Merry Christmas!

Well two days late anyway.....Last weekend we were in PA at Grandpa and Grandma's for their Christmas dinner. We left Friday afternoon after the girls got home from school and came home Christmas day. The weekend was a lot of fun! Got to visit with the family a lot, eat a lot, and play lots of games! We learned two new games which is always fun. The drive home was wonderful...couldn't have asked for better conditions....not much traffic, weather was beautiful and the roads were dry. I don't think we saw a cop the whole way home either!
It was nice to get home though. To sleep in our own beds and get the girls caught up with their sleep.
It seems there's not much going on the next couple of weeks...I don't even know what we are doing New Years Eve yet. Well I take that back I think I'm working, but only till 8pm at the latest.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MADDIE!!

I cannot believe Maddie is 8 years old already! Wow where did the time go? She had a little party on Saturday with some friends from school. She was very excited last Wednesday we went shopping with Mom and Alissa. She had no idea she was going to be allowed to get her ears pierce for her birthday! She was really nervous when she was first sitting in the chair, but when they actually pierced her ears she didn't even flinch. We were so proud of her, we were expecting a lot of tears!
Yesterday she got to go out for chinese with her grandpa and grandma for her birthday. So now today is her "real" birthday, as she puts it, and not much is going on.

Yesterday afternoon Jackie and I went to see the movie August Rush. It was sooooo good!!! I was a little disappointed at the end though...I wanted more!

I need to post some pictures of Maddie's party later.

More sickness...

Alexa was finally without a fever Fri. morning and was able to go to school! Friday night they were having babysitting at the church, so Dan and I decided to use our gift certificate to the Hen House and go to LaVale for some shopping by ourselves! It took forever to get our food at the Hen House. I think we were there 1 1/2 hours and they weren't even that busy. The food was really good though!
So after we were finished with our meal there really wasn't all that much time left, we had to be back at the church by 10:00. We needed to get Maddie a winter coat and I needed to get my rings inspected and cleaned, those were my goals. We went into Sears first and Dan looked for coats while I went to the bathroom. He found a really cute coat and it was 50% off!!!! Yay! He's such an amazing shopper!
So we got my rings checked and as we were leaving there Dan gets a phone call. Riley had thrown up all over Cynthia! So we left right away...I called Mom and they went to pick up the girls. Well when we got there Riley's temp was 103.8. She ran a temp all day Sat. then Sunday morning the fever was gone but she has a really bad cold now. She's miserable. I feel so bad for her. Hopefully she feels better soon!
In better news...Sonny and Lis had a work day at their house on Saturday and they got all the roof trusses on!!!

It's been a couple of weeks since I've posted anything. There really hasn't been anything too big going on.

Sonny and Alissa are building a house! I'm very excited for them. They are having a work day on Saturday to put the roof trusses up. Hopefully they have a good turn out for that.

Alexa has been home with me since Tuesday. She came home from school Monday with a fever. Her temp went up to 103.2 which is no fun! This morning it was 101.2. It seems to go away during the day. She only seems to have a fever in the morning and at night. It starts to spike around 7pm for some reason. She has a little cough with it but nothing else. So who knows. I hate it when the kids are sick....do I take them to the doctor or do I let it run it's course. Of course the decision is all up to me because Dan doesn't have a whole lot to say about it. Ugh! I hate it that she has this many days off school too.

Also I found out from Alexa's teacher that she is having trouble paying attention. Whose knows what we'll have to do there. There is a parent-teacher conference on Monday, so hopfully we will find out more then.

Happy Anniversary!

Happy anniversary to us...yesterday! :) 9 whole years! Wow sometimes it feels like it hasn't been very long ago, but then I also feel like I've known Dan forever! There have been a lot of ups and downs in the last nine years...I just thank God we've made it through to this point, I couldn't have done it without Him holding me up! :) It all feels worth it to have what we have together now.

We did get to go out to eat at Applebee's last night after Dan's dr appointment. That was fun!

Brayden and Riley

These two are just cracking me up today!! They are playing so nicely looking at books, coloring, riding bikes, being puppies, and jumping. I just love listening them talk to each other! They were in the bedroom jumping from a little chair onto a mattress...I hear Riley going "ready set go" then she'd go RyeRye's turn and he would go BooBoo's turn and back and forth.

Here you can see they are both going "cheese".

Pictures

Here are the girls all dressed up...left to right is Maddie, Lexie, Ashlyn, Shay, and Julia

The ladies playing pick!

The Coburn's at the lodge where we were staying.

And here is those of the Riley gang that were able to make it this year! We always have a lot of fun the times we are able to get together with them. Dan's grandad is the guy in the middle with the red hat and his wife Gail is beside him.

Too busy....

