Sunday Fun

I attended a lovely shower for a young lady in our church today.  She's having a little boy...

Jillian and Annah played with Mackenzie during the shower, until it was time for them to go to youth group.  

Megan did a great job putting on the shower, including making a very yummy and totally adorable teddy bear cake.  Best wishes and lots of prayers go to Melissa and her baby boy!

Setup Silliness

Sometimes setting up (and tearing down) all the things it takes for our church to operate as a church that's in a union hall can have some frustrating elements.  It is hard work!  And doing it over and over again every single Saturday night is tough!  

I'm thankful my husband knows to add humor when stress gets a little high...even if it does embarrass poor Samuel.  

"The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him." 

-Psalm 28:7

Harvest

I love harvest time.  It's exciting to me to see the farmers gathering in their crops.  I love thinking about how those crops will be sent all around the world to feed people.  It's a beautiful and hopeful thing!  

"Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest 

if we do not give up." 

- Galatians 6:9

Boys in the yard

What an absolutely gorgeous weekend we have had!  Jeremy and Caeden played a bit of football in the backyard a few times yesterday and today.  

 I L-O-V-E seeing these boys play anything together!! 

Baking apple pie

When the 3 crates of apples came home with us, Sylvia immediately asked if she could make apple pie. My immediate reaction was that she'd be on her own because I am deathly afraid of making pie crust.  She has enjoyed making pies with Gram, so she was confident.  She invited her friend Eve to come down the street and bake apple pies.  They were excited about it all week long.  I told them they were on their own after I got the peeling and slicing done.  (I must mention that Jeremy also ran to town twice for ingredients, instruments and necessities for baking the pies, and also helped peel apples.)

The girls mixed up their first crust in the mixer with the bread hook.  I let them do it on their own, but it wasn't usable.  They let the mixer run as they mixed in ingredients, and I don't think their cold water was cold enough.  We were able to keep half of their dough for later though.  I mixed up a couple batches of double crust dough for them, divided it, and refrigerated it for 30 minutes to make it easier to work with.  Then, we decided they'd try rolling it out between wax paper.  They were good to go on their own from that point on...

They weren't taking the pre-made crust or even crumb-top easy-way out!  They were determined to bake two lattice top pies from the Betty Crocker cookbook!  I will admit, I was extremely frustrated by the process of making pie crust, but once I left these two 10-year-olds to their process, they were good to go!

I think they did a great job!!

They used their leftover dough to make an apple pastry.

And we all enjoyed some with ice cream!

The girls played Mancala, Clue Mysteries, and window markers while waiting for one of the pies to cool enough for Sylvia to carry it to Eve's house (Eve rode her bike.) so she could share it with her family.  Our family will enjoy the other for lunch tomorrow.  

What sweet, determined, resourceful girls!  It was a great way to spend a Saturday.

Just fine without me

I am sick this week.  It started with a runny nose on Wednesday.  Jeremy sent me to bed early after some NyQuil.  

Thursday morning I sort of woke up at 5:45 and made my way downstairs to the recliner, but I was completely out of it.  I felt so horrible and couldn't function.  I was vaguely aware that the girls' alarm went off and they started moving around upstairs getting ready for school.  At one point, Sylvia walked by me and I asked her to wake up Caeden.  I also remember opening my eyes once and seeing her sitting on the couch doing cross stitch.  I think I managed to mumble, "I love you." as they went out the door, but otherwise I was near comatose until about 9:45 a.m.  Even after a shower I spent most of the day either in the chair or in bed resting.

Today, I'm feeling quite a bit better.  Definitely not 100%, but well enough to communicate.  As the kids were having breakfast, Caeden told me that yesterday he packed himself a peanut butter and chocolate syrup sandwich for lunch.  

I've enjoyed that little confession all day.  I'm glad to know they got along just fine without me.  :)

WE Day

Over the summer, at PoC, we have been "moving from me to WE."  Our leadership had a realization that we kind of felt like there were groups among us--those who were part of the original launch team, those who joined us along the way, those who became part of the family at launch, those who came at Easter, those who came from our commissioning church but at later times, those who were brand new...etcetera.  We want everyone to feel part of our church family from the very first time they visit, so we have been trying to move toward just being WE--the PoC Family.  It's been fun!

And today, we celebrated our 1st birthday!  One year ago was our Launch Day, and today we partied all day long to thank God for all HE has done!

During our morning worship service today, Angela interviewed Pastor Todd.  He was able to share about how PoC came about in the first place, and some of the fun "stats" of the past year.

