Hope Classic 5K

Nate ran in the Hope Classic 5K again today. I think he's done it every year since I started working at Hope. He finished in 23:01. Not bad for no training! My brother-in-law Ben ran also. He got the gold medal in his age group (25-34)! I think his time was 19:35. I usually go and help out with late registrations and taking times at the end of the race. It's like a secretaries reunion every year:) Stephanie Lanning - who was the secretary before me - comes and helps every year too. Going back to help makes me miss this time of year at school.

Nate also won a gift certificate to Rainbow Grill! Good things we stuck around for prizes this year:) We then of course had to go out for dinner tonight. Who wants to cook when you can go out for free? Em and Ben were over at Mom and Dad's house so we called them up to see if they wanted to come too. The kids were all very well behaved and we had a nice dinner together.

Now Nate and Jon are playing outside with the kids, so I have a quiet house to myself for a little while. Then it's the usual Saturday night routine of getting ready for church tomorrow. I think Nate and Jon are going to go play basketball, so I will have a night to myself...I'll have to find a good book to read, or clean the house....I think a book sounds better:)

June Newsletter

Every month I email out a newsletter. I thought I would start putting it up on here as well. If anybody would like me to add them to my email list, let me know!

Here is the first section of my June Newsletter. The next one will come hopefully on Monday!

Summer's Here!! Are you ready?

Along with summer comes all those lovely grass, dirt, and blood stains. Wouldn’t you love a product that takes them all out, even if you forget about them? We have a couple different products in our SA8 line of laundry care that are great stain fighters.

The powder detergent is awesome! I have never given a sample out where the people don’t love the product! (I guess there’s a reason it’s ranked #1 by Consumer Reports.) There are no phosphates in it, which is great for your machines. It won’t cause any build up in the pipes and will also start cleaning them out as you use the detergent, making your washer last longer and saving you money! It also dissolves completely, which makes it great for sensitive skin or for babies. Our 6.6 lb. box is so concentrated that it would take 3 – 4.18 lb. boxes of Tide to do the same number of wash loads.

I have used the liquid spot remover quite frequently with my two kids. It gets absolutely everything out!! It has gotten dried blood out of Andrew’s white church sweater (after he had a little accident in nursery) and blood out of Allison’s white sweatshirt after a fall out of the bike trailer. You can’t even tell where the blood was!! I was so happy, I thought they were going to be ruined.

Also, I use the Tri-Zyme presoak/booster as well. This is great if you have little kids or babies. I have a couple customers who love it for their baby stains. You can use it as a soak before you put them in the washer or as a booster along with your detergent. I’ve also washed and dried a shirt with spaghetti stains on it (I forgot about the stains at the time), treated it with the spot treatment and then used the Tri-Zyme along with my detergent and the white sleeves came out perfectly clean!!

I can’t say enough about these 3 products!! The other products in this line are also great, but these are the ones I use on a regular basis.

We also have all-fabric bleach, liquid detergent, sensitive detergent, and fabric softener.

If anyone is interested in any of these products or anything else...feel free to give me a call (616-667-2598) or email me at epastoor@hotmail.com. You can also order through any of the websites that are in my links section on the left.

Busy Memorial Day!

We had a very nice Memorial Day today! We started out the day going to the Jenison parade. So nice that we just have to walk to the end of the street to watch it! My mom and dad, brother-in-law Ben and Sara and David came at about 8:30 and everybody headed down the street (well, I stayed home to take a shower and get ready...kinda nice to do that without having the kids coming in the bathroom all the time;)
The kids loved the parade!! What wouldn't you love about filling a bag with candy? Andrew was most excited about seeing Clifford the Big Red Dog on the library's float. He told everybody about it! "clifford, parade...clifford, parade" to anybody who would listen:)
After the parade we came back to our house to relax and have lunch. Rich came over a little later and we played ladder golf for a while...until Nate got the balls stuck up in the tree!
All 4 kids napped at the same time for a while, so we got to relax which was very nice.
After they woke up we got ready and headed off to Nate's parents' house for dinner. It was also a little going away party for Vernon and Melody Ibe (he is a student at the seminary). They are going back to the Phillippines this week. They will, DV, be having a baby at the end of July! We are very excited for them and wish them all the best as they travel for 26 hours to get home this week!
Now, I think I'm ready to head for bed. It's back to normal life tomorrow. Nate has to go back to work...it will be wierd without him around! The kids will miss him a lot, they got used to having him around every day.

