Daisies

L to R: Juliana, Bernadine, Lydia, Faith and Keana

Nadine is officially a Daisy Girl Scout! And I am her Daisy Leader! This is our troop. It's small, but entirely manageable, which is fantastic! We had our first meeting last night. We learned about the Girl Scout Promise and began to dissect the Girl Scout Law. So last night we focused on being honest and fair. We talked, read a story, made a craft that reinforced fairness, had a color sheet and put our vests together! The girls loved it.

One of the grandma's made the vests for us because they are so expensive to buy through the Girl Scouts! They turned out wonderful!!!!

My first 5K

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Yesterday, Julie came over to watch the kids while Rob and I made our way to Put-in-Bay for the Put-in-Bay 5K run. We had to leave the house at 6 am to catch the 7:30 ferry to the bay. Its great on the island at 8 am. No one is around and it is very peaceful! 542 people participated in the 5K. Unfortunately, I was towards the end of those 542. I finished the run in 41 minutes. Partly because I am out of shape and partly because I have been sick. I couldn't breathe but more importantly I couldn't stop coughing. There was probably a two minute portion that I just stopped and coughed. It was fun and I am going to continue to run them.

We didn't stay late but we stayed at the Island until the 5 o'clock ferry took us back. We run with Jeff and Darlene, so we hung out with them for the day. We hit some of the local establishments to people watch and laugh at the craziness. It is amazing the reasons people come up with to party! Put-in-Bay celebrated this weekend the half-way point to st. Patty's day. They even had a parade! It was funny! A great money-making ploy as well!

Running...

Tomorrow is the day that Rob and I go face-off at Put-in-Bay. We are leaving at 6 am to go and catch the ferry out to the island for the Put-in-Bay 5k.

I still have a horrible cough and I feel as if someone is sitting on my chest, so I'm not anticipating a good run! But hoping to at least finish it! I started an antibiotic yesterday and it seems that the congestion has loosened a tadbit but not much.

Wish me luck! :)

In Hiding...

We went out to check on our Caterpillar this morning because last night he wouldn't come out of his jar. They have little hooks on their feet and you can't just lift them up. They grab hold and won't let go. So we put the lid back on and gave him some more leaves to eat and figured we'd try in the morning.

Well, he's not coming out now. He has formed a coccoon with the leaves we gave him and his silk. (Since he's silkworm!) So now we have a resident jar inhabitant for the winter. According to the website we found he will stay like that until spring when he will turn into a beautiful moth with a 6 to 8 inches wingspan. We'll have to watch him closely then because he won't fit in the jar anymore once he comes out!

The Hungry Caterpillar!

Rowan has a new pet! Or so he thinks! Right now, this very hungry caterpillar is chilling in a jar on our front porch. Just until Nadine comes home to see it! Then she'll be released into our tree. Daddy and Rowan found this big caterpillar while working in the front yard today. She is a Cecropia Silkworm. When she cocoons she will become a moth that has a 6-8 in. wing span. She is really neat looking. Fully expanded she is about 6 inches long!

Rowan is having a pretty good day today. He has been really sick since Friday. In fact, he has pneumonia, but the antibiotic seems to be working! I am sick right there with him. I don't think mine is pneumonia, it's just a nasty cough and mucus.

TRUST

Trust = knowing there are risks and knowing that God is bigger!

November Trip

In November I am flying down to Virginia to preach at my friends church. Lonnie is actually one of my classmates. The last time we went to see Derek & Jackie, we made the trip to his church and visited for the day with his family. They invited me to come back for pulpit supply this fall! So I've purchased my plane ticket and soon I will begin writing my sermon. I haven't completely felt a sense yet of what God would like to say through me. I'm planning on calling Lonnie and getting a feel for where he has been and what direction they've been headed.

I also will have the opportunity to join them for a district leadership event down there called Team Day. They have guest speakers and worship the weekend that I will be there.

It's all quite exciting! I'm not as scared as I thought I was going to be about it! Which is awesome! This will be a defining moment for me...

GNO

Barb, Jen, Traci, Holly, Tracy and me!

