Monadnock Youth Retreat

This past weekend, Amanda and I were at Monadnock Youth Retreat in New Hampshire with Katie and Christy. It was a ton of fun! We played laser tag, dodgeball, jousting, and bungee run. At gatherings, we played funny games, sang some great worship music, and listened to Greg Dyson, our speaker. We had some great discussions and laughed alot. It was a totally awesome weekend!

Christy

There were rubber chickens hidden all over the campus. If you found them and brought them to a gathering, you got points for your team. If you dressed them up, you might get extra points for creativity. We found 7 chickens. These are 3 of them: a mummy, a chicken getting eaten by Christy's jaguar, and a nun.

Amanda with a pirate chicken

Katie with the sword she made for the pirate chicken

Katie and I are jousting. The object of the game is to smack each other with the big log-things and knock the other person off their pedestal.

Katie and Amanda are doing the bungee run. They are strapped to a bungee cord and are competing to see who can run and get their beanbag the farthest before getting jerked backwards.

Amanda, Christy, and Katie waiting to play laser tag

~Megan~

Belated Christmas Photos

I was going through the pictures on my camera today and discovered some great ones from Christmas that I had forgotten about. So, without further ado, I give you our visit from Santa Claus and his trusty elf helper.

You know it's spring when...

-you can have a water fight and get completely soaked.

-you can leave the windows open at night and not freeze to death.

-Birdsong becomes normal again.

How do you know when it's spring?

Wise Words of the Week

So, Nathan has recently been going on all the time about how hoeing your garden is so good for you and will "make you live to be 100". At dinner, he was insisting that eating meat will make you live to be 100 as well. However, I found Joshua's comment on the subject to be the most profound:

"Food is good for you. It'll make you live to be 100."

I heartily agree.

~Megan~

Happy Birthday, Benjamin!

Sunday was Ben's 7th birthday! We didn't end up celebrating until late in the evening due to setbacks. The main one was the cake. It was in the oven for over an hour and still hadn't baked. We couldn't figure it out and kept checking the recipe and wondering what could have gone wrong. Finally Mommy realized the oven wasn't even on! She had intended to turn it back on after making supper in it, but had forgotten.
So Ben opened presents while the cake baked. His favorite presents are a Narnia castle and some Playmobil knights. He and Hannah have been playing with them nonstop. Their game sounds pretty funny. These are some of the bits I overheard:
"My guy is remote controlling the castle."
"There's two Aslans. Both Aslans are bad. This Aslan is over here. He's reading."
"This guy was really rich and everybody liked him. But he died and then everybody didn't like the guys who killed him."

I may post some pictures later, once Daddy transfers them to the computer.

~Megan~

World Record!

Something amazing has happened!

Nathan refrained from speaking for

over three hours!
At supper, Amanda said something about him not being able to stop talking, so to prove her wrong, he stayed silent for the rest of the evening. :0

Sleeping Beauty

Hannah refused to go to bed or to lay down on the couch, so when Daddy came home just after midnight, he found her sound asleep on the kitchen counter and snapped this picture.

Spring Fever

The beautiful warm weather today had us all in a springy mood. Mommy was sorting through Hannah's summer clothing and made Hannah try on a shirt. Hannah wasn't too happy about having to try on clothes. So I told her to model in front of the mirror and see what she thought.
"Is it cute, sorta cute, or ugly?" I asked.
"Ugly," she whimpered.
So much for that!

Kitty Kidnappers

Today someone came to take our 3 remaining kittens to a new home. Nathan calls anyone who takes our kittens 'kitty-kidnappers', though never to their face. So when the lady gets here, Hannah walks right up to her and says, "The kitty kidnappers came and took the other kitty."

At that point we had to explain to the poor lady what a kitty kidnapper was and that she was, in fact, also a kitty kidnapper!

Don't you love it when little kids say things like that?

The Great Shootout!

Today our house was the sight of the greatest shootout since cowboys rode the Wild West. It was boys against girls, with each side holed up in their bedroom. The boys were armed with Nerf guns, the girls with a marshmallow shooter. From windows and doorways they shot at each other, pausing only to shout insults and reload.

The girls were thrilled to find that the marshmallow gun is so easy to use that Hannah can shoot it. They took great pleasure in teaching her to load, fire, and reload. Hannah was begging to be allowed to "have more shooting practice." She's shaping up to be quite a little gunslinger.

~Megan~