Spring Retreat 2007

Here are some pictures of a recent youth trip we took to Camp Oak Hill in Oxford, NC. We had to post-pone the first trip due to a death in our church family and lost some students when we changed the date. We ended up with six teenagers, but God worked in their hearts and we all had a good time! We played a fierce game of kickball the second day we were there, and I'm happy to declare that my team won of course! The leaders we took brought their spouse along so we had to put them on separate teams so as not to be biase!It was a short Retreat, only a day and a half, we left on a Friday evening and returned in time for Sunday School, but good. We left Emma and Anna with my parents for the weekend and took Lizzy along with us. The girls had a blast at Papa and Wanka's house and Lizzy enjoyed all the attention from the students and leaders! God truly is working in the hearts of our students and leaders at Stony Hill! We are looking forward to a mission trip to Florida in early July!

Dad's 50th Birthday

We had a busy past couple of weeks, and I apologize for not getting on here at updating in a while. . .May 8th was my dad's 50th birthday! We wanted to make him feel old so we (my brothers, sister-in-law, Jody, my mom, etc.) had this elaborate plan to trick him. My dad is very good at figuring out things so we had to be really careful and keep a lot of people in the dark. Our first phase was to decorate his office at work, we were going to get him out of his office Monday afternoon so we could go and decorate for Tuesday (his actual birthday). Of course we couldn't get him to leave work early enough and we weren't able to get there in time before they close (4:00pm). Our next phase was to put signs up from Garner to Wake Forest for his drive to work (about 45min-1 hour). Josh & Matt decorated his car Monday night and put the signs up with some help from our cousins too! Dad woke up and went to work and spoke not a word to anyone. Of course we were going nuts to see if he even saw the signs?! The girls and I called and sang Happy Birthday to him and he acted like nothing was up? I found out later that he did see the signs he just didn't know that I had anything to do with them! We had also planned a surprise party for him at Matt & Diana's house that evening. My grandma called and asked if she and my Grandpa could take him out to dinner that evening since we (the kids) couldn't go and celebrate! My Grandparents live a couple of miles down the road from Matt & Diana so my Mom got him to stop there on the way and we were all hiding in the garage! Matt, Josh & Diana did a great job decorating the garage in black, they hung black tablecloths along the walls, blown up over 50 balloons, had black streamers, black "50" signs all over, etc. I had also made black t-shirts for us to wear and created a slide show of pictures from everyone in my family playing in the background! We "got him". We can't wait for my Mom's birthday. . .she'll be another milestone in 2 years!