Murder Mystery Dinner….

Well, how many of you knew that Charlie, my brother-in-law and I were hosting a Murder Mystery Dinner on Easter night?!?! You didn’t? Well, I didn’t either! HA, just kidding, I thought we were hosting it on Saturday night – but alas, that is another story! Anyway, a couple weeks ago, Charlie (age 14) comes to me and asks me to help him execute this Murder Mystery Dinner – which for those of you who need a little bit clearer words means – Sarah, can you help me purchase decorations and help decorate and help me go grocery shopping and cook all the food and then serve it the night of the dinner?! HA! Yes! I told him – gladly! And what a great opportunity! Charlie budgeted for this dinner – we were going to have it around Easter because everyone and I mean EVERYONE was in town – we had John, Ruth, Sam, Me, Sadie, Nathan, Katie, Mike, Johnny, his girlfriend Siri, Judah and Charlie – oh and don’t forget Ethan – but he didn’t take up much room! So, we started planning a week ahead of time – we went to Party America for some fun tropical decorations – we decided to serve Pina Coladas as everyone was arriving, in costume, by the way…. So we got these fun little plastic cups. We got a couple of fun, colorful lais and took them apart and proceeded to hot glue the flowers to the stems of these cups – tons of fun! We had a great time doing that! Charlie addressed all the invitations and we assigned everyone a character and got them in the mail!

Example A: Notice the fantastically decorated pina colada cups – oh, also, this is Katie and Mike.

Let’s see, then what – well, the menu that came with the game wasn’t all that, so I did a few minor alterations – and totally changed it! Charlie wanted seafood, until I proceeded to tell him that NO ONE in his family ate seafood, including him, except for me, Nathan, Mike and Sam – 3 of which are all the in-laws! Anyway, we had a simple plan of salad and bread for appetizer, then BBQ Chicken, twiced baked potatoes and String Bean casserole for the main course and then miniature cheesecakes with kiwi, strawberries, and pineapple on top! So that was a great field trip to the grocery store, taking Charlie, his budget and our list – he got a real lesson on the cost of food these days! He was utterly depressed afterwards, I tried to tell him – Cooking one meal for 12 people is going to cost a lot of $$$! I think he believes me now!

Here’s the whole crew!

Anyway, here’s a little secret for you – I’ve gone completely crazy! I know to some of you, that may not sound like too much of a secret – but seriously – over the edge gone! Charlie thought it would be a good idea to glue shells to the handles of our silverware, a.k.a. fine clear plastic ware! So we were going to buy some shells and then I remembered I had a ton of them downstairs, so I began hot gluing shells on the silverware and three hours later, I finished all 12 place settings of forks, spoons and knives, I don’t know if you can see them all that well, but I should have taken a better picture of them, they turned out beautiful!

Like I said, I should have gotten better pictures, but we saved them, so hopefully they’ll show up again! But everyone of the 36 pieces were different!

So we had great fun! Here a couple more pictures for your viewing enjoyment!

This goes to show that John lost one of his eyebrows BEFORE the party started!

The Happy Coupe – Sam was suppose to be a fishing boat captain, and I was the made up role of his wife – turns out his character was a womanizer and I didn’t fit too well into that story – so it was good I spent all my time in the kitchen anyway!

The Happy Hosts! What a great time!

Happy Spring!

Anyone interested in a Spring Fling BBQ?

Amazing Grays….

Just to let you know, Sam’s art show went really well. He didn’t sell much but it was a good cause and he spent a lot of time painting for a worship service, a quick draw, he did a great job! There are some new paintings on his website – those were the ones that he entered into the show. So check it out! www.samcoleman.org

