Home From Model T Tour

A few days ago we got back from our family vacation. We attended the 100th Anniversary Celebration of the Model T Ford. This big event went on last week in Richmond, Indiana. There were just under 1000 Model T's there and it was a great time!!!! We went with Dave's parents, and his brother and his family. There were 13 of us altogether. We drove a Suburban and pickup, both pulling big trailers with our 3 Model T's in them. Dave, along with his dad and brother, own a body shop and restored these T's for us to bring. The one that we drove is, in my opinion, the best one! We drove a 1926 Depot Hack and it is very awesome looking. The guys started restoring this about the beginning of this year and worked with a carpenter friend to do the wood work. While at the celebration we went on a different tour everyday. One day it was a nature lover's tour, another day we visited Amish country and went to a house that used to be part of the underground railroad. Yet another day we visited Annie Oakley's hometown and a museum there. We traveled anywhere from 40-100 miles a day in the Depot Hack. It was lots of fun! One of the greatest things is that when the Associated Press wrote an article about this bige event, they used a picture of our Depot in their story!!!! Our picture have been in countless newspapers throughout the county, along with online. Here is a link to the article on MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25786751/wid/18298287/

These are 2 of the 3 T's that we brought on the tour. The one on the left is a 1927 Roadster, the other one is our 1926 Depot Hack. We also brought a 1919 Touring.

This is the whole family next to our Depot. We were all very hot and tired for this picture, but managed to hide it somewhat well for the picture.

This is a line-up of a bunch of T's. One day all almost-1000 of us lined up for a picture. I can't wait to see what the picture looks like!

If you ignore the paved road this kind of takes you back in time, doesn't it.

Here are my 5 kids looking out the "window" of the Depot.

Here are my 2 girls and my neice in their vintage dresses I found on ebay. They looked adorable!

Another picture of the girls in their pretty dresses with me and my attempt at looking like I lived in the 20's or 30's. Good thing you can't see my Birkenstocks or the girls' Crocs!

3 Years Old

Debbie is now 3 years old. I took this picture of her yesterday and thought I would post it. It's shows a sweet, angelic type girl. I won't tell you any different than that but if you read the post previous to this you might know different. LOL!

Debbie....

Here is a picture that I happened to grab while Debbie was playing outside this morning. Now......I know all about the controversy of letting kids play with guns. I try to limit the violent type of play that the kids do. But.....come on...........there are 3 boys in our house! As long as they are not shooting at people........the guns are OK. Debbie must have gotten ahold of one of Benji's guns and brought it outside. Not the best of toys for a little girl. But..........isn't this just the cutest picture?????

Don't Eat Batteries!

Yesterday turned out to be way more excited that I had expected. I had expected to have a fun afternoon swimming in the pool and then going to church after supper. All of that changed when everybody came downstairs after rest time and the first thing Benji said was "Mom, Chris swallowed a battery." Eeek!!!!

Within about 15 minutes I was on my way to Dave's grandma's house to drop off the other kids so Chris and I could make the 45 minute trip to the closest x-ray machine. The x-ray was actually kind of cool. A perfect picture of Chris's neck area, with a perfect circle right in the middle. It looked like there was a hole in the x-ray. At this point I still wasn't too concerned. I was thinking "Give the kid something to make him throw up, we'll get it out and go home." Little did I know.........

So...."Scott" (a doctor? a PA? I'm not sure) came in and said "It needs to come out." Duh???? Getting it out would not be so easy. They needed to put a scope down Chris's throat to get the battery. BTW, the battery was from a toy and was about the size of a quarter.

The town we were in has a new small town type hospital. There was a problem..........the only doctor that could do surgical procedures was on vacation. UGH! This meant that we would have to take him to a bigger hospital, over 2 hours from where we were. And......they had to take him by ambulance.

I guess there was a lot of concern because if the battery moved it could cover the opening of the windpipe and he wouldn't be able to breathe. So in the ambulance we went. The medic in the ambulance warned me that if anything happened I would have to move to the front of the ambulance while he worked on Chris. If Chris started throwing up there was a good chance he would start choking.

