It's Friggin' Hot!!!

Ok, now I realize that summer is hotter than winter, but it's friggin' hot! Luckily, LGPC opened up it's air-conditioned doors to the community and it's members without A/C. We survived there and in the bedroom, where we have a window air conditioner. The rest of the house just had to deal with fans. It's another reason that I love working with the youth groups... Pool Parties!!! Every sunday night the sr. high group goes to someones house usually with a pool! And whether you're dressed for it or not, you may get wet! Not that I ever encourage that kind of behavior :) Every wednesday the jr. high group goes... somewhere. Usually there's water. We've gone on the Willamette Jetboats, been to Lake Grove Swim Park, tubed Oswego Lake, Hunted at the zoo, and destroyed armchairs with sledgehammers. But this weekend, and now today, we're mostly not moving much.

Mercy Project

Today, a makeshift band of Jr and Sr highers met to record their first demo. How am I involved? I wrote the songs. But I kinda suck at playing them. So I gave them to these youngun's and they really make them better that I ever did. It's really cool. Most of the songs that they are playing were written for what I had titled The Mercy Project. A guitarist named Kouchi thought it would be a good band name, and it had kind of stuck.
Mike Cummings is the main arranger of the songs, playing guitar and singing. Brandon Vance keeps the song moving playing bass. Catie Elrod joined us late as a singer, a job she shares with Mike. The youngest, and filling my place, is Sara Wendland amazing us with her drumming.
We had been practicing a song titled Who? for some time, and were just going to record it, but Mike had been working with the song Hide, even recording a version on his phone! So, with some extra time availabe, they practiced it a couple of times, and recorded it easier than they had Who? We've got to get them a gig somewhere!

Lavender Soccer Mission

So Sunday morning Michaela and her cohorts were officially commissioned by our church to go on their Mission Trip to Mississippi to rebuild houses that were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. It's an all work, no VBS type thing... I'm sure that they's come home tired! But Diane, Hannah, and I missed it... we were at the Portland Lavender Fair - which is in Beaverton and Forest Grove. Lots of Lavendar to pick from, some cool booths with neat doo-hickey's and even Lavender Lemonade and Ice Cream (yes, we had both)! So, newly purchased lavender seedlings in hand, we headed home... until Entheos, where Katrina gave her Senior Spotlight.
Now, this week began Soccer Camp for Hannah, up at Hallinan Elementary. She was all decked out in pink soccer shorts and socks, shin-guards, black-n-pink cleats, and princess warm-up jacket...kicking a shiny pink soccer ball! How cute! The kids learned and practiced for 4 hours, and then played on the nearby playground for another... I wish I had that kind of energy!!!

Beach Day!

The 4th of July weekend tends to suck as far as driving to the beach. So we skipped the weekend, and drove down early Monday the 3rd! We were the first car in the public lot at 9am at Cannon Beach. It was cold. It was windy! Diane, Hannah, and I took a long walk on the beach (Michaela had to work) and played in the tide pools at Haystack Rock since the tide was out. It was a wonderfully relaxing trip. Of course Hannah wanted to jump in the ocean, but it was COLD! We putzed around the town and headed down to the beach after lunch. Diane and I took the mellow approach and lived in our beach chairs while Hannah played in the little river that empties into the ocean. After a couple of hours, while Diane napped, I took Hannah to the edge of the ocean, and we jumped waves for a bit, but it was COLD! It would have been nice except for the wind. So we went back to the town, and did some more window shopping ("no, we're not shopping for windows Hannah.") We left at about 7:30pm, what a wonderful day! Hannah fell asleep about 60 seconds after we hit 101. Diane crashed about 15 minutes later. A nice quiet drive home!