The end of an era...

...for my beloved car! Let me just preface this by saying that Mike and I have had a TOUGH week! First of all, he had a small fender bender, that was his fault, last Wednesday and his car has been in the shop since then and we have only had one car, which wasn't too bad. Well....it then gets worse. On my way to pick him up on Tuesday of this week, guess what? Yep, I was involved in an accident! However this time, it wasn't my fault and it was MUCH worse than his. (I just had to out-do him...haha!) I, along with the people in the other car, were very lucky to not have been seriously hurt.

To make a long story short, the girl was traveling the opposite direction from me and turned left right in front of my car, causing me to hit her. There was NO avoiding her. As soon as I saw her turning, I knew I was going to hit her. This scared the CRAP out of me! I have never been in a serious car accident before and when the air bags deployed, I didn't know what to think! But all is well for the moment. I am having to go to the chiropractor because I got whiplash but he seems positive that all will be well. We also finally got a rental car to drive today and I will be going back to work tomorrow.

I had to clean out my car today and was almost brought to tears. Yes, I was getting to the point where I needed a new car, but I hated to see my car destroyed like this! It was my first car and had gotten me through college and my first few years of teaching. Many good memories with the eclipse! So, this is kinda like losing a family member! :(

This week taught me a few things...to be thankful to God for keeping me safe and providing for us by giving us GREAT friends and family to help out when needed...teaching me patience and learning to trust him for direction...and to be a careful driver. I have become more cautious (maybe a little over-anxious too) but I'm hoping that I can begin to enjoy driving again.

Here are a few pics of the damage. These were taken today. I took some of my phone at the accident but can't get them to upload on the computer.

Good bye my sweet eclipse! You will be missed! :( You served me well!

Salkehatchie 2009

So...I've been bad and not posted in a long time! I'm going to try and get better at that! This post is about our trip to Salkehatchie. A group of 21 youth and adults went to Bishopville, SC for a week in June to work on houses. Also at the camp were churches from Bennettsville, Simpsonville, and Lexington. We had a GREAT group and a GREAT trip!!!

Our group from Knightsville.

In total there were 9 sites. My site had 3 people from my church and 11 people from the other churches. We worked on Ms. LuAnn Wright's house. She has a husband, one daughter, 3 sons, and a sweet grandson that lives with her. Her brother lives next door and was a big help to us during the week.

This is her house before.

As you can tell, her house was very much in need of a new roof and paint job...which we gave her throughout the week! We worked for 5 long, HOTTT days on scraping the old paint off, stripping off the old roof, putting a fresh coat of white paint with black trim on the house, putting on a new roll roof, giving her 2 new ceiling fans inside, cutting her grass, repairing the front porch and painting it, putting Plexiglas in some broken windows, and cleaning up the landscape. It took about 25 gallons of paint and 30 rolls of roofing to finish her very large house! We were very busy!! The family was a huge help to us too. They helped do a little bit of everything that we were involved in. It couldn't have been done without them! As a gift, we gave them a new front porch swing as well as a table and chairs for the porch.

This was her house after we finished!

We also had other activities throughout the week such as going bowling, swimming, going to the local library (to catch up on facebook and email!), having a Talent Show and visiting the famous "Button King" from Bishopville.

Me with the Button King.

To see more pictures from the whole week, you can check them out here.

Overall, we had a great, rewarding week and I can't wait to go back next year! :)

Kate Gosselin!!

So, this past Tuesday I got a chance to hear Kate Gosselin speak in Mt. Pleasant! (For those of you who don't know who she is, she is from the show Jon and Kate Plus 8 on TLC. She has a set of twins and sextuplets!) My good friend Beverly told me about this wonderful opportunity and I am SO glad that she did!! :)

Kate gave her testimony and shared about her Christianity. It was very neat to hear her talk about her struggles. She discussed how she was always a Christian and did the Christian thing, but she didn't start to really, truly rely on God until she was pregnant with the sextuplets. She had to realize that she was on God's time and that he was making this plans, not her. They also had to step back and let down some of their pride when Jon lost his job towards the end of her pregnancy. He was out of a job for about a year (I think) so they had to rely on God, community, friends and family. She was truly inspirational to me and I don't even have kids yet!

Some neat trivia I learned from the night was:

• The Gosselins used about 17,000 diapers during the babies' first year!! WOWOW!!!
• Now, they use about 775 boxes of cereal a year! (about 2 boxes per day!! Craziness!)

I also stood in line to get her autograph in their new book Multiple Blessings. There were so many CRAZY ladies their that almost got a little too fiesty! Haha! :)

Anyway, I truly enjoyed the "ladies night" and hearing Kate's message! If you have not watched their show, you should tune in to TLC and watch it!! The kids are TOO precious!! Love it! :)

Mike's first basketball game

My hubby, Mike, is coaching the Senior Boys Basketball team at our church, Knightsville UMC. They had their first game last night and it was at Summerville Baptist. They played Bethany UMC. They played pretty well, but it was their first game so that had trouble with playing as a team and passing the ball. They ended up losing by like 14 points, I think. However, they did really well with shooting free throws, which is something the team has had trouble with in the past. They have another game this coming Saturday so we are hoping that it will be better than last night's game! :)

Some of the boys playing bball.

Philip, JC, and Sean cheering on Logan as he shoots free throws.