July 4th + Recent things

First off, this week is going to be veeeery quiet because, coming to an inner city Minneapolis near you are 20 youth group kids from my church ( and staff), and other youth from other EFC churches in the general area. They'll stay till the 24th, working with a church based in Minneapolis doing VBS and other things. I'm not there obviously. They have a blog, www.bumptwincities.blogspot.com
There are reasons, but we're not going there. It's all good, tho.
Also, Kristen, my cousin-that-is-really-like-a-sister, took off with her youth group to Worlds of Fun in Kansas City.

Now we're moving backwards. . .
one week and 6 days backwards. . .
Ahhh! The 4th of July!

Kelli and I marched in the 4th of July parade in Slater. (First time we've both been in a parade together)

Our band

Kelli is on the top left. (all her hair is pulled up) and I'm the second bass drum from the top ( the one that's lagging behind. By this point I could hardly move; I'm not usually that slow.

Also, our band marches in parades and plays for pep band wearing what you see in these pictures- hockey jerseys. When we march at the football games and when we have concerts, we have tuxedo-like uniforms. It's brilliant!

My bass drum murdered me. I had never worn it before and I had to suddenly walk a mile in it. Oh it was bad. And hot. But. . .

The night before, I performed with the Ballard community band. I happen to be the only girl percussionist.  It's pretty cool. (Can you tell I like band?!)

I'm on the far left waaaaay in the back.

After that, we went to Aunt Denise's house where we had delicious food and just hung out and had fun together.
Kristen and I played Battleship. (Does anyone else not like the new version? What happened to sitting across the table or room and not having to be nose to nose? And the format is really wacky.)

 She won.

 

Kelli, Evan, Ryan, and Nathan played croquet. 

Kelli looks like she could do it for a living!

Recently, Kelli and I helped one of her friends (I guess she's kind of both of our friends, whatever.) celebrate her birthday. Among other things we did was straighten Kelli's hair, just of the sake of straightening it.

For those of you who don't know, Kelli's hair, left to it's own devices, will sometimes do things like this:

But it has good days too. . .

Like this. . .

And when it's straightened, it looks like this:

We all determined that Kelli doesn't = straight hair.

Lastly, we painted something! 

Ahh, generalities!

Ok, we painted the short "pantry wall" in our kitchen. We painted it the same color as a wall we had in our kitchen in NE. We really like the color. 

Here's the story:

Before: The wall was a light yellow with a repair spot or two and a test spot for the new color

Primed

Me. Working. Bad picture. Moving on. . .

The finished product! Woo hoo! (It looks darker in person.)

P.S. That random spot in the bottom of the picture is the light coming in from the window.