Week 19

I'm just not feeling the photo love these days. Even when I make sure we have the camera with us, most of the time we still don't take any pictures. What's up with that?! But never fear! This week's Project 365 will not be lacking in photos, no it will not. Because as most of you know, my daughter graduated yesterday! And I'm totally stealing photos from her facebook to share with my little corner of the bloggy world :-)

This is not to say I don't have any photos of my own for the week. Just not many. Most of what I have are of houses and property we checked out during two separate drives to look at real estate. Not sure when, or even if, we'll be able to buy a place of our own but it doesn't hurt to look. Finding one place turned into quite an adventure that lasted 2 hours (the house was only 11 km from where we live but we got totally and completely lost trying to find it). Felt a little silly when we finally did get there, since it's barely 1 km off the highway.  Loved, loved, loved the setting by the river...

The house on this property has a foundation and a few walls but not much else. No windows, no roof, and half the walls are missing. But that setting... *sigh*  Location is everything, as they say in the real estate business. And this place is in a great location...except for what we need. It's too far out from where we're working to establish a church, and there's no public transport out that way, what with it being between two towns.

But on to a happier, MUCH HAPPIER, topic!

I'm sharing LOTS of photos from Tina's graduation and festivities, so just sit back and enjoy the tour :-)  First up is a photo of Tina with her brother and sister-in-law on Friday night at the Presidential Dessert.

Tina and Kyle:

Not sure what to call him. Boyfriend? Good friend? Anyway, they're spending a lot of time together these days and he helped make this weekend special with a number of extra touches, like making sure there were flower arrangements on the tables at the celebratory lunch on Saturday -- in red and white, the school colors.

How thoughtful is that?! And that's just one of the things he did.

Speaking of thoughtful, I mentioned the women who traveled down from Michigan for the graduation. One of them had to leave immediately after, in order to get back to Michigan for Hillsdale College's graduation. But Katie and Lois were able to stick around and have lunch with the crowd.

There was quite the group that descended on Cerulean's for sushi and bento boxes after graduation. Looks like they're enjoying it!

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Right after graduation Tina had some photos taken with special people, like her grandma:

And one of her best girlfriends and fellow graduates, Toni:

Lots of fun and great memories!

For those who asked, no there was no way to skype during the graduation nor were they doing live streaming like we hoped. BUT they did videotape it and Tina ordered the DVD for us!

Our son tried to take photos during the program but unfortunately a bald man was sitting directly in front of them and the camera flash kept bouncing off his shiny pate so none of those pictures came out. LOL  I do think we'll get more professional prints from the college.

And before I leave the subject of my daughter I wanted to share that she already has a job! They offered her the position on April 30th and she started work on Monday, the 3rd! She's the project coordinator for a large marketing campaign for her alma mater as they make some pretty big changes in their programs and what they offer. The college hired Brandpoet, who in turn hired Tina as the project coordinator. I'm sure I'll be blabbing on and on about some of the things she'll be doing in the coming months :-)  We're very proud of both her accomplishments in college AND for getting the new job!

She's been feeling rather overwhelmed, what with working her new job and her old one (two week notice will take her to the end of this coming week), with graduation in the middle, and an open house in Michigan next weekend. Once she gets through all of that and things calm down, she might start to breathe again. LOL

Breathing is not something I do much of on Saturday nights. I'm too busy laughing at our young people; they keep me in stitches and make it hard to breathe. We are blessed with a GREAT group of young men and women who are growing in the Lord, and having a good time doing it!

Have you ever tried to play ping pong with more than one paddle?!

After the ping pong tournament we sang. The youngest girl in our group had taken time this week to put our choruses together in little booklets. No more loose papers floating around and trying to find the right one.

Some of the kids are taking guitar lessons and learning the new choruses so they can accompany us as we sing.

We announced tonight an upcoming long weekend retreat at the house in Sta. Rosa and the kids are pretty excited! It looks like we'll have three couples and 15 kids going. I think we might end up feeling like the Old Woman Who Lived in the Shoe :-)

This week we'll have our co-worker's two youngest daughters while they get away for a bit of a break. They've been doing all the paperwork and preparing to leave on furlough in July and it's just been nuts all they've had to do. I'll enjoy cooking for more than just us, and anticipate they'll get lots of fodder for their annual skit spoofing us. Honestly, those two girls have nailed me and Ivan and they're just hysterical when playing their (our) parts!