I also wanted to tell you about one of the funniest things that I experienced yesterday. OK, we are taking our youth down to Guatemala next summer with the God’s Child project. But two couples from our church just got back from there. Last night, they were speaking for the “Amazing Gray’s” at our church. Once a month, the older folks get together and have a dinner and a speaker or movie or something like that. Well, we wanted to go and hear the presentation. So we went for dinner and were sitting there while they were going through their introductions and devotionals, then they made announcements. “Next month, we are going to Joe Smith come from Parkside Funeral home to tell us how to start preparing for our funeral. And  it turns out that he also plays the guitar and sings! So that will be a real treat! Come next month for that!” I was so taken by surprise and then I got the giggles. But mind you, I’m in a room of about 50 adults 60 and over – and sitting at a table with 4 adults that were 70 and over! So Sam wanted to know what I was laughing at and I tried to tell him by wispering, with the giggles and he got the giggles. Then he didn’t even believe me! So he turns to the 70 something lady beside him and says, “Did she really say some guy was coming from the Funeral home to talk about preparing your funeral?!” And she said, plainly, “Yes. Well, Sammy, we are all getting old!” And Sam burst out laughing and said, you aren’t THAT old though!!! I couldn’t stop laughing, it was the funniest thing ever! Then later on in the program, Sam said that he really likes these people and we should start coming more often – so I asked him if we were going to come next month – he said we might skip that one! HA!

Go ME!

I’ve conquered technology!!! Read the blog before you watch the video though!! Have a great weekend! Maybe I can find more pictures on this disk to post, let’s see!

This would be all of us at Big Sky – you can tell that visibility was pretty low.

This would be my Confirmation Group – 8th grade girls minus 1. We decorated t-shirts a couple of weeks ago – it was a lot of fun! PS. We’re in the Youth room at our church.

This is just a great picture of the big T!

And this is just a picture of some of the Coleman boys. We went on a great walk the other night! (Johnny is missing!)

So that’s a little pictoral update on my life!

Hope beyond hopes, I hope this works….

I know I just blogged earlier and so rare is it that I blog twice in one day, but I was reminded of the funniest thing that happened yesterday. There is no way to describe it to you in a way that you would understand or even think was all that funny – it was definitely a “had to be there” type moment. Oh well. How should I start? Well, a while ago, like months, no years ago, Sam asked me if I had any super power, what would I want?! What the heck? I don’t know. I told him I never think about stuff like that. But considering the question, I figured he’d spent quite a bit of time pondering the thought himself. So, Sam, what super power would you have? He responds so quickly, maybe a little TOO quickly 😉 I’d blow things up! He proceeded to show how if a building or a car was in his way, he would just blow it up by throwing a fireball at it – complete with sound effects! It was one of the craziest and yet adorable things I’d ever seen! So fast forward a couple years to….yesterday. Yesterday was quite a crazy day. I told you before that we have this art show starting this evening. Well, we were on our way down to the University to drop off his painting for the show and we were just running like crazy – it had already been a crazy day! Then we had a bunch to do for church last night on top of all this. Well, to get down to the UMary, we had to drive right through town – at 3:30pm. So schools were getting out, people were getting off work – traffic was crazier than normal. I was on the phone talking to mom and Sam was driving – well, we nearly hit a couple cars and then finally got on the right road heading south of town and I don’t know if Sam had enough or what the deal was – but all of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I see him throw a “fireball” and blow up a building on the side of the road – seriously, I nearly peed in my pants! My poor mom – I was trying to talk to her and laughing my head off at the same time! Sam didn’t even know what I was laughing at – he was so in his own little world that he had moved on thinking about something else! When I think about it – I still keep on laughing. So today…. I thought I would try to get Sam to reinact for you – I wish you could have been there – it’s definitely not the same. He didn’t want me to say anything because he already thinks everyone thinks he’s a little different – but this was too priceless – I couldn’t pass it up! Hopefully it works!

 I’m so disappointed, my computer is too slow to upload the video – it almost gets there and then it says that it’s timed out already – so I have to wait till tomorrow, but I’ll add it right on here…. if I can….This really ruins all my fun right now…. I hate technology….when it doesn’t work! 🙂

Florida bound!

