Say What?

It had been a running family joke that Nick was going to talk his way into the marching band as soon as possible. Whenever we saw a sixth grader manage to worm a spot on the stands, or a seventh grader marching on the field, we knew that Nick would follow in their footsteps. Kai did one show in sixth grade herself, and everyone knows you can get into the band earlier if you have an older sibling.

But I must say, we didn't actually think he'd get a spot with the band in FIFTH grade.



Granted, it's just a spot on the honor guard for now. He'll be carrying the band banner, or maybe the American flag. But he gets the uniform. He gets to travel with the band everywhere they go. He gets to go to the games, the competitions, and the parades. And as he says, he can tell the Penn State Blue Band when he applies for college that he's been in the high school marching band for eight years. (He predicts they will say, and I quote: "What the? Who the? How the?"

But what was really funny was what happened when he got his whole uniform on and stood out on the lawn. Scott has had people glance at photos of Kai in band uniform and say "Is that your son?" But when we saw Nick in his uniform, our first thought was, "Whoa. He looks like Kai."

What do you think?

I'm Bored

Okay. So everyone always says "Where do you find the time, Jenn?" and "Did you actually vacation at all, Jenn?" and other assorted things when I talk about my summer.

But VBS is done. Our trip is over. Band camp doesn't start until next week. And this week, all I have to do is nothing.

That was fun, for a day. Then I finished scrapping every picture I have developed, caught up on the blog, wrote several trip report updates, cleaned the house, did laundry - basically gave myself to-do lists to keep busy. Napped. A lot.

Now I've been doing "nothing" for four days. I'm SOOOO over that.

So today I tried to make up my own cupcake recipe, using bits of this and that. An apple filling recipe from one site. My spice cake recipe I've used since I was a kid. A brown sugar icing recipe (cooked icing, no less) from another site.

The end result was these Apple Spice cupcakes. This was a first attempt - later I hollowed out more of the cupcake with a spoon handle so I could stuff in more apples.





They are good, but I have to say - we had this leftover apple filling. And leftover icing. So we stuck the apples between two tortillas and put them in the quesadilla maker. Then we dipped them in the leftover icing. That was REALLY good.

Good thing I was on a cooking streak and skipped breakfast. Otherwise, I'd feel really guilty about the half cupcake and 1/6 applepiedilla I had. (I'm STILL trying to lose enough weight to not be considered overweight by the old height and weight charts. *sigh*)

Can Hannah Sleep Over? Puleeze?

What was I supposed to say? We only get Hannah 7 weeks out of the year. And Kai and Nick had been gone for almost 4 of them. Sure, it was the night after a long week of VBS. But what's a little more mayhem among friends? Three more kids, make your own sundaes, movies - why not?

Besides, it's not like she takes up much room.

Let's Go!

Wow! What a week. We had 56 kids at VBS, our highest number ever. I had to keep running to Hackman's for more t-shirts and crafts, and every night, new faces appeared at the registration table. It was wonderful and chaotic, blessed and a little bit crazy. But every kid went away knowing that God's Word is true, comforting, surprising, and life changing. And most importantly, God's Word is for everyone! I wish I had better pictures, but I was so busy I handed the camera off to Scott and forgot to tell him to put the flash back on, so everything's a bit blurry. It was still nice of him to try to get me pictures. If you want to see some more of the week, you can check out the slideshows Ed created on Calvary Baptist's Facebook.

We couldn't have done it without our great volunteers and supportive church family. Now it's time to start saving cardboard rolls - next year, our theme is Panda Mania. We're going to need a LOT of bamboo!

Cyndy's Wedding Dress

I can't show you the pictures of Cyndy's dress, of course. What if Ben finds this site? But Hannah, Kairi, and I went to help Cyndy pick out a dress for her Christmas wedding. She found the perfect dress, and at a great discount. She'll be a beautiful bride! And Hannah will be a lovely maid of honor.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to yoooooou.... Let's visit the zoooooo....

You look like a monkey.....

And.........

Okay, maybe we should just stop there. Happy Birthday, Scott!