About 20 minutes from our destination, Chris started throwing up. Instant panic!!!! But....praise God....the battery came flying out of his mouth. Relief! I now thought......good, we'll get the hospital, meet up with Dave and go home. Nope!

Once at the hospital, the doctor who saw him was very concerned because the battery was very coreded (and it was!). I guess that the stomach acid, when mixed with the battery, causes electrical charges to happen. The doctor was very concerned that this may have done some serious burning to Chris's throat.

After another x-ray to tell us that there was not a hole burnt through his throat the doctor felt a little better. He said that kids often die from those little batteries. He had Chris eat some toast and peanut butter and while it was a little painful for Chris, he ate it all. We were then free to go.

Today Chris's throat is very sore but I don't know if that's from some burning or from just having a big thing stuck in his throat for a few hours.

I'm very thankful that the battery came out safely but please pray that his throat heals quickly and feels better soon.

Give a Kid a Camera.....

........and this is what you get.

The boys got a hold of my camera yesterday after we had gone swimming and this is the result. Remember.....these pictures of me are after I was in the pool for a couple hours and then got attacked while relaxing on a towel. Please forgive me if I look like I'm not all made up.

My CSS Friends

As I said in a post earlier today, I got to visit with some of my great online pals in Chicago a couple weeks ago. This is the third year I've done this and it's always great! My first year I was really nervous about meeting these people. It just seemed so strange. But it's been wonderful getting to know them in real life as well as online. I thought I would share some of the pictures of this wacky group of ladies.

To begin with, this is one of my bestest friends. Karin and I have known each other since 2000 when we worked on the 2000 Census together. Last year I talked her into going with me to the retreat and she was hooked! So we loaded up my van this year and drove the 13 hours to Chicago. We had lots of goofy, zany moments along the way. Her 17 year old daughter came with us and I think she is conviced we are both nuts!

The lady in the middle is our CSS list mom. She is also the lady who puts together this whole weekend for us. Marybeth is an amazing woman of God and she is the perfect person to lead our group. Over the past 6 years I have come to love and respect her very much. The other one is Becky. The two of us have a "thing" going. We kind of like to pick on each other, although I think she starts is most of the time! I just have to defend myself! We sat on opposite sides of the room this year and we were throwing comments across the poor gals in the middle. Becky once threatened to throw a paper piercer at me! Can you believe that???? Check out our shirts........they were a prize from Marybeth..........and they both say "Anything you can scrap I can scrap better." When we saw these we just knew that the two of us had to have them! Seriously.........I think Becky is wonderful! Just don't tell her I said that.

This is Marybeth with the chef for the weekend.........her husband Paul. Their daughter Steffi also cooked lots for us and was constantly bringing us good things to munch on.
This was a challenge over the weekend. It was a 4 Product Challenge. Everybody received the same 4 products and had to make a layout using them. You could only use those 4 products, plus some cardstock. I loved how everybody created totally different layouts using the same products!
These are the gals who attended from our CSS group. There were also come local Chicago scrappers there. These CSS ladies are: Marybeth, Becky, Denise, Kate, Karin, Judy, Heidi, and Julie (in front). This was the best part of the weekend..........getting to know all these great ladies in real life! We are already planning our retreat for next year! I can't wait! It's just too bad that Chicago is sooooooo far away! What a looooong drive! But so worth it!

57 Pages Done

A couple of weeks ago I traveled to Chicago for the weekend. I went all the way to Chicago.......about a 13 hour drive............to do a very important thing............scrapbook! This was my third yearly get together with an amazing group of online friends. We belong to a group called Christian Scrapbooking Sister (CSS). There were 12 of us that scrapped for the weekend. I ended up getting 57 pages done. I was hoping for more as I had completed almost 80 the years before, but I was pleased with how much I did get done. I won't bore you by showing you all of the pages but here are some of my favorites.