Happy Birthday Holly!

Happy Birthday yesterday to our niece, Holly!  We celebrated her birthday last weekend when she came home from Louisiana. 

 Her cake was on fire from all of the candles.

Her angel food birthday cake tasted delicious.

Take care,

Michelle

Mercy Meals

Last Saturday morning Cara and Erica had a short 4-H meeting and then the club went to package Mercy Meals for their community service project.  They packaged the meals for one hour. 

Upon arrival at the Mercy Meal warehouse everyone must put on aprons, hair nets and then wash their hands.  Here the group is listening to instructions about packaging the food.

Assembly lines are then set up to package the meals.  Everyone has a job in the assembly line.

Allison is sealing a package shut for the shipment.  The packages that the kids put together would either be sent to Kenya or Haiti.

Casey is waiting for her turn to put a label on a finished package of food.

Cara and Charli were packaging the filled bags in boxes.  Each box contains 50 bags of food.  Each bag contains: rice, soy, dried vegetables, chicken base.  Each bag feeds 3 people and costs about $0.70 to make.

Erica worked behind the scene assembling boxes and putting labels on the boxes.

The following is from a letter handed out to the volunteers:

Mercy Meals of Nebraska is a non-profit organization that allows volunteers to package nourishing food that will be delivered to children in need throughout the world.  Orphanages, refugee camps, feeding centers, disaster relief centers and local food pantries have been recent recipients of the food.

Through this program, we hope to instill in our children a sense of self-empowerment, civic duty, world awareness, kindness toward their fellow man and appreciation for the blessings in their daily lives.  We want then to know that they can make a difference in other people's lives by being informed, by making good choices in their lives, by giving their time and by donating their talents.

This was a great service project for these kids to complete, especially at this time of the year.  The project is easy and fun to complete.  My kids have done Mercy Meals before and each time they have a good time while helping less fortunate people.

Take care,

Michelle

Wordless Wednesday

Decorating Christmas Cookies

Grandma Leader and Cousin Holly have a tradition of decorating Christmas cookies.  This year with Holly coming home early the cookies were ready to be decorated early.  Also Grandma Leader has started a cookie exchange annual program on the Guenther side.  This next Saturday will be the 3rd annual event.

Shortly after the dinner dishes were done, the cookies and decorating supplies came out.  Cara, Erica, Ashlin, Holly and Aunt Sharlene started work on the ice cream buckets of cookies to be frosted.

Ashlin working intently on her cookie.

Erica and Holly taking a break for a photo opportunity.  My girls were inseparable from Holly the whole day.  They have missed seeing her and bugged her constantly.

Cara creating another masterpiece.

Justin was kind enough to hand out finished cookies to other guests and even enjoyed eating quite a few himself.  Thank you to Grandma Leader for sending quite a few home with us to enjoy this week.

Justin playing Lego's with Michael.  Justin kept asking for someone to play with him.  He sat on the Winnie the Pooh step stool and saved the Dora stool for a friend.  Michael played Lego's until Justin crashed the airplane that he had created.

Zac also got the opportunity to sit down and join in the building fun.  Grandma Leader made a good investment when she purchased the Lego's and the table from Eli.  This corner of the laundry room got a lot of use that day.  It was a great day to spend with family. 

Take care,

Michelle

Happy 8th Birthday Conner!

Our nephew Conner turned 8 years old yesterday.  His birthday happened to coincide with the family dinner that Keith's parents hosted yesterday because our niece Holly was home from Louisiana.  Conner had a birthday party on Saturday, but we celebrated yesterday also with cake again.

We couldn't make it to his birthday party on Saturday, so he got to open our present yesterday.  We gave him a Cars2 DVD and a Nebraska hooded sweatshirt.

Aunt Sharlene made jigglers to celebrate Conner and Holly's birthdays for lunch.  Grandma Merina made a most delicious dinner of ham, swiss steak, au gratin potatoes, corn, green bean casserole, dinner rolls, salads and butterfinger dessert.  Later in the afternoon we had our choice of two birthday cakes.

Take care,

Michelle



How to cook a turkey by Ashlin

Last Wednesday we were totally surprised when we opened up our newspaper and there was Ashlin and some of her classmates on the front page.  The reporter from the newspaper came to the school and interviewed the whole class on how to cook a Thanksgiving Day turkey.  Ashlin was picked to get her photo taken holding her drawn turkey and she also got to be featured on a You Tube video also posted by the newspaper.

Several 1st graders were recently asked by the Norfolk Daily News how to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving.  Click HERE to view their responses on this YouTube video, courtesy of the Norfolk Daily News!  Hopefully the link works to watch the video, when I tried it worked.  Ashlin is about the 2nd or 3rd student interviewed.

On a side note, I did purchase a new camera during my Black Friday adventure, so hopefully I will be back to posting more regularly once again.

Take care,

Michelle

Congrats Ashlin!

Sorry I haven't been blogging, but I am still having camera problems.  I am trying to decide if I should buy a new camera now or wait until Black Friday to score an awesome deal.

Anyway, Ashlin needs to be congratulated today on placing 2nd in another coloring contest.  This time she entered a Halloween coloring contest sponsored by our local Shopper newspaper.  This newspaper is distributed in Northeast Nebraska weekly to households and it is free.  In the shopper are the grocery ads for the week and other for sale items.  Ashlin placed 2nd in the 5-6 year old division and won a few free games of bowling.  She was so excited yesterday when the Shopper arrived on our doorstep and I showed her that she had won a prize.

Simply put, Ashlin loves to color and she could color for hours.  She does a very good job.  After placing 2nd this summer in the Library's coloring contest and now 2nd in this contest, she is determined to place 1st in her next contest.  Ashlin is now on the look out for the next coloring contest to enter.  Sorry I don't have a photo of her 2nd place photo, but the camera is not working and it is very frustrating to me.

Take care,
Michelle