Birthday Festivities

[The students, Sarah, and myself.]

Wednesday night the middle school students surprised me with a big birthday bash at youth group. I went walking back to the room when it was time to start and found that all the lights were off and then they flipped on the lights and sang "Happy Birthday." A bunch of the students had made cards for me and there were even some balloons, a couple gifts, and two jumbo birthday cards that all the students signed. Oh ya, and we had cupcakes. With sprinkles on top. Here are a bunch of pictures.

[The two jumbo birthday cards.]

[Thank you, Patrick, for picking out such masculine balloons for my party.]

[Some of my awesome cards included brown elephants, ducks,

Hoops and YoYo, homemade cards, encouraging letters,

and just plain funny cards that I'm not sure I'll ever understand

i.e. "Happy 292nd birthday!"]

[This drawing of a lollipop wielding Easter bunny

would fall under the category of "cards I'll never understand."

Thanks, Maclane.]

[This birthday poster was made by Sarah using pictures

her sister, Rachel, had taken over the past 8 months.]

[Still more awesome cards from the students.

Hopefully I didn't miss any in my pictures.]

[These are more cards I have gotten from friends and family.]

[This was a gift from Hannah and Kayla. They blitzed me

hard time with duck paraphernalia. As you can see, they

provided What (my pet duck) with a few friends.

[Lastly, this is a pic of Paige, me, and Sarah (not the Sarah who made me the awesome orange poster). Whist I was carrying the bouquet of balloons back to my office, one of the middle school students smashed a cupcake in my face. Since both of my hands were full, I wasn't able to defend myself and was left holding the cupcake in my mouth. Sarah took advantage of my precarious plight and snapped a photo. I stole the photo off her Facebook.]

Much of Thursday and Friday was spent with a committee planning the upcoming Basic summer mission trip that I'll be able to be a part of, and last night I hung out with a couple who helps lead the middle school.

This morning I helped with Clothing Closet (a big clothing giveaway put on by Cornerstone to help needy families in the community) and afterwards went out with some friends for a belated birthday celebration since we couldn't go out during the week. I'll post more about this in the next couple days. There will be plenty of pics, I assure you.

Tomorrow afternoon a bunch of students and I are getting together at Kayla's house to watch "Twilight." Pray for me, I don't do well with chick flicks. Also, we are having a SNAC at the McGoldrick's house after small groups.