Last night, I had the opportunity to have a Girls Night Out with five of my friends. We went to the Olive Garden and had intentions to go back and play games at Jen's house but we waited for an hour and a half at the OG and then sat there for three hours stuffing our faces and chatting! It was a great night! God created us to be relational. We have to have people to talk to, people to do life with! Traci, Holly and I all rode together since we are from this side of town and we met the rest of the girls there! Hopefully we'll do this again next month!!!

Not much happening

I say that like I haven't been busy! I have been busy! Rob and I are both off this weekend so we are hoping to do something fun with the kids and get you all some fresh, new pictures!

So we will start with a run-down:

Nadine will be beginning Daisy Girl Scouts this year. I am going to be her Troop leader! She is very excited that she gets to sell cookies. My question is how is that she realizes that cookies are in her future. When we started talking about being a Girl Scout, her eyes lit up and she was like "I get to sell cookies!!!!!"

She is doing fantastic in school. She hates homework! Which is fantastic since she only has 13 more years to do it! But she does love school. She is having a hard time eating all her lunch in the alloted time because she is too busy talking to her friends. And her bus ride is quite long coming home.

Caravans have started back up at church for the school year and she is loving that!

Rowan is adjusting to home life without the girls. He has told me that he misses Deany and he's always anxious for her to come home. He's been having play dates with other friends though, while I've gone to meetings or over to help grandpa and grandma. Our new pastor has a boy his age and our friends Renee and Ryan have three boys, so he is finally getting to play with boys!

Jourdyn is getting off on the right foot for school. Mid terms come home today, so we'll see! We've been going round and round about her piano. She hates it. But 6 months ago she hated the saxophone and now loves it again. So we have had long hard discussions about the fact that as parents its our job to nurture the gifts that God has given her. Her only option is to get through all the levels and then she can quit. It will take her at least two more years to do that, but if she had been applying and practicing all along she would be even closer. So this week she has practiced everyday for 30 minutes. She is so good at it. She is definitely gifted. I believe she is just bored. After this level, she moves onto chord playing, which I think will open her heart again to it.

She is 12. So she is going through those emotional changes. Hate something one day, love it the next. But we'll make it through!

Rob has been working and I have been doing all that I do. My class is fantastic this time. It's History of Christianity I - The Early Church to Medieval times. The best part of the class - we have a woman teacher! First one in all the classes, except for our intro class at the beginning. I am so thankful that this is the case right now because I have been at a point that I need to know that another woman has been where I am and understands!

REVOLVE 4Real 2009

This past Friday, Jourdyn and I left daddy and the little ones home and headed out with 17 other girls to Columbus for the Revolve 4Real Tour! This was our second year attending! I'm not sure that we will ever miss another one while Jourdyn is a teenager!

Revolve is basically a conference for middle schoolers and up! They focus on teaching girls that they are more than the world says they are. They are God's girls! This year we got to hear Chad Eastham talk about how guys are like waffles (they put everything into compartments and they don't mix compartments) and girls are like spaghetti (a big intertwined collection of everything). He's really good! And after the conference was over and we were at our hotel waiting for valet to get our van, we saw him and Jennifer and Tracy paprazzi-ed him!!! You'll see the pics!

There were concerts by Stellar Kart, Britt Nicole, Group 1 Crew...we were able to get a picture of Britt Nicole at the hotel as well. I think most of the Revolve Team stayed at our hotel.

On Friday night after the conference, we loaded everyone in the vans and went to the Cheesecake Factory for the yummiest Cheesecake in the world!

We also were able to hear Jenna Lucado speak, watched dramas and had praise and worship together! It was a fabulous weekend!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

jourdyn n i are at revolve this weekend in columbus! having fun and learning lots!

Good Intentions

Recently, at work I waited on a little old woman who is most of the time by herself. This particular night, however, she had 8 others with her, part of them her family. Two others were guests from Chile and Honduras. I am sure that the family had the best intentions of spoiling their temporary guests, taking them out to their private club and lavishing them with all the particulars that they as a family are accustomed to.

It was a night of indulgence! At least by my standards, maybe not so much for this family. There are many times that as a middle-class American I wonder how it is that these people can spend this much on a drink, let alone what they spend on their meals on a regular basis.

