Coast Guard Festival

This last weekend was the Coast Guard Festival in Grand Haven, which is the cutest little town about 15 minutes from us. We went on Saturday night to walk around, shop a little, people-watch, and see the fireworks!Thursday night at midnight, the city opens up the lawn for people to duck-tape blankets around for the fireworks on Saturday night. Is that ridiculous or what? Needless to say, we didn't have a duck-taped area, so we found a little spot kind of behind a tree to sit and watch. We met this cute couple near us, who let us borrow their blanket and asked us cute questions about being married.

The channel (I don't really know if that's what it's called, but oh well) was FILLED with boats all connected together "saving" their spot on the water for the fireworks. What a funny site to see!

It was a fun night--and we bought a new game called SET. It's really fun and we can't wait to teach all our friends at home to play!

It seems weird that I'll be coming home in two weeks! I can't believe that! But I'm excited to get back to real life and regular routine!
Today's drink of the day is coffee from Stu and Stacy Wininger's big day...Made especially by Mike Thibodeau, sweeted with Splenda and millk my husband had to go to Rite Aid to buy! :)

Week Six Fun!!

This week was a full week! It was a blast--and the large amount of kids always gives the week more energy!! Saturday was our anniversary and we traveled to Grand Rapids to eat at our favorite, Macaroni Grill. Five years! I can't believe it's been that long, but also can't believe I ever lived without Jason...So funny to be married. Jason commented the other day that we've been married longer than I was in college. This is so funny to me!


So anyway--our Staff Appreciation Dinner was that night too...at 11:00pm! It was on the pool deck and was all decorated fancy-like. It was a fun evening...and so nice of them to give us an anniversary party! :) That's what it seemed like anyway!




On Thursday nights we have a bonfire on the beach with worship and a talk, and s'mores and fun! Jason's been doing worship this week since Tyler's gone, and he's been doing great, but I also got some great pictures of him speaking on the beach. The sunsets here at Maranatha are definitely a sight to see!! Every day is a new beautiful surprise, and it never gets old!

The highnet Interspeed...

is not working here at Maranatha. It is very frustrating, and it is making me crazy. I can't check my email, I can't pay my bills, I can't veg out on my myspace. Life is sad for me.

So I am not connected, literally...to my boss's internet via a cord, and am getting ready to pay my slightly late bills. Thank goodness for grace periods. Seriously.

Anyway--we've got a million kids here this week, which makes for fun and excitement, and lots of energy, which is good.

Gotta go to the beach...the drink of the day is definitely ice water...to take with us to the beach! :) See ya'll soon!

This was a really low week in our teen department at Maranatha! After quite a few weeks of increasing numbers up to about sixty, we only had about 15 teens at our programs each day...Volleyball and Football camp took a lot of kids away from us...But we managed to rest a lot and have a lot of fun with the kids we did have!

This is a picture of Jason doing some heavy drinking...We got lucky enough to get a half a keg of rootbeer from a parent for our weekly Sunday Night Pizza Party...The kids really enjoyed it, but the staff definitely enjoyed taking funny pictures with it more! This one is a tame one...I'm sure you can all imagine!






On Tuesday when we got back we went on a kayak ride on Mona Lake, which is connected to Lake Michigan very close to us...We had a lot of fun and a great workout!










We also had some fun at the pool this week. This was Tuesday night Teen Swim and although we didn't have a lot of kids, we still had fun! To get an idea of Maranatha's beachfront and pool, you can see that I am looking out at Lake Michigan in this picture...and enjoying an amazing sunset! What a beautiful place this is! :)

So today's coffee of the day is...hmmmm...probably Bubble Gum flavored. We're doing a study next week from a book called Chew On This...it's about spiritual formation and "chewing on" scripture...but there's a big piece of Bubble Gum on the front, and it's sitting next to me, calling me to do some work!!

Hope you're all doing great!! Love you!

Dunes, water parks, and fun!!!

What a great week we had this week!

