Pray.....

....for the people in Minneapolis.

http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/242437

Matt's New Toy!

The other night my Opa took my family and my Uncle Ron's out to the Mandarin! We had an awesome time and ate ourselves almost sick! But hey what esle is the Mandarin for?! :)

After we went to my Uncle's and saw his relatively new house. There we also got to check out my cousin Gary's electric guitar. He bought it out in Edson, Alberta when he used to live out there. Anyway he had a nice system and he got Matt all pshyced up about it, so Matt went out last night and got one for himself!

It sounds pretty cool and I'm pretty sure it won't leave Matt's arms for a while! The only way I managed to get this picture is cause he's gone to work...he said this morning when I dropped him off that he's going to be thinking about it all day!

All thanks to Gary! (not a good picture)

Time goes by....

How quickly time flies! While the hours from 7:30-5 in a stifling greenhouse often seem to drag by unbearably slow, when I look back over what has happened in the past few weeks I am amazed again at how fast life is flying by.

Graduation took place and I never posted pictures of the event...I apologize for that. Unfortauntely I still don't have them on this computer so they're still not going to get posted

...maybe sometime in the future...

Here are a few notes on what's happend in the Boekee lives in the past few weeks...

- Track and Field Day came and went and was again one of the hottest days of the year. Devissers came again to our place and stayed the night.

- We had an amazing July the 4th weekend. On Saturday we spent the day in Orono park. Orono celebrated it's 175th year as a town. Some of the festivities included a CF-18 jet which flew overhead and two parachutes (with people - I can't think of the right word) landed on the baseball diamond.

From left to right:

Scott, Matt, Kara, Mike, Chris, Melissa, Nicole, Me, Janita and Susie, with Mark sitting up top.Sunday we left bright and early. We went to church in Toronto and from there we went to my Uncle Art's and Aunt Jeanette's and had an amazing weekend and made memories that will last for years to come.

- Playing in the sand dunes and gravel pits and getting sand in every single part of our body.

- Singing 'The Pirates who don't do anything' and 'The Wheels on the Bus' in our tents at 12:00 in the morning.

- Playing a three hour soccer game with a score of 4-4. How many times did we say 'Next Goal Wins'. We literally played for almost an hour and a half with no scoreing. We finally declared a truce and all won!

Wednesday we welcomed back Opa and David from there 3-week journey out west. They had a wonderful time and we thank God for the safety they had on their trip.

Friday our YP hosted a fundraising baseball game in Orono park. it was a great success, beautiful weather and we had an awesome time.

The latest exciting news is all the rain we've been getting lately. After a long dry couple of months we are finally getting rain again. Our God is faithful...

Last night we had an powerful thunder and hail storm and a breathtaking lightning display. Today again we had little thunderstorms all throughout the day we torrential downpoures which lasted for a few minutes each. The temperature here in Orono was 45 with humidity. Between the pool and our air conditioned bedrooms we are all surviving the heat.

Hoping you all are having an enjoyable summer!

Miscellaneous Pictures

Chris and Cory the other night - Cory said he was paying Chris 5 cents an hour! I think they were pretty desperate for something to do.

Dave and Opa the night before they headed out West!

So far it sounds like they're having a blast. Last I talked to Dave they were in Banff and were spending most of their days walking around Lake Louise. They had beautiful weather (after about a week of straight rain) and they've seen tons of animals, including 3 bears by Lake Louise! I'm so jealous!! Latest addition to the farm. There's 300 of the little things!
When they first came they were adorable, however my brother soon reminded me that 'in six weeks off goes there head'!

Unclear pictures of the sunset.

More pics from Grad to come...

Brockville Conference

8

This past weekend a bunch of your YP group went up to the Brockville Conference. Though I've met some of their young people before this was the first time I actually went there. We had an amazing weekend.

Our speaker was Rev. Jeremy Veldman, and the theme was 'Running the Race'. We had three amazing seminars and I really enjoyed them all.

