What a week!

This week has flew by for us. It's a hard thing when you try to balance family, work, friends, and then just having fun. At the beginning of the week I said to myself "I'm going to do fun things this week". After mentioning that to my friend Shari, she took it upon herself to make sure it happened. We had lunch together 3 times this week, we went shopping for others and ourselves, and we continued to work on Avalee's scrapbook. Thanks Shari, for making my week "fun". Dan and I just had a great week - yet we didn't do anything 'spectacular'. I love being able to say that. Everyone's healthy, Avalee has been great, and has taken really long naps all week. Dan came home on time for dinner every night, and we were able to watch some of the television shows we like - American Idol, Apprentice, and Big Brother.
We usually have more busy weekends than weeks. Most people use weekends to relax and catch up on family, where as for Dan and I it's the complete opposite. We try to relax as much as we can during the week because we know it will be non stop all weekend. We have UpStreet tonight, I have a baby shower to attend Saturday afternoon, we are going out with friends in the evening... and of course Sunday, well... you know - Sunday's for us!

First Easter Egg Hunt

Today Avalee had her first Easter Egg hunt. She loved sitting in the grass! As soon as she picked up her first egg she decided to see what it would taste like. After about 3 minutes of eating a plastic egg, she then discovered she was sitting in grass and wanted to try to eat that - she loved it! She thought the grass was hilarious, and would laugh every time she picked the grass.
Dan did an awesome job with the church's Easter Egg Hunt. We distributed 6000 eggs, had over 100 prizes, and about 170 kids. The funny thing about egg hunts is you put in so much preparation, 3 hours of set up before the event... it took us an hour and a half to lay out all the eggs on the grass, and all the organization of volunteers. When all the kids show up, they line up then go on the whistle - the event is over in ten minutes flat! What a fast thing to watch - but the kids always love it.
Tomorrow is another busy day - Big Day at Church, family dinner, another family egg hunt for Avalee (and Dan). I can't wait to dress Avalee in a beautiful Easter dress from grandma Eaton! gone are the days Dan and I get to dress up for Easter, we have to wear our team Jersey's to church for now on. Oh well!
Happy Easter!

March Madness

The Sareyka's and the staff at Fellowship are all really into this march madness thing. If you know Dan and I at all, you know that we (especially Dan) are not into sports. (Dan didn't even know what March madness was???) Just to be "cool" and go along with the crowd I decided to do one too. Now grant it, I have no idea whether any of the teams I picked are good... but I did go for the three philly teams. (isn't that what you're supposed to do anyway - root for your hometown?) Well hopefully at least Temple and Villanova will do somewhat decent. As for Dan, he'll continue to not care what everyone else is doing, and will continue to not really know what March Madness is. Are any of you doing this?

Interesting facts about Easter

I found this on Pastor Mike's blog and found it very interesting myself... I was wondering why Easter was so early this year!

“Have you realized how early Easter is this year? As you may have heard, Easter is always the 1st Sunday after the 1st full moon after the Spring Equinox (which is March 20). This dating of Easter is based on the lunar calendar that Hebrew people used to identify passover, which is why it moves around on our Roman calendar.

Based on the above, Easter can actually be one day earlier (March 22) but that is pretty rare. Here’s the interesting info. This year is the earliest Easter any of us will ever see the rest of our lives! And only the most elderly of our population have ever seen it this early (95 years old or above!). And none of us have ever, or will ever, see it a day earlier!

Here are the facts:

• The next time Easter will be this early (March 23) will be the year 2228 (220 years from now). The last time it was this early was 1913 (so if you’re 95 or older, you are the only ones that were around for that!).
  
• The next time it will be a day earlier, March 22, will be in the year 2285 (277 years from now). The last time it was on March 22 was 1818. So, no one alive today has or will ever see it any earlier than this year!”

weekend reflections

Have I ever told you how wonderful my husband is? Dan is an incredibly hard worker - to which most goes unseen because he never toots his own horn. Dan is a part time Children's Pastor at our awesomely cool church in Glen Mills - www.fellowshiptoday.com - we just had a complete stage makeover with lights, truss, and fabric. It totally rocks - to quote our lead pastor "we now have the best portable church stage in the country". Dan put in lots of hours to make this stage happen. for the past month or so, i have not seen much of Dan due to his WAY overtime amount of hours he put into the project. On top of that, he helped me pull off an incredible UpStreet Friday night (our small groups program for kids) and an amazing Sunday morning in KidVenture which set the tone for Easter next week. I love Dan, I love partnering with him, serving with him, and watching him make things happen.
Friday started Spring break here in PA - Friday night was our UpStreet program to which we expected low numbers due to most families going away. We still had a great time talking about the fruit of the Spirit of Love, and having pizza and soda for the kids. We had an awesome turn out of volunteers come out that night to stuff eggs for our Easter Egg hunt - over 5500 eggs were filled. I know they never want to see another egg again, but boy am I glad I didn't have to do it! We got home around 10:30 and Dan went straight to the garage to finish working on the lights and truss to be put up by Saturday afternoon.
Unfortanetly with such a busy weekend, we missed out on Dan's sister, Evelyn's shower in Boston. Evelyn is getting married to Dave (who she met at LBC) on May 17th in Lancaster. We are thrilled for her and Dave and couldn't be more proud of what they've accomplished. Can I just say - I've never seen two people being tested before they were married as much as these two have. If you name it, they have been through it, and yet their faith and trust in the Lord is still as strong as ever. These two amaze us - and we are so blessed to be a part of their wedding.
Avalee woke up Saturday morning with two top teeth poking through. Of all the misery this girl has been through with teething - Dan said if they don't pop through soon he will drill them in. FINALLY we have some evidence to her crankiness - and we as parents are very relieved - for her of course. Avalee continues to get better at crawling (backwards of course... anyone with a mix of Sareyka and McInnes blood will not do anything normal) She babbles constantly - sings in the car to veggie tales, loves peek a boo (especially when her daddy plays with her - he's more dramatic than mommy) and may have just mastered the sippy cup. My 8 month old baby is getting big!!

Blogging Land

Well... Dan and I have finally decided to start a blog due to the large amounts of whining and complaining (kidding!?!) from family and friends of how we don't keep up with staying in contact. Is being busy really an excuse to not maintain the wonderful relationships in our lives? of course not! So here it is - our McInnes blog. We will try to post regularly to keep you all in the loop with what is happening in our lives. Remember we love you all - and hope this will be a blessing to you as you peak into our world.