Dental Hygiene and Sound of Music

The other night I had dinner at my friend Amy's house. I love hanging out with her and her family. After we ate Christopher disappeared upstairs. Amy went to see what was going on. To her discovery he was flossing! He came downstairs and told us how it tasted like peppermint candy, and offered everyone a taste. We all differed except for Hannah.

Christopher disappeared upstairs again, and came back down asking "Anybody want some?" He had climbed up to the top shelf of the medicine cabinet to get the whole container of floss. He was trying to give us all s piece. Its nice to know he is worried about our dental hygiene!
 

Meanwhile Hannah sat in Amy's lap asking her to sing the last verse of "So long, Farewell" and pretended to fall asleep.

 "The sun has gone to bed and so must I...Goodnight"

Tie Dying Central!

I added up that since June I have tie dyed somewhere around 75 shirts. Our church high school group did their rendition of Godspell this past weekend, so my boss had asked for me to tie dye some shirts for the kids. I also made a tie dye shirt for each member of the Hungary team.

I really don't mind doing it at all, actually I kind of enjoy it! I've done this for a long time...back when I worked camp at the Y, and I'm sure even times before that! One thing that I haven't tried is tie dying black shirts, until now. I asked a friend of mine who is helping with the Godspell if he would like me to make him a shirt. He asked if I could make a black one, and the challenge intrigued me. After a few trials and errors I finally figured it out!

Here's how:
Materials:
Tie Dye (I like the kits since they come with squirt bottles)
Rubberbands
Rubber gloves
bleach
water
plastic (to protect your counter tops)

Step 1: Wet the shirt and lay it out flat.

Step 2: Grab the center of the shirt and twist the shirt to create a spiral

 Step 3: Place rubber bands tightly around the shirt to keep the spiral shape.

 

Step 4: Using bleach in one of the squirt bottles add bleach to the shirt. Be sure to get it in between the layers. I like to put bleach on every other section of the shirt. 

  

Step 5: Let the bleach sit until the bleached areas change from "rust" to a "yellowish white" 

  

Step 6: Once the shirt has changed, cut the rubber bands and wash the shirt as usual in the washing machine. 

  

Step 7: Lay the shirt out flat and with the tie dye kit put various colors where you would like them. Try to follow each spiral to be one color. 

Step 8: Allow the dye to sit on the shirt. The longer it sits the better (I try at least 24 hours)

  

Step 9: Rinse the dye out of the shirt until the water runs clear.  

 

Step 10: Allow the shirt to air dry. Wear and enjoy! 

 

 

This really turned out better than I thought it would! 

 

Coming soon...Godspell pictures...but I have to sift through the 1,335 that I took and pick which ones I want to post! 

Picture Walk

On Friday O and I decided to go on some picture walks. I love fall (if I haven't said that enough yet) and I love photography...so why not capture the things of fall that I love?!

I gave O my little point and shoot camera while I used my digital SLR. We walked around his school's campus and took a picture of the beautiful chapel there. We also walked around his neighborhood taking pictures. Here are some of the pictures...the first is a few of O's pictures, and the second are mine. Enjoy! :)

Stayin Alive...

I heard this on the radio the other day...

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/10/16/disco.song.health.ap/index.html

Transition...

tran·si·tion –noun

1.	movement, passage, or change from one position, state, stage, subject, concept, etc., to another; change

The thought of transition has been on my mind the past few weeks. Fall is my absolute favorite season, the beauty of the leaves changing, the hot muggy air moving to cool crisp breeze. Putting away the shorts for sweatpants...and football jerseys. I. LOVE. FALL.

Looking at the definition I like the thought of passage. We pass through all things of life. Sometimes we stop and stay for a long while, and others its a short trip. God uses each stop to mold us and change us, but I think that He uses the actual passage and transition to grow us even more. Transitioning can be from something bad to something good, or something good to something better. Being the maximizer I am, I always try to think of ways to do things better, but sometimes that means I need to admit to the failures of what came before the new ideas. That isn't always easy.

I think the hardest part of transition is the ending. We should strive to end things well. Whether its the end of an era, a job, or a relationship we should strive to do everything in our power to make sure we can't do anything to make the end better. Sadly, even if we do accomplish that the ending can still be messy.

Ever since I was little I have always been horrible with goodbyes, so having to end relationships is the absolute worst for me! Looking back at the some relationship passages I've been though I see some that were very difficult to end, but now that I have come through the passage and I'm on the other end I see why it needed to happen.

I think about the leaves changing and how beautiful they are...and it makes me wonder why God makes the death of the leaves something so captivating. I think that it might be a way for Him to show us the importance of having a good ending. If you view the leaves as the transitions or passages of our lives the ending is when the leaves change color and fall to the ground, then the winter season of the barren tree is a neutral zone to pray and try to figure out what we can learn from the past, and look to what lies ahead. Finally spring comes and the leaves grow anew and it is time to grow and learn from the new beginning. The transition is complete.

This year I have had a few transitions to grow through, and I know that there are many more to come. Here are to great endings and even better beginnings!!!

8...7...6...5...4

8...7...6...5...4 are the ages of all the kids I had in the mini-van on Friday on our way to a birthday party! S and O's family is very close with another family who's mom had to be somewhere at the exact time of the party and asked if I could take her 3 oldest kids. So I packed R, J, S, T, and O all in the van and away we went! The party was at Pump It Up, a place filled with moonbounces and other inflatable apparatuses for the kids to play on. I was very impressed with the staff there, they gave the kids free time, but also engaged the kids in activities.

Here are some fun pictures from the party! 

 O climbing up and hopping over! 

S was too fast for me to get once he jumped over! 

J sliding away! 

 

I tried to get all 5 of the kids to hold hands for a picture...they did it...but sadly S and O didn't make it in the pic! This is really cute of R, J, and T though!  

What do you do in your Staff Meetings?!

We have an all staff meeting the second Thursday of each month. We come and share a meal together, and discuss various things that are going on within the church. We always share some laughs...and today we shared a ton of them! Here is a glimpse of our staff meeting today...



Yes, That's right! We built our own Marshmallow Launchers and shot each other with marshmallows! It was a blast!

What did you do at work today?! :)