Catching up...

Well, I hate resorting to bullet points, but unless you want 12 different posts about completely unrelated things, bullet points are really the only answer. Here goes....

• The girls had a weekend of firsts...their first sleepover at a friend's house and their first football game. We are within walking distance of the high school so I'm not sure why it took a sleepover to get them to a game. The boys are feeling fairly left out so I see a football game in our future.
• Last week I forgot the pin number my debit card. The debit card that I've had for over a year. The pin number was completely gone. I don't know where it went but every time I went to the store I was completely blank. So I had to look it up. Nope, thankfully I didn't shred the pin number like you are suppose to. Otherwise we'd have taken an embarassing trip to the bank.
• Soup weather has arrived! I had brocolli cheese soup and wild rice soup over the weekend. So very good! And, no, they weren't homemade.
• I think I'm going to have to put my flip flops away soon. They are calling for frost this week. As Joe can tell you, it is a sad day in our house. I love flip flops, but when there is a chance of frost bite occuring I guess I should actually put on socks and shoes. And it is rather difficult to explain the girls why I'm allowed to wear flip flops and they are not.
• I sorted the boys' clothes this last weekend and I'm not sure which vegetable it was this summer that they ate that made them grow so very much. It was probably zuchinni. My zuchinni plants are still producing zuchinnis. I've lost count on how many quarts I have frozen. If it was the zuchinni then they will probably grow that much this winter as well because we'll be eating it all winter. For now I just need to find John some jeans to wear to school.
• I put my pants on wrong side out this morning. Yep, that is possible. Zipping them up was rather difficult. That was the first clue to me that something was wrong. Not really a good sign for the week.

I'm always up for a chance to win something this pretty!

Check out my friend's blog. (The link will highlight if you run your mouse over it. Not sure why it's not in a different color!) She's going to have a drawing to give away some of her beautiful handmade cards.

You know you have a mosquito problem when...

• you wear bug spray to take the dog out.
• you feel like you need to explain to people that "no, I don't have the chicken pox or any other disease. I've simply been mosquito food lately."
• when you enter your house, you all gather around the door and on the count of three, the door is opened the slightest bit and all six of you make a mad dash inside slamming the door behind you hoping not to smash any one's feet, fingers or head. Then you stand inside gasping for breath in search of the mosquitoes that managed to escape inside while you were busy stampeding one another.
• Benedryl cream and gel become your best friend--you don't leave home without them. (Did you know you are only suppose to apply it 4 times a day? ooops...)
• You are so convinced the buzzing sound of the mosquito is going to wake you up in the middle of the night that you begin hearing mosquitoes that aren't there.
• You keep asking yourself "Does frost kill mosquitoes? If so, Bring. It. On!"

He may be bald sooner than I thought

I treated myself to the best pumpkin spice latte this morning. Ahh, just the memory of it makes my mouth water. That has nothing to do with this post...just thought I'd share.

Last night was the first night of AWANA at our church. They had done it years ago and decided to try it again. Evidently yesterday afternoon my husband came up with a brillant incentive plan to get kids to invite their friends. He offered to shave his head if we hit 100 kids this school year. Last night's attendance....61! Which is completely awesome for the first night. AND especially the older kids were excited about the possibility of Pastor Joe being bald. So we may be looking at a bald pastor who wears a lot of hats sometime in the next few months. The funniest part about it is our own children declared at breakfast this morning "Nope, we don't like the idea, Dad. We don't want you to shave your head." So evidently the Pastor's kids won't be inviting any friends to AWANA anytime soon.

Time to play catch up

A lot has happened in the last week. You'll excuse the bullet points as I try to catch up:



John had his first field trip on Friday. He went to the apple orchard. On Thursday he came out of school, very serious (he's always very serious when he comes out of school) and told me: "Mom, we have to wear jeans, a jacket and a smile tomorrow. We have to wear all three of those things." I think he repeated it to me about 5 times Thursday night and never cracked a smile. He had fun on Friday.

Ashley is sporting new hardware:

Sara is loving third grade. She has clicked with this teacher more than any of her other teachers. She's already surpassed her reading goal for this quarter. She and Ashley both started Girl Scouts for this fall. They are super excited for their first overnight camp in the middle of October.

Nathan, my cowboy. Last week Nathan went through about 5 outfit changes a day. He would go from Incredible Hulk, to Superman, to Batman, to a pirate, to a cowboy. Finally at the end of last week he settled completely into cowboy mode and I must say its my favorite look for him. I sometimes can't bear to tell him to change clothes when we go to the store because he looks so adorable in his cowboy costume. This picture really doesn't do it justice. I wish I could just put this stage of his life in a bottle and pull it out in several years. Because he has three older siblings I know how fast it goes and I intend to treasure every minute that it is here.