Just a few of the things GOD has done:

Salvations - 48

1st time Sanctifications - 63

Baptisms - 32

Guests - 518

New Nazarenes - 188

Tithes/Offering - $198,689

Missions Giving - $30,490.35

Those are the works of His hand; we can't take any credit.  So, as we heard each of these statistics, we said, "TGBTG!"  (To God Be the Glory!)

And, I have to give kudos to the setup team (and my hunky hubby!) for the number of times things have been put up and taken down to make our church look and function beautifully...

Poles with concrete buckets setup and taken down 2, 288 times

Drapes setup and taken down 1248 

Tables - setup and taken down  1456

Crates - setup and taken down 3744

Platforms - setup and taken down 416 

Screws holding up the cross setup and taken down 1664 

Altars setup and taken down 108 

Chairs in sanctuary setup and taken down  - 18,408 (just for Sunday mornings!)

Yard/ Road Signs setup and taken down  208 times

Banner up and down - 104 times

Canvas cover screens setup and taken down - 2,080

Carpets setup and taken down  208

Entire sound system, speakers, microphones, cords, lights, screens, keyboard, bench, etcetera setup and taken down 104 times

After the service, we celebrated 6 baptisms!

Jeanne and Mick are newlyweds, and were baptized together!  

I loved Odemaris' reaction when she came out of the water!  Yes!

Caed's "brother" Samuel was baptized too, and our friend "Miss Pat" was there to congratulate him.  She used to babysit for our Life Groups from the time we started them and the boys were babies!

We had a great lunch provided by Keller's Iron Skillet.  They have been so good to us!

After lunch, there were indoor and outdoor games for all ages throughout the afternoon.

Pastor Todd in his office

Then this evening, our worship band gave a 2-hour concert!  Wow, was that fun!!!  

I have to admit, I used to kind of worry that it might be hard work doing nothing but worshipping God all the time when we get to heaven, but after 2 hours straight of nothing but worship and testimonies, I can't think of anything else I'd rather do for all eternity!  

God is SO good.

Some Saturday

The kids and I went grocery shopping at Meijer this morning after we picked up Sylvia from her sleepover at Emma's.  (She had a great time!)  They saw these chairs and thought they were super fun.  Then, without my saying anything, they had the sense to realize they wouldn't match anything in our home, and they also would take up too much room.  They sure are fun though.

We were honored to celebrate Bekah's golden birthday with her and her favorite friends this evening! She is just sunshine for the soul!!

She, like us, loves everything Disney, and her cake was Wreck-It Ralph! 

Love these ladies!!

After the party, we went to church to help with setup.  Tony gave us these 3 crates of apples!  Guess I better be looking up some recipes this week!

Everyday life--my favorite kind

Today, I had a pretty quiet day to myself at home.  I prepped 18 crockpot freezer meals this morning, including chili, taco meat with beans, Italian beef, taco soup, Italian chicken, buffalo chicken, meat sauce, sesame chicken.  For now, both freezers are full, and we should have meals every night for at least a couple weeks.

Following summer, I was down to only 5 piano and 1 voice student, but I've started 4 new students in the past couple weeks.  Only 2 of my students come during the day, so Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons and evenings are pretty busy around here now.  And on Mondays and Thursdays we go to town for our kids' music lessons.  So the crockpot helps us out a lot around here!

Oh, look what was delivered on Wednesday!  Our replacement rug for the living room came, and also a replacement for the rug that wasn't ruined.  I'm not sure what to do with it, but if Lowes doesn't want it back, I think it would look lovely in our bedroom!  Oh Lowes.  Goodness.

This evening, I took Sylvia to a friend's house for a sleepover.  When we dropped her off, Annah noticed Pearl was showing our highest trip mpg so far--60.8 mpg!  

Spelling Spat

We are trying 4:00 violin lessons this Fall. The kids get off the bus at home at about 3:33, so I have to pick them up at the stop with their instruments and take the fastest route to town to get to lessons about 2 minutes late, whew! Usually I bring a snack for each of them, but today was stopped by a neighbor as I was loading the car and didn't have time to go back to get them snacks. 

When we got to the music shop, it was time for Caeden to practice his spelling words for the test tomorrow.  Spelling is easy for him, and he knows the words.  But we always make the kids study whether they feel they need to or not so they will develop good study habits for the future. Today, Caed tried to tell me he was so tired and hungry that he "had no brain power" to practice his spelling words. He whined, whimpered, complained, protested, and generally acted ridiculous during the 20 words... 

Here's the proof:

Here's the kicker... I discovered as I went to check his words over... 

He spelled every single word wrong ON PURPOSE!!!!  

He and I went for a walk out to the car, where we both sat in the backseat and I explained that he would now write each word 10 times tonight and until each of them were spelled correctly and neatly.  

