God is good to us and Adventure Island

You can tell by the title that something exciting has happened and it has! We received an e-mail from our agency Friday afternoon that the updated paperwork we faxed to them on Thursday was acceptable so now all we need to do is get it all notarized. Once that is complete we can then submit it all for certification and begin that step in the adoption process. Pretty exciting stuff for us and nice to go into the weekend knowing it is good.

On that happy note, Max has hist first big school project where he has to make a large land form and show various aspects like a peninsula, lake, desert, etc. We knew this would take some time to complete so we started on it Thursday night with gluing cardboard boxes and egg cartons to a foam board to make the "mountains" and volcano. Julie had picked up modeling clay/stuff for us so we covered the mountains and made the island Friday to let it dry overnight. It was exciting to see it start to take shape.

Saturday morning Max and I drove to Meijer and picked up the paint we needed as well as a bunch of misc other things for projects around the house. We came home and began painting with tempra paints.

We let the paint dry through the day and talked about what else we'd add and what else we'd name things. Max wanted to name the island "Adventure Island" and features things like the "Cliffs of Death", "Keel Haul Island" a sea cave with an eel and an erupting volcano. Saturday evening we went to mass as usual and were looking forward to our Fall Festival and an outdoor mass. When we got there the meadow where we'd have the outdoor mass was too wet, so we celebrated indoors. We stayed for the Fall Festival and the kids enjoyed eating hots dogs, burgers and chips. The previous week was Sister Julie's 80th birthday and the church had taken a special collection for her to send her to Colorado for a retreat her order does every year. They presented Sister Julie with the gift and then made her promise to use it on herself because anyone who knows here, knows she'd give it all away and miss out on her retreat. We then had cake and let the kids play outside for a while before we called it a night.

Julie and I didn't eat at the festival as they didn't have anything veggie friendly so we swung through super-nutritious Taco Bell (do I know how to show a girl a good time or what?!). As usual, we double-checked the food before we left and found meat on Julie's nachos so waited while they made her a new one (on the timer of course - we were not going to pull ahead and let them off). We got the second set and at first glance all was well and we pulled away. As we got onto the road, Julie found meat, so I turned around and took it in asking for a replacement. They always get you in the drive through, don't they? They apologized and we were on our way. I think Julie was concerned that I'd make a scene - not sure where she got that idea from. ;)

All of the paint was dry on Sunday so we added our lake, river, delta, waterfalls and lava. We also added the labels we made for the features and used a pirate font called Windlass to make it look cool. We think it looks pretty nice so hopefully we'll get full credit for it. Even if we don't it was fun to spend time working with Max and helping him turn his ideas into reality.

Max also turned into a fearsome fly slayer this weekend and has killed 4 at last count with his Nerf gun. Who'd have thought a Nerf gun would be good against flies? You learn something new every day.