Thank you for praying!

Gretchen (17, Andrew (14) and Anna (20)

Zach (16), Jeffrey (19), Andrew (14) and Phil (ahem . . .)

Emily (12) and Kathleen (15) cutting veggies.

Noah (7?), Leah (almost 9) and Sumana (11)

Our amazing, budding mechanic: Jeffrey!!!

Thanks for praying for our 'adventure' to Tatamy, PA. We had a WONDERFUL time! ALL of us . . . .REALLY!!! The kids played board games, Wii, spoons and even 'Mennonite Madness!!!" What a riot! Check out the fun pics of Sumana and her good friend Leah. They were soooo cute! They both had been counting down the days til they could be together. Sumana stayed in Leah's room. At night they talked and even prayed together til they fell asleep. They were up and playing games by 7 am. Monopoly and Horse-opoly seemed to get the most attention.

The older kids played games like 'Faces', identifying old-time photographs with phrases that pinpoint the facial expressions. They also played spoons (dangerous!) and a new game for us, 'Mennonite Madness'. They had to write the numbers 1-100, but there was only ONE pencil and a roll of '6' on a die earned the right to use the pencil . . . that was pretty rough, too! Sunday morning we all went to church and in the evening all the teens went to a Cuba Gooding movie at the church, "Gifted Hands'.

The only bug-a-b00 in the weekend was the effects of the rain. I checked the info when we got home . . . we got almost 3 inches of rain and wind speeds were recorded at over 60 mph! Well, our big, green van was out in the weather. I totally forgot that it doesn't like to start when it gets wet . . . and it got REALLY wet. When it wouldn't start for church on Sunday, we got it into the garage to dry out. Today, Jeffrey tore the audio console off the van to get to the spark plugs. Who in the world designed it THAT way??? Thankfully, Jeffrey is pretty handy that way, so he was able to disconnect the spark plugs and dry things out with a hair dryer. Once he got the van running, we put things into overdrive to pack it up and get on the road. We made it home in 4 hours, with no incidents. I am truly thankful!

AND, I must report that our new daughter handled herself quite well. There were several intense moments, but all in all, she held her tongue and temper very well. She even announced when we got home that she had lots of fun on our weekend! A BIG thank you goes to the Tielmann family for bravely welcoming the six of us into their home of 9, already! The other sad note, though, is that Greig had a really rough weekend at Crosswinds and he ended up not coming down.