My Blog Sabbatical

...has come to an end. :-) It lasted over a MONTH, if that's not the craziest thing. There has just been soooooooo much going on and so many reasons not to blog that I'm just now feeling that it might be time to jump back into it. I've missed it. :-)

I just have to start by saying how