After our Tuesday excursion on the helicopter...we followed it up with a trip up north to Silver Lake Sand Dunes to ride the Mac Dunes Scooters...

This was quite an adventure! We went with about 20 other staff from Maranatha on a school bus about an hour away...
And obviously, we took some pretty silly pictures...

Silver Lake Dunes are one of the largest living dunes in the country...This means that they are still moving around every day...There are parts that don't move anymore, but it seriously looked like the desert...Jason asked if they filmed any good movies there, and they said yes...but couldn't name any movies they knew...
The Mac Dunes Scooter Rides were so fun! On top of a bit of fun information about the area, this "scooter" took us on a thrilling ride over the dunes, with beautiful views, splashing in Lake Michigan, and a view of the public area where many off-road vehicles were zooming around on their own...Afterwards, we went to the Whippy Dip, a local ice cream stand and got gigantic and wonderful specialty flurries to tide us over until dinner....

Friday night in Teens we did a "staff hunt" which means the kids are sent off to find staff members who are hiding (either literally hiding or disguised) on the the grounds of Maranatha. As you can see, some of us had some fun with this, and definitely got a little silly with the whole thing.

I'm the one with the purple hat. Jason told me I was going to be one hot old lady, which made me feel a little better about one day "going gray."
And then there was Saturday...What a fun day! There is a family who lives at Maranatha who just recently opened a water park in Illinois, about an hour west of Chicago. Their daughter works on our teen staff and they so graciously invited us to join them for a day at this awesome park! I was definitely in for more than what I expected...This place had 10 water slides! Some were free fall, others had tubes, one was like a toilet bowl (you went around and around and around) and one was called the boomerang...You went down this tube into a huge bowl-like thing, and then you went back and forth and back and forth until you finally spurted out into a pool.

This place was awesome! There was a lazy river (the 7th largest in the US), a huge wave pool...and a great mouse-trap-looking play area for kids...It was a great day to act like a kid and play like a kid...to get to know our staff and to be blessed by Maranatha...Getting into this park for the day, getting to drive the Maranatha van all the way to Illinois, having a place to "retreat" in a way with our staff was so fun and relaxing!

So this has been a great week! And we're looking forward to the next one!

no new pictures...

Hey guys!! No new pictures to add right now--but we're having a good week! Feeling way better this week, and we're getting more comfortable in the new digs...We organized the office yesterday and are just waiting patiently now for a desk...or maybe even a table would be nice!! :)

Hope all is well at home!! We love you all and drank coffee this morning...yesterday I didn't drink coffee and had a headache all day! Yuck!! I don't like to be addicted!

We went on a helicopter ride!!!

This week's mission organization is called JAARS and it is a part of Wycliffe Bible Translators...JAARS used to stand for Jungle Aviation And Radio Service...but it doesn't anymore...Now it's just JAARS and they have aviation, but also have a lot of other services in Papau New Guinea and maybe Indonesia, I can't remember...

Anyway--they are giving short helicopter rides this week for a fee, and Jason and I figured that could be a once in a lifetime sort of thing, so we signed up!! Quite terrifying, but really exciting too!!
Here's the pictures!
We got to sit next to the pilot and wear headsets to hear ourselves...

This was pretty cool!

The wind was pretty strong today, so the take-off was a pretty scary thing, but as we got moving, it was so cool to see the people around, the houses and streets and cars...

And soooo many pools in backyards right by the Lake! Strange!


Here's the sky-view of the lakefront at Maranatha...The pool and condos in the middle are right behind the main beachfront of the camp, and if you look way up near the top of the picture, I'm pretty sure you can see a part of our house where we live in India...Fun!
Here we are after the flight...What fun!





















This is another plane that's here this week, it's a bigger, more expensive plane made especially for mission flights...It takes off real quick and can land with just a little landing strip...It also has a huge engine and takes jet fuel which I guess is a cool and different thing from most planes...We didn't get to ride in this, but Jason got to sit in the cockpit and this guy told us all the cool things about flight school and planes and missionary flights and stuff...

That was cool!!!