Ready to Cast Off

We finished our High Seas Expedition VBS decorations a week early this year. Scott traditionally goes to Eagles Training Camp on his birthday, but the Eagles seem to be running late this year - the veterans are only just showing up on his birthday. Since he doesn't have any other days off, that means that in order to get to training camp, he'll have to go the Saturday before VBS. That day is usually reserved for frantic last minute VBS work - so we had to not procrastinate this year! The picture above shows our finished main stage.

Here's a close-up of the dock area:

Our snack area:

The entranceway leading to the main stage:

Our craft room:

A close-up of the boat:

More craft room:

Chadder's Sail Away Cinema:

A close-up of that area - we really like the little portholes we made:

Our Bible Voyage room, set up for the first day:

And our games table. Yup, we need all this stuff:

Not bad for a decorating crew of four! I thank God for my dedicated family - and for the fact that we'll have a lot more helpers when VBS actually starts!

They're Ba-ack!

The kids came back from Grandma and Grandpa's house with their grandparents in tow. We enjoyed their company for a few days before they had to head back to New York. Here's some pictures of the kids having fun at the park with Grandpa.

Zoo with Aunt Jenn

What do you do when your own children are on vacation? Borrow someone else's, of course! I took my three nieces to the Philadelphia Zoo for a day trip. We started out stuck in traffic. There was construction on both the Schuylkill and the Turnpike. So when we got to the zoo, what did we do first? Got up in the zoo balloon for a bird's eye traffic view, naturally. Actually, it looked like traffic had gotten much better from up there.
Faith hated the balloon and spent her time looking at her feet and holding on with both hands for dear life. Juli had her eyes glued to the toddler-height holes in the basket. Hannah loved it, although this picture doesn't really show it - she looks slightly ill, but she wasn't. In fact, she wanted to stay up there all day.
We started through the zoo in search of actual animals. That lasted for a little while. We saw this turtle looking at us.

But then everyone was DYING of hunger and thirst so we stopped for lunch. After lunch, we headed to Big Cat Falls. This puma looks like he's waving hello, doesn't he?

But animals alone couldn't hold the girls' interest for long. We had to seek out rides. So we rode the carousel.

And the draft horses.

And the train.

And I suggested we look at animals. But we rode the ponies.

And petted the goats.

And rode the camel.

By then everyone was tired. So we took an ice cream break. Which took forever. Because "Make it REALLY small" doesn't seem to mean much to ice cream swirling zoo employees. I appreciate that they wanted to give me my $4 worth, I really do. But when a 3 and 5 year old get ice creams bigger than their heads, nothing good can possibly happen.

Anyway, then we saw a few animals. What's kind of cool is that I didn't even know the giraffe on the right was pregnant - but she gave birth the very next day!

We had to stop to see the polar bear, too.

At this point, we were going to be late to get Scott, and I was starting to worry about the traffic on the way home. But I had kept saying "later" when we passed face painting stands. And this was as "later" as it was going to get. So we stopped to acquire one tiger...

One princess...

And one butterfly on the way out.

I'm told that they didn't wash them off for days. But that's Mom and Dad's problem - the best thing about being Aunt Jenn is dropping them off at home when you're tired!

Now Even Kairi Beats Me

I have never won a game of mini-golf when Scott was with us. That's a given. But when I took Kai and Nick to Putt U just before Grandma kidnapped them for their annual visit, I kinda thought I had a slight advantage. I mean, I'm playing against two kids, right?

They may be kids, but they are good. Or maybe I'm just telling myself that so I don't feel bad. But this was Kai's first shot on one of the holes:
So it's no big surprise she trounced me. Get to Grandma's, ya punks!

The Average American Vacation

What is the average American vacation? Maybe a trip to the nation's capital. Museums, monuments, zoos - and of course, Fourth of July fireworks!

But don't more people go to the beach? Maybe that vacation is more average, if less American...

Then again, when you win the Superbowl, you don't say "I'm going to the beach!" So maybe Disney World is the average American vacation.

Well, we couldn't decide either. So we did it all. Twelve crazy "vacation" days - which left us feeling like we needed a vacation. You can read all about it at our DISboards trip report here. (It's still in progress - we took 1500 pictures!)

Not a bad start to the summer!