Because on Rainy Days...

I just feel like writing.

The rain is pounding on my window. Lightning is flashing. And supposedly bad weather is headed our direction. Bad weather complete with strong winds, hail, and a possibility of a tornado. What a perfect weekend to do it on too. This weekend is Campus Preview Weekend, and how fun would it be to be down in a basement with an additional 200+ high school students? Hm, yes, well... maybe not.

Besides the excitement of possible storms, I'm excited that it is the weekend! Ah, yes. And today was the last day of Friday classes. Only Good Friday and an exams Friday is left. Wow. Where oh where has this semester gone to?

In other news, today I found out I get to go to an opera while in Europe. One word: excitement! Seeing an opera is on my bucket list, and getting to see one in Europe, let's just say I'm excited. It'll be great.

And, because I'm just going to keep going off on random tangents if I don't close, I'm going to go and watch "Megamind" with Bethany, Damarise, and Janessa. Who knows, maybe that tornado they're predicting will end up coming and we'll be watching the movie from the comfort of the basement. Either way, this is the perfect ending to a rainy day.

Week with the Woodrows: Friday

Friday! Yeah! So close to the weekend! Also the youth group Christmas party! :D 

Damarise and Bethy made sugar cookies to decorate once the youth arrived. 

Food colouring. 

The cookie cutters. 

Damarise and Bethy. My beautiful sisters!

The Maddux brought over these adorable colours for the icing. Theirs are all the neonish colours! SO cute!

Annie's cookies turned out SO cute! 

Esther decorating :)

Me. 

Sarah. 

Ian. 

Everyone decorating. 

Bethy's turned out SO cute! 

All the cookies. 

All morning Gracie planned out a scavenger hunt. It was amazing! Every clue we would get we would be like, "Wow! Gracie did an AMAZING job putting this together!" There were three teams who did different stuff, but I'll just say what the team Damarise, Bethy and I were on did. 

Everyone started out by the Woodrow's hospital where Gracie told us that we were shepherds who had just seen the angels and heard about the birth of the Messaiah, but unfortunately for us, we are slightly deaf and it's a windy night so we didn't hear everything that the angels said, like where the Messaiah was! Oh no! So we started off with our clue looking for the Messaiah. Damarise, Bethy and I headed off to get our blanket, but our next clue said that, whoops, we had left it on the clothesline. We found it and the next clue, which sent us to the gates of the big house (Their house) We arrived at the gates and found our clue. We had to say, "We awaitest at thine gates." before someone would come to the gate. After a while Kent arrived at the gate, before anyone would speak to use we had to say, "How dost thou fare?" Once we asked Kent that he let us in. We asked if he knew where the Messaiah was. He didn't and gave us our next clue. We had to walk down the hallway to where the Scribe was. We knocked on the door and asked the question before Benaiah the Scribe let us in. When we came in we asked Benaiah, who was sitting at a desk studying the Bible, if he knew where the Messaiah was to be born. He held up the Bible to us and said, "You must search the Scriptures!" We took the Bible and found our next clue. It told us that Benaiah was acting a bit suspicious and we should keep an eye on him. Hehe, Benaiah was then supposed to leave and drop a clue for us, since we would be watching him. But we kinda took it to seriously, when Benaiah tried to leave I wouldn't let him leave the room. Haha, sorry buddy! Bethy finally said, "Well, maybe he's supposed to leave." Duh! She's so smart! Benaiah left and dropped our clue which said to ask the Page where the midwife was because she would know what babies have been born recently. We went to the Page which was Kent and asked him about where the Midwife was. He pointed us to the carpenter's shop where Aunt Julie was sitting there. Damarise, Bethy and I walked in, said our greeting and Aunt Julie asked, "Ohhh, are you all here because you need a midwife?" Haha! We started cracking up! After asking her about any new births she told us that no one had been by for weeks asking her to be their midwife, but she said we should check with her husband the Census man. Off we went, with our next clue in hand, to find the Census man. As we were leaving the carpenter's shop we noticed a clue hanging up outside. We decided it must be for later so we would get it then. Off we went. We came to the church and inside was Uncle Charles the Census man. :P We asked him if he knew where a little baby boy was. He wouldn't answer us and mouthed the word baby. Ohh we realized, he's mute! Well we kept asking him about a baby but no reply. Then we thought that maybe he's deaf too. So we started to sign language. Haha, he cracked up! Then we thought, "You know what? I bet something on that clue hanging outside of the carpenter's shop would help us get what we are wanting. Maybe something that we need to ask him!" So, we apologized and told him sorry but we'd be right back! Haha, we all ran out of the church only to hear Uncle Charles clapping his hands. We marched back in and Uncle Charles gave us our clue. (Whoops we realized we were supposed to be asking for a pregnant lady :P ) Our next clue was to go to the inn and see if the pregnant lady that the Census man had seen earlier was there. We went to the inn keeper, Benaiah, who told us that they had been by, but he had no room for them in the inn, so he sent them to a stable. Off we went back by the hospital site where the Smoker's containers were and in there we found the Messaiah. Well, a picture of Mary, Joseph and Jesus :) After we found the Messaiah we had to go tell everyone that we'd found the Messaiah. It was fun! :D And Gracie did an AMAZING job coming up with all of that in one morning! Way to go Gracie! It was fun to do and kept us reminded of the Christmas story at the same time! 

While we were outside doing this, it was raining! So when we came back in Aunt Julie made us hot chocolate! Mmmm thanks! 

