Friday, August 31, 2007

Well, I'm outta here!!

I'm out of The Office until Tuesday and one week til the Women's Meeting.

Lots of stuff to do this weekend.

EVERYBODY HAVE A FANTABULOUS LONG WEEKEND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

WHERE HAVE I BEEN?????

I'm not sure.

JUST KIDDING!!!

I've been right here at The Office. I've just had some real work that needed done.

I know all of you are wondering about "The Trip". We went, we saw, we even bought the T-shirt. That's it in a nutshell.

Ok, I'll elaborate.

We left the church later than planned. (Big surprise - NOT!) Anyway, we went one hour down the road and stopped for dinner. (What do you expect out of a van full of Baptists?) Then, we hit the road. We arrived at the hotel at about 11:30 on that Friday night. There were a few that were ready for bed. We did have 2 girls that stayed up til 3 or 4 am and the alarm went off about 6:30. Those 2 girls stayed awake the whole day! How do they do that?!

When the description for the hotel says "Deluxe Breakfast" we assumed it would be like the regular breakfasts that the hotels give you when you purchase a nights stay at their hotel. No such luck, but there was a McStablishment right across the street. We're in luck!

We took our time getting everywhere. Kinda. We got to the zoo and took the big loop around. It was a little bigger than what I remembered. (Well, in all fairness, when I was there before, half of the zoo was closed for remodeling. Most everything was open for this trip.) We spent about 2-1/2 hours there. We could've stayed a little longer, but we were trying to make the aquarium by 2. Some of my girls were taking pics with everything they saw. E & K were hilarious. Cracked me up somthing fierce!

The aquarium was too cool!!! At the end of the first section, there was a "Red Sea" exhibit. There was this little girl standing in front of this tank. As I passed, she said "LOOK! THERE'S DOREY! but where's Nemo?". It was the cutest thing. Well, upon further investigation of other tanks, we found Nemo. He was cute!

One of the really cool things about the aquarium was the "tunnel" style hallways. The walls and celing were a really heavy plexiglass. It was really cool to "walk through water". In the middle of the second section, they had an alligator pit. YOU WALKED ACROSS THE ALLIGATOR PIT ON PLEXI FLOORING!!!!! It was kinda creepy. They had the same type of plexi in the floor when you walked through the "big tank" tunnel. Really neat! That's where we found Mr. Ray! They have sting rays in the big tank with some different breeds of sharks and a couple of shark rays. They were really cool!! (At one point in the big tank tunnel, I heard myself singing: "Let's name the zones, the zones, the zones...". It was very scary!!!)

At the end of the aquarium tour, they had a shark petting area. They also had this scale you could sit on and it would tell you what shark you would be based on your weight. Yeah, we didn't sit on it! I really don't care what kind of shark I would be. And in actuallity, I very well might have turned into one if I'd have sat on that thing. It wouldn't have been pretty.

Anyway, I'll be posting pics when I get copies of them from E & K.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

SLACKER!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, I know I'm a total slacker!!!! I've been busier than a one-legged man in a back-side kicking contest, one-arm paper hanger, and...well, you get the idea.

Anyway, I've also been working on some other projects. Stuff to do with the kids during youth meeting, stuff for the women's meeting that I usually just help with but am now doing a whole host of things, and generally losing my mind. =) I hope you understand.

Kids Stuff:
We're taking the official "Summer Trip" this Saturday. We're going to go jump off a cliff the Cincinnati Zoo and the Newport Aquarium. I think they will have loads of fun! This trip does include an overnight stay. "THANK YOU, YO BOB!" for thinking of the people who would be doing all the driving. Although, I've done it before. Drive 3 hours, walk around in the heat all day while the kids get baked on crazy rides that would make you throw up dinner from 2 decades ago, pile back into the van, stop at "The Golden Hog Trough" on the way home, deposit children at the correct address, meander your way to your house, careen the van into our parking spot, pile into our house, take out contacts that are permantly sealed to your eyeballs, fall in the bed, and die......until morning. Then, you've got to get up and get ready for morning worship service and are expected to be in the "oh, so holy" vein. (Man, what run-on sentences you have! Says the big, bad wolf.)

WHATEVER!!! This trip works out really well. Every place we were going to go (we trimmed it from 4 different locations to visit down to 2 different locations - I was proud of them) opened at 9am-ish and everything was closed by 6. Ummmm, ok. So, out of the last 6 or 7 years we've been taking them on trips, this will be the first that we'll be getting to bed about the same time as normal! I'm liking it!!!!

Women's meeting:
My mom is the president for the WV State Women Active for Christ. Which means I get to help with the ladies retreat that will happen in about 3 weeks. The theme for this fall's meeting is "Farther On - I Can Only Imagine" and will be all about Heaven. Mom asked me to sing "I Can Only Imagine" for the meeting. I decided to spice things up a little by having the girls from my youth group doing the sign language to the song while I'm singing it. That should be good.

Mom and I went shopping last night. We bought some fabric to make a drape for the top of the baby grand in the sanctuary and a table runner for the communion table. Those will look nice!

Then, while in deep discussion with Mom about all things retreat-ish, she told me that she hadn't talked to anybody about doing a skit for the Saturday morning session. I offered a suggestion that maybe she give somebody an idea like doing commerical spots. Like for Philadelphia Cream Cheese "It's so heavenly, it's almost sinful!" kinda thing. So, since I came up with the idea, I'm going to work it out with Em. Oh, what fun. (It's kinda like slave labor, but not.) KIDDING!!!

I'm also in charge of the spoken word service (I stole the idea from Boomama's church. We did one last year and it tore the place up real good.). This will be interesting. I'm going to have about 3 weeks to get it all, and everyone who is going to participate, together. Lots of fun stuff!

Well, I think I'm tired of rambling, and I'm sure that you're much too busy to stay here much longer (that's why you're "doing reasearch online" right now, isn't it? Ok, if you say so.). So, I'm going to end this fun-fest. I'll be back at "the next appointed" bloggity time (we Baptists always refer to service times as "the next appointed time". You'll catch on quick.).

Oh, the amount of links and parenthasis' (I'm not sure I even spelled that right. I used spell check and it gave me 3 different possibilities. I don't know - that's why I'm asking you, stupid computer.) in this paragraph.

SOMEBODY GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!!!!

The store is now closing please take all purchases to the check out registers.

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SOMEBODY STOP ME, PLEASE!!!!!!!

Thursday, August 2, 2007

They've found me!!!!!

Yes, they have! The kids from my youth group have found me - well, at least one of them. The comments from the last post are from one of my kids.



She's too funny!



We (me & C) have a joke with the girls in the group. "If you line them up, what do you get? A wind tunnel!!!" I hope they all know we're kidding. Sometimes they search for the answers to your question on the celing, but they're my girls.

I'm kinda like a momma bear with the kids in my youth group. I just love them like that. I hope they all know that. ;)