Another week has gone by. Time seems to disappear around here. Someday, I hope I can find it! Erin visits Houghton this weekend for a recruit weekend. Mark and I get to take her. I am really looking forward to it. Please pray for her to be strong. SHe was the final one in the family to get the flu. She ended up sick MOnday night and yesterday. She went to school today, but didn't eat very much before she left. It takes a good 2-3 days to come back from this. Playing hard Friday and Saturday might be difficult after being sick.

Emily is doing well. SHe is loving being back to school. She is facing a few academic challenges this semester. She has a full load (17 credits) and is working 6 days a week. Prayer would be wonderful! She is also in the process of applying for a position as a counselor at a summer camp. SHe would be absolutely incredible! I would have LOVED for my kids to have had a counselor like her. It would have changed their opinion of camp. Jacob, Erin and Sam had difficult experiences with their counselors. For Jacob, it ruined his experiences all together. Sam was pretty miserable one year as well. She has had a phone interview already. THe really neat thing is that the interview was on Friday. Emily had no idea that the camp director was going to be on campus Monday - Wednesday recruiting students to interview for camp. I told Em that she should stop by and say hello. She did and ended up having a great conversation with the director. She REALLY liked him! He was very excited to hear that she had already interviewed and then to find out that she had attended the camp 6 or 7 years! He told her that when he gets home on Thursday, he would pull her file and give her a call that night. I am praying that she is able to work there. It would be an incredible experience!

Jacob took a midterm with the 9th grade science class on Thursday. He is homeschooled, but we want him to be able to get the actual credit for the course. If he is able to pass the final, he will get the credit for it. It was a difficult thing to ask him to do simply because he had not study guide, has never heard the teacher teach, has never sat in on a class, nor had any idea how he would test. On top of that, he found out that they had studied 3 chapters that he had not (they went out of order) and he had studied 4 chapters that they had not done yet. So... it was a very intense few days leading up to the test. I was so proud of how he handled the pressure. He studied hard and took the test. We should get the results this week; until then.. he feels confident that he passed.

Tomorrow is Elizabeth's birthday. When we made Marks' cake, RI announced in a very sad voice, that his cake was not cool. It wasn't! I knew it when I did it. I had ran out of time, so I just through together cupcakes, slapped on colored icing and stuck some candles in it. I promised him that when I made Elizabeth's cake, I would make him a cook cake too. We found pictures of some cakes on the internet and he chose a dinosaur cake. Elizabeth chose a princess cake. And I chose cupcakes to take to their awana class. here are the results: