we're baacckk

After a hour drive to get across the Iowa/Illinois border (which would normally take about 10 minutes) and then a stressful drive into O'Hare airport...Kyler and I are home! Yay! Since we were getting in relatively late on Wednesday night we decided we would just stay the night in Seattle. Great decision as my nerves were toast and the drive home probably would have put me into a little puddle on the floor board of the car!

I know you all want to see artwork now that I'm home but I just haven't had time to make anything new since getting home. I thought I would share photos every now and then, though, of the scrapbook pages I did for my grandpa. You all have to promise not to laugh at me though, k? I got 17 pages done in one day for the scrapbook so you can imagine how much creativity the last couple of pages had! Anyway, the picture of the left is the first page of the scrapbook. It was already pre-printed with the words so I just matted the photo grandpa had from basic training, added the years and taadaa...the first page. It is actually exactly how I wanted the first page to be so it is perfect to me! (Todd's scrapbook starts the same way although I need to go back and add his retarded, oh I mean retirement date to it...teehee!)

The photo on the right is, obviously, my grandpa and I. He has lost some weight due to his health problems but he is doing really well. Do you think we look anything alike? When I walked in the door and looked at him last week all I could see was my mom. My goodness they looked alike! It was a wonderful trip, a great time to share with grandpa, grandma Fern, and Kyler.

Please be in prayer about the flooding in the mid-west. It really is as bad as the news is saying and lots (and I do mean lots) of people have lost just about everything. My grandparents have neighbors who have two of their kids that have completely lost their houses. In the paper one day was a picture of about 6 houses in the river lodged up against a bridge. Now, I know that when cities and houses are built close to a river that there is always that risk but still...so sad. Even my hometown in Janesville, WI is experiencing flooding. Scary stuff that needs to be given to God.

Please know that if I have been absent to your blog and commenting on it that I will be starting back out visiting anew today. I had over 650 new blog posts in my Google Reader (no Internet in Iowa) so there was no way to go through them all. Also, please know that over the next week and a half or so is the busiest time of summer for me so if I'm not around a lot everything is fine I'm just swamped! I've got the final planning of VBS to do and then VBS is next week. We are extremely low on volunteers so I have to figure out what to do there too. If you live in the area and would like to volunteer or have your kids attend our VBS HERE is a link for you! I've missed you all and I'm so glad to be home!