Thank you so much!!!!!

A banner that Lydia and Marie made for me!!

Yesterday was our meekness meeting. Before the meeting, Lydia planned a surprise birthday party for me. It was great! Everyone arrived an hour early, and went swimming. The pool (and air) were freezing (water about 66 degrees)! Afterwards, everyone got dressed and went inside. We were still cold though, so Mom brought down all of our extra blankets, and we wrapped up! It was fun! Then we went on with the meekness meeting. First we sang, and it sounded great! We had a couple funny skits, raced putting puzzles together (to demonstrate how important it is to have meekness with teamwork), and talked about overcoming anger. I think it was one of our best meetings so far (maybe it helped that you were celebrating my birthday :~).

Thank you so much girls!! I loved all of your gifts! They are each so unique and fun! I have never received so many presents all at one time!

~ All of the gifts from the girls ~

We had full attendance last night!!

After we were done downstairs, Mary, Faith, Maggie, Rachel, and Alexis picked up all the highlighters, stacked the papers, and folded the blankets. I want you girls to know that I really appreciate your help!

Thank you all for everything! I can't wait to see what the group gift will be! Looking forward to seeing you all on the 21st! I love you!

~~~Haley~~~

Monday's meeting

We had a great meeting Monday! Everyone had a good time singing, and we are getting better and better participation! I forgot to take pictures though. :(

Last meeting you probably remember was on Contentment. Monday's was, Sensitivity. Contentment is when you are not concerned about your own needs. Sensitivity, is when you are concerned about the needs of others. We talked about "gloves" to your sensitivity-- friends, busyness, things you do by yourself (computer games, facebook, TV, listening to music on earphones, etc.). All these things can make you less sensitive to those around you. Also, you have to notice. Sensitivity is noticing. If you don't notice if someone is left out, you can't help them feel welcome. It goes like that with everything. You have to notice, or you can't be sensitive.

We pointed out that whenever you are sensitive even in the littlest thing, or are feeling frustrated because you were trying to help but it didn't go right, you won't lose your reward (Matthew 22:39). Also, whenever you do something you are doing it to Jesus. This can be a beautiful thought, or a scary thought. If you are being sensitive and kind, it is uplifting, but if you are snapping at your brother or glaring at your sister, it is not a nice thought to think you are snapping or glaring at Jesus.

The most important, but probably hardest, place to be sensitive is in the home. We are running sprints with our friends, but a marathon in our home, and it is always harder to run a marathon than a sprint.

To end the meeting, we talked about one way to show you care is to make sure you know everyone's name. We played a little game with that, where everyone wrote down everyone else's name, and during snacks asked questions of each person to find out something about them. One thing we found out: the majority of the girls' favorite color is blue!

We also had another little quiz we did, to see how well we know our siblings.

For snacks, we provided strawberry shortcake, Elizabeth brought grapes and watermelon, and Marie brought ice cream sandwhiches. Yummy!

Marie and Elizabeth, thank you for bringing snacks! They are always appreciated!

I'm looking forward to seeing you all on the 31st! We will be learning about meekness. Quick question: do any of you know who the Bible says the meekest man was?

Madaline, MaKenzie, and Abigail are bringing snacks next meeting.

Love,
Haley

P.S. Faith, thank you for picking up all the change on the floor, it really was appreciated!

Updates......

Here are some picture I took lately:
Lydia, holding a large toad we caught in our yard.

This was several weeks ago, when we were planting our garden.

Team huddle! A picture that Lydia took at one of Grant's baseball games.

I showed you the eggs from this nest, so I thought I would show you the little bird. There were actually four little robins in the nest. They are grown and gone now.

This week Lydia, Grant, and I have been at HPA's summer drama camp. It is fun and busy! Tomorrow, when we are supposed to be at camp again, we are actually missing a day to go to a Tiger's game. Our uncle is taking all of us for his birthday! Our Grandpa and Grandma from Tennessee will be there too. It will be fun, but I hope we don't get too far behind at camp. Friday there will be a performance, I am doing a skit with two other people, our whole group is singing One Short Day (from the Broadway musical Wicked--I never heard the song until Monday), and will be doing a dance. I don't particularly like the dance--I guess I am to used to Irish step dancing, holding your arms straight, etc.

Simple Berry Cobbler

Here is a recipe for a simple cobbler that we made recently. It is very simple and very tasty. We used mulberries and strawberries, but any berries will work.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

First combine in bowl:
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Instead of using milk and baking powder, I used 1 cup of soured milk (you can also use raw yogurt or buttermilk) and 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda.

Pour into 9 x 13 baking pan.

Then, chop up at least 2 cups of berries of your choosing. (You can also use frozen or canned fruit, but fresh is always best.) We used considerably more than 2 cups of fruit. Use your own judgement as to how much you like fruit. Add the fruit to the pan evenly.

As a last minute thing, I added little pieces of kiwi to my cobbler. You could add kiwi or any other complementary fruit to your cobbler.