It's been a busy couple of weeks! I'll start with Labor day weekend...we left Friday evening and drove to Harrisonburg, VA. There is a camp there run by a church near my cousin Angie's house where the Halteman family (some of us anyway) gathered. We had a lot of fun. The girls had cousins to play with and there was a lot of playing dress up going on. I have pictures, but they are going to have to wait the battery on my camera is dead and I can't put the pictures on my computer.
Anyway there were a lot of games going on, good eating, yummy yummy food and wonderful company...can't get much better than that.
Sunday night we stayed at my cousin Brenda's house. The girls just love having other kids to play with and they played really well with Brett and Shay. They even had a slumber party in Shay's room that night.

The next week was full of meetings almost every night.

Then Saturday morning we left for a pleasant (ha ha) 7 1/2 hour drive to Charlotte, Michigan. We gathered together with the Riley family. We had a great visit with Dan's aunts, uncles, grandad, and cousins. The girls were so hyper though after being in the car so long, let me tell ya they kept me running. They were so excited to see their Uncle Blake, Aunt Marianne and cousins Brady, Cory, and Miranda. They stayed with them this summer for a week when Dan and I took the youth group to San Jose. So we had dinner at Dan's Grandad's house Saturday night and had a nice visit. Then again Sunday morning when we got together at a restaurant in town. Again the girls had me running...uh! We left right after breakfast and got home around 7:30pm. It was a crazy two days with a lot of driving, but it's a lot of fun too. If it weren't for the kids getting so crazy I'd love it.

Hopefully I'll get around to posting pictures of both weekends sometime soon!

Today I spent all day canning Salsa! I'm really excited that I did it and I got it done all by myself. I've done some canning before with the help of mom, but never on my own and not for a very long time. Well we have a lot of salsa. I did 4 batches and got 36 pints and 5 quarts of salsa!!! It was really good too! Yay me!

First Day of School!

Wow, the first day of school already! Were oh were did the summer go?

Well my little Lexie got on the great big yellow school bus this morning to go to Kindergarten. I can't believe she is old enough to go already! She was so excited though! Back to School night was last night and she was so hyper. She wouldn't sit still for anything, she kissed me probably 10 times while the principal was talking, and she kept sucking her thumb. How do you stop at 5 year old from sucking her thumb?!? So I'm very curious to see how she does today!

Miss Madisyn is starting 2nd grade. She was a little nervous this morning, but I know she'll be fine once she gets there. She was excited that she has Mrs. Hostetler as her teacher this year.

Pictures!

Just some random pictures! This is Riley at Katie's making a complete mess of her cone.

I love this picture! Honestly he wanted me to put the barrette in his hair! Poor thing... he comes to this house and he's bombarded with girly stuff! He loves us anyway though.

This is so like Alexa. I think anytime we try to take a picture of the three of them she has to be making a face or doing something silly. She is so Dan's child!

I'll end with this one. I really need a new camera. Mine is a pain in the butt! So hopefully I'll get an early Christmas from mom and dad in the next couple of weeks!!

Lots of Green Beans!

Timing is everything! It is amazing how things worked out yesterday for me. First of all my plan was to get up this morning, go to Kenny and Evie's and pick the rest of their green beans and freeze them. Well Kenny called me last night around 6:30pm and said that he got home from work early yesterday and picked all of the green beans for me. I got there and he had what he thinks is 3 bushel of green beans, he had two heaping boxes full of them. I was thinking well this is great, the beans are picked I can snap them and freeze them Friday (today).
Then I got smart...the youth group was already planning on coming over to work on Sunday's service on San Jose...soooo I put them to work!!! There were 9 of us snapping these green beans and it got done really fast! Then Amanda stayed until 11pm helping me blanch them and seal them in bags to freeze. So I am done!! Just in time too, because I woke up with a head cold this morning. I don't even want to think about how long it would have taken me to do all those green beans by myself!

So thanks to our wonderful youth group!!!

A whole lot of nothin!

Well, there has not been much going on in the Coburn household. Last Tues. we picked Maddie up from Mini camp. She really had a lot of fun and I am so proud of her going somewhere where she knows nobody. I never would have!

I got to see my friend Sheri Weaver and her kids. They were visiting from Kansas! I felt so bad for little Cameron, him and Lexie were such good friends when they left and she ran away from him any time he came near her. He looked so sad and said "why won't Lexie play with me?" Poor thing. She told me later that he looked different and that's why she ran away from him. Sheri and I had a good visit though. They got safely back to Kansas Sunday night.

The weekend was nothing much. I worked Saturday. Dan preached Sunday and that's about it.

This week...youth group was Monday night as always. We had a bible study, but ended up discussing the future of the church and what they would like to see different. After that we just hung out. Watched a new show called the Singing Bee. It's really corny, but I like it! They when there was only Danielle, Nicole, and Amanda they decided they wanted to watch our wedding video. It was really fun to watch again! That was a really great day! So much fun.

The girls have been going to bible school at Cherry Glade all week. Dan's had meetings both Wed and Thurs nights. It was fun last night I left Riley with Dad's, took the girls to Bible school, picked up Viola and we went to Perkins for supper. It was really good too, but it was fun to be with Viola again!

