Girls of Grace

At my church there is a class called Girls of Grace. Girls start this class in 1st grade and graduate in 6th grade. I graduated from Girls of Grace quite awhile ago. In Girls of Grace (GOG) young girls learn how to grow up to be a godly woman, who's desire is to serve God, her children, her husband, and her friends. These girls learn how to cook, clean, sew, knit, crochet, sing prasie, devote time to the Lord, and most importantly, how to become Godly women who serve the Lord. In the GOG classroom, there are 2 or 3 adult teachers, who are usually Moms of some of the girls in the class, and a junior leader, who is a high school aged girl. This high school girl is selected by the overall leaders of GOG. Much to my pleasure, I was selected as a Junior leader. This has been a dream of mine since I was in the first grade. It is such an honor to be chosen because of the high requirements to be selected. This girl has to be involved in church, a christian, kind to everyone, caring, and like a big sister to all of the girls in the Girls of Grace class. I about cried when I was asked to do this. It was such an honor that all of these well-respected, christain women in my church thought that I was good enough to be a junior leader.

One of the duties of a Junior leader is to come up with creative activites and crafts for the girls to do. This is something I am going to struggle with, all of the other Junior leaders are crafty and creative, they spent their childhood doing crafts and creative things. I grew up on a farm, the only bit of creative I expirienced was asking Daddy to make shapes out of the pile hay bails, or seeing how many people could stand on the hayloft floor before it fell through, or arranging a handful of prairie flowers without getting stung by a bee. (That's a different story...) So I am putting every once of creative craftiness into trying to come up with ideas for these girls. It is really hard, but at the same time it is my responsibility, so it will get done, and it will be done with all smiles by this girl! :)

Please pray for perserverence and guidence through this whole process! It is a big step for me, but I am willing to accept this challenge.

Baby Rudy...?

Recently, I was asked what the eariliest memory of my little brother, Rudy, is. First of all, he isn't so little anymore, he is actually taller than me now, which would go along with some people's (cough... Celie, Micah, Byron, Elijah, Sydni, Evan...cough) theory that I am shrinking. (It's not true, everyone is just getting taller.) Anyway, back on planet Earth...There are two first memories of Rudy, and I am not sure which one came first.

Memory 1:
Rudy was a baby, and I was about 2 years old. We were at my Grandma Dreessen's house in Elkhorn. After a couple of hours of terrorizing my family, my Grandma decided to take me up to see baby Rudy, hoping that it would calm me down. She took me upstairs to the blue bedroom with the baby crib in it. Rudy was sleeping calmly in the crib. Grandma picked me up and held me so that I could see the baby, in my hand was a "sippy cup". Grandma had just told me not to wake the baby, but I decided to take matters into my own hands. I threw the sippy cup into the crib, and much to my Grandma's displeasure, it landed right on Baby Rudy's head. He. of course, woke up and started scream crying. I don't even remember if I got in trouble for that or not, but Mom always jokes that I started all of the fighting between myself and my not-so little brother.

Memory 2:
This was when Dad was working as a normal firefighter, working normal firefighter 24 hour shifts. Dad was on duty, and Mom had just gotten home from a long day on the OR floor of the Hospital she worked at. Baby Ru and I were at day care all day. Mom came into the house, got Rudy out of his carrier, and plopped down on the couch with him in her arms. Feeling a little ignored, I grabbed Baby Rudy's carseat carrier thing and dragged it all the way across our dining room and into our family room where Mom was sitting with Rudy. I dropped the carrier at her feet and proceeded to shout "Put baby in! Put baby in!" Mom laughed and then told me to come and sit with them as well.

I don't quite know why I remember these two memories so well, but they just stick out in my mind. I love my not-so little brother.... no matter how many times I threw bottles, sippy cups, pacifiers, etc. at his head.

Wild Weather

It came on so fast. We didn't really know what was happening. "Annastazia! Grab the kids and run to the shelter now!" "What about you?" "I'll be fine! Get the kids now and run to the shelter! Hurry! It's coming!" I did as I was told.

It was a calm day, July 5th. It was our second day of camping at Gavins Point Dam in Yankton, SD. We were camping along with another family that are close friends of ours. They have three kids: Payton is the same age as me, Noah is the same age as Rudy, and Ripley is the same age as Izzy. We had our campsite set up very neatly. There was one camper and three tents. The adults slept in the camper and the kids slept in the tents.

We had spent most of the day at the swimming beach, so when we got back to the campsite, we all took showers and changed out of our wet, sandy swimsuits. Daddy and Paul were starting the campfire and Mom and Tara were cutting up meat and veggetables for the stew. All of us kids were in the camper playing card games, we came out of the camper when we heard the Mom's calling us. It had started to sprinkle a little, and they wanted us to get the tents closed up in case it rained harder. We closed up the tents and then helped prepare super.

All of a sudden, it started to rain harder, and we all ducked under the camper awning. The Dad's were a little upset, because all of the fire wood was getting wet, the Mom's were upset because super would take longer to cook, and all of us kids just wanted out of that tiny, cramped space. Then, the power went out, we heard the air conditioner in the camper shut off. Daddy and Paul got into the truck to go down to the ranger's station to see how long the power would be out. While they were gone, the wind picked up tremendously. One of the over-hang tents started to blow away, and trash, leaves, and anything light was tossed around in the wind. As the wind picked up even more, one of the tents was about to blow into the fire. The Mom's rushed out and caught it. Just then, Tara looked up at the sky, my Mom looked up as well, and they both started yelling. My mom came to me and told me to take the kids to the shelter. I obeyed. We were all running down the windy road. I looked up at the sky, and all I saw was a huge wall of water about to hit all of us, the wind was so strong that it was carrying the rain water in sheets. As we ran up the road, Rudy was shouting at various other campers to get to the shelters. They all looked at him like he was crazy. When we finally got to the shelter, Paul was there, but Daddy had gone back to the camper. We waited out the storm in the shelter. Thankfully, there was no severe weather and no severe damage. Looking back, I realize just how scared I was when I was being shouted at to get the kids to the shelter. Everything turned out okay, but it still scares me to think about that.