Car-Wash-A-Thon

Teen Mania (the ministry that Sam works with) is hosting a fundraising event next Saturday (June 7) in an attempt to scholarship some interns for this August.

For those who aren't familiar with Teen Mania, following is the mission statement and core values of the honor academy:

Teen Mania's Mission Statement

To provoke a young generation to passionately pursue Jesus Christ and to take His life-giving message to the ends of the earth!

Our Core Values

Faith We receive direction, provision, and motivation directly from God and His Word to take the Gospel to the world.

Integrity We are who we say we are, and we always do the right thing, regardless of expediency.

Relationships We have servants' attitudes, and we go to heroic lengths to meet the needs of others.

Vision We dare to dream as big as God dreams and believe that, with God on our side, we can achieve the impossible.

Excellence We demand of ourselves uncompromising quality and strive to be people who demonstrate excellence in everything we do.

(More information on the internship program here.)

I thought I would do my part to help by giving you all the infomation on the fundraiser and the opportunity to donate to an incredible cause--these kids are the future of America!!!

June 7th the ministry will be hosting a car-wash-a-thon. The way this works is we are taking pledges per car that is washed. We will stop washing at 1,000 cars, so it is not indefinite!

Would you be willing to pledge any amount per car to help scholarship kids who otherwise could not afford to spend a year interning here?

An example would be $0.05 per car--which would equal $50 if we wash 1000

$0.10 per car--which would equal $100

Or even $0.01 per car--which comes to only $10

We will even take one time donations of any flat fee.

If you can help, please email me (salhasz at msn dot com)! We can accept credit cards, cash or personal checks.

Thank you so much!

We will return to the regularly scheduled adventures of Hank, Jo Jo and Fish as soon as I can find a few more minutes at the computer. Stay tuned! :)

Memorial Day Weekend

We're going camping over Memorial weekend--at Grammy and Grandpop's house! The boys are so excited that it is all they can talk about.

Hope y'all have a great weekend too!

Yes, Kim. I said y'all. :)

Update on the house....

Here it is! Not bad, huh?

And don't worry. The house isn't actually sitting on an angle like it appears in the picture. That is just due to my AMAZING photography skills! ;)

It seems like they are moving so quickly! I have a more recent picture (from last night) but it is still in my camera. The only difference is that they are completely finished with the brick and there is a whole load of drywall in the garage. They haven't shingled the roof yet, and they can't do the drywall until the roof is finished. I think that was supposed to get done today, but I haven't been out there to see yet.

July will be here before we know it. I feel like I should be packing up this house, but I don't know where I will find the time (or energy) to do it. Wish me luck!

Wordless Wednesday

Arkansas re-cap

We had a great time vacationing in Arkansas last week! It was really cold the first night (with no heat in our cabin!) but then warmed up a bit. Which is a good thing because after setting the carpet on fire, we didn't want to use the wood-burning stove anymore. Ha! There was great company, good food (too much!), the great outdoors, and even some shopping! Lots of fun.

During dinner (at Jon and Kelly's cabin) one night, Henry said the funniest thing. He pushed away from the table and went running across the room to the window, yelling, "HEY! I SEE A NOSE-PICKER! See it, see it? Way up in that tree! It's one of those NOSE-PICKERS!" I was laughing so hard (and trying not to let Henry see me laughing) that I fell on the floor. It was actually a red-headed WOODPECKER. :)

One day we stopped in a clothing store that was going out of business. Jonah went in the dressing room with me when I wanted to try on a cute summer dress (that didn't look quite as cute on me as it did on the hanger). There were clothes laying all over the floor and Jonah was pretty excited about it. He said, "Now I can try on clothes too!" And he did.

And then there's the story of Bass Pro Shops and the GPS. I have this great thing in my car--it's called a Garmin. I don't travel anywhere without it! It gives me directions, tells me where things are, finds the nearest park--it is amazing.

So one day, it's raining and Sam decides a fun thing to do would be to go to Bass Pro and look around. The kids always enjoy going to that kind of store and it would get us out of the cabin. So I pull out my garmin and look up Bass Pro Shop. It shows the nearest one is 30 miles away, but it says the travel time is a little over an hour. Weird. We figure, "Why not?" so we head out.

