The sleep over

For Taylors 8th birthday I promised her she could have a sleep over. With soccer finally over we had her party last Friday. I have been throwing birthday parties for 17 years now and never I mean NEVER have we had one where everyone can come. That said we invited 21 girls. I know I know but I hate to hurt feelings. .....Only 1 girl couldn't come. CRAZY. So in my tiny house we had a ton of little girls. They were so fun no drama,fights,or even complaining. Thank God for my sweet husband. He was so helpful . All the girls think he's so funny. We made bracelets,bookmarks,played bingo and watched movies.Oh and ate a ton of pizza ,snacks and popcorn. I think it went really well. I started to get all proud when I had all the girls asleep at 11. But got knocked down a peg when they woke up at 4:30 am and wanted to know what I had planned for them to do now. This is not my best time of day. I told them SLEEP was what I had planned and we were not going to get up right then. They compromised and watched movies til 6:30. What a blessing to have such a fun group of kids . I do not foresee us inviting this many over for quite a while. At least till next year when my Sweet girl looks at me with those big blue eyes. We just laughed when we saw them all squeezed in. The neighbors even came over to see the show. The picture does not truly give the situation justice.

Dominican Republic

Last night Caitlen left for a week to go to the Dominican Republic. She is going with our church youth group, 25 in all. Rebekah Holbrook is there on a 2 year mission working and teaching at an orphanage. The kids are going to do speechless,vbs and manual labor. What an amazing opportunity . I am so thankful Caitlen was able to go. Please pray for all that went . My prayer is that this will be a life changing trip for my daughter. If you would like to see updates here is the blog for the trip. http://www.dominicanupdates.blogspot.com/ and this is Rebekahs blog so you can get to know the kids there and special prayer requests. http://web.mac.com/tiarivka/Site/Blog/Blog.html Please check out both sites especially Rebekahs I know my heart is touched by all she is doing there.

Trick or treat with the Brownies

Last week Taylors Brownie troop went to Nohl Ranch Inn ( an old folks home) to trick or treat. They go at dinner time (4:00) and go from table to table and the people give them candy. Its really cute everyone makes such a big deal over the kids. I met the sweetest lady . I had a volleyball t-shirt on because we were going straight to Caties game after . The lady told me her granddaughter plays for Elmo which is the team we were playing that night. So I got to see her granddaughter play . What a small world ! She invited me back to teach me to knit,crochet, or sew special volleyball pillow cases. I love how these women love to touch. They crab on to your hand , touch your hair, or your back. It reminds me of how my grandma used to be. I think I enjoyed this time more than the girls. Later as I was going through her candy I found a viactive (calcium supplement) One of the grandmas must have kept the candy and started handing those out instead. I laughed so hard. Sneaky sneaky grandma !