Bittersweet day...

My best friend Maria called me last night and asked if she could take me out for lunch today. She went on to tell me that today was the last time we would see each other until Christmas. She is leaving for Guatemala on a missions trip next week and will be gone until August 10. We leave for Grand Cayman on August 6. I was so glad that I don't work on Wednesday's, and we were able to get together. We had lunch at Fazoli's, went to the mall, Payless =), and Wal-Mart. Yes, there is a story behind Maria's picture at Payless. I will save her the embarrassment!!! Thanks, Maria, for a fun time. I will miss you, but we'll stay in touch. Love ya!

Gordon Mote

This past Thursday evening, Adam and I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Gordon Mote. We were asked to help run the tables for a concert at which he was the pianist. When we got there, we found that we would be working Gordon's table. For those of you who don't know, he is a well-known pianist and currently plays for the Gaither Vocal Band. Although blind from birth, he has a long list of accomplishments, including being on stage with some of the most popular country artists such as, Martina McBride and Trisha Yearwood. He played for artists such as Rascal Flatts, Kenny Chesney and Randy Travis in the recording studio. We had so much fun working with Bob Rodgers (his close friend and manager) and are glad we got to have this experience. If you get a chance, stop by his website www.gordonmote.com.

Here are two girls from the first week of Camp Roberts. Janae (left) and Jillian were two of the campers. The week was a lot of fun and went by very quickly. Today started the week for 3rd through 5th graders, and with 40 of them.... wow! A crazy day to say the least. I'm driving my route by myself as we are short one counselor for a couple days, and it's a lot longer of a route than I had last week. It took me about an hour to get to camp this morning, but quite a bit shorter on the way home. Several people on my route didn't come today, so tomorrow could be just as long picking people up. Anyways, it's a lot of fun, and hopefully I'll have my Camp Roberts t-shirts soon!

Domestic Diva!

For the first time since high school, I have had the urge to start sewing. I made a jumper for myself while in a home economics class in high school. I want to start making skirts for myself and maybe some other things, so I decided to start with making a dress for my niece, Kaitlynn. I took her to Wal-Mart and she picked out the material. Very nice taste! Mom helped me get a pattern that would be easy and nice for Kaitlynn. I began working on the dress on Monday and basically had it finished by Tuesday. The rest of this week I put the finish hem and the snap on it. It looks very cute on her and hopefully she will get lots of wear out of it! I'll try to post a pic of her wearing the dress when I can.

I'd just like you to know that I have a new claim to fame. My good friend Jeff Snyder who is now traveling with the Mike Bowling Trio recently visited Lima for a concert with his group and some other group called the Crawdads or something like that... =) Anyway, he delivered on their website with some pics of us folks here in town. So I am now famous in the Southern Gospel world... I think.

Anyway, check it out if you get a chance. Click on photos, then on the section titled "On the Road" and I am on there twice. Pretty cool.

http://www.mikebowlinggroup.com/

A Dream Come True

A very exciting thing happened when we were in Tennessee. We were on our way back to Maryville from Gatlinburg when I suggested we try to find the cabin we stayed in on our honeymoon. We couldn't remember exactly how to get there, but knew the general area. We found ourselves behind the cabin on a gravel road that dead ended. After a very complicated turn-around, we headed back around the mountain to find the front of the cabin. We found it and took several pics. The name of our cabin was "A Dream Come True." It was awesome and we were so glad to have found it again!

A weekend in Tennessee...

Another late post....

A week and a half ago, Adam and I went to Tennessee to see my brother Eric, his wife, Megan and their little princess, Olivia. We got there late Thursday night and stayed up really late talking. Friday, Megan had to work and Eric wanted to get the rest of his studying done (he is a pastor) so Adam and I got to babysit Olivia. We had so much fun with her. She is such a happy baby that smiles all the time. She fell in love with Aunt Valerie over the weekend, too! Adam said he thinks I held her most of the time we were there. =) Saturday, we went to Gatlinburg. There, we walked around and went into little shops and then we rode the skylift. It is sort of like a ski-lift. Once you get to the top of the mountain, there is a little gift shop and we took tons of pictures. That was a very fun part of the day. I was a little nervous at first because Adam kept acting like he was going to start shaking the cart. We ended the evening by going to Huck Finns Catfish for supper in Pigeon Forge. It was an awesome restaurant that none of us have ever been to. Sunday at church, Eric preached, I played the piano, Megan played the organ, Adam led the singing and he and I sang 2 special songs! The Lord's presence was definitely felt and it was a very good service. We had a wonderful cookout for lunch and stuffed ourselves. We left around 4:45 to come back home. It was so beautiful traveling that we could have kept on going for much longer. Actually, we were talking and having so much fun that we missed getting off on I-75. We went about 20 miles further and then we realized what we had done. After 40 extra minutes, we were still very excited about the beautiful weather and scenery. We had a great trip home. Thanks, Eric, Meg and Livvy for the awesome time! We love you.

Camp Roberts

Today was our first day at Camp! This week we are working with Inner City kids ages 6-8. We have about 30 coming each day. Next week will be 3rd through 5th graders, and the following week will be 6th through 8th graders. There will be a week off after that, then the cycle will start again.

