Our House

This week has been Interesting around our house. There is never a dull moment. I like it when the kids have their friends come over. Friday night Jeff came up and mentioned that he was going to have a couple of friends over. Tim then announced that he was also having a group of friends over. I got a phone call from Colby asking for Jake, and within an hour he was at the house and had conned his Mom into sleeping over. I love to watch how kids that age operate. My conversation with Colby when he called was,"Uncle Kim, is Jake there?" I told him no, call back later. His conversation with his Mom was "Uncle Kim said that it was alright if I could sleep over...." Mindy fell for it because she is a pushover. Jake then had a phone call from another friend that had recently moved away and wanted to come spend the night.
Before we knew what had happened our sleepy Friday night consisted of Jeff and 4 friends in the living room trying out songs that they thought they might know on the piano. Tim and his 5 friends sitting in the kitchen trying to play card games and just being funny, silly. In the meantime Jakes little friend Colton was shooting two of the girls with a Nerf gun "I think he may have had a small crush". It gets pretty loud when they are all over, but I think that they are at a fun age.

Saturday morning while Kathy and I were at Jakes soccer game we decided that it might be fun to hold a recession party. We called up several of our friends and invited them over. A recession party is not a celebration of the recession, it is instead a way to acknowledge that there is still lots of fun things that can be done without spending a ton of money. When I called everyone and told them they were invited to our recession party they were confused. When I gave them the explanation of what it was I think a few of them were still not quite sure what to think. I explained that a recession party is; everyone coming had to bring something to eat, but the rule was that they could not spend more than $5.00 on their item. Everyone had to bring at least one game. If they had kids that would require a babysitter then they would have to bring them, to avoid the cost of paying for a babysitter.
Here are some of the items that were brought.
Stir fried rice.
Crackers and artichoke dip.
Sloppy Joe and carmel corn.(Pam Brown found a managers special on the Hamburger)
Kathy made soup from a packet and added beans to make it go further.
Cheese sticks and Marinara sauce.

Everyone had a good time and the total cost for a party of 14 people totaled just under $40.00.
Compare that with a night out to a restaurant and a movie and I think we did pretty good. It was also fun to just have a chance to talk and joke around with everybody.





Here are some of the activities at the house this week. This is Mandys friend Cassidy. Mandy took the picture when they were out in front of the house the other day and I thought it turned out really nice.

This is Mikael "I probably just slaughtered his name" He was out riding the rip stick.

This is Jeff's friend Cameron Olson and Alex Lewis. I came home to find that Alex had talked Cameron into letting him cut his hair. From the looks of the picture Alex is way more into this haircut than Cameron is. It is amazing at 16 years old what girls can convince boys to do.

This is Tim riding the rip stick. The story behind this is that when Mandy bought the Rip Stick (Thanks Grandma Tebbs, for the Christmas money) we made a rule that they could only ride it if they wore their helmet. Tim thought that the skating helmet was dorky, so this is his version of a skating helmet. The neighbors must think that we have lost it.


This was not this week, it was taken at Prom. Jeff and Friends decided that they would have a progressive dinner. They had one of the stops at our house, so Kathy lined them up on the stairs to take their pictures. I was amazed how pretty the girls were in their dresses and hair done up. I was also shocked at how mature all the boys seemed. I still picture most of them as elementary and junior high kids, so to see them in their suits with dates kind of makes me feel old.

We have quite a mixture of religions, ethnicity's, talents etc.. but the one thing I am impressed with is how they all seem to accept each other for who and what they are, and the bonds of friendship that they are able to build at such a young age.