Vacation Bible School!

Just wanted to show you a little of what I've been working on for the last SEVERAL months. Our VBS is the Power Lab VBS. This is my first brain child. It is the logo, but what you can't see in the picture is that where all the black dotted lines are around the edges, are christmas tree lights. So our sign has blinking lights going around it! It looks AWESOME (even if I do say so myself!)!

These are my way of keeping up with who has brought the most offering, the boys or girls. In this picture, the boys had won on Night 1. The next night, the girls won. My blue and white balloons are bubbles (if you couldn't tell).

These are just some random decorations that I thought turned out really good!

These are atoms that I built out of hula hoops and little plastic balls (like in the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese's). I have 8 of them hanging from the ceiling! They look really cool!

This is my backdrop on the stage. This was hours of work, but turned out really good!!! There is a guy at church that helped me take on this task and he did as much, if not more work, than I did.

Summer time, Summer time, Sum-sum-summer time!

I'm finally done with my summer psych nursing class!! And it couldn't end soon enough. I took my Final today and left with such a weight lifted off my shoulders! I enjoyed the class, but trying to cram a semester's worth of material into 3-1/2 weeks was just too much. I was struggling to even keep my head above water. And on top of that, our church is in VBS this week!
I didn't study too much for my final, but oh well...I'm just out to pass right now. I'm ready for the summer. Poor Trevor has been so neglected--I'm ready to spend some time playing with him!

He's finally here!

Mom and Daddy brought Trevor down this weekend and met me after clinical in Meridian. I was so excited to finally get to hold my dog. He is precious!!! We played and played all night Friday night. He has very sharp teeth.
Saturday, we went over to a friend's pond and refreshed Trevor's swimming lessons. I threw him in the pond and watched him swim out. My friend has a German Shepherd that is so sweet. Her name is Katie. Katie mothered Trevor and they followed each other everywhere. When we were leaving, Katie actually started whimpering and crying. We'll have to arrange a play date again soon. When we got Trevor back into Daddy's truck, he immediately went to sleep. We got him home and he crashed all afternoon long. This is a picture of him in his box. He likes small confined spaces so I put a blanket in the bottom of a box and its his favorite place to sleep now. I'm so happy he's finally here. He's a whole bunch of fun!!

T minus 2 days--we're halfway there!

Daddy went and picked up Baby Trevor yesterday. He and mom have him at their house. They'll be coming down Friday and bringing him. I have clinical in Meridian, so they're gonna schedule their trip so that they come through Meridian as I get done with clinical and I'll meet up with them and ride home with them. That means 2+ hours that I don't have to wait to see my dog.

I did ask Daddy to take pictures of him now that he's at their house. I think the pics are SO cute! His feet are so big!

Mom says he's very social--you can't walk across the room without him getting under your feet. I talked to her this morning and he was following her everywhere she went and sleeping beside her recliner. He's very active too, which I'm glad to hear!

So, without further ado--The new Baby Trevor!

T minus 3 days---The Preparation

Bless their hearts, the guys at church helped Dave build a chain link fence in my back yard for my new puppy that's coming FRIDAY!!! It ended up being a pretty big ordeal. They came and scouted it out and it seems that a tree that would be inside the fence was leaning toward the house--a lot! They talked to our building committee chairman and he agreed, it had better come down before they start building a fence. If they didn't go ahead and cut it, 1) it could fall on the house or 2) it could begin to fall toward the house more and then they'd have to cut it and it would fall the other way--on my fence.

So, they had to start the whole fence building process by cutting down trees. While they were at it, they cut down another dead tree in my backyard. Now that it is done though, it looks great! They did a fabulous job! Here is the finished product!

I was wondering if I'd ever get home again....

About a week ago, some of our church members started talking to Dave about floating the creek. For all of you who don't know (and I didn't before we moved here), floating the creek consists of 15 foot canoes/scanoes with either trolling motors or oars and going down the creek for about 6-8 hours. They fish and then swim and eat lunch out there somewhere. We've been once before and Dave had mentioned wanting to go again sometime. Well, here was our opportunity. When I talked to one of the ladies going, she mentioned that we should bring our flashlights. They were telling one couple that we'd be floating til after dark, just to pick at them.
So, we went and floated Red Creek yesterday. There were 12 of us going (6 boats). We put in and by 7:30 am (or a little before), we were headed down the creek. No one in our group had done this float in a long while and they knew that at a couple points, there were logs across the creek, but a couple of obstacles isn't a big deal. Well....there were just a couple obstacles!
Dave and I stayed in the middle of the pack and at one point, we came around a bend and one of the older men that went was sitting on the bank. His wife told us he was have chest pains. We all pulled over and I was getting myself psyched up to do CPR if necessary. It didn't come to that. I think he just got overheated. He took a couple nitroglycerin and rested for about 30-45 minutes and we were off back down the river. We stopped every now and then for him to cool off.
As we went down the river, it seemed like there were constantly logs to get over. Sometimes, they were only sticking out of the water a few inches, but several times, we had to carry our boats. These were small boats, but not THAT small. Not so that you'd want to carry it very far.
At one point, Dave and I were dragging our boat through some shallow water over a sandbar when I heard him say, "Snake". Dave is deathly afraid of snakes and I was worried how he'd handle seeing one right up near him. I was very proud of him. He kept his cool very well. I actually moved faster than he did. I left the boat in the water and got on the bank. He wasn't far behind and we went back and forth between watching the snake (water moccasin) and watching the boat drift away. Finally, the boat drifted past where the snake was, so I told Dave to watch the snake and I'd get in the water and get our boat past that point. While I was getting the boat on past, Dave hollered to the boat coming behind us that there was a snake. They had a pistol in their boat and so when they got up near it, the snake was no more. All in all, we saw 3 snakes yesterday and killed two.
The sun finally started going down and I began wondering if we were ever going to get out of the creek. I asked our "guides" and they had no idea where the end was or how close we were to it. They could only say, "I'll know it when I see it". That's a scary thought. Several times, we'd pass a sandbar that looked identical to one we had already passed. We joked that we were going in a big circle and someone out there was laughing at us wondering, "When are these idiots going to realize this!" I began remember the Blair Witch Project. But it was no circle--it just kept going, and going...and going.
As it turned out, we finally got to the end of our float where our trucks were parked at 8:45pm. We had to carry boats a long way and upstairs to get the trucks in addition to the trolling motors and batteries, coolers full of fish, coolers of food and drinks, fishing poles and all the other stuff. Dave and I got back to our car last night at 10:00pm.
But to our credit, every one of the people that floated with us yesterday made it for church today. We were all laughing and joking about yesterday. Although there was nothing funny about it last night, this is a story that we will be joking about for years to come!