Saturday aft. after the seminars we went for a hike up Blue Mountian (not the one in Collingwood). Though it was quite a hike and there were a million trillion horsefly's and twice the many mosquitos it was really pretty and and a ton of fun.

Unfortunately my camera is a piece of junk and quickly becoming worse so the pics aren't the greatest quality but here's a few anyway.Standing around before the hike waiting for everyone to come.
From left to right: Natasha, Ashleigh, Mike, Devon, Sarah, ?, Jen, Jason, Matt' shoe, and Chris' shirt.

View from the top of the 'mountian'.

Matt and Issac

Rhonda, Jolena, Nancy and Sarah at the top of the mountian.Jacqueline and Jeremy (our speaker),That evening we went to Dan's house and played some sports and had a campfire.

Sarah (the one waving), Richard and Michelle

We stayed at Ashliegh's place. They had a gorgeous house and property.

Here's the view out of the front windows:

We had an awesome time. Thanks again for everything everyone did! Looking forward to next year's!!

Walk-A-Thon

Today was the annual walk-a-tho for the Precnancy Help Centre. My brothers Dave and Mike raised money this year.Melissa and Rob on the trail. Rob said 'the walk was really, really long and boring. My favourite part was the ice-cream!!'

One of the kids that were there....an amazing piano player. He had the awesomest piano pieces and it was all out of his head. It's so cool to see young kids who can play so good.
Ashton enjoying the jumping castle.

Susie between two of her new-found friends - Samuel and Daniel.

Mike getting a snake painted on his arm. Snakes were all the thing this year, all the kids wanted them.

Susie getting a baby deer, and Owen waiting in line with his 'sword'.

Prizes go to the people who gather the most money. Mike and Dave got first place and their prize: a portable DVD player and an awesome case to go with it. They were thrilled.

The boys with their door prizes. Rob was so stoked about his 'Bubbles Bottle'. :) I'm not sure what the expression on Mike's face is for....

The kids playing in the Jumping Castle. Samuel got his face painted as a Chettah and I think that's what Susie's trying to be....

Anyway all in all it was a good day with awesome weather with lots of fun had for a good cause.

Toronto Zoo

Monday we went to the Toronto Zoo. We had airmiles to use and my Dad had figured we could either get 1/2 the people up the CN Tower or all the family half-way up or everyone could go to the zoo. SO we chose the zoo.

My friend and ancestor!

Random

A zebra - in case you hadn't figured it out!

A giraffe, I've never seen them do the bending at the kness thing....looks very uncomforteable.

A big, fat lazy rhino!

They had so many signs warning of bears it was ridiculous. I mean of couse there's bears, it's a zoo!!! Hello? They made it sound like they have bears wandering all the zoo pathways and you should usually try to avoid them! Duh?


Here's the scariest of all the bears!!! Like the sideways effect? :)


Mr. Boa Constrictor!! David doing one of his favourite things.....chasing the millions upon millions of Canadian Geese that were wandering around the park.

Chris at the man-made but cool waterfalls!

Mike - I'm not sure if he's trying to give me a hug or a punch..? The latter seems more likely.

Susie in the rock caves.

Matt a sittin on the rocks.

Matt and Chris

Summer pictures...

Beautiful Tuplips, they look much nicer when you look at them for real.

Rob hitchin a ride with Dad

Susie with Maddie

~

We had campfire the other night

A cool distorted picture of Chris...doesn't the garage look cool??!!

Matt gettin some strummin in...

David playing with fire...

Can you guess what Melissa's smiling at?? :)






David being silly...again!

A few more pics from yesterday...

Michael and David's fort! I don't think I mentioned it in my last post, but during Man Hun Cory was chasing me, and I had no where to go so I headed down the lane, I ran full out as long as I could (which really isn't that long) and then decided that rather than run the mile and a half to the other end of our property and to the first real hiding place I thought I'd take refuge in Michael and David's fort! Guess if I got caught or not??!! ;)

Melissa enjoying her new series of books and the warm sunshine at the same time!

Matt, Michael and David clearing a path for the four-wheeler!!

