Emma's Letter to Santa

She wrote her name and drew the picture. It's sad but her handwriting is almost as good as mine.

Love from Above,

Dana

Halloween

Ok, so Halloween lasted like four days this year. Our town does trick or treating on the Saturday night before Halloween and the town the church is in (which is three miles away) does trick or treating on Halloween. Emma had two costumes: Her choice, the princess and our back up cat since the princess wasn't very bathroom accessible for preschool. Anyway, it was interesting because we had a youth retreat going on this past weekend. I had already worked it out so that we could go trick or treating during the dinner break on Saturday during the retreat. But, I was a little sad when I found out that there was a tea party with Belle and the Beauty and the Beast characters at the art museum on Saturday afternoon. Not to worry, my good friend Julie came to my rescue and graciously offered to take Emma and her little girl Anna. A very large undertaking I might add!! And she also took my camera and so I have lots of pictures from it too. So, just to show all of my friends and family why they sometimes don't hear from me for a while, this is how the weekend went...

The retreat started on Friday evening. The planning of this event was an undertaking of one of our wonderful parent volunteers and the kids in our youth group (Thank God!!). So anyway, they invited up a couple of small groups from Virginia that don't have a full time youth minister or the facilities that we have etc. And they put on a retreat for them. So on Friday night, I went to the youth house to hang out and prepare for the other groups to arrive. Around nine, I brought Emma home so that I would have plenty of time to get her to sleep before the 23 girls from the retreat showed up at my house to spend the night. It worked.. Some how I got Emma to sleep and managed to fit 23 girls into my tiny little house. I can't say that I slept much considering the three or four girls that decided to jump on top of me and my friend Erica at three o clock in the morning because they "were hot". Did I mention that it was 26 degrees outside? They were begging me to turn on the air. They had to settle for me breaking ice trays over their sleeping bags. And I guess staying up late could have a little something to do with the fact that I myself got the chance to act like a teenager again by having one of my friends my age (ok she's a couple of years younger) there and laying awake all night chatting. It was so fun! But, it is more fun to blame it on the teenagers.. On Saturday morning, we went to the youth house, had breakfast and a devo and then headed up to OVU to play in the gym. I stayed there for a couple of hours and then came home to get Emma dressed in princess attire for the grand tea party and got to Julie's house just in time to rush back to OVU to be a driver for the scavenger hunt. We finished the scavenger hunt, took the teens back to the youth house, went to get Emma to get her ready for trick or treating and then at 6:00 our community group from church came to our house to do a little group trick or treat. So I think we had 11 kids and probably nine parents. I think the last person left our house around 10. After church on Sunday, I crashed and slept all afternoon and on Monday, I took Emma to a magic show that they were having for the four year old class at her school and to dance and in between times I tried to repair my house from the weekends events. On Tuesday, Emma had a party and a program at her preschool. And pretty much this is how our live is. So, if I haven't called you, please don't be mad at me. Rest assure that I still love you. And, by the way, I don't think being busy is a virtue. I just have a hard time managing to not do it. But, at this moment, my husband is at the youth house doing a fifth quarter with the teenagers. And I, stayed home and put my child to bed at a decent hour and now I'm writing this for you dear reader. So see, I do love you.

Ok, so when I started this, I was just planning on posting the pictures and not writing anything. But I have to say, if you are bored enough to read this whole thing, you need a second job or something. ;).

Love from Above,

Dana