Pictures - part one

Custer State Park, South Dakota...


This is me on top of the rock that was in the first picture.



This is the bus, she's a beaut. A 1989 Eagle with only 765,000 miles on it (767, 000 now)

3,800 miles in 7 days - day 49...

ok, not really day 49, only day 4. It has been an interesting couple of days, and even though I would much rather be home, I'm sure trying to work on the attitude thing and trying to make the best of it...and actually there are some cool things that I'm experiencing - there are just people who I would rather experience them with, maybe that's whats so boring about this!

Here's where I've been: Sunday was spent in Rapid City, South Dakota and surrounding areas - some of the group did a cave tour and Wind Cave National Park, and the rest went hiking at Custer State Park - both very cool places. Driving a bus through the mountains was interesting, had to stop at one point to let the brakes cool down - but at least no more break-downs. Sunday night we headed to our next destination - an Indian reservation - in the middle of absolutely nowheres. Even Jill (my GPS friend) couldn't help me. It was close to midnight before we finally made it, but we drove for miles on roads with no signs, street lights, or houses - kinda weird. At one point I even ended up on a gravel road. Monday the group did a service project at the reservation and then we headed towards Colorado. The group spent the night at a church in Castle Rock.

Today the group went to Glen Eyrie in Colorado Springs. The views here are amazing. The castle on the website looks even more amazing in person, however, apparently we are the surfs because we're staying in what would resemble servants quarters. My room doesn't even have a TV, but that only makes it easier for me to get outside and enjoy this place. Tomorrow I don't have any driving to do, so I'm going to hike up this mountain. Should be cool - but hopefully I don't fall and kill myself! Oh yeah, and when I was parking the bus, I scraped the side of the bus. These roads are not meant for buses and the corner was impossible to make. I am still down on myself though - I was trying to do a good job this week and now my bus needs body work...grrr. I guess that's all for now. I'm sure nobody cares about what I'm doing each day (it feels like I'm doing one of those school assignments: "what I did this summer" but at least I'm entertaining myself...haha. -aaron

3,800 miles in 7 days - day 2

Today was one of those faith building days. One of those days where I have to keep saying that God has a plan for me and maybe he's using this experience to teach me something. One of those days where I say whatever doesn't kill me only makes me stronger!!!

For starters, this job is stressful. And I don't sleep well when I'm stressed, so I have that going against me. I don't drink coffee or caffeine because that makes me have to pee and we're on the road for up to 4 hours at a time without stopping today. Although today we had an unexpected stop. We were driving down the I-90 just minutes away from South Dakota when somebody on the bus yelled, "Aaron, you need to pull over". I look in my mirror to see a billow of smoke coming from the back of the bus. With a few choice words and some mad bus driver skills, the bus is pulled along side the interstate and the group is evacuating to the shoulder of the road. I grabbed the fire extinguiser and head to the back where we discover the problem. An amp (or energy converter??...something that runs off the battery that you can plug AC power cords into) had fried. Wires melted, sparks flying, the whole works. I guess we were lucky that we killed the power in time and the sparks didn't spread to anything else. After some phone calls and investigating the situation further, the situation was resolved, and we re-loaded the bus and headed to the next city, where there was a mechanic waiting for us. He capped off the wires and said we were good to go as long as we didn't use the amp anymore - I said no problem! Oh did I mention that while the group was evacuated it was raining outside? We were about 1/2 mile past a rest area so they all took off for that. This kind of stuff stresses me out, so it was a long day. But there's a saying that goes "eat that frog" (or something like that). It means that if you woke up every morning and ate a frog, it would be the worst thing that happened to you all day. (If that doesn't make sense, it's because I'm tired!) Anyways, what I'm getting at is that today's problem was our "frog" for the week, so it's clear sailing from here on out...only 6 more days of this! Pray for me!

3,800 miles in 7 days - part 1

Hey - Aaron here. I thought I would update on my random life. Currently, I'm sitting at Damon's in Wisconsin Dells at a resort called Kalahari. I'm on my first charter bus driving trip of the summer and I'm already ready to be back home! Heidi dropped me off at my bus this morning at 4:00 a.m. and by 11:00 a.m. the group was getting ready to go to what is supposed to be the countries biggest waterpark. They're here until 6:00 p.m. and then it's back on the road for a few more hours...and this is day one...I'm doing this until next week Friday...yikes! But I'll make the most of it and have some fun. The group I'm with is pretty cool. Ok, I really don't have anything else to say...maybe I'll post some pictures of my daily adventures. :) Have a great day!

