wakeboarding....

John loves to wake board. Our friend Andy invited John and I over to the lake a couple Friday's ago to play in the water. We had lots of fun and I got a lot of great pictures.

back home...

While I was back home for Suzzy's wedding, I got to hang out with Bryce and my mom and dad. It was fun to just chill at the house. I played the Wii with mom and Bryce. Then Bryce and I climbed a tree together. We took lots of fun pictures.

My dad was doing yard work.
Bryce playing in the tree.

Here we both are in the tree...

I am afraid of heights but I managed to climb the tree and get down without falling. I really enjoyed the time with my family and wish I could get back more often.

Wedding Bells are Gonna Chime....

A few weeks ago I headed back to Tennessee. One of my best friend's from middle/high school, Suzanne, was getting married. She had a very beautiful ceremony and fun reception. She was so beautiful and her husband Chris and her were so happy to finally have their big day. I got to see a bunch of friends that I haven't seen in forever. John couldn't get out of work to go, so I took lots of pictures to share with him and you.

Suzzy with her step dad, a beautiful...
All the pretty maids in a row....The church was so beautiful...
They had a very nice Christian ceremony... They were both really happy

Love...

pew flowers...

I couldn't get over the church. I also couldn't believe that I had never been there...

....

The reception was just down the street.

One of my buddies, Josh (that I've known since kindergarten), Suzanne's mom, and me...

Josh, Megan (I've known her since the 4th grade!), and me...

Suzzy and me giving the goofy faces...

Okay, a serious one. She was so beautiful...

I had a great time getting to see Suzzy tie the knot and hang out with all my friends.

VBS time.....

It's VBS time! A couple weeks ago we had VBS at our church. John and I were in charge of the 3rd grade class. When we signed up for that group, we had no idea it was the biggest group at the church. We led around 32 kids almost every night of VBS.
This is our group doing their big performance at the end of the week.
Here they are practicing...

John practicing with the kids...

We took up two full rows because we had so many! We also had 2-3 youth helpers each night to bring up the rear of the line and help herd the kideroos.

I'm on the top row! They made me sing with the kids.

We learned sign language to go along with the songs. We have a lot of pictures of the singing because we weren't the teachers or the craft leaders, just in charge of getting the kids to each area. And we helped sing along.

The kids were a lot fun.

Here we are in crafts. I would help a table or two and so would John and our other helps.

The kids of course loved the gym class part.

They played a lot of fun games that we didn't play as kids.

The kids actually did really good at learning and listening during the Bible study. They worked with a new verse every night. They also could memorize and recite all the verses to win a prize. There were about 5 kids who memorized it and two adults. Coincidentally, all the kids were from my class, though I had nothing to do with them memorizing them. I was very proud of them though.

This game was like dodge ball but with beach balls.

John couldn't resist playing with the beach balls.

They burnt off a lot of energy playing.

....

All in all we were really glad we could help out with the kids. We hope to get to help again next year.

Ice Cream Block Party

I know, I haven't blogged in forever! I've been so busy that I have just gotten really far behind. So I have lots of updates for you now! This was from a month ago. Back in the spring I signed up to win a giveaway from Edy's Ice Cream. Well, I won! So they sent me ice cream to feed 100 people and the supplies-bowls, spoons, scoops, table clothes, and such... To win I had to write an essay about why my community deserved this prize! I suggested in my essay that the volunteer fire department and rescue squad needed a big thank you! We were able to get everyone together as I threw my first ever Ice Cream Block Party!

Edy's sent 10 tubs of ice cream and 36 little individual servings. John and I raided the box of ice cream as soon as it came, to choose our favorite flavors we wanted to try. I wanted to try the Double Fudge Brownie and John wanted to try Smores.

The ice cream came in a cooler with dry ice.
There were so many choices!

We all had a great time and enjoyed the ice cream.

There was a big turn out of volunteers...

and their families...
Shannon, Kristi, Rachel & Terri serving up all the ice cream...

I also planned for some fun games for the families...

Rachel took a turn... She was pretty good. We had basketball, football toss, and horseshoes...
The guys also played some footfall.

they had a lot fun...

It turned out to be a beautiful evening and I think everyone had fun and plenty of ice cream!

We had the rental equipment for the whole weekend, so we set up the basketball game in the garage on Sunday.

We all gave it a try.

Chance and Richie came over to hang out too...

The guys moved into the basement room to play darts afterwards.

Chance, John and Jeff are really competitive when playing darts.

I don't remember who shot this, but yeah, they hit a bulls eye!

They concentrate so hard.
It was a long fun weekend. Again I would like to say thanks to Edy's Ice Cream and Grand Rental in Vinton, VA for their contributions. We were able to celebrate the great volunteers of Hardy and enjoy getting together and having fun, on a very small budget.