An hour and a half later we are traveling on a little deserted two lane highway in the middle of nowhere. The garmin is telling me that in 5/10 of a mile I will be at my destination. And what do we see? A dirt road leading down to a park with a pavilion and a bunch of picnic tables.

I called a family meeting by the side of the road (Kelly and the kids were riding with me and the guys were in another car following us) and we looked into the problem. After some investigation and a few phone calls, we determined the nearest Bass Pro Shop to actually be in Branson, MO.

Another hour away.

Oops.

I may have lost a little bit of faith in my trusty Garmin after that little episode.

We went ahead and drove into Branson. That sure is a fun place! We didn't do much while we were there--it was already past lunch AND nap times by the time we got there. We did visit the Bass Pro and walk around on the landing and look at the fountains. Of course we got ice cream while we were there too. :)

All in all, a very fun week. What exciting things did you do this week?

Oh, and I do realize that I didn't get any pictures of Bridget into this post. I'll try to get some up of her later this week. Have a great week!

This is how they play......

Garage Sale!

I LOVE garage sales, but I have to clarify one thing here...I love going to garage sales. I don't necessarily love hosting garage sales. Luckily, I have some great friends who were all willing to pitch in a little and help keep everything running smoothly. (Thank you Andrea, Kelly and Kim! You are all wonderful!)

Here's the girls who had items in the sale....(Kim, why didn't we have Sam take the picture so you'd be in it too? You had the most popular cookies in the sale! I wasn't thinking--sometimes I'm an airhead....)

Here's Andi trying on the merchandise. Can you believe somebody actually bought this coat? Shall I remind you that we live in TEXAS where it is averaging 80 degrees right now?

Bridget occupied herself with trying to lick the legs off one of the tables...

We had a few offers on her, but fortunately she stayed with us! ;)

And here are the businessmen. Henry asked every single person who set foot in our driveway if they'd like to buy some cookies. And many of them did--he made around $15 total!

It was a lot of fun and we got rid of a lot of things!

Next week we are headed to Arkansas for a little vacation with Jon and Kelly. I'm not sure I ever posted about it, but we went last year with these two. We stayed in some cabins on a lake, owned by Kelly's family members. All the way there, we were telling the boys that we were going to Kelly's uncle's cabin. He translated that to "Cabin's House." We didn't realize that is what he was thinking until we got there and he asked, "Where is Cabin?" :) He told me yesterday that he hopes Cabin isn't there so we can stay at his house again. Ha!

Anyway, I'll be gone from blogging (no internet access? Will I make it? We'll see!) for the next little while.

Happy Mother's Day to all you mama's out there and I hope you have a great week!

Jonah's new boots

Here Jonah is showing off his new rubber boots that a friend passed down to us!

The best conversations with my kids usually start out in the van. I don't know what it is, but they seem to say the funniest things while I'm driving down the road!

This week Henry was naming body parts and telling me which letter of the alphabet they started with. He was doing great. When he got to "Arm....Ah-rrr-mmm, that starts with 'A'" Jonah piped up, "Hey! I've heard A. That's like in that song we sing!"

I said, "What song are you talking about, JoJo?

He answered (singing, of course)...."A, B, C, D, E, F, G....you know, that one!"

Sorry, ladies.....

.....he's mine. I know you're jealous.

Jonah, on coloring....

"When I was two, I scribbled. But now that I'm three, I color!"

And more from Jonah:

This is Jonah nursing his baby (who happens to be named Bridget, if you must know),

and he never forgets to burp her! :)

Have a happy Sunday!

Another amazing feat....as performed by Sam!

Sam has this old beater car that he uses to drive back and forth to work. He has kept this thing running quite well, even though it has over 200,000 miles on it.

Recently the car started losing power. I'm not sure the exact details, but when Sam finally figured out the problem, it turned out to be cheaper to replace the entire engine than to fix the specific part.

As usual, I thought he was nuts. Does he think he is a mechanic all of a sudden?
But Sam persevered! He ordered an engine online and over the last week (in his VERY limited free time) he replaced the engine!
Look at all those parts/wires/tubes/ahhhh!
And last night it was finished. I'm sure he held his breath as he turned the key that first time.....but it started right up!
I am SO proud of my husband. Seems he can, in fact, do ANYTHING he sets out to do!