Goshen Trip

I wanted to visit my college roommate, Rachel, and her family. So, I planned a date for this summer to travel to Goshen with the girls.  (I figured Jeremy didn’t want to waste vacation days hanging out with my friend!)  On top of what felt like a go-go-go kind of month already, we packed up and headed out July 24th.  (Yep, July, not August.  Just posting a little late.)  It is about a 4-1/2 hour trip, so I thought a stop along the way would be a good idea. 

On the way to Goshen, we stopped at the Toledo Zoo.  A zoo had been on our summer bucket list, and it hadn’t happened yet, so this killed two birds with one stone.  It was a beautiful day for the zoo!  In fact, we actually had to wear jackets to start the day; this following days of killer heat and humidity!  The girls love the statues that many zoos had.  While I took a few photos, I declared a moratorium on pictures on top of every statue!

We saw seals and a really active polar bear playing with a barrel… and we saw him (her?) dive in the water!

    

We saw more cool animals – birds, penguins, tigers, grizzly bears, etc.  Most of the animals were pretty active because we were there in the morning, and it was cool.

         

The girls loved the (man made) stream they could play in filling containers, building a dam, wading, and exploring.  We could have stayed there a lot longer, but we had a deadline of when we needed to leave, so I cut it off a little early.  They also had a fun looking splash pad, but we thought it was a little cool to get wet.

    

They had a chance to paint each other’s faces, touch sting rays, and see a diver in the aquarium.

 

It was a fun stop along the way.

    

We arrived in Goshen Monday night to enjoy supper with Rachel, Tex, Josiah, and Oliver.  We also went to a pretty cool park to play that night.

From then on, we played.  On Tuesday, we tie-dyed shirts, which worked much better than anticipated!  The afternoon was spent at the pool.  Strangely, the kids were complaining of being COLD!  It was a little breezy, but sunny.  That evening, we went to the local ice cream spot (similar to the Dalton Dariette).  Madison, Ellie, and Oliver (Josiah was out farming with Tex.) played among the trees some hide and seek.

         

On Wednesday, we went to the Elkhart County Fair.  It was a fair, and it was fun for the kids.  It was kids day, so there were special activities going on for the kids – an obstacle course, performances on stage, ga-ga ball tournaments, special booths with freebies, and free coupons for ice cream at the dairy barn!  The kids could each chose 5 rides to ride on top of all the other fun. It was neat to see what rides each chose for their level of “daredevil-ness.”  One unanticipated benefit of tie-dying the day before is that they wanted to wear their shirts to the fair; this made them easy to spot in the crowd!

               

We went home tired – or at least Rachel and I did.  After supper, we went to bed early and clean.  The next morning, we were headed back out. 

On Thursday, we returned home via Bluffton.  I wanted to stop and see my friend, Molly, and her two boys, Chase and Colton.  This stop was full of tired kids and a lot more chaos.  But it was still worth stopping to catch up.  When you are good friends, you just talk over the din and reconnect.

We made it home that night in time for supper.  It was good to be home and see Jeremy again.

VBS and Stuff

Short post coming your way…

We have the started going to Stanwood Community Church’s vacation Bible school.  Our church does Bible school in an untraditional way – splitting it up for Sunday school curriculum throughout the summer – which has its own allure, but it is just a little different than one week crammed with camp-like fun.  And Stanwood does an outstanding job with theirs.  This year the theme was Maker’s Fun Factory.  The girls had a blast, and the music is great.  It ran Sunday thru Thursday from 6-8pm the second week of July.  On Thursday, they had a little performance.

   

We also went to a pancake breakfast out at the Wayne County Airport.  Mostly, we went to support Gloria as she was serving through Ruritans.  We saw some small planes, and the highlight was, of course, FACE PAINT.  You want to win my girls over at event, include face paint… or horses… or a bounce house… or well, a fun activity of some sort will pretty much do it  :)

Afterwards, we played at a fun park in Smithville.  I did not put Ellie in a cage.  The girls were pretending to be hunting animals for a zoo, and Ellie’s face paint was perfect for the experience!  

    

It was a beautiful day.

Cleveland Museum of Art

I had been wanting to take the girls to the art museum for awhile, probably since last year.  I finally put it on our calendar for this year.  It felt squeezed in among an already crazy month of July, but I am glad I did it.  Sandy, our resident art friend, went with us.  The girls last for about two hours in the morning before needing to eat some lunch. 

       

After lunch, we went to the kids area to explore.  This area was more hands-on, and they enjoyed this as well.  One thing they could do was use a virtual potter's wheel to create a digital piece of pottery.  Here are their pieces of art (Madison’s is bottom left; Ellie’s is bottom right):

         

Of course, we visited The Thinker:

   

We also ventured over to the natural history museum to see the dinosaur outside.

While I have little to say, it was a good experience. 

Mennonite Church Conference

The beginning of July, my brother (Luke) and I had the opportunity to take the youth group to Orlando for the MCUSA Convention held biannually.  I LOVE conference.  I am an admitted conference junkie, so it was a no brainer that I wanted to go.  Luke was more on the fence, but was willing to be an additional sponsor.  The youth were just excited to go to Orlando. 

The five days we were together were fantastic.  They were surprised with the number of seminars offered each day.  They tried some alone and with others.  The worship experiences are like none other.  There were about 1700 youth worshipping together in a room, singing praises to God, united in faith.  It was spectacular.  The bonding time for our group as we shared meals, new experiences, and living quarters was worth it.  It was so neat to see them grow, discuss, question, discover, step out of their comfort zones, step up to challenges, meet new people, bond with each other, and catch the fire for the greater church body.  Here are a few pictures:

               

While I was gone, Jeremy handled mornings and evenings with the girls, but they had play dates during the day so he could work.  They love play dates.  One day they spent with Johanna picking strawberries, playing in the sprinkler, and baking.  Another day was with their cousins (Cale and Landen); they baked cinnamon rolls from scratch and played.  Another day was with friends from school – dress up, Barbies, and bouncing on the trampoline filled that day.  The first day was with Jeremy and his family at the Fredricksburg Fourth of July parade.  Saturday ended the week with a day at home, and a night filled with fireworks. 

They missed me…. but only a little.  And that is the way I like it!

         

U2 Concert

Jeremy loves the music group U2.  I am kinda indifferent.  In January, tickets went on sale for their United States stadium tour.  Jeremy was all over it.  They sold out everywhere quickly.  He snagged two tickets for the concert at First Energy Stadium in Cleveland.  While others would be intensely jealous of me going, I was happy to go, but just because it was a date night with Jeremy. 

We sat very high, but there were others higher!

We enjoyed the band One Republic who opened for them.  I recognized quite a few of their songs when they started.  Then, as the sun set, U2 came out to perform.  The uniqueness of this tour was they were performing their songs from their Joshua Tree album, one of their first (their first?) albums that really caught people’s attention.  It was familiar music to me.  Jeremy loved the concert.  They did put on a good show with huge video screens with neat effects behind them.  As is the case with many concerts, during at least one song, the cell phone lights came on to light up the stadium. 

It was a late night by the time we got home.  The girls were sleeping soundly at my parents’ house, so we just fell into bed ourselves.