I Love My Church Family!

Today was our Annual Celebration! (Which for those of you who don't know, commemorates the beginning of our church. We had a short church service, in which several people (including myself) gave testimonies about what God has been doing in the last year.

Then in the afternoon, we went out to the Puffers for a big party! And as I looked around, I struck me, not for the first time, how much I really love my church family.

Good old Knock out. The classic basketball game that guys get bored with while girls love it to death. The object is to stay in as long as possible. And you can get people out if you are behind them and you make your ball in the hoop before they do. (But of course, the person at the front of the line gets to make the first shot, before the second person can make theirs.)

 Lenea is a doll! She was praying for her dinner and it was so cute! My heart melted!

 The Elder Team!

 Jake keeping the little ones busy!

Praying over the elders..

All in all, it was a wonderful day full of fun and fellowship and LOTS of good food!

Montage to Mattea

I have been so horribly awful about blogging! It's like I disappeared from the internet entirely! (Not really, but y'know...)

Anyways, don't mind me while I throw up a bunch of pictures from MATTEA'S AWESOME VISIT!!!!!!

We had so much fun! ^-^

On the first Friday she was here, we had an all girls sleepover at the church!

We played tons of fun games like "HaHa" (pictured above), "Nertz," "Scribblish," "Telephone" among others. =)

The blackness of our feet afterward. We also ran around the church scaring each other and me and Matt had the inside joke of mentioning "the Zodiac killer" whenever possible.

exhausted picture Mattea took.

On Tuesday, Mattea's Aunt Sam and Uncle Doug were in town and we went to In-N-Out with them and went bowling.

I found out that I'm not that good at bowling. In the second game, Baby Will beat me. (I evened the score with him but then he went after me and he had the benefits of the giant dinosaur roller and bumpers!)

Me and Mattea playing "secret agent" at the grocery store! We videotaped ourselves racing through the produce section and humming "mission impossible." We got a lot of weird looks. But the produce man laughed and when we had to come back again, he asked how our video turned out! So we showed him.

Us with pastor Kyle.

And that's all I have on this memory card and computer. But more to come!

Family Reunion- Day 1

Warning, these family reunion posts are going to be VERY photo heavy. =)

When we got there, the Washington Tylers had already been there about 12 hours or so. We just chatted, caught up on life. The boys went down and played at the creek.

They had tons of fun! The boys are getting so big!! When I realized they were there, I ran into the house to see them and I was like, "Oh my gosh!" They were a little distracted because they were watching a movie but they said their hellos. And they were so sweet!!

Grandpa had a raft!!

The boys spent so much time at the river throughout the whole trip.

Jack.

Dad was teaching me how to work my camera so I demonstrated a jump for him. This is on the "action" feature. Dylan is in the background. =)

Mommy! And more camera practice!

After dinner, we (the kids) played games and ate carrot cake in the dining room. Jack Jack sat on my lap and I helped him play Whunu with us. Whunu is very similar to Apples to Apples in which one person is the judge and they "rate" the items from favorite to least favorite and you can score points based on how they rated your card.

I found out that Dylan is not really a fan of dinosaurs, Ben really likes the Olympics, and Jack definitely does not like spiders. Who knew? Needless to say, I don't think I won this game. But it was great getting to know the boys playing games with them.

Basketball with Cam

 So Cam asked real nicely if I would play basketball with him and I consented. So he led me to a basketball court at a nearby church about ten minutes away. It would've been longer but we took a shortcut through some alleys.

As you may or may not be able to tell, the basketball hoops were very... short. All the same, we had a rousing game with much yelling, fouling, cheating, and running up and down the court.

 We were pretty evenly matched. I was tall enough to dunk the ball in the hoop, but nice enough that I shot from further away. And missed. A lot.

Our game was even complete with a "halftime" break during which Cam collapsed on the ground. It was a hot sunday afternoon and we only ended up playing for about half an hour. Next time, I say we play half court.

Something Sweet!

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Meara organized an impromptu youth and government get together at Something Sweet. It was so much fun! And their cheesecake is so delicious! I got the black forest cheesecake.

 Y&G peeps. Now you can see everybody!! (Well, not quite everybody.) The boys had a game of Uno goin at one end of the table and we played Spot it in the middle... (Thank you Aunt Colleen! We love it!)

And on this end of the table, the guys were just being goofy! I am not sure what they are doing in this picture...

Another picture of my cheesecake before I ate it. The server was so good to us (there were 13 of us!) Even when Logan spilled a giant pitcher of Mountain Dew all over and they didn't tell our server about it... We cleaned it up as best as we could. But I kind of expected them to at least tell our server that there was a spill.. Idk. Apparently, they thought he saw the whole thing... Who knows. It was a nice evening of games, cheesecake, and friends. Maybe we'll do it again sometime.

The Stock Game

In Financial Peace University (which I was taking for a school credit! Yay dual credit!!), and we were learning about stocks and mutual funds!

Enter: the Stock game!!
In the stock game, Dad gives me imaginary money to play with and spend on whatever stock I want. And after that I'm not really sure what happens. A few weeks ago, I was brainstorming for the different stocks I could "purchase." I am not allowed to use any of the stocks we already own...

We began this game a few years ago before my dad moved down here and became a financial advisor. However, the game was never finished (as it stands now... we haven't moved beyond the brainstorming point.) and we are still trying to play it.

I am not sure what happens but if/when we finally get it going again, I will update! :)  I think I have a greater understanding of stock now than I did a few years ago, so hopefully I will do better and understand the way stocks work even more!! Yay! *fingers crossed*

One day, I am going to be very smart on the subject of stocks.