking a silly pose in their winter coats, a lovely portrait of Grandpa and Grandma Robertson (Erick's maternal grandparents) and his parents with his younger siblings that still live at home.

On the top shelf I put plates that my kids made for homeschool co-op last year. It was a Pinterest project involving Sharpies on plain dishes, then baked. They aren't as fancy as fine china, but since I know the artists personally, they are a lot more special.

I haven't filled the drawers or bottom cabinets yet, but I think that school books are going to go underneath. I may eventually just turn the whole thing into a display for school projects.

Our new house (with video blog)

I decided to make a video blog about our new house this time. Right now we are renting the house we are living in, but we are in the process of purchasing it. Enjoy my video!

My sister's wedding and other misc. things

Good morning! I am taking a few minutes to update my blog, because I promised I wouldn't get so far behind again.

Last week we went back to Indiana for my sister Susie's wedding. It was so sweet.

While we were there, we also picked up our van, which was in the shop because it had died two days before we moved. The guy had called and said it was finished while we were on the way to the wedding.

Last week I spent most of my free time switching all of the accounts that were set up on automatic bill pay to come out of our new account instead of our old one, as well as catching up grading from Jay and Joy's high school. Jay is behind on his again, because I don't think he did anything the entire month of April. So he's not allowed on his iPod until he finished his schoolwork.

I picked up a bunch of extra hours at work, because they were still scheduling me on my old availability. I had cut it down to only sixteen hours last semester because of my internship, and somehow it didn't get changed even though I had said I could work anytime except Sunday mornings. I was starting to get kind of worried when I wasn't hardly getting any hours, but now that that's taken care of, I should get plenty.

Today we are going to visit with some new friends we met at Illinois District Council. They have kids about the same ages as ours, and they homeschool, too. They just recently took a church about a half hour from us, which is one of the churches that Erick had applied to. (He was their second choice.)

So, I think that's about it for now.

So I'm finally updating my poor blog that I've neglected since January.

I have been so bad about keeping up my blog. Actually, I've been insanely busy, but that's no excuse. I've always been insanely busy and I've always found time to post a few words here and there.

To be honest, the real reason I haven't kept up my blog is that since during my internship I did so much writing, that I was kind of tired of writing by the time I got home and didn't want to write anymore.

Also, there were things going on that I had to keep secret, and it makes for a boring blog when you can't tell what is going on. Now that everything is out in the open, I don't have to keep the secret anymore.

To summarize: Erick was elected the pastor of New Salem Assembly of God in Petersburg, Illinois, and we moved to a new home last week.

We had been looking for a church for about a year. We still loved the people at Clay City, but we really felt that our time there was coming to an end. We talked to the District, who said that until we officially resigned, we should not tell people that we were resigning. So that's why I never mentioned it in my blog.

We sent out a resume to this particular church back in July, I think. Then we heard from them around September, and they said they were going to give us a call. They never called, and in January Erick called them. They interviewed him over the phone, we went and candidated in early March, they voted him in a few weeks later, and his first Sunday was May 5, which was also Abby's 12th birthday.

We moved to a house that is owned by one of the deacon's daughters. It's out in the country a couple of miles, and it's a very nice house. We are trying to sell our house in Jasonville. The plan is to rent this until we can get the mortgage to go through. We are going to meet with the loan officer tomorrow.

So far we really love the church. It's a newer church, only about twenty years old. It's still small, in comparison to our last church it seems pretty big. There are actually people there who do things like run the nursery and lead worship and teach children's church. It's not just Erick and me doing everything. The worship is great and I don't have to lead it, although Jay and Sarah and I have joined the worship team.

So that's the short version of what we've been doing. I will try to not neglect this blog ever again.

Oh, and the dishwasher.

I just realized that I didn't post about my dishwasher. Yes, the internship is the most exciting thing going on in my life at the moment, but the dishwasher is pretty cool, too. A friend gave us their old dishwasher a month or so ago because she got a new one for Christmas, and Erick installed it finally. It works so nicely. I have to run it after every meal, though, to keep up!

Internship

I guess I'd better take a few minutes and talk about my internship.

Last year, right before Christmas, Joy and Sarah were invited to a birthday party for a friend they met at the FISH co-op in Brazil. We don't go up there much, but I was off that night and so I decided to take them up there. We did some other Christmas-related shopping while we were up there, waiting for their party to be over, and also visited Betty (from church) who was in the hospital.

It was very cold and icy that day, and I was having a bad hair day on top of it. I was wearing a Santa hat because it was in the van, and besides, the party was a Mad Hatter theme party. While I waited for the girls to finish up a round of Catchphrase with their friends, their friend's mother introduced me to another friend's mother. We got to talking, and I found out that she was the Communications Director at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College near Terre Haute. I told her I was a communications senior at IU East, and she asked me if I was interested in doing any freelance work. I had never done any before, but I gave her my name and number and said I was interested in learning more.

Fast-forward to after vacation. This lady, Kristy, e-mailed me asking for my resume and some writing samples. I sent her the link to my Greene County Daily World blog as well as the .pdf files for the articles I wrote for the school newspaper last semester.

Last week I started school. I had four classes I was taking--the Howler class again, Public Relations, Biology of Addictions (to fulfill my last science requirement) and Spanish II (which is going to kill me, I'm pretty sure). On Wednesday of that week, I got an e-mail from Kristy asking if I could come in and interview for a paid internship at the college. I would be writing press releases and handling their social media. I went in on Thursday and by the time I made it home, an e-mail was waiting for me offering me the position! I scrambled around trying to drop the biology class and pick up the internship before it was too late and just barely squeaked by all the deadlines.

I will be starting it as soon as I get my background check back. They actually wanted me to start Tuesday, but it wasn't back in time. I also will be cutting back on the hours at my Walmart job and will be working there only a couple of days a week.

