Tuesday, February 25, 2014

The Dells

 I have been at my job at FBC for 10 years, as of last November.  As an amazing gift, the people of FBC gave our family a trip to the Dells.  We have never been there, and we were very excited to go.  So we went for a few days in February.  The picture above this is of the high ropes course.  Yes, this means walking around on ropes up in the rafters attached by a harness.  Not my thing, but I did it with them anyway.  Well, it turns out that it is also not Hannah & Chloe's thing.  Only, they figured that out at the top of the course while they were clinging to poles, crying, and refusing to move.  How do you get down you ask?  You have to go back through the course to get to the exit.  By the grace of God - we made it back.  It was a very long experience.  When we got off, Hannah said, let's do it again!  Um, No.  I have no pictures of us up on the course because no cameras or phones are allowed - because people tend to drop them & they break or crash into people below. Below the course was one of the arcades.  We also spent a lot of time there, Tyler of course, loved the arcade.
 Most of the time was spent in one of their 3 indoor waterparks.  We went from park to park & loved them all.  Chloe would be playing & when the clanging bell gives the heads up on the bucket dumping, she would run to stand in front of the pillar to kind of get wet from it.  Hannah & Tyler spent most of their time on the big slides, while Chloe stayed closer to me & the smaller ones.  Chloe had the lifeguards giving her high-fives to the point where they would be looking for her & goofing around with her.  It was fun to watch that.
 We also played a couple of rounds of black-light, 3D mini golf.  When you take a picture in the dark, you miss that the pirate's gun is pointed right at Tyler's head.  We also did some laser mazes and laser tag.  I wish I would have gotten a picture of Chloe in her laser tag vest, since it came past her knees.  In our first round which was just us, Chloe lost big time, since Tyler had no mercy on her.  However for our second round, we had to play with 11 other people that we didn't know.  And Chloe won that round! How did that happen?  Well, these strangers felt bad for her.  They would come up to her and say, oh you're so cute, I won't shoot you.  But how about I let you shoot me.  So as a result of them all doing that - she won!
 They really liked the wave pool.  I liked it because it was all natural light.  Chloe decided this day that she wants to grow her bangs out.  I'm all for that.  So now we are sporting the fountain head pony tail for a while.  And the end of that day, when we back to the room, she was quite disappointed because they were not all grown out.  She wasn't thrilled to learn that it doesn't happen in just one day.
 They are kind of hard to see in this picture, but it was typical of how they did it.  Tyler jumped into the waves with no tube, Hannah relaxed in the tube, and Chloe karate chopped the waves nice & close to the "shore".
We also went to this really nice place for supper.  An expensive buffet with so much delicious food to choose from.  And do you know what they ate?  Chloe ate a salad (or two) - no surprise there.  Hannah ate chicken noodle soup.  And Tyler - he ate spaghettios!  What?  All that food and you eat spaghettios?!  But I had promised myself that this trip was all about having fun & letting them enjoy the time.  So if that's what you want to eat, then I am glad for that.  (But I still had to express my what?! here).

This trip was such an amazing blessing.  Without the love of Christ pouring out through our church family, something like this would not be possible for us.  We are so blessed that it is hard to express the extent of the thankfulness & gratefulness that we feel.  God is so incredibly good, He doesn't just faithfully continue to be our provider, He goes above & beyond His provision and blesses us beyond what we could ever imagine.  So thank you to everyone who helped make this trip possible.  It brought such joy to the kids, so thank you, thank you, thank you.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

My Valentine Flowers

This week Tyler got off the bus with a vase of flowers.  He had ordered them through the school for Valentine's Day.  He bought one for each of the women in his life.  Which is me and all his Grandmas.  So we took time that afternoon to deliver to the Great Grandmas, and Grandmas.  One grandma wasn't home so I still have hers in my kitchen with mine.  I was just so touched that Tyler spent his own money, all on his own idea in a way that was a blessing to others.  God is doing some great things in him!