What were we thinking?

I was teaching children's church a few weeks back and it was a lesson on the passage where Jesus asks the disciples "Who do you say I am?". To introduce it, I asked the kids if any of them knew what their names meant. A few did and the question promptly begged my kids to ask me what their names meant. Honestly, Joe & I didn't really look at the meanings of the names we picked for our kids. We mostly picked them because we liked them. So finally this morning, we looked it up on the web. Sara means "princess", John means "God is gracious", Nathan means "God has given". And then we came to Ashley. I desperately searched for an alternate meaning but to no avail. I had to break the news to Ashley. "Your name means 'ash wood'. You were named after a tree."

What else I've been up to...

I realized I forgot to include two more items on my "What in the world have I been up to" list.

First, cleaning up my yard. We have a gorgeous yard with lots of mature trees that provide lots of shade. With the mature trees comes the price of limbs in the yard when a storm comes through. We've had a couple of vicious storms that have come through the last couple of weeks. A week and a half ago the six of us spent all morning raking and picking up sticks. We filled the back of Joe's truck and got to have s'mores later so that we could burn all the additional brush. After our storm last night, it looks like the kids and I will be spending some more time in the front yard. They are raking it in--they usually get around a penny a stick. (Last week we went to a set amount due to the amount of sticks--they were going to end up with more money then we had at a penny a stick...)

Second, Pizza with a Pastor!!! I'm not sure how I could forget this. Joe & I decided we wanted to have our whole church over for pizza--that's around 170 people. So we split the church up alphabetically and every Tuesday in July we had Pizza with the Pastor. The last one and largest group was last night--we had around 40 people and the storm hit right when everyone was arriving. It added some excitement to the night and for a few moments we thought we were going to be having Pizza with the Pastor by candlelight. But I've digressed, over the last four weeks we've consumed 42 pizzas, 20-some bags of Caesar salad, and too much lemonade and cookies to count. We had around 120 total and it was great. It will definitely become an annual tradition. Joe liked it so much that he would like to start fish with the Friar, ravioli with the Reverend, cookies with the clergy.....

What in the world have I been up to?

VBS stuff

Catching up with old friends

Catepillar Power Parade--the kids had a blast!

Froze 16 quart of sweet corn this afternoon. Sara was a power shucker!

I got a new shower curtain. This is a really big deal because it isn't white! You have to understand that between seminary and ministry jobs, decorations in my house get consistently pushed to the bottom of the budget--especially bathroom decorations. When we moved in here I got cool red towels for our bathroom (since we hadn't bought towels in 12 years) and picked out a shower curtain that I really liked to go with them. So then I proceeded to wait for the curtain to go on sale. And wait, and wait, and wait, and wait and wait....you get the idea. So today while we were shopping and I was checking to see if it was on sale--Joe grabbed and said that he was getting it for me. Yeah! I took a picture but I don't think it did it justice so you will just have to come to my house and see it.

I chopped my hair off.

I've started wearing eyeliner. (It's not on in the picture). I figured now that I'm 35, I'm probably mature enough to wear eyeliner.

Did I mention I was getting ready for VBS? It's next week.

We got a bike trailer for our bike so the first thing on the agenda with the kids in the morning is a bike ride.

Merry Christmas!!!

in July that is. Actually it is belated Merry Christmas in July. I have a friend who has an annual Christmas in July party every year and I made a quick trip to Iowa to attend. This one was special because we used it as an opportunity to bestow some Christmas presents onto a dear friend who is currently displaced due to the floods. We still had our white elephant exchange in which I ended up with a turtle footstool--yep-a turtle footstool. I also was chosen through a drawing to get to have the traveling white elephant gift (it returns every year)--"The Multiply Pot" but that is for another post.

The next night we had a sleepover at a friend's house. The kids had a blast. We have 9 kids with one on the way (not me!) between our two families. John & Jackson (currently the only boy in the other family) especially had a great time together--they are only 3 months apart in age. We didn't see much of them except at mealtime.The girls enjoyed being, well, girls together.

You know you've run too many errands when....

by the time you reach Walmart (your last stop) your debit card stops working because the bank has flagged it for possible fraud!