Family Night

Shortly after Mel and I arrived home from Texas, we went out for a family night.

The place we went to was Rainbow Falls Adventure Golf.

I don't know how adventurous we were, but we had fun.

If you haven't already learned this by now, Hemmers don't do things the normal way!

I think we must have used the clubs and balls more in other ways than for what they were originally intended!

Balancing ...

oops, did you hurt your mouth, Mel?

Sword fighting...

en garde!

"Clubbing"...

Lest you think we are abused,

I will put your minds at ease and tell you that Mom didn't really hit him.

Juggling...

she's pretty good!

We did eventually get around to using everything in the correct way.

Studying the course...

The hole is on the other side of the stump. Hmm...

I see you!

Melody put a flower behind Jason's ear and told him to look "dainty".

Do you think he succeeded?

In the first shot of this pose, Jason wasn't smiling,

so here's what he did for the next picture.

They told us to make a face like the totem poles.

None of us did very well in our scores, but we definitely had an interesting time!

Can you guess where we went afterwards?

Nope, you're wrong! We didn't go to get ice cream, we went bowling.

Only this shot of Jason turned out, the rest were blurry.

I think his goal was to see how fast he could throw his ball.

Sometimes it went in the gutter, but he did top 20 mph.

Dad gave us quite the expression when we told him to pose for the camera!

Contrary to Jason's expression, we did have a fun evening together!

Shopping!

On Tuesday we had a shopping day in Rockford. The original purpose was to purchase supplies at Sam's for the Hospitality Room for the up-coming ICHE convention.

Since we don't have a Sam's card, our friends, the Kalebaughs, loaned us theirs. We decided that it would be fun to make it a "girl day" and do some fun things as well.

On the way up we played the card game "Scum". It was interesting trying to shuffle and deal out the cards without a hard playing surface!

First stop, JC Penney Outlet store. Faith and I had never used these long hooks to get hard to reach items off the racks. It wasn't easy trying to find the correct size you needed and grab that particular one!

I had the idea that we should try to find items of clothing that totally did not match and then put them on and model them for each other. Faith and Rachel declined, but Becky and Crystal joined me in the silliness.

Oh, my!

Well, what do you think? Will we start a new fashion trend?

I bet we'd never catch Becky in these type of pants in any other situation!

We had so much fun laughing at each other.

I wonder what the clerk working in the women's dressing room thought....

Without the clashing jacket, my dress really was quite pretty.

I'm not a big spender. I actually only purchased two shirts there.

The next stop was Cherry Valley Mall. After stopping at the food court for lunch (most of us had Chicken Teryaki), we wandered around and did some more shopping.

I've always like Barnes and Noble; I could spend hours in there...

This was a huge bear that you could sign up to win. I didn't enter the drawing - where would I put such an enormous stuffed animal??!!

Crystal and I had fun trying on sunglasses at Claire's. These were far too big - they dwarfed our faces! I don't know why, but they make me think of Mickey Mouse...

Crystal and I both liked a particular shirt, but they didn't have my size. She said she'd wear hers and think of me!

After a couple of hours at the mall, we headed over to Sam's to shop for the snack items for the Hospitality Room.

Wow, I don't usually purchase such large quantities of these things!

Before we drove home we stopped at Coldstone Creamery for some ice cream.

We went to our first one with Gretchen and Nate Sisson, and now we're hooked. Good thing Dixon doesn't have one or we'd be splurging far more often!

We had a great time shopping and hanging out with our friends. Thank you to the Kalebaughs for making it such a fun day!

Costume Dance

A few days after Melody and I returned from Texas,

we three Hemmer kids went down near Bloomington for a costume dance.

We enjoyed seeing all the creative and beautiful costumes of everyone else

since we didn't have time to make some for ourselves.

There were people from the Old West and Colonial time periods.

Dick Tracy and James Bond showed up as well as some visitors from Hawaii.

Amber and Shannon Moeller came as Maid Marian and Friar Tuck.

They both spent a long time making their costumes, and the finished products were excellent!

Before the dance, we met them in Bloomington for visiting, games, and supper,

but they just came as Amber and Shannon.

I think it would have been more interesting if they had come dressed up instead of changing right before the dance!

Just think of the looks we would have received!

Amber and Helena (a Scottish maiden)



Johannah Stanford and her "one-legged" soldier husband, Adam

I don't think anybody quite knew what Sam was supposed to be,

but his was definitely the most unique costume!

He had white socks rolled up and pinned to his clothes.

We had fun visiting with friends during the breaks.

Faith, Jill, Amber, Johannah, Melody, Helena

This was the last English Country dance for awhile since

Lucas will be getting married in two weeks,

but we hope he continues the dances in the future.

We sure enjoy them!