Well, we didn’t find a completely exotic location to vacation, but we found some decent tickets down to Orlando to visit with my brother and sister-in-law! I’m really excited to see them and spend some time with them in their home! Plus, it will be my brother’s birthday while we are there! How many exclamation marks can I use in one blog?!!!! 🙂 Sam found an amazing deal to Costa Rica – flight, hotel for 6 nights, SUV with unlimited miles and gas all for one low price of $569 per person! Unfortunately, we don’t have 6 nights for this particular vacation and we wouldn’t want to waste it! But maybe next year!!!!! HA! So Wes, if you are reading this, I will have Sam email you our itinerary – hopefully it works for you!

So this is our plan – Sam has to preach April 2nd. Then we have Small Groups and Rock Solid afterwards. Maybe we can get someone to take over. Then we head out, hopefully by 9pm and head straight to Chicago, because we have a meeting at 10am on Thursday, April 3rd. (It’s a 12-13 hour drive) We are taking our Sr. Highers to Chicago this summer on the missions trip and we have to do a Pre-trip. So this works out perfectly. We’ll meet with the Mission Organization and then catch our flight out to FL that afternoon, then we come back to Chicago on April 8th. And Sam’s Youth Conference starts on April 9, 10, and 11. Then we’ll take our time getting back home. So that’s the plan for that! Pretty exciting, huh?!

Last nigth, we had an interesting discussion in our Small Group. I’m not sure if I’ve updated you on that for a while. I started teaching 7th grade girls last year for Confirmation Small Groups. I had 6 girls. I kept the same group, so this year, they are 8th graders, and I have 12 of them. They kept coming, one or two at a time, now there are tons of them. And to tell you the truth, I had a rough year, up till a couple weeks ago and the Lord really worked on my heart. So it’s been fun, even though my group is way too large! But I have this great college student, Emily, who comes and helps me – I couldn’t do it without her, that’s for sure! God has totally blessed me with her! So anyway, last night, we were talking about sacrifices. And even more specifically, we were talking about the kinds of sacrifices parents make for their kids and they had to write thank you letters to their parents. So they were talking about how unreasonable their parents were and how they get away with lying to them. We talked about how parents might not catch you at the time, but they find out things, you’d never believe! It was great! Then we talked about how maybe their parents would never find out, but they knew they lied and God knew too and in the end it would catch up with them. I’m pretty sure they were so freaked out to ever lie to their parents! HA! Probably not, but still…it was funny! I don’t know how good of a small group leader I am trying to scare kids into submission, but it sure is fun!

Let’s see, what else is going on – this is the weekend of Sam’s big Art show – www.accartshow.com. He’s still painting! We took the main show pieces over yesterday, but today he’s got to finish the live auction pieces. Tomorrow night, he’ll be painting during a big Community wide praise service. Our Music Director is leading this service that involves about 10 different churches, it should be pretty good. But then Saturday night, Sam is painting for the Quick Draw event also. So I’m pretty sure, he’ll be ready for a little break after this weekend.  Pray for him. Thanks.

Next weekend, I think everyone is coming home for Easter, not sure, but if so, that means 13 people. That is including Johnny’s girlfriend, Siri. Charlie ordered a murder mystery dinner. So he wants me to help him put that on. But I’m not exactly sure how all that is going to work out. I’ll let you know. Especially since the game is set up for 8 people and we don’t really have room for 12 people + 1 baby at our house for dinner.  Anyway, we’ll figure something out. It should be interesting!

 Well, that’s my life in a nutshell right now. Have a great weekend! Happy Spring – soon, hopefully!

Life is so much more interesting….

with pictures. Isn’t that the truth? I’m deciding that I would really like to practice getting pictures of people. Even though I love landscapes and wildlife – I’m much more interested in people and I’d love to develop that through taking pictures of people and eventually establish a photo. business of taking family, senior and engagement photos. I’d like to learn how to capture people’s personalities through photos. It’s so special to have pictures. Anyway, that’s really all I had to say. So soon, I will try to be better about getting pictures off of Sam’s camera to post on here. I know that if you had the option to sit down and read a blog that was pretty speckled with lots of pictures or sit down to read yet another blog about weather in North Dakota without any pictures, I’d definitely choose the pictoral account of nothingness!