Posting to the Weekend Crowd

Hi, Mom!

(Nobody does the blog thing on weekends!)

It's been a good week around here. James and I are feeling lots better this week, so that helps! We had a good church service on Thursday night to kick off our ABM Outreach Week. Our Regional ABM Coordinator, Brother VanDeventer, has asked all of our churches to spend January 9-15 in prayer and fasting and reaching out to people who used to be members of the Church but are now backslidden or unfaithful. So in our service on Thursday we made a list of all those in our area we'd like to reach out to and had a good season of prayer for them, and for ourselves as we attempt to contact them and invite them back to church and to the Lord. I'm excited to see what the results will be from around the Region through this effort. It's so much in harmony with the General theme, "Making a Difference Through Prayer & Fasting" and it sounds like there's been great excitement over it. Fasting is never fun, but it's one of God's WAYS and He's sure to bless us when we're willing to make sacrifices for the sake of lost souls.

Yesterday was a long--but really great--day. Ah, yes. First of all, let me PRAISE GOD for how very good He is to us. We had a need and didn't know how it was going to be supplied. But God miraculously took care of it WAY beyond what was actually needed. We had been praying and weren't surprised that He answered, but were shocked at how far above and beyond He answered! He is just so good to us. :-)

Anyway, we headed to town at about 2:30 yesterday to hit all of the amazing sales. There were a whole bunch of good ones at different grocery stores, but only if you bought whole cases. Because of God's goodness and blessings, we were able to do just that! It seems a little crazy to do such a thing until you add up the hundreds of dollars that you're saving to buy those quantities at these prices. Our grocery bill should go WAY down for the next several months now and that makes me very happy. :-)

We also went to Sam's Club to pick up my contacts that we FINALLY ordered. I've been wearing the free trial ones since October. I intend to wear this set a while longer before opening up the new ones. Why move on when these ones are still doing the trick?!

After all of our running around it was finally time to head up north to the Clarksons' house for Sadie's birthday party. Her birthday was actually about a week ago, but they were out of town and unable to do the party then. Our kids were soooooooo excited! They haven't been to a PARTY in years other than their own. And to be quite honest, their "parties" usually consist of cake, ice cream, and a few gifts, often with just the 5 of us! So they were THRILLED at the thought of going to a true blue birthday party and they all worked for days ahead of time to make gifts for Sadie. :-)

Here are the girls in their party dresses with their party tiaras, boas, and glow-stick sceptres.

And the boys looking very boyish.
Sadie blowing out the candles
I had to post this picture because it's the only one I had of Sadie actually smiling instead of cheesing out for the camera! Ha!
I won't post pictures of all of her gifts, but I'll post pictures of the ones my kids made her because... well, because it's my blog! :-)

Here's the trio of gifts from Katie

A pot holder and a little parrot from Joe
And a super cool butterfly from Sam
After cake, ice cream, and presents, it was time to play Pin the Tail on the Donkey. First time my kids had ever played. (Sad, hu?!) It's an okay game for the kids, but a BLAST for the parents who get to watch! HA! So funny. Here's the birthday girl, a little off course... Ha!
And Cainan a little turned around as well...
Naomi having trouble
And more trouble when James decided to get involved. (I love Brother Chris' face in this picture!)
Katie had a plan going into the game. She had studied the picture and knew just about how far away the donkey's tail was from that particular crease in the paper. Pretty clever! She won the Cube of Rubic as a prize and was THRILLED... but has been super frustrated ever since. Those things are a lot harder to master than kids (and most adults) realize!
Then they played this Tic-Tac-Toe game. We went through several rounds, but it was clear that nobody was actually going to get three in a row, so they just gave the prize to the kid who got the most balls on the mat regardless of their position. Joe happened to pull it off and won a Wall-E puzzle that he enjoyed putting together this afternoon.
Katie played a game of Battleship with Brother Chris, the girls played princess stuff upstairs, the adults hung out and talked, and Joe & Cainan set up action figures and tried to shoot all of the other kid's guys down first.