For a moment that night, I tried to place myself in the shoes of the two young men that were their guests. Both visiting from countries that are far less fortunate than ours. That evening they had about $50 spent on each of them for their meal. They were given enough food to probably have fed 5 in their home towns. And the entire table spent $500 total.

What would these young men have been thinking? Would it have been to them an act of kindness or an act of pride and American excess? Was it seen as an act of generosity or an opportunity to show off how good these Americans have it here in the States?


I don't know but I do know that Honduras still lives in extreme poverty in dirt floor huts, their water never being as clear as ours. "Honduras is one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere and remains dependent on international economic assistance." (http://www.encyclopedia.com/) I'm not sure about Chile, I believe it is one of the most prosperous countries in South America, but I'm sure it still doesn't have the excess that was displayed this weekend.

I am 100% postive that this family had good intentions. I'm sure they wanted their guests to experience the best that our area has to offer. However, I can't help but wonder if it was more offensive to them then welcoming.

I don't know. My stomach turned then and it turns now as I think about it!

Driving Miss Tatum

Curt brought Tatum over yesterday afternoon to play with the kids. They had a ball playing in the backyard. They all took turns driving Rowan's tractor and playing on the swingset! However, remind me in about 11 years that Nadine doesn't need to be driving!

When?

Ever get to a point that you're ready to not give up, but instead to move on? To have people stop telling you that they see your potential, but to instead do something about it? Ever wonder why it is that people think you do a great job, but the bottom line for them is, go, do it somewhere else? Or to work for something so hard only to have people hold you back?

Ever wonder if maybe the problem is that you've stayed and toughed it out, you know, to build character, to perservere, to not give up, to not be weak, to stay strong, when maybe you should have moved on long ago? Ever been to a point that you're not burnt out, you love doing what you do, you just know that doing where you're doing it is pointless? It's a dead end - A metaphoric ceiling is slowing becoming a tomb.

So do you stay or do you go? Do you be still and patiently wait? Those words "be still" in Psalm 37:7 "Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways" they mean "STOP IT." Is it time to just stop doing what you're doing? To just stop everything and wait for Him. Patiently waiting isn't passive. If you've done it, you know that it hurts, that it aches, that it takes all the strength that you have. It's a sustained longing, an anxious anticipation...but what if where you are waiting, doesn't have anything to be anxious about? When do you move on?

Attraction

History of Christianity has begun! And this class is all about the early Church up through Medieval times. Of course, we are starting at the beginning and moving towards modern day. As I was reading yesterday one thing really stuck out to me about the Early Church's ability to attract converts to Christianity. The Early Church had certain characteristics that really defined who they were:

“Charity offered without expectation of return…fellowship opened to all social levels…steadfastness in the face of persecution…high moral standards…rejection of fate and belief in providence…” (Hinson, 64)

Do these words describe the Church today? Are people flocking to the Church for the same reasons? Do we share the same heart as the early Christians or have we become the picture of “Christian exclusivism”? Has our “very best of Christian intention turned against” us? Have we gotten to a point were we are “construed as a perverse ‘obstinacy’”? (Hinson, 71)

On so many levels, we have become an exclusive entity that sticks to itself, shunning all that doesn’t have the Christian brand and sadly, corrupting the things that do have that brand. Our charity expects something in return. Our fellowship is segregated, economically, culturally, and racially. We shutter in fear at the thought of standing up for what is right in the small things in life, facing the thought of being taken naked into an arena to our deaths, as early Christians were, we would deny our Lord. Much of our community has sold out to the worlds standards on morals and on fate. Christians read their horoscopes and believe that things happen because of fate. They forsake their Bible for the latest spoon-fed words from whoever.

Yet, I believe that many in the Church are perpetuating a movement towards our historical roots found in the early Church because they are applicable to ministry today, if ever they were before. Our youth/young adults of today are reaching out to make a difference in their worlds like never before. Within the Church many have seen the hypocrisy that comes with exclusiveness and are turning from it. Ministries are sprouting everywhere that love and give for nothing more than to bless the recipient. Inclusiveness is the cry of this movement and return to Christlikeness is its mission. I’m exited about it and I think that returning to that steadfastness in Christ will be blessed.