I'm just so thankful to God for just dropping this opportunity in my lap like this. I had been trying to find an internship but hadn't been successful, and really didn't think it was going to happen this semester.

Our Texas Vacation

We are back from our Texas vacation and we had a wonderful time! We decided to go the first week of January because we'd be in between school semesters and I really didn't want to try to do school on the road. Spring break wasn't going to work because Erick couldn't take his vacation then, and I had to take mine before May. We decided just to head south and hope for the best.

I have two aunts that live in Texas--my dad's sister and her husband, and then my dad's brother's wife. (My uncle died a few years ago from cancer.) We haven't seen them in years.

The first day of our vacation, January 1st, we actually went north instead of south. Erick's parents were having their Christmas celebration, so we went up and joined them. Then we headed home, spent that night at our own house, and then headed south the next day.

It was very cold when we left and there was still quite a bit of snow on the ground. We drove to Little Rock on our first night and crockpotted some chicken on the way. We had bought an invertor to hook up to the battery to save money on meals. It smelled so good cooking all day, although trying to wash the crockpot in the bathtub at the hotel was a little difficult. We actually weren't sure if we'd get a room. I had called the hotel a few days earlier to reserve a room, and they said there had been a blizzard in Little Rock and that thousands of people were without power and that all of the hotels were filled to capacity. By the time we got there, though, all the snow was melted.

By the time we got to Texas the next day, not only was the snow gone but we saw flowers blooming and green grass. We stayed with my aunt and uncle who live near Houston in a place called The Woodlands. The city's name matches the theme--every single street looks like it is in the middle of a state park. It's hard to see gas stations and restaurants because they are all hiding behind trees. The streets all have organic-sounding names--Woodcreek and Creekside and Greencreek. I don't think I could ever find my way around because I'd be constantly lost in the woods, but it is a beautiful place. My aunt's house is very beautiful, too. My uncle Kerry is a real published author and has written with big name preachers like Chuck Coulson and Henry Blackaby. He gave me a lot of great advice on my writing.

Aunt Lainey and Uncle Kerry took us out to eat for nearly every meal because she said she didn't want to cook. We also went disc golfing with my aunt, which most of us had never done before. It was a little chilly that day, but it was still a lot warmer than it had been back home so we weren't complaining.

We stayed two nights in The Woodlands, and then Saturday we drove down to Galveston. That day it rained and was cold. We stopped at Kemah Boardwalk but couldn't go on any of the rides because it was too wet. So instead we bought tickets to the Discovery Center at Moody Gardens on Galveston Island. It was pretty cool. They had a sound and music exhibit and there was one of those pianos you can walk on and a lot of other neat things. We all did karaoke, too.

After that we drove to San Antonio, where my aunt Barbie lives. Two of my cousins that I haven't seen in forever where there--my cousin Braden, who is my only cousin on that side of the family that is younger than me, and my cousin Carrie. We also met Carrie's husband, Braden's wife, and Braden's three adorable kids. We had a great time with them and went to church with Aunt Barbie the next day.

In the afternoon, while Aunt Barbie took a nap, we went to visit the Alamo and see the Riverwalk. Rachel had three dollars she wanted to spend and it took her forever to find something to buy with it that she felt was worth the money. She finally bought a bracelet with red chili peppers on it at the Rivercenter Mall.

Since that day was Erick's birthday, we went to eat at Texas Roadhouse before continuing on our trip. We were planning on spending that night in Dallas, but it took longer to eat out than we counted on. We ended up only making it to Austin before we stopped for the night. We had only been asleep for a few hours when I was awakened by a lot of screaming and running and doors slamming. I wasn't sure at first what was going on--it sounded like maybe some teenagers goofing off. Then I could hear a woman screaming, "Don't hit me!" and a man yelling angrily. I could hear him slapping her around. I got up and called 911, and the police said they were on the scene. Soon I could hear the woman yelling at the police--and telling them to leave the man alone because he was her boyfriend! It took a good two hours until things were quiet.

The next day we drove to Springfield, MO, and it took all day to get there. We drove for twelve hours straight and we were exhausted by the time we got there. We stayed the night with our old pastor from Praise Assembly where we attended while Erick was at CBC. We enjoyed the time we spent with them and wished we could have stayed longer.

Tuesday we went to Bass Pro Shops in Springfield. Erick used to clean that store every day when we lived there. They've done a ton of remodeling since we left. The only thing we bought was some beef seasoning to put on the roast we'd bought at Braum's. We also bought ice cream there and I was suprised how reasonable their prices were. I had remembered Braum's being expensive, but I think it wasn't so much that Braum's was expensive back then as we were very poor. It's amazing how your perspective on what is reasonable changes when you aren't quite as destitute.

After that we drove to St. Louis and spent the night in another hotel. We were going to see the Arch that day, but decided to wait until Wednesday since it would be closing soon. So Wednesday morning we walked down there since our hotel was only a couple of blocks away. I wasn't sure if they were going to let Jay in at first, because he had four pocketknives in his pocket. I don't know why on earth he thought he needed that many, but since they weren't springloaded and they weren't longer than four inches, they let him in. Sarah had to lift her pant legs, though, because she kept setting off the alarm. Maybe it was the zipper on her jacket.

We went up inside the Arch, which was really cool but rather terrifying. I am kind of scared of heights. Joy was a lot more scared than me, though, so that made me feel better. At the top, I had this awful feeling that if I leaned over too far to take pictures or look down, that my weight would tip the whole thing over and the Arch would come crashing down.

That last day of our vacation we only had to drive across Illinois to get back home. I was glad we hadn't planned to drive too much on the last day, because I had time to crash when we got home. It's amazing how tiring vacations can be.