We stayed for a long time and had a great time. The kids had so much fun, Sadie seemed to be pleased with her party, and I enjoyed the fellowship. We didn't make it home until about 10:30 and I was soooooo tired. But there was chicken and pork chops to be separated and frozen (we're going to get 6 meals out of a giant pack of chops that we paid $10.98 for--I can't tell you how happy that makes me!) and cases of corn, green beans, four different flavors of soup, Ramen, chili, fruit... Maybe some other stuff, I can't remember. Our pantry is bursting at the seams and I'm a little concerned about the shelves holding up, but so far so good. As I was adding up what we paid for all of this stuff and figuring out what we might have for meals, I was sooooo excited to realize that most meals that we'll be eating will cost less than $3 (some less than $2 or maybe even less) to feed our whole family. WA-HOO!!! I feel so THRIFTY. :-)

Today has been a strange day. Regular schooling and all of that, but this morning we got some news that sort of threw us for a loop and I ended up spending a lot of time on the phone and in prayer. While I was praying the Scripture came to me about the disciples being on the boat with Jesus, in a panic over the storm. When they woke him up in a frenzy He said to them, "Why are ye so fearful, oh, ye of little faith?" I felt like that's what He said to me today. After all of the things He's done, why let fear grip your heart now?! Being human is such a pain sometimes! ;-) I really felt Him give me peace and have felt better and better throughout the day, though still praying lots for this particular situation. I don't know how people cope with life when they don't have God to lean on and bear their burdens. We don't realize how blessed we are.

James took Sam with him to run errands today, so I let Katie & Joe watch the Veggie version of Gideon this afternoon. We'd been reading about Gideon in the Bible the past few days and wanted to watch it in vegetable form. :-) I LOVE the "marching band" style music in that show--very emotionally charged. And, of course, who wouldn't enjoy Lance the Turtle?!

Since I seemed caught up on all of the big things, I sat down and finished my book. I've been reading Mistaken Identity this week. It's the true story about some kids from a Christian collage who were in a terrible accident; five died and three survived. But the paramedics got two of the girls' identities mixed up and, due to the nature of the accident and the injuries--and the girls' similarities (same hair type and color, same color eyes, same body form, etc.)--it wasn't discovered for 5 weeks. So while one family had a funeral and were grieving and trying to cope with losing the daughter they THOUGHT was dead, another family was spending 24/7 at the bedside of the girl they thought was their own... Only to learn after 5 weeks that their daughter had died the night of the accident and they'd been caring for someone else. And the family who thought their daughter had died received a phone call a month after they'd buried "her" saying that she's still alive. AMAZING. I cried a lot, but must say that I was blessed. You could tell by the way these families responded to a-a-a-a-all of the things that they went through that they really were Christians. Their faith and hope in God seemed like the real thing. It makes you think about life and how fragile it is; how quickly things can change and how important it is to have your priorities right your treasures in heaven, not on earth.

Katie has weird teeth. They don't just get loose and then fall out like normal kids. When one of her teeth is beginning its departure, it starts sticking farther and farther straight out--even if it's still tightly secured to her gums! It will get crazier and crazier for months before finally getting loose. She's had one that has been so bad she could barely close her mouth (ha!) and it's finally started loosening up a little bit, so James has been having her work on it as much as possible to get it ready to go. (It really needed to go so her big front tooth would have room to move into place a little better.) Tonight was her lucky night! She doesn't have the guts to pull out her own teeth, no matter how loose they are--and she PANICS at the thought of her Dad doing it (I don't blame her!!!)--so that leaves me to do the dirty work. We've done the string method a few times before and it's always worked like a charm. James caught the whole procedure on film this time. Ha!

A strange thing happened, though. When Kate said she was ready and I gave a yank, there was more resistance than usual (it actually hurt her a little bit this time--I felt so bad!) and we heard a small "clank" in the opposite direction of what I was pulling... and we never did find the tooth! Ha! We crawled all over the floor and looked and looked, but to no avail.

Since she had nothing to hide under her pillow, the "Tooth Fairy" decided to just go ahead and take her her money right then. :-)
And here's the happy girl showing off her new hole.

That's about it from around here. Oh, except for this. I filmed it during devotions tonight. I figured some day it would make me smile to look back on Joe's early days learning to play guitar. :-)