Never a dull moment!

When I flew out to Dan and Bethany's I got a one-way airline ticket out, and a bus ticket back! My visit to D&B's overlapped with the Wissmanns, and they very graciously let me ride back with them! As much as I love plane rides, riding on the bus was WAY more exciting, and the company was better too:)

One of the highlights was being able to see some new sights, including a trip to the Amish Store.

A couple things I learned that week;

1. Ruth makes incredible breakfasts! (I got so addicted to yogurt and fruit)

2. Flexibility is a daily attribute that one must have...you never know what might happen in a morning.

Life on the bus is never dull!

3. Doing hair is so much fun, especially when you have such agreeable models:)

4. God is glorified when ordinary people surrender their lives to Him and obey His calling. He then uses them to do extraordinary things!

Believe it or not, I did get some school done...

...but it was way more fun to play cards!

Eating at one of the We Care banquets!

When browsing through a chocolate factory we came upon a wonderful sight! Jelly Bellys! All the pretty colors, new flavors that had never been tried, bags just waiting to be filled...who could resist? Certainly not me! *smile*

So many fun, exciting and interesting memories were made that week!

Thank you Wissmanns for letting me 'tag-along' with you! May the Lord bless you as you continue to serve Him.

Branson and Thanksgiving

Our trip to Branson this year was scheduled over Thanksgiving. It was so special to be able to share it with the Wissmann's and Dan! We were having SO much fun that I totally forgot to take pictures of some of the things that we did. But just know that we had a wonderful time!

It has been a tradition for our family to play a big Thanksgiving game of football on Thanksgiving day with our extended family. This year being away from our "regular teamates" we decided to invite our soon-to-be extended(ish) family to join us for a family game of football in Branson. It started off with kicking field goals...and I can't remember how far they kicked..but I was impressed:)

And of course since I actually played in the game I was not able to take pictures...

After the game we quickly drove back to our Condo and ate a delicious Thanksgiving meal!

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And of course our absolute highlight of the trip was spending time with the Wissmann's and going to their show!!

Thank you Wissmann's for letting us steal you away for the weekend (sort of). We had a wonderful time!!

Kitchen makeover!

For Mom and Dad's 26th Anniversary they decided to take a week long trip to VA. With Dad being George Washington in "Let Freedom Sing" he decided that that would be the perfect time to visit his gorgeous estate, Mt. Vernon, and the other historical monuments the DC area (hopefully more pictures on that soon).

The dream of painting the kitchen had been in the back of Mom's mind, for quite sometime...and so while they were gone, and with the help of many friends, we made that dream a reality! And we had SO much fun while doing it!

The first step was decided what we were going to do to "transform" our kitchen. We knew that Mom had been wanting to paint it red, so that was a start, but she hadn't said a whole lot moret...so we called up our favorite decorator (who happened to be skilled in just about every area that we needed: ) Abby, to help us!!! A whole day spent shopping...and we were ready to get started!!

We never knew quite how dirty the walls were, until we began to clean them...

We had lots of willing helpers...right John?

The painting process was so rewarding to watch! We have such wonderful friends that will come over and help! Luke N. came over and painted the red and cut in the white for us! He is a very skilled painter when it comes to red...after painting his grandma's bathroom in 7 coats of red, he found out the secret and did our red in only 2 coats!! He was so fast that we hardly got any pictures of him..but I did manage to find this one! Thank you, Luke!

Not sure how Noah U. fits into this...not sure why he was over...lol...but he did a very little bit of corner work...(did you, or were you just holding the brush while you paid someone to take your picture?)

Josh heard we were painting and came right over...well...not exactly, but we needed someone tall and he just happened to be in the right place at the right time! *smile*

While we were busy painting Abby and Anna N. were busy arranging the pictures that were to go on the big red wall!! And after a little arm twisting we got Caleb to screw in the pictures for us! He did a marvelous job!

Picture hanging is always a precarious job..."right, now left...no, too far now...up a little,...down just a bit, now to the right again." It was a happy thing when they were all hung and looking pretty!

Finally it was all done!! The "finished pictures" didn't turn out very well so feel free to come on over and see it for yourself!

Mom's reaction was just what we had hoped for! A lot of pleasant screams irrupted when she entered the kitchen!

A HUGE thank you for all of you who helped!!!

The smiles just got bigger!!!

Would you look at those smiles!!!! 

We are very excited for Dan and Bethany as they begin their 

new relationship with each other!

