Heather Accident

Last Tuesday (October 5, 2010), Heather Veenstra was in a car accident. Thank God she only broke her pelvis and got a concussion. God has blessed me with a wonderful family! When we went to the hospital I saw all of my brother and sisters there except 2 who saw Heather later.
What happened was Heather was going to go meet dad at the mechanics to get the car fixed. Well dad went and Heater followed. They got to the first intersection (Irving and M37) and Heather kept "following" dad and got T-boned right in the drivers side door. Dad made is to the mechanics and didn't even realize that Heather hadn't been behind him. After a while he decided to go back and find her, only to find that there is a road block and the police aren't letting any one passed. So dad asked the officer if one of the car involved was a little green Chevy Cavalier and the officer said yes there was a little green car involved but he wasn't sure if it was a girl in it. The officer ended up letting dad through. When dad got there they were just loading Heather into the arrow-med (which we were told is most of the time peoples last trip but Rachel had also taken that trip). He came up to her and held her hand prayed for her and she was responding to him, although according to the EMT report she had not responded to anything until she made it to the hospital in Grand Rapids. They took her to the hospital and they did x-rays, MRI's and other tests and found that all she had was a broken pelvis and concussion. Thank God He was watching over her!
She stayed in the hospital for 3 days and is now walking a little with the help of vicadin (I don't know how to spell that :/ ).
Thank God she is ok and will be fine!

The Blue and the Gray: Shifter

"The Blue and the Gray" was one of my families favorite 15 passenger vans. The reason we called it "the Blue and Gray" was because just before we got it Ian was going through a time in school (we were home schooled) where he loved anything that had to do with the civil war. Well, the van was a 1992 Ford E350 with three large stripes (the middle stripe was gray and the other two were blue) and one day Ian said, "hey the van is just like the two sides in the civil war; it's blue and gray!" And so that is how are 1992 Ford E350 got it's name, "the Blue and the Gray."

Well, one day we were fund raising for the extra things (programs) we did in home schooling and when we went out for lunch break, something else decided to brake! As we always did we went to a fast food restaurant (I think it was Burger King this time), through the drive thru and lets just say the van didn't want to go all the way thru....
Mom went to order, put the van in park, turned off the engine (we always had to do that because we never had a van that had a completed exhaust system) and order; That went fine. It was when she was done ordering and it was time to start the engine; it started fine. Then it was time to put it into drive and.... the shifter lever went limp, in the drive thru at supper time!
I bet your thinking about now, "OH NOO!!" Yeah, we thought the same thing. But this wasn't the first time something like this happened, so we got good at figuring out what to do.
What ended up happening was the manager of Burger King came out and he was nice but really didn't know anything about cars.
So we were back to the drawing board. The whole time my mom was on the phone with my dad trying to figure out what to do. Then, thankfully, mechanics like to go through the drive thru too! So there was a guy who came through and showed us how to go under that van and put it in drive. So we drove home... but we didn't end up getting the problem fixed until like 3 months later. Yeah, it was a little nerve raking to be under a van to put it from park into drive, sometimes we would miss a notch or pass one put it into 2nd or neutral. After that you had to go back under and you didn't want to do that!
Yeah, that van was was pretty awesome!!!

Penedendria

Do you remember when you were little and you would play 'house' with your brothers and sisters? Well in my family we couldn't.... because there were too many of us. So instead we played 'town'.
We played 'town' so much that we ended up naming our yard and a little bit more around our yard, "Penedendria."
Penedendria consisted of; our back yard which had the tree house, barn, dog house and fenced in area. The tree house was always the mayors house (who was usually Brian, Jon, Harry, Ian or I, depending on how old we were because we eventually got too old :( ). The barn or the garage would be a car repair shop/Garage. The rest of the back yard the rest of us kids could pick what our house was. In the front yard what was a part of Penedendria was the car port, the basket ball hoop, the garage, the crab apple tree and behind the garage. The car port was usually the general store (because you could go into the house and get stuff). The basket ball hoop was the main gas station for out bicycles (the garage and barn were also gas stations). The garage was the fix-it shop/gas station for the bicycles (because that's were we had all the wrenches and stuff... we didn't have the best bicycles on the planet). The crab apple tree and behind the garage were choices to live.
The rest of Penedendria was not in our yard but rather down the trail; this was the out skirts of town. In the out skirts of town there was the "Trail", "Brian's Creek", "Seven Islands" and the field in between our house and the trail. When we went to these places we would just explore, it was SOO COOL!!!
How did we play town? we would get our bicycles and ride around the yard/down the trail, go to the general store (car port) and buy things with our fake money. Oh, sometime we would have a barber shop on the porch and that is where we would have our made up town gossip. We would go to the gas station and get gas. We would get our bicycles checked out by the "mechanic" (Jon, Harry, Ian or I). We would talk to the mayor about the town rules. Growing up "Town" was one of my absolute favorite games ever!!!

Thanks, to Brian for the wonderful idea for the game and the name of the town!
Thanks, to Harry and Ian for making the tradition of town live on until Heather and Jennifer were too old to play it anymore!

A Description of the Crazy Veenstra Family!

When I decided to start a blog I wasn't sure what it should be about. Then I was telling somebody a crazy story about the things that happen to you when you are from a big (huge to some) family. So I think I found my answer to it in that.
My name is Rebecca Veenstra and I am a middle child (I have middle child syndrome if anyone could ever have it :) ), I am #7 out of a 11 kids from the same set of parents. The 6 siblings older than me are all married and I have 17 (going on 18 and 19) nieces and nephews. Just to introduce the 'Crazy Veenstra Family' right away they are;
My parents Curtis and Ann. They just had their 35th wedding anniversary on March 15. Congrats mom and dad!
Chris (oldest) he is married to Amber. They have 4 kids (#5 on the way), James, Leighanne, Tyler and Bryce.
Brian (#2) is married to Bernadette they have 3 kids, Brian Marcus, Ethan and Elsie.
Anneke (#3) is married to Casey Marek. They have 3 kids, MacKenna, CJ (Casey Junior) and Dylan.
Jonathon (#4) is married to Brenda. They have 4 kids (#5 on the way), Elizabeth, Katie, David and Joshua.
Harrison (#5) is married to Julia. They have 3 kids, Chloe, Andrew and Jeremiah.
Ericka (#6) is married to Daniel Bolluyt. They have no kids.
The rest of us are single. They are, Me [Rebecca (#7)]. Rachel (#8), my twin sister. Ian (#9), Heather (#10) and Jennifer (#11).
You can only imagine the kind of crazy life we've had together and I love it. So I have decided to share it (the best I can) with the world !