Dancing with the Stars

Never watched the show on ABC, but we had our own version at Hillcrest Friday night. About 75 middle schoolers gathered together for the annual party. There was lots of food-from roasted kidney to spring rolls, cookies to French Silk Pie (gotta get that recipe)....yum! The food occupied one room.
Another room was dedicated to board games. I saw quite a few kids also playing twister in there.
One room had video games hooked up to TVs. This room stayed well occupied during the duration of the evening.
Then there was the dance floor! Lights out, lots of lamps on though (as many as we could find!) I really enjoyed watching the kids have fun. Typically, the boys usually stayed on one side of the room, girls on the other, all chairs around the edge of the room were occupied by those that just wanted to watch. At one point there was a "dance off" in the center of the room. This was quite entertaining.
Over all, I think fun was had by all. After cleaning everything up and packing up the step downs, lamps, Ipod, transformers, etc., we headed home and crashed. Mattie was the only one of our girls who was eligible to go. She said she had lots of fun.

Jon and Lauren are off for a Purity Retreat with most of the high school kids. Friday morning is Field Day for elementary school. Naomi is so excited about all the activities-especially the water slide! Friday night, the entire eighth grade class will descend upon our house for a night of games and food. Then, as if we haven't had enough excitement, the 10th grade class (Lauren's) is hosting a carnival at school on Saturday. The next weekend is the 7th grade campout. Jon, another teacher and I will take 32 kids camping. Due to high level of security concerns, we won't be able to take them far out as we had hoped, but we expect to have a really good time. Mom brought in Hershey bars, graham crackers and marshmellows when she came out. We've been very disciplined and not touched them-just waiting to make s'mores on the campout!

Thank you for all your emails. Many of you have had questions for me to answer on the blog. I'll try to get around to each of these questions in the next few weeks. If you have other things you would like to know about life here, I'll do my best to answer.

Please keep the political situation here in your prayers. We are gearing up for elections over the next few months.