Bethany Wissmann has always stood out to me as a girl who loved God, and tried to glorify Him in everything that she does!  Spending time with her has only reinforced those first thoughts!  The past few years, especially when he moved out to Virginia, I have always teased

 Dan that the girl he picked I would have to approve of.  Well...once again, he has exceeded my expectations *smile*  Love you Dan!!

Looking forward to spending lots of fun times with you Bethany!  Love you girl!!!

Friendship

It was so fun this past week to be able to spend several days with the Wissmann's!  The excuse this time was, so we could do NCHEA prep work!  What a blast we had....and we did manage to get lot done as well!  But a downside was, that we were just having to much fun that I totally forgot to take pictures of the prairie that we painted, or the town that Elizabeth and Ruth put together.  Bethany did manage to take quite a few pictures (imagine that) and you can view them HERE!

"The best sweetener of human life is...

Friendship"

Thank you Wissmann's for a wonderful time!!!

Every once and a while Abby, Betsy and I get together and go shopping, out to eat..something like that.  This time however we opted to watch a movie about shopping instead of doing it ourselves!!

"The Confessions of a Shopaholic" had us laughing like crazy together!!  We had the whole theatre to ourselves so we could make as many comments as we liked!!  What fun!!  

The "short and snappy movie review" Betsy put together was excellent.  Except, she did forget to mention that, for those of you who like cool accents...this movie had a great one!!! 

Thank you Betsy and Abby for a very fun evening!!

Side note; if you are hoping that this movie will help to cure your love for shopping...pick a different movie. *smile*

Jimmy John's anyone?

Jimmy John's is the newly discovered favorite resturant, at least for Rachel and I. So when we were found with an hour and 1/2 of time to burn with a Jimmy John's in walking distance...it didn't take very long for us to make up our minds!

~Friends~

Josh had come to church with us that morning and had the afternoon free and wanted to do something, so we decided to grab a couple friends (that were still at church) take a quick trip to Cabela's and than out to a movie! Michal and Emily Hipps had stuck around so they joined the party. The selected movie didn't start for another 2 hours so Josh decided to run some errands and meet us back at the theatre. Much to our dismay he never did make it back to the theatre! (...he missed a good one). And the rest of us decided to wait it out at the near Jimmy John's! It was delicious just as we expected, and they even let us take home the leftover bread...which was sort of an inconvenience, right Rachel?

What crazy people!

Aaron and Rachel came too...providing me with a much needed ride home: )

A pleasant Luncheon

With Alatheia out of town and Amy Parsons coming in, Mrs. Larsen decided to have a little luncheon for Amy. Alatheia was greatly missed but we did manage (it was hard *smile*) to have a fun time without her.
After a delicious lunch the little Grady people went downstairs and soon came back up with a large box of hats! Mrs. Larsen have a great love for fun hats so there was plenty to go around.


Just a few fun pictures;





















After the hats were put away games were got out and a rousing game of Catch Phrase was played.

Trying to make people understand what the word is...can sometimes be difficult!

Thank you Mrs. Larsen for a lovely time!

Rotella's Bakery

Today we had the pleasure of touring Rotella's Bakery. The only one in the nation!

Once we all got our hairnets on we headed into the tour with about 20-25 other homeschoolers.
They wouldn't let us take pictures inside so I will leave that to your imagination. They had HUGE mixing bowls that held 1600 pounds of dough...you should have seen the dough hooks that thing had: ) They went through aprox. 3,000,000,000 pounds of flour in only one week!

Some fun bits of info;

- Rotella's Bakery caters and sells bread to all 50 states, Canada and they send bread to Iraq for all the troops.

-The oven that they used was 110 feet long, 25 feet wide and held about 3000 loaves of bread at one time...not to mention that they had four ovens.

-Their employee's love working there because, not only have they never "let someone go" in the history of the bakery (which started in 1921), but they also have individual air conditioners throughout the summer (it generally reaches 110˚-115˚in the summer).
The reason for that is, that it is way too expensive to air condition the whole building with all the ovens giving off continual heat.

It was a pretty amazing place!!

Christmas Program

~Warming up~

~Angels~

~Fixing hair~


~Laughing~

~Our sweet little Mary~

~Tying belts~


~Pinning the Wise Man's turban~


~Smiles~


~And finally the performance~

Master's Hand Candle Co. and Gift Shop!

Susie had her open house for her candle shop on Sat.
There were a lot of candles...

Esther was chosen to be a salesperson for another lady's stand that sold
wheat and gluten free products.

Alatheia played fiddle as background music, it was so pretty!

I had a little stand where I sold little girl dresses with a dress for their doll to match!
I even got a few custom orders!

Grace and Nicole...they probably can't believe it's over: )

Keep checkin' back for pictures of the little dresses...