Fun morning with Nate and the kids!

We had such a fun morning today! Unfortunately Nate is home on "vacation" - unpaid of course:( but that also means we get him home all week!! The kids are loving it:) Andrew calls for Daddy when he wakes up in the morning...sounds so much better than mommy:) For a week anyway. I'm sure I'll be ready to hear Mommy again next week:)
We spent the morning relaxing and getting ready to head out to the mall. I had to return something, and then of course replace it with something else. I got the kids sunglasses from Children's Place...so cute!! They thought they were so cool on the way home...but wouldn't really keep them on outside...go figure.
Then we got some McDonald's for lunch and brought it to the park. The kids love playing there! We brought our kite and tried to fly it. Tried being the key word there!
The kids are now sleeping and Nate is out visiting restaurants showing them our energy drink mixers for making all different kinds of drinks and smoothies. We're trying to make up for a little lost income this week. Hopefully he comes home successful!
I just got done laying out on my chair and reading a book...it's so awesome outside today!! Ally would say "love it" like the dragons on Dragon Tales say...she's a little obsessed with them!

The weekend was pretty uneventful this week. We did have one little mishap on Saturday. Nate was giving the kids a ride in the bike trailer...unstrapped...tipped over and they both fell out. Ally scraped up her chin pretty bad:( She was upset all night...Nate felt so bad. Hopefully it will heal nicely before we have family pictures taken in June and she has to be in my cousin Meri's wedding on June 19. Hopefully a little makeup can cover it by then:)
Allison also got her papers for Sunday School, she is very excited to start! I can't believe she old enough already!
Well, I suppose I should get something done while the kids are sleeping!

Way Behind!!

Wow, I didn't realize I hadn't posted in over a month! Time is flying by!!

We've had a pretty busy month so far. Allison turned four on May 3. I can't believe how fast 4 years goes by! We had a party for her the Friday before her birthday. We had both of our families over for pizza and cake. Every time I asked Ally what she wanted for dinner for her birthday she would tell me she wanted Marco's pizza. That made it a pretty easy party for me:)
Allison also started going to Jenison's Early Childhood Center a couple of times a week for physical and occupational therapy. We had her tested in March at the ECC because we had some concerns. My Aunt Ruth (Kaptein) has been through this system before, so she came with us to all of our meetings. We are so thankful to her for helping us know where to get started.
They recommended she start therapy to help with her gross and fine motor skills as well as with her inability to focus. She has really like going to "school" these past few weeks and is excited to start pre-school in the fall. She will go to the ECC for pre-school as well. She will be in what they call an at-risk pre-school which means there is more help per child than a normal pre-school. She will also get any PT/OT that she needs. We are very thankful that we live in the city of Jenison, they have been so helpful and quick about everything!
Other than that, Nate and I have been busy in our business. We participated in a Health and Fitness Expo in Caledonia a couple weeks ago with Jon and Alyssa. It was a great learning experience for us! But the coolest part was that we had a booth right across from one of Amway's pilots. After the expo he brought us to the Amway hanger at the airport. We got to sit in all the DeVos' planes and their helicopter. It was so cool!! They are awesome planes!!
We also went out to Pittsburgh for a business conference at the end of April. It was a lot of fun! We went to the Pittsburgh mission for church on Sunday. We finally made it after getting re-routed because of some sort of charity walk. Then we totally missed the road the church was on! We ended up coming in as they were singing the song right before the sermon! Oops! But it was nice to meet all the families there. It happened to be the one service a month that Rev. Bruinsma goes to a different church to preach, but we got to watch a sermon from Hudsonville PRC instead.

Well, this is a very long post...sorry! I'm not promising that I'll post soon, because that obviously doesn't happen:)