A new Nephew

My new nephew finally arrived on May 31 at 4:30pm. My sister in law was 2 weeks overdue with her 5th baby!!! It ened up being a rough delivery because the baby was twisted and his shoulder wanted to come out first. Yes, it is another boy! That makes 5 boys for my brother Chad: Ethan 9, Lucas 7, Wesley 5, Jackson 3, and now Caleb. I love them so much and love being their aunt. Aaron seems to like being married into the whole uncle thing too :).

Please continue to pray for my sister who is adopting from Etheopia (sp?). They are running into some problems and their adoption has been postponed and they don't know how long to be. They had a benefit garage sale though last weekend and raised closed to $3000! God is good!! Hopefully we can bring this other little boy from half way around the world.

Memorial Day Weekend!

Heidi and I had a great weekend. It was our first holiday weekend as a married couple and also our first camping experience. It was also probably our first weekend since our honeymoon where one of us didn't have something work related going on. So we celebrated by heading up north to Silver Lake to go camping with some great friends. We had a full weekend at the state park which included sleeping in, golfing, fishing, hanging out in the dunes, naps, relaxing around the campfire, and laughing...alot! Now, while this was Heidi's first Silver Lake experience; I've been coming here since I was little and it's probably one of my favorite places. The memories we have could probably fill a book! But, even though it was Heidi's first time up at Silver Lake, she was totally okay with my life goal of someday buying a cottage and moving up there! The way I figure, I could get a job in either field I currently work at: I could work at Grace Youth Camp as a director or something, or I could be a Mac Woods dune ride driver or tour guide or whatever they are called. And while I haven't researched it a whole lot yet, I'm sure she could find some sort of social work job! Ok, so maybe my life goal isn't terribly realistic, but it was fun to dream. We're still in this "got our whole life ahead of us" phase of marriage! We are excited for what God might have in store for us, and while sometimes we'd like to know what that plan is, we've decided that we'll make an effort to enjoy each moment and stage of our life and give thanks for the many blessings we have. And this weekend, we were thankful first of all for some great friends and second of all for time that we could spend together away from everyday life. This summer is going to be busy for us - between Heidi's job and summer classes, and church stuff, and my new venture of driving charter buses - it seems like we might spend more time apart from each other than together this summer! But that will just make the time we spend together that much more enjoyable, right!? Well, I guess that's all with us for now...sorry we're not so good at keeping this page updated yet! Hope you all had a great holiday weekend and have a great week!

Here are a few pics from the weekend:

This is our friend Ruby...she is Jordan and Lindsay's baby - very cute! Although, I hope it was okay that I fed her licorice..haha!

While I played with the baby, Heidi went fishing with the guys (that's embarrassing!). But the boat only held 3 and Heidi wanted to go - so it was really a selfless act on my part by letting her go...haha. She is also a way better fisher than I am.

Not to bad for only being out there for a couple hours. They cleaned these and we fried them up for dinner...

The Nienhuis Family Expands :)

No not a baby...to soon for that. We have to work our way up to a baby. So tonight we brought home a cat, yes a cat. Now Aaron and I are not the biggest cat lovers, but an older friend of mine from one of my jobs needed to get rid of the cat because they want to move into a condo and downsize. So we decided to give this cat a good home. Her name was Chloe but we weren't to fond of that so with the help of Aaron's sister, Heather, We named her Lola. :) She is 3 years old, yellowish/orange, all declawed, litter trained, and fixed, and we got everything we could need for a cat too from the previous family. She is a little nervous coming into a new home and we will post some pictures once we get her to come out from behind the dryer.....:)

As far at this blogging thing goes. It's driving me (Heidi) nuts! I can't figure a thing out. I tried to add our friends Kristin & Jason as followers but accidently added myself to be a follower of our own site and now I can't figure out how to delete that. Oh well, I'll figure it out in due time. Any blogging pointers though would be helpful. Thanks! -Aaron, Heidi, & Lola!

April 29, she's out from behind our dyer, here are some pics :)