Sarah, Esther, and Annie! Cute!

The guys. 

Awww... Esther's present bag to Annie was the cutest.

Gracie passed out all the gifts. Thanks Gracie! :D

Hehe, Gracie made Ian a light saber for Christmas. Haha! What a great idea!

Riley and Kent got hats. 

Annie got headbands and gum :D

Esther got a bunch of lil' stuff, like nail polish, pencils, cute bag and other stuff. :)

Sarah got a bunch of lil' stuff from the Sunday Feira that she has been wanting. It was cute! And Kent put verses on each gift that had something to do with the gift. It was a neat idea! 

Damarise got me this adorable stuffed animal dog! 

Damarise got body spray :)

Andrew got Bethy an adorable shirt! It looks SO cute on Bethy! Great going Andrew!

Gracie got a devo book. 

Andrew got a lighter :)

Awww! Esther's hat :D

Dinner :D Mmm burritos! Yum!

Haha! Esther can make some crazy faces! 

Chiquita in the hat. Awww...

Me in the hat :)

Kent and Riley in their Mozambican hats! Cool!

A Fun Filled Friday!

Yep! Fun filled! That's what my Friday was! 

So... I woke up :D Yeah! 'Tis always a fabulous way to start the day! Took a shower. Which was lovely since the day before the city was without water until 10am. And got ready to head over to the Woodrow's place. Ian and some friends were going over there to help work on the hospital. So we girls tagged along to hang out with the Woodrows and do school :D

Before we left, Andrew came in the room to show me his pirate outfit. Pretty good eh? (I love the left leg :P

We girls actually did get school work done :) And had fun in the process! :P

While we were at the Woodrows, Elijah (Esther's brother) invited Ian to spend the night. So we got to have Esther spend the night with us! Fun fun!!

Esther and Sarah had fun with different hair gel type stuff :P Haha

Anywhoodle, there's my fun filled Friday in a nutshell :P  :D And it was.... fun filled!!!

A Fantastic Friday!

Yesterday, Friday, was a wonderful day! A fabulous way to start August! (Yesterday was August 1st!! Happy August everyone!) So, yesterday the translation conference started up for our mission. We got to where we're having it at around 7:30am! Ate breakfast. The boys went to school. Mom and Dad went into the meeting. And as for Damarise, Sarah and myself we sat down to do school. And we sat... and sat... and sat, not getting any school done. It was so hard to concentrate outside! Around 8:30ish the Woodrow's minus Aunt Julie and Sarah Beth *Bethy* showed up! Yeah! Time for the fun to begin! We hung out with them for a lil' while just chit chattin' away, and then decided to go to the house next door and visit with the Maddux family.  They had just gotten their container in the day before! (We were thanking the Lord for that! They have been waiting for a couple of months now for their container to show up! Poor things!) Anyways, they had unpacked it all the day before, but they needed more stuff to go back into it and into other houses. So, we popped in and helped out! It was loads of fun! We moved stuff back and forth! (So nice! I think I've missed it! We haven't moved stuff like that in a while now.) And we had a snowball fight! :) Yes siree bob! A snowball fight in Mozambique, Africa! A place that doesn't even have mountains high enough to have snow on them. So, the question is, how did we get the snow to have the snowball fight? In their container (No, there wasn't snow in there;) ) they had a refrigerator. Which meant that we had to empty their other fridge and defrost the freezer, equalling loads of snow! :) (For those of you who don't know, I love snow!) It was a wonderful treat to have a snowball fight! Anyways, after all the fun of moving stuff back and forth we headed back to our conference for lunch. But since we got back early, we swung on the rope swing! It's the first time Damarise and I have done it! You have to climb up a tree, get the rope handed to you, hold on tight, jump, wrap your legs around a large knot and swing! SO fun! As long as you can stay on. Which I did the first time, but then next two times I just could not get my legs to wrap around! Oh well, lunch time came. And the special  Lasagna! Mmm! I haven't had a cheesy lasagna like that one in ages! It was delicious! After lunch, I went outside and Gracie called me over to see this humngo grasshopper! I wrote a post about a rather large grasshopper a while ago but this one topped the other by far! It was amazing and so intricately designed. It had beady red eyes, adorable, long antennas, green, perfectly arched legs. A beautiful green colour to cover the top of his body but, when his wings opened up, wow! It was a stunning red like his eyes and streaks of sunshine yellow every so often and, my favourite, lil' black feet. It looked like it was wearing slick, black, dress shoes. After admiring this lil creature and the amazing Creator, Damarise and I headed over to one of the houses on the compound where our conference is being held and sat in the living room while two kids had their nap times. It was nice to sit back and relax a little. Sarah and Gracie came and joined us for a bit. Then we had snack, hung out not doing anything. Had dinner and then a wonderful ending to a fantastic Friday, rain! Yes, Rain! Not a little drizzle or even a normal rain fall. Oh no, this was much greater! This was a downpour! It was beautiful! So much rain after not seeing rain like that in a couple months is a beautiful thing! Damarise and I ran out to stand under the pouring rain. Gracie came out for a little bit, so did Andrew W. And we all got soaked to the skin, but it felt wonderful! I love the rain!! It's so refreshing. ... When the rain died down a little bit we headed on home to a nice, long hot shower! So lovely!... After a movie, The Fantastic Four, I headed to bed, where a lovely sleep awaited me! ... And that, was my Fantastic Friday!