That's it for now...

POOL PARTY!

Wow, last week was great! Clarissa got to come with me to my Grandpa and Grandma's in PA. We left wednesday around 10am, stopped in Hagerstown (I got Maddie and Lexie very cute backpacks at Gap), stopped twice in a very short time to go to the bathroom, and got there around 4:30pm. Had a great visit with my grandparents. Then we spent the next 3 days doing nothing but visiting with family at my aunt and uncle's pool!!! It was awesome! My cousins Cheryl and Angie were both visiting with their kids and we got to just sit there and watch the kids swim. The weather couldn't have been better!
Saturday was a yummy breakfast of pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream at the Heritage. Then we were back at the pool with the whole family. Dad, Mom, Sonny, Alissa, and Brayden arrived Fri afternoon. Unfortunately we (me, Clarissa, and the girls) had to leave Sat night.

I do have a rather humorous story from the drive home. I'm there cruising down the 78 going 70-75 mph when all of the sudden there is a little rabbit right in my way. Unfortunately I hit the poor thing. What I didn't expect though was to see it fly over the car! I'm not kidding it went up and over, not under. It was rather funny seeing a rabbit flying through the air! Not only that when we stopped at McDonald's I looked at the front of the car and the thing broke my licence plate holder thing (the licence plate wasn't on).

So we got home around 10pm and my wonderful husband had the whole house clean! He even cleaned off my messy, cluttered, unorganized counter and closet. He bought shelves to put in the closet and cleaned the whole thing out!

Well, then Dan preached Sunday morning and did a great job! I'm so proud of him! Then we took Maddie to Mini camp at Laurelville! She was nervous all morning and even wanted us to ask the church to pray for her. But she was fine once she got there!

Wow, I finally got these pictures to work! Here are a couple of pictures of our group in CA. The first one is in Santa Cruz. We went there with 3500 other Mennonites from the convention! We were at the boardwalk amusement park and boy were the lines long! It was also very chilly. Dan got to ride his first real rollercoaster! He was literally shaking standing in line out of fear! Let me tell ya this was a side of him that I have never seen before!!! It was so funny! He ended up loving it after the first drop.

The second picture is obviously outside the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We were so stinkin exhausted that night. We had left Pittsburgh at 7:15am arrived at San Jose at 12:15pm and then went to the aquarium that night. It was a very long day.

I have to go to work now, I just wanted to see if I could get some pictures on here and what do you know it worked after about 1 hour!

Pastor Dan

Well we had our congregational business meeting tonight and the covenant between Dan and the church was approved. So Dan is officially the part-time interm Pastor at Glade. There is some stuff that will take time that needs to be done for the conference so he can be licenced, and then they will have a commissioning service for him. Everyone in church was so supportive tonight and were worried about the expectations on him that they wouldn't be to much that it takes away from his family, since he's still working at Rigidply full time. It's exciting though. I am looking forward to when we can be in ministry full time.

Me, Clarissa and my girls are leaving Wed morning to go to my grandparents in south eastern PA for a visit. Dan's working and can't come, plus he's preaching Sun. morning. Dad, Mom, Sonny, Alissa, and Brayden will all be coming up sometime Friday. I have to leave Sat night though already. I want to hear Dan preach, plus we have to take Madisyn up to Laurelville for Mini camp Sunday afternoon. I'm really looking forward to spending time with Grandma and Grandpa, I'm glad it works to go up early!

It's been quite the Summer!

Wow, what a summer it's been already! Dan and I along with Kevin and Carolina Dodge took our youth group to San Jose, CA for the Mennonite USA convention. What a blast! There were 12 of us total that went. We left Sat. June 30 and returned Sat July 7. The convention didn't start until Mon. night so we had some extra time on our hands. We went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Saturday night.


Sunday we got to spend in San Francisco! I got to drive one of the vans, I was following Kevin and in order to keep up with him ended up going through only... about ...ummm... 9 stop lights!!

Then Monday we went to the Winchester Mystery Mansion and the Henry C Cowell state park to see the Redwoods! Both were a lot of fun and rather spectacular!

The convention was awesome! Great speakers! Great Music! Just so much fun all around! I slept in the most comfortable bed with feather pillows! We also just happen to have a great group of kids in our youth group who are a blast to hang out with!

My girls went to Indiana to stay with Dan's Uncle Blake and Aunt Marianne. Who took such good care of our girls. They had so much fun swimming, riding horses, feeding goats, singing and more. Madisyn even told Miranda (Dan's cousin) at the beginning of the week "I thought I would miss my Mommy, but I don't". Don't worry, my feelings weren't hurt. I'm just glad they had such a good time!

I tried to upload some pictures on here, but we back woods folk can't get high speed internet yet and are stuck with dial up. So maybe I'll post some pictures later when I have an hour :P

New Blogger

Well I've been reading others, but never did this for myself. Should be interesting to see what comes out here!