Getting About Time for a post...

So I figured some of you out there are probaly wondering when I'm going to do a real post about what' really happening in my life these days. Well I came home from my Aunt's this past Tuesday. One of this first things I did when I got home was meet our puppy Madison or Maddie for short. She's so adorable. And poor Mia gets extremely jealous of all the attention Maddie got at least for the first few days.

And for those of you who didn't know, I was unfortunatley unable to make it to OCHEC this year, one of the saddest weekends of my life. :( Well I kind of got over that a couple of weeks ago (though I'm still just as sad and mad about it) and I spent the week getting back into home life. Last week was really dreary most of the time which kind of stinked, but now that the weather's back to sunny and relatively warm I've been spending every spare moment outside.

Yesterday we had Rev. Pennings preach in our Church, and he had two excellent sermons! Apparently we've had him before but I don't remember him. And he is definately 'rememberable'! He talks in a very clear and VERY loud voice!! It was also louder because my family was like the latest we've ever been to church and we had to sit in the very front row!!

After church we quickly had lunch and then Matt, Chris, Tim walked over to Vogel to hitch a ride to the Nursing Home. After running up and down the road a few time trying to get the dogs to stay at home we finally made it to Vogels. By that time we were nice and hot and sweaty and then we got to sit in the nursing home for a 1/2 hour and then race off to church and sit in a very warm (at least to us) sanctuary for another hour or so. But who are we to complain, the warm weather is awesome!

After Church we went home again (I bet you didn't see that one coming!) :) Well it was acutally quite an event, because it was my family (10) plus my Opa, plus Melissa and Kristyn, plus Christi, plus Issac. The reason was we had coffehouse so some of the people just came home with us. It was squishy but fun! When we got home Melissa and I jammed for a while, well we jammed about as much as you can jam on a piano and flute! :) She had an awesome new piano book with her so we had tons of fun with that. We played some soccer outisde and then we had supper and then we played some more soccer. Around 7:30 most of the people were there and we started some peope. To my brother's chagrin it was quite the disorganized game and people kind of just went and came when they felt like it. He hates any kind of disorganization especialy in sports and most esepecially in baseball! Anyway he got over it and we had fun, at least I think most of us did!

After that we played a whole whack of games of Man Hunt. More disorganization. Because of the amount of people once there was a substantial group they would just start the game over and the poor people who were paitently hiding would have to discover that no one was no longer looking for them. Then halfway through the game James, Justin, and Amanda showed up! Soon after we went into the house and sang until about 10:00. Matt and James played the guitars for us! It sounded awesome! Thanks guys!

Most of the peopl left around 10, but James, Justin and Amanda stayed till about quarter till 11. My Dad showed us this DVD of this old country westers singer John Denver, who had this ridiculous back-up singer who didn't sing but danced! Amanda kept asking my Dad if she was drunk! She was so hilarious (the dancer I mean!). Then Amanda thought that it was a guy with a wig on because her face was so wierd looking. So in the end we concluded that it was John Denver's brother in a disguise! My Dad told us we'd ruined that song forever and he'll never be able to watch it without thinking of what we told him! So after we had jammed a bit more in the basement, Justin decided it was time to go home. After he had done an imitation of John Denver's 'brother's' dancing and he attempted some handstands!! He was so hyper by the time they left! Needless to say we had TONS of fun! And we've concluded that we should really try to get together more often!

Well I think this post is long enough now. I've added some pics from today, our collection of animals at the moment! Everything looks better when the sun's out and it's warm so I armed myself with the camera today and had fun. Enjoy! oh and one note guys, comment are GREATLY appreciated!!!

Mia all tired out from her 'Go Fetch' lesson!

Chicklet all shiny, thanks to Melissa hours of brushing! The horse are shedding their winter coats and they can be brushed for an hour each day!

What's a picture collection of animals without one of the cows! I even got one to look at me!!

And our ever-wet, water loving puppy Maddie!

And last and certianly least, :) the chickens enjoying the sun and their new pecking grounds!