Mission Trip - Chicago

Our church, St. Mark's, allows our Middle School and High School students the opportunity to serve others as well as see some marvelous sights outside of our Lincoln community through work camp/mission trips. This year our church decided to see St. Louis, but two weeks prior to taking off our plans suddenly changed. The agency that allows our youth to participate made a mandatory age requirement of 15 years, which caused us to rethink this summer's trip. We (our church youth) received overwhelming love from last year's adventure to Chicago, that we decided to revisit them instead.

This year I joined Tyler much to his delight...not. Our first day we did some sight seeing in downtown Chicago. Tyler went with his buddies shopping and I visited Chicago landmarks. I figured I can go shopping anytime. What was Tyler thinking?

The Pier was a great place to take photos

and so was Millennium Park.

This fountain was so cool. The face changes every five minutes.

This huge Marilyn Monroe is a new to the area. I guess she's caused quite a stir and is a bit controversial.

I'm thinking this might be the reason why? You know I just had to look! ;)

Then we volunteered at several places in the Chicago area. This Head Start Center was so much fun. We broke into 4 groups at this children's agency. We cleaned out an office, took care of the outdoor area (mowed and picked up trash), cleaned and organized the kitchen and of course, played with the kids.

The lady in the white shoes runs the front desk and hasn't ever missed a day of work. The director had us guess her age. She's 106 years young and still goes to work (in a non-air conditioned building). Very inspirational!

The following day we headed to the 2nd biggest homeless shelter in downtown Chicago.

It provides beds to 200 men and about 50 women.

We sorted, folded and stacked over 4,000 bed linens.

So, of course, this scrapbooking layout will be titled "Holy Sheet".

We also took the fastest elevator in the Northern hemisphere to the top of the Hancock building. 100 floors in 40 seconds! Impressive!

We also enjoyed Chicago style pizza! Yum!

We watched the White Sox play the Detroit Tigers. Sox win!

Lastly, we spent the day at Six Flags!

A great trip and such a worthwhile experience despite the lack of showering.

Six days and one shower! Delightful!

Renaissance Festival in Colorado

Two weekends ago....Madison and I took a fun, mini vacation through the Girl Scouts to Larkspur, Colorado to experience a Renaissance Festival, which neither of us has done before. It was a quick weekend trip, with driving on Friday, Festival on Saturday and home again on Sunday, but it was well worth it!

We saw fiddlers!

Took lots of photos!

Tried Henna tattoos...

Madison got a cool butterfly

and I got a design on my hand (not pictured).

Then the girls (four of them) wanted a

feather in their hair, which should last about 2 months.

Then we watched various performances

and my friend, Juel, tried out Palm Reading.

I thought it was weird that there was an "aura" around her head when I took the photo.

I'm sure it's how the light hit the camera, but still it's pretty wild.

We ended the performance with jousting.

We cheered on the knight in black...

and I still don't know who really won?

But my favorite was the "village idiot".

He asked a very tattooed lady if she got her a$$ kicked by an Etch-a-Sketch,

which I found incredibly funny!

Next week, I am off to do mission work in Chicago with Tyler.

I just might blog it! ;)

Baseball & Berry Picking

Can you believe this? Two days in a row blogging. I really don't know who reads this stuff about the Broekers or who really cares, but I guess this helps me with my knowledge of my photos when I come back to scrapbook it.

Today Tyler's team (Blue Chips) played in a tourney in Seward. The first game was awesome with a score of 19 to 2. Tyler got the three outs in the final inning playing second base. The boys had their bats going and all was well.....

and then they played their second game.

The grandparents (photo courtesy of Grant) came to watch this one. Well, the outcome was slightly different with a loss of 14 to 6. Tyler did get a couple outs at 2nd again and he hit a triple!

Bummer, I don't think my parent have yet to see a winning game.

We call this the "relative factor" and it holds true for both sets of grandparents, aunts, uncles and probably long lost cousins if they came. Ugh!

Grant did enjoy a nice snow cone.

Then it was off to Roca Berry Farm to use our gift certificate for 10 pounds of strawberries.

Here we are just beginning to pick...

It's back breaking work.

Grant loved picking strawberries and asked if we could do this all the time.

Sorry, Grant, this only happens for 3 weeks in June.

Nebraska is not a strawberry growing state as you can see. I believe Tyler is holding the largest berry found for the day.

This is the only photo that's not blurry of me. It looks like I am holding cherries.

The kids are showing their stained hands after our picking activity.

We picked 8.6 pounds!

Now what am I going to do with them?

Summer is Here

Hello again! After the longest stint away from blogging, I thought I'd post again. I have no excuse for not posting now that I'm finally into my second week off of work. There are no good reasons now for my procrastination except for maybe....

Tyler's U14 baseball games. This is Tyler's final year of youth sports now that he's entering high school this fall. Tyler continues to play 2nd base and loves it. He's had a good year "at bat", but has not hit a home run since the day Michael Jackson died. How could I forget...two historical events in one day.
Madison also finished up her soccer season playing goalie and a mid-fielder. She loves this game and I look forward to seeing years of her playing it. Now she's currently taking a theater class where she learned to be a glass of water on Tuesday. This does make a mother proud. (ha, ha) She also is playing softball with the name Toros. I enjoy cheering, "Go Lawnmowers!"

Grant has his sports too now, which is enough to send me completely crazy. I did bring this on myself. He's in his second year of Little Greens Track and will begin T-ball on Sunday. More opportunities for scrapbooking for me!

Oh, in case you are curious, we still have Miss Penny the Shiz-tzu/Pound Puppyl She's darn cute, but does enjoy eating Grant's shoes. Grrr! We just give her loads of raw hide bones and everyone is happy. Ranger still tolerates her also. He does look at her like, "Where do you get all your energy?"

I also decided to post two things that made me happy today....

Huge sale at Bath and Body Works! I received a wonderful gift card from my neighbor and used it on some great buys. Woo hoo!
And the UPS guy delivered my Scentsy kit today!!! Yay! My house smells wonderful, just wish it looked wonderfully tidy too. My web addy is http://amybroeker.scentsy.us/...if you want to check it out.

On a sad note, Lincoln Public Schools lost their District Office over Memorial Day weekend. It's unimaginable all that's lost, thankfully not my job and of course, not my classroom.
Still as awful sight to see, but the community will rally and all will be well again!