Today went well - the kids were pretty crazy at times, but this being the first day I guess that was to be expected. I'm in charge of the Bible Review this month, so I run that "station" three times in the afternoon. The kids respond to threats of taking away pool time more than any kids I've seen respond to any kind of threat. They love the pool! Damion, the bold print name in my group, ended up missing 20 minutes of pool time today. We'll see how he does the rest of the week.

I'll try to post some pictures of the Camp at some point in time.

I'm relatively tired, so I am off to catch some sleep before day 2 begins. Whee!

Another successful game!

Last week's game saw me at my 10-years-ago-regular position of third base. Aside from two groundballs in the first inning, it was an uneventful evening at the hot corner. At the time of arrival of the first grounder, I was till somewhat dazed at the weather (or something) and failed to make a play on it, or at least much of a play on it. The second one was a stung one-hopper that somehow found my glove and I fielded it and threw the batter out without too much strain. We won the game, but lost this week's so our record is currently 2-2. This week Zoob (the other pitcher) and I planned to alternate innings and this worked well through 3 innings. But then the other team decided to pull out some rule about only being able to sub in and out so many times in the pitcher slot. So, I had to sit the rest of the game. We ended up losing 13-9. Perhaps this was due partly to my absence from the lineup, but methinks it was mostly because of our horrendous defense (infield in the 6th inning) and our lack of hitting. As a side note, I had two strikeouts while pitching the two innings I pitched. One was swinging and the other looking. The looking one came on a full count and I relied on the old knuckler. It was great. I really would've enjoyed beating the other team, as they were rather cocky. But alas, I could only watch and heckle from the bench. I don't like the umpire either. She (yes, she!) seems to have a large moving strike zone along with her largely-moving foul lines.

Adam's league - Valerie hurt

Sorry we are a little behind in our posts. Two weeks ago after Adam's softball game, I, along with a few other girls went out on the field to hit a few. I batted third. I went to the plate and was ready to whack-a-moley when the first pitch came. It spun off my bat and came directly back into my mouth. Wow...it hurt. Thus the extremely attractive picture. It took a couple of days for my jaw to get back to normal and after some ibuprofen the swelling in my lips went down. Our school graduation was the next night, so I was very thankful I didn't look too stupid.

Hey! We won our softball game! It started out kinda rocky, but we settled down and ended up winning 20-14. My new pitching style really seemed to work. I only allowed 5 (I think) runs over 5 innings. My knuckle-ball seemed to baffle them, and I even got a strike out! That's a stat to write home about in slow-pitch softball.

My wife meant to take pictures again this week but found herself too busy cheering us on, so you will have to wait until next Tuesday for pics of my white-with-red-stripes kneesocks. Maybe it was my socks and not my pitching that worked so well...

It feels great to be a winner again!

Today was definitely a day of mixed emotions for us at PCS. Today was our last day of school. We started the day off with graduation practice for the graduation which will take place tomorrow night. This morning before we started, I walked over to the bathroom where I heard running water only to find one of our students, Jessica, filling water balloons. I asked her if they were for one of the other teachers, or for herself. To both questions she answered no. She said I wasn't supposed to know anything about it, so I left her to her business. I knew we had it coming to us! After we finished eating pizza at a local park, the students all rushed over to a couple of vehicles. I thought we were toast. It ended up that before the water balloons, they decided to present me with a beautiful bouquet of flowers and my husband seven boxes of dots and a "Cat In The Hat" book (long story). They also gave us a scrapbook with many memories from this past year as well as the frame that you can see above with their pictures and notes to us. Many tears were cried.

Thanks guys for the gifts and for an awesome first year! You are our first class and we will never forget you. We love you!

Tonight I practiced my pitching for around an hour with Greg. I developed quite a nice curve ball, a decent two-seam fastball and a wicked knuckler. Needless to say I am quite excited to try them out on some suckers Thursday night.

The Reds finally won tonight. Valentin hit a pinch-hit two run shot in the bottom of the 8th inning to give them the lead, and Weathers claimed the save. Greg was listening to the game with me and called the homerun right before the pitch. It was pretty cool.

Not much else is happening that's very exciting. This is the last week of school, which I guess is exciting. For the students at least. But it brings my unemployment. Welfare is calling, I guess...

We didn't fare so well in our first game. Actually we got our rears handed to us. Not good. Not good at all. Offensively, I went 3 for 3 with a sacrifice fly and 1 or 2 RBI and a double. I am working on some new pitches, however, and I hope to stymie the opposing batters in games to come. My wife took no pictures, so I have none to post. But perhaps the weather will be warmer and she will be outside watching and will take more pics next week.

I can hardly contain my excitement. Tomorrow night is the first game in our softball league. Well, our team's first game anyway. We are playing on Lima Baptist Temple's team, with a good friend, Uncle Louis (pronounced "loo-yee"). I am our starting pitcher, and we have no bullpen, so hopefully my arm stays healthy. It being my rookie debut, the jitters will no doubt haunt me for at least an inning or two, but I hope to work through all those annoyances and pitch flawlessly. Just to let you know, I've got a wicked 12-foot arc.

I'll be sure to let you know how it goes, and also upload some pics of my victory.