When it is all together, put in oven and bake 4o minutes or so.

And it is done! Happy eating!

Love~Haley

Singing @ BL

Hello girls! Here is the video of you singing America the Beautiful. It is about 2 min. 30 sec. long. We sounded a lot better last meeting. Keep up the good work!

Before you listen to it, scroll to the bottom and put the music on pause.

Camp Barakel

Hello girls! The Father/Daughter retreat at Camp Barakel is open for registration! Dad, Lydia, and I have gone to previous retreats and we would like to encouraged you to attend also! Here are some pictures:

Barakel means 'Where God Has Blessed'. That is Camp Barakel's motto.

This is a picture of the West Side Chapel. This is where we would be having chapel sessions. The picture was taken during the winter. Lets hope we don't have snow for the Father~Daughter retreat!

Shear lake--Barakel's own spring fed lake. It is beautiful. They have swimming areas, paddle boating, kayaking (our favorite!), canoeing, etc. It is great!


This is Paul Gardner. He is always smiling and happy. Mr. Gardner is the camp director and will be one of our hosts for the retreat. He also leads the singing. The singing is great there! It's my favorite part!


This is the zip-line. I have never been on it, as last year it was still in construction. We did walk up to the platform though, is it ever high! Five people can go at one time!

This is on top of the zip-line platform. Look closely and you can see the far platform across snow valley.Another thing we enjoy doing is the rifle range. You can shoot air rifles or (if you are over 12) 22s.

Everything there is so pretty. They have over 350 acres, plus the Huron National forest boarders them, so there is an additional 1,000 acres that can also be explored.

If you like to fish, there are fish to be caught. (Please don't ask me to fish with you though!).

Picture of chapel, taken from the balcony, which is actually a little museum. Lots of fun things to look at there!

The blob. Many people love the blob, but I think it is scary and painful. You have to go on a 10 foot platform and jump. Then crawl to the edge and when the next person jumps, you are catapulted in the air. Poor Lydia had a boy that was twice as big as her 'blob' her, and she flew way in the air, flipped over, and landed on her face and side. Was she ever sore!

If you like mountain/dirt biking, they have bike you can use.

The blockhouse, Barakel's symbol. It has a museum in it. It also has honey bees that you can see at work. Very interesting!

One of our favorite things to do is kayak. It is so fun to go in the shallow parts of the lake, but still be able to skim over the water.

They have a fun climbing wall also. It is not a vertical wall, but horizontal. It also had some fun areas. In one part there aren't many grips on the wall, so you have to sort of monkey along the top.

It is really long!

Lydia did the whole thing, a feat that not many have accomplished!

You start at A and go to Z. That is hard enough, but try to keep on going right along from 1-10. Now THAT is hard!

This is the Thunder Express. It is a long corrugated tube (used under ground and such). You go down on sleds. It makes a lot of noise, and because of the angle, is really scary the first time, but after that, it is not scary at all.

Lydia at the bottom.

You sort of can see how long it is in this picture. There is a long way to climb back up!

The top platform.

Some of the boats.

I love this picture. It has such perfect reflections!

The north end of the lake.

One of the platforms on the path leading down to the lake. This is a good place to go at night. It is so quite, and there aren't as many trees, so you can see the stars and moon clearly, since there isn't much light pollution.

A picture at the chapel. The fireplaces are really fun. They have all sorts of things stuck in them, interesting rocks, etc. There is a paper explaining what each thing is and why it is there.

Another thing is the food. Camp Barakel has great food! And there isn't any preparation or cleaning up. (For us that is. Thank you to all the staff and volunteers in the kitchen who work so hard!)

If you want to sign up, click here for the registration form: http://www.campbarakel.org/bn_brochure/2009/2009FallFatherDaughter.pdf

If you want to read more about Camp Barakel at their site, go here: http://www.campbarakel.org/.

When you send your registration in, make sure to check the SECOND retreat (September 25-27). Also, in the blank where it says 'what church or group do you want to be housed with' put "The Bright Lights group". That way, we will be housed together.

"Goodbye! We hope you can come to the retreat! It has really blessed our lives!"

Scrapbooking!!

We had a great meeting yesterday. Although a lot of people were on vacation and elsewhere, there were still 15 girls. Elizabeth, Faith, Alexis, and Gabbie all had or tried the memory verse. Good job girls! Keep it up!

We also talked about Camp Barakel, and showed pictures from previous Father/Daughter retreats that Lydia, Dad, and I have gone to. I will post some of those later.

Then for scrap-booking! We talked a little about how it could be used for a ministery--using pictures from a church event, giving pages away that have verses on them, etc. were all ideas. The girls made some lovely pages!

Thank you to Gabbie and Maggie for being greeters! You did a great job! Thank you to MaKenzie, Marie, and Elizabeth for bringing all the tasty snacks! They are appreciated!

The group, holding their scap-booking pages

Marie and her page

Alexis' page

Faith's page

Gabbie's page

Maggie's page

Lydia's page Maria holding her scrap-booking page

Leah doing her page

Everyone is busy!

Singing!

"Come on, Noela! We don't sing THAT bad!"

See you later!

Looking forward to the next meeting!