How John spends his recess

I got some one-on-one time with John this afternoon. This has become rather rare since he's in school now. I would like to say that it was because he missed his dear mom and wanted to spend some time with her on her errands. I think it is probably more likely that he wanted a sucker from the bank. Hey, I'm not beyond bribing at times. We had the following conversation on our little trip.

Me: So who'd you play with during recess today?
John: "J" (we'll call her this for short)
Me: Oh, what did you play?
John: house (notice how he elaborates)
Me: Soooo, were you the dad and "J" the mom?
John: Yep
Me: Did you have any kids?
John: Yes, we had 3 boys and 10 girls
Me (with my eyes popping out): Really! So you had thirteen kids huh?
John: Yep. Then "P" wanted to play and I thought he would make a good son and he agreed. So then we had 14 kids.
Me: Wow, that's quite a few kids you had
John: They were only pretend mom.
Me: (sigh) that is good to know John

The Orchard

We love Honeycrisp apples, but I always miss them at the orchard because I don't usually think about going to the orchard until the end of September. Honeycrisp are ready at the beginning of September. So I was rather proud of myself this year for remembering and on Saturday we headed to the orchard to pick some of them.

my current worst fear

I like to sing in the shower, or the kitchen, or the living room, or the van...pretty much anywhere. You can ask my kids. They will verify. They will also confirm that my dancing isn't much to talk about...or maybe it is something to talk about, just not in a good way. Anyway, I like to sing. This morning as I was really sweating on the elliptical I realized the Tim Keller sermon that I was listening to just wasn't cutting it for motivation. I had a goal I wanted to reach this morning and I was a little sluggish so I switched over to some more appropriate music for reaching the goal. Don't get me wrong, I was enjoying Tim Keller...maybe a little too much--I think that was the problem. So the last five minutes I had my music blaring through my earphones and I realized that I was having to catch myself several times from singing out loud. Now you have to understand, while I am at the gym with all the morning birds the workout area is actually pretty quiet. The TVs are muted with CC and people are either reading (how do you read on a treadmill or an elliptical?!) or listening to their MP3s. It would be very disruptive to have me suddenly start singing between breaths. So I've decided that pretty much my worst fear now is forgetting where I am and start singing at the top of my lungs. I'm fairly certain that it would be worse then pushing the panic button on my key chain causing the van horn to honk and all the lights flash on the van while sitting by the school with 25 people milling around waiting for the kids to be dismissed. Yeah, that was somewhat embarrassing....

When I grow up...

So Nathan asked me yesterday if I was going to be a grocery store cashier when I get bigger.

Acts 20:24

When I was in high school I memorized the book of Acts. It was externally motivated. I was a Bible quizzer and I'm a little competitive. In any case, during that time I found what I wanted to be my life verse. Acts 20:24 "However I consider my life worth nothing to me if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace." It sounded like a good summary of a life serving the Lord to me, so I decided on it. I had no idea exactly what that commitment would look like. Over time during different circumstances in my life God has asked me to reconsider that verse and seriously consider if I meant what it said. Is my life, my wants, my desires really worth nothing to me in order to be obedient to the Lord's calling on my life? This past year has produced some of those circumstances and has made me evaluate my life more than I ever have before. God called me to be obedient in a way that I really didn't want to be. And He made it very clear that in my obedience my life, my desires, my wants needed to be set aside in order to complete the task that He had given me. I made that choice, but it wasn't with a joyful heart. It was with sorrow. Putting our selfishness to death is not an easy task and has to be frequently revisited after the initial decision. But one of the consequences of putting our selfishness to death that this specific verse does not address (but is addressed elsewhere in the Bible) is the joy that we will experience in it. And this joy will not be experienced just in eternity with our Lord, but God is so gracious that He lets us experience it here on earth as well. And so now I fulfill the second half of that verse—testifying to the gospel of God's grace. In ways that I couldn't even imagine God has been so gracious to me and filled me with joy here on earth since my decision to be obedient. One small moment of extreme joy was yesterday when my husband and our youth pastor had the opportunity to baptize nine adults. Wow! It was one of the most amazing things I've gotten to experience and I really feel that one of the reasons I got to experience it was because of my obedience.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow,

Praise Him all creatures here below,

Praise Him above the hosts,

Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost!

Amen and Amen!