I won't analyze this situation any more here, but this boy is definitely the reason I am re-reading Journey of  Strong-Willed Child these days.

The Horn is Home!

Sylvia got a school horn today and brought it home!  Her level of excitement was so beautiful.  She is totally, totally thrilled!  We are all excited with and for her, too!

It really couldn't have come at a more perfect time either, as we received her String Project audition results back this afternoon.  She wasn't placed in the top group, so she is disappointed.  However, she received helpful feedback to work on with her violin teacher, and they want to hear her reaudition soon.  So, after I read the email to her, we were able to enjoy the excitement of looking at her beautiful horn.  That was really God's gracious timing, I believe.

I think this horn is going to be a big blessing to this girl and this family!

Bubblewrap and a Box

I love it when simple things add joy to life!

We had a couple long strips of big bubble wrap waiting to be thrown away, so I put it down on the kitchen floor where the kids would pretty much have to walk over it this morning on their way into the kitchen and bathroom.  They giggled and popped around the kitchen for an hour before going off to school.  It definitely added joy to the morning for all of us today!

We also had a big box going to be recycled tomorrow, so Sylvia and Caeden decided to play airplane pilots in their few spare minutes before going out to the bus stop.

This evening, Caeden's neighbor-friend Nate came over to play.  It was too hot to play outside, so they played with the Hotwheels RC and its iPad controller.  They spent some time building obstacles and a course for the car inside the big box. 

Simple fun times are the best!!

Joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart!

The kids like to listen to our local Christian radio station, WBGL, most mornings while getting ready for school.  I had it playing through an app on my phone when Caeden came downstairs for breakfast this morning, and Monk and Neagle's song Beautiful You was playing.

Caeden loves to dance, but he was really dancing with such a peaceful, joyful look on his face this morning.  It's that unmistakable contagious joy of the Lord!

He told me he really loves this song and asked if I could download it so we could listen to it whenever we want.  

"Let them praise his name in the dance," - Psalm 149:3

Setup

The kids are sometimes very, very helpful during our PoC setup Saturday nights.

This evening, the girls were being incredibly goofy while putting together the Sunday morning response cards.  

Pastor Celia caught the boys in a more rare serious moment while they alphebetized name tags for Sunday morning.

I think they're starting to realize that the harder they work, the more helpful they are, the more quickly setup goes.  

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, 24 since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving." - Colossians 3:23-24(NIV)

Friday Night

The first RHS home football game of the season was this evening, and it was a beautiful night for to be outdoors.  Our team is rebuilding after graduating many seniors last spring, but we enjoyed cheering for them.  And, the band is looking better than I've ever seen them look!

At halftime, they performed their entire competition show, which they've never done at the first home game.  And they looked and sounded great!  Love those kids, and so proud of them and their directors!

This is Thursday

When we had dinner with Grandma L over the weekend, she gave each of the kids some money.  Caeden's immediately started burning a hole in his pocket, but since we wouldn't take him to the store immediately he changed his mind after a few hours and decided he would put it in his savings account. He has asked me at least 2 times every day since Saturday if we could go to the bank, and we finally got there today.  He was quite the grown up little boy, and went right up to the teller window by himself.  When the teller asked how she could help him, he told her he wanted to deposit money into his savings account, his name and how to spell it, and how much he was depositing.  He answered all the questions he needed for his own transaction.  I was pretty proud of him for deciding to save his money this time.  He usually either spends it all immediately, or puts it in his piggy bank and then gives it all away when the school has a charity fundraiser.  It was nice to see him thinking it through this time.

After Caeden's guitar lesson, we hurried back home.  The girls didn't have violin lessons at the Music Shoppe this afternoon because their teacher, Ruthie is in Chicago for a special medical appointment for one of her children tomorrow.  But, she is such an awesome teacher who goes way above and beyond! She knew Sylvia had an audition coming up on Monday, so she did a short FaceTime lesson with Sylvia! See her on the iPad at the left of the picture?  Too cool, and so thoughtful of her to do that for Sylvia!

Already, Annah is having quite a bit of homework in 7th grade.  She's in an advanced math class that has daily homework.  Tonight she had 2 tests to study for.  I helped her study for Science and also Family and Consumer Sciences.  I had to take a picture of her science vocabulary word "lichens," and text it to my brother.  He and I still tease Dad about the family vacation when he tried to teach about lichens.  At the time, we were ungrateful snotty kids who thought we were too cool to learn about boring lichens and that wasn't what family vacation was supposed to be about.  Now, I think it's pretty cool that we still remember Dad teaching us about lichens.  He has shown my kids lichens in his forest, and they thought it was pretty cool and exciting.