I Never Knew Shopping Could Be So Fun!

Tuesday we gathered up all the girls and went...shopping (of course!). We had so much fun, trying on silly clothes, prom dresses, and things that we seriously wanted buy...we had lots of laughs.Trying on different clothes...some silly and others not so much. I love Megan's skirt...it makes me smile! :)

And, sunglasses of course, are always fun to try on!

We went to JC Penny's and just had to try on their prom dresses.

Necklaces...oh so many to choose!

What girl wouldn't like Bath & Body Works. It seemed like we spent hours in there sniffing, spraying, testing...

...until we finally bought those things that we love smelling and had to pose for another picture!

Then over to JoAnns where we played with the flowers a bit. :)

Trying on scarfs and high heeled shoes

We finished our shopping with dinner at Panera Bread

This is my lovely meal. Broccoli Chedder in a bread bowl. :)

We finished the day with a stop at the beach. Unfortunately my camera died just then, only allowing me to get just a couple pictures.

A Picture From This Summer

Earlier this month us high school girls got to have a sleep over with our pastors wife at one of the ladies (from church) home. We all had a very fun, giggly girl time eating pizza, watching Sense and Sensibility and staying up to nearly 2:00 am. I didn't take very many pictures...actually hardly any...but I was able to get this one of Em and I just love it!
Hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend!

Friends Visit

The Bennetts came to visit us on Thursday!

Heather, me
Sarah and Aaron

We played Apples to Apples and another game shown below.

They bought some beautiful Gladiolas!!

I love purple and yellow together, just like I do blue and yellow. :)

Now here is the other game we played, a game that we are not sure of the name. But it was a lot of fun and brought a lot of laughter!
What you had to do was a write a sentence on a piece of paper (like the one above) and then pass to the person beside you.

That person would read the sentence and then draw it.

The third person is only able to see the drawing, and then must write what he sees.

It kind of goes on like that, so that the fourth person sees only the sentence and draws that.

Many times you will end with something totally off from the first sentence. :) I would highly recommend playing this game...especially with a lot of people (the more people the funnier they are at the end). We played with 5 people this time.

Summer Fun!

I brought the camera to church last night...it was fun taking pictures of the girls. :)Marjorie, Heather, Bonnie and Lydia

Here's a message for you!!!

Heather and Sophie aren't they so sweet!

More Pictures of Peru

First I'd like to say, to those of you who gave me suggestions for a new blog name, THANK YOU!!! I had a very hard time choosing which one it was going to be, so hard in fact, that I did the "pick it out of a hat" thing. I, as you can see, picked "Looking Through My Lens". I hope you don't mind, but I actually changed it a bit, to "A Look...". Thank you so much for your ideas, I really like this title better then my first one. :)

Second, I thought you should see some more pictures from Peru. Sooo, here are a few random pictures from the "million" that we have. Enjoy! (Note: I am not sure if these pictures were taken by Mom/me or from someone else who went on the trip. We have all the pictures from everyone mixed together. So therefore, this post is "a look through many peoples lenses".)

::The mountain that we saw everyday::
This is the mountain that you could see when you stood in camp looking towards the entrance. This is also the mountain that we climbed! :)

::One of the towns we past through to get to Trujillo ::
(I believe anyway, it could be Trujillo, I can't remember)

::Working on the wall::
This is what we went to do along with other smaller things.

::Working on the walkway and flowerbeds::
One of the girls/ladies projects was to weed the flower beds and plant some new flowers in it. :)

::View of the mountains::
I think Mom took this picture while we were climbing the mountain

::Taxi rides::
One of my most interesting memories of Peru was the one night coming home from the Youth Meeting at the Stilwells church. There were six of us girls stuffed into a taxi (one up front and five in the back), which would have been exciting in normal traffic (normal for them I mean, which is getting to front even if you have to drive between two cars with only an inch between you and the other cars...), but this taxi driver and the other one that was driving with some of the boys decided to RACE!! There were several times I was certain we'd rash, but yes, it was very exciting in that very insane kind of way. :)

::The ruins that were a couple miles (I'm guessing) from the camp::
On the last day that we were in Peru we were able to go see some ruin sites. They were pretty neat.

::An overview of many of the people working::
Top right, guys laying bricks. Top left guys brushing off bricks. Bottom right, guys/girls sifting out stones from sand. Bottom left, making mortar.
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For anyone who wants to see more pictures of the wedding that I helped with you can go to my Mom's blog HERE.

Kal-Haven Trail (Bike Hike)

Saturday we packed up our bikes and set out to the Kal-Haven trail. We went with several families from church and spent the afternoon riding our bikes down the trail, and then came back to eat a potluck supper. We were all (well, all but the younger kids...they have so much energy!) very tired and ready to eat after riding for about 3 and half hours.

Me, Sarah and Lydia before we started.

The girls (most anyway)

Dad on the trail. The trail used to be a railroad bed. Now it works great for biking because it is so flat. :)

The kids having fun after they got back from riding. :)

Em and I after our ride. We were very tired. :)

The kids, again having fun with anything they can find.

Lydia and Em after supper

Betsy and Bonnie (notice their matching Inca Cola shirts from Peru)

I loved the sheet we were sitting on so, I took a picture of it. :)