April Showers...

It was so relaxing to go to bed last night! It was a gorgeous day outside (it got up to 86 degrees) and the day was followed by the perfect evening thunderstorm. I hate going to bed when lightning is landing in the yard next door, but there is nothing more relaxing than falling asleep to the sound of a light rain on the roof and the smell of a spring shower wafting in through the bedroom window...

Ok, enough being "poetic" and all that stuff!!! But it really was a beautiful day yesterday! My mom, Eric, his friend and I all went to Yorkville for church for my cousin Peter's baptism. At that church, they practice baptism by immersion and it was so neat to see Peter get baptised that way! He is always so serious, and he was so cute when he was telling his youth pastor about how he accepted Jesus and why he decided to be baptised. Yay Peter!

Then last night, my family had a very productive Skype experiment. Let me start at the beginning. I will be going on a missions trip to Monterrey with my church, and my dad thought it would be a great idea if we could possibly set up a video call between the missions team in Mexico and Hillcrest in De Kalb during church. He and my brothers ran to best buy to get a mic and camera for using with Skype, and the first thing he wanted to do, of course, was test it! So, not being able to think of anyone else with Skype, I contacted my beautiful cousin Brittany in hopes she could help us with our experiment. After acquiring her peculiar screename, my dad found her and suddenly we were talking to her and her awesome husband - for free! They could see us, but they had no camera, so we couldn't see them. (Britt & Mark - this means you need to get a camera so we can see you too!) The call dropped a few times, but I think it was pretty good for a first try! Well, happy Monday! (If there is such a thing!!!) =P

BattleCry!

Last weekend, I went with my youth group to Detroit for BattleCry, an awesome youth event held at Ford Field. It was awesome! We left Friday morning for Detroit and it took us about 7 hrs. with stops to get to the church we were staying at, then it was all night and all day at BattleCry and we left for home on Sunday. I haven't posted about it till now because I caught a cold and I've been sick all week, but it was still a fun time!
Worship was led by Hillsong, the speakers were great, but the best part had to be the bands!!! Skillet played on Friday night, then POD and Hawk Nelson on Saturday. POD was a little bit of a let down, but Skillet and Hawk Nelson were AWESOME!!! I can't get my camera to work with my computer now, but hopefully I can share some blurry, far away pics of the stage at a later date! Oh, and check out this story that Nightline did on BattleCry a while back. Adios!

New Pics - Finally!!!!!

I'm so happy!!! My camera finally works to upload pics again! I'm not sure why it didn't before, but it is working now! I have a few of the much-anticipated Deep Freeze pics and also a few from Easter. Enjoy!

The band at Deep Freeze -
The Least of These

My youth leader Dan on the Zip Line

My brother Mark playing trivia on stage

Classic Covenant Harbor Skits
(always funny, never well rehearsed!)

The following pictures are from the 3-birthday/Easter celebration we had last Sunday. We celebrated Faith's, Sammy's, and Josh's birthdays along with Jesus' resurrection all in one massive party!!!

The 3-in-1 cake

Sammy & Faith sporting their new protective gear!

The third birthday kid, Joshua!
(with his new two front teeth!)

Reading to Faithy

And I took this pic of Casey right before we left -
if you look close, you can see her pretty blue eyes!

That's all I have for now. I'll have pics from my trip to Detroit hopefully sometime next week. Have a blessed weekend!

Spring Break and Coins

I didn't go on any kind of vacation or anything for spring break, so this week has just meant being at home and doing less school than normal! Today, my mom took the day off and we went up to Rockford to do a little shopping. My brother Mark drove - he got his learners permit a few weeks ago, so he's trying to get in as much time as he can. We found some great presents to give our cousins when we finally see them, which was the main goal of the shopping spree.

Earlier this week, when I didn't have much else to do, I decided to spend my time counting my jar of loose change just to see how much I had. It ended up being over $50!!! Go count your change, people!!! A few years back, there was that big craze to collect all the newly minted state quarters. I've tried to do a little of that, and I finally decided that I was going to see how many I've collected. I won't list them all here, but I ended up having 32! Some of my favorites are Illinois, Michigan, and Oregon. In my USA coin collection, I also possess: three $.50 pieces, seven gold Sacajawea dollars, one USA bicentennial quarter, eight pennies from my birth year, one penny from the year of my parents' wedding, two pennies that somehow rusted together, and one penny from 1958 that has the old back (not the Lincoln Memorial). And in my foreign coin collection, I have one gold Canadian dollar from the year I was born and $1.50 in Euro form. I also have quite a lot of Mexican pesos, but I haven't bothered to count it because I will most likely use most of it this summer! I leave for Monterrey in 65 days, and I'll be down there for around 45 days total. I can't believe it's coming up so soon!!!