Liddick reunion

My family is so spread out. My parents live in New York, my older brother lives in Arizona, we live in Minnesota, and my younger brother lives in Kentucky. To top it off, we've all been working in or pursuing ministry, which makes it difficult to get together on weekends and holidays. Needless to say, getting all of us together at the same time doesn't happen very often. In fact, the last time was exactly 2 years ago when we all gathered in Ohio for Matt and Brianne's wedding. However, we finally did it. It didn't last long; even shorter than planned due to David's and my flight getting canceled and us leaving a day later than we were supposed to. But there were about 24 hours when we were all together. Mom, Dad, Mike, Jen, Marlena, Jacob, David, Melissa, Brianne, and Matt.

Doesn't it always figure that there's always going to be one person making a funny face?
Sweet little Marlena had had enough of the pictures and was starting to get silly.

Here's hoping it won't be two more years until we can do this again.
I mean look at those two. How can anyone go two years without seeing those cuties!

Househunting

We've had the pleasure (and stress) of hunting for a house over the past few weeks. The family we've been caretaking for will be returning from Poland at the end of the summer, so it's time to vacate and find a home of our own. House hunting has been quite an experience. I never dreamed it would be so difficult for two people to find one house that they liked equally. In addition to the whole compromise aspect, we've witnessed some interesting houses over the course of our search. Most of the real "gems" have been the foreclosures that we've been through. Typically in those situations, the home owners will take with them all of the appliances, but in one house they also found it necessary to remove all of the toilets and several doorknobs. Most of the time the listing Realtor will hire a cleaning crew to remove any remaining personal property and vacuum the carpets. One house we looked at last week had not experienced that luxury yet, however. I have never seen a house so filthy. It appeared as though the home owners never even owned a vacuum cleaner. There was garbage and personal property left all over the floor throughout the house.

Apparently they owned a dog.
I was able to deduce that from the 3 inches of dog hair on the carpet.

So where do we currently stand in our hunt? Time will tell... We've put an offer in on a short sale listing (which often means the opposite of a short sale), so now we wait to see if the lenders will accept our offer. Pray with us that this truly can be a SHORT sale and not drag out. I'd rather not have to store all of our things and live in temporary housing while we wait to close. It's all in God's hands. We will trust and wait on Him.

A day and a half left...

Well, summer is so close I can almost taste it.

My students have been turning the stories that they just finished writing into books this week. There were a few that finished early, so I encouraged them to write a little biographical information inside the back cover. There was one in particular that made me laugh out loud.

"(Student's name) is the author of this incredible book: A Bully in the Neighborhood. This story will enchant your minds. Don't miss this spectacular book. (Student's name) was born on July 24, 1999. She has a family of 5. (name) started a picture of a flower vase. It took her about a month to finish it. (name) got the idea of this book from a movie she saw. She hopes everyone who reads her book will like it!"

This struck me so funny because everyone else wrote the standard "I am in third grade. Gym and recess are my favorite classes. I have a brother and a sister. etc." But, this girl is really trying to sell her book!