Kid Stuff

So busy week with the kids. Aside from the normal stuff we had a few extras this week. Brian had the council Pine Wood Derby race for cub scouts on Saturday. Hundreds of cub scouts, plus brothers and sisters all running around a gym...absolute chaos. The actual Pine Wood Derby portion was quite well organized. I've never seen such a nice track or such nice cars. Sadly, Brian didn't do quite as well as last week, but he had a great attitude about the whole thing. One scout was a little more sad after losing, and was crying while walking out next to us. The dad, ever practical, was trying to tell him about not being a sore loser. The mom turned to the dad and said emphatically, "He's not being a sore loser, he's nine!" I was especially proud of Brian because he did most of the work on his car, with just our guidance. As I talked to some of the other parents I found out that for some of them, this was more their project than their kids.

Although Kelly had her Trike-a-thon at school to raise money for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, apparent Kelly that was not big enough for us. So Wednesday at Bible Clubs she decided to dive over the sidewalk into a brick ledge. She caught her head right on the edge and gave herself a nice little gash on her temple :( So we spent the evening in the ER getting her checked out (no stitches even), but thankfully she is fine and was back to her energetic self the next morning. So, nothing major in the end, but a great reminder of how much God is watching out for us because it easily could have been much worse.

In news for Allison and I, it looks like we will be heading overseas for a couple weeks this summer in July. If you'd like to know more about it, please email one of us.

Cub Scout Pine Wood Derby

Some of you may know that we have had quite the process with Cub Scouts at our school. Well, it has been a long road, but we finally this weekend felt like we are making some big progress. Thanks to another local pack we were able to pull off our pack's first ever Pine Wood Derby Race. The day wouldn't be complete without the last minute adding of weight (supplied nicely from our collection of washers), but the kids had a great time and it seemed like all had fun. Brian had a great time of course, as his car came in first in our pack. The great thing is that I think he did the most work on it himself out of any of the kids...so I think it was well earned :) A couple will go on to compete at the council level next week. To celebrate the good time we ended with a trip to McDonald's for ice cream and some play place time.

Speaking of McDonald's Kelly had a funny comment today. We were going taking the Bible Club teachers out to lunch after church and she asked if we could go to McDonald's. We didn't think that it would be their first choice, so we told her no we were going to Groucho's Deli. She thought about this for a moment and then asked, "Is McDonald's closed?...for why else would we not want to go to such a wonderful place :)

Quick Easter Update

Hi all,

Just wanted to try to get a quick update put out here. I'm still trying to be a little more regular about it. We had a nice Easter down here. Brian and Kelly are on break, so we did some good family time on Friday and Saturday. We found a Good Friday service at a cool old church downtime that I have wanted to visit for quite some time. The Pastor, Ferguson Sinclair, was excellent, living up to everything I had heard about him. Afterward, we just wandered around down town Columbia, which is always fun. We found a fun shop for ice cream and they amazingly had the best flavor of all, Black Cherry (I don't usually find much outside Michigan). I'm unsure if Kelly enjoyed the ice cream or the downtown fountain more. Saturday we mostly relaxed together. Allison attempted, in vain, to wash the pollen off the car. Actually she succeeded, but you wouldn't know that a short bit later (I have never seen as much pollen as they have down here). The bad news Saturday was that MSU lost (as well as Duke winning), but on a bright note they recently opened a BW3's down here, so that was an enjoyable find. Easter day was an interesting mix. Service was nice in the morning and we relaxed all afternoon and played some games as a family. Brian's game of choice was Rummikub, although Kelly's help was mostly going around and telling what each of us had in our hands. So lots of fun and Allison made some good food, however we do miss family on these days.

Speaking of family, there is again some hard stuff going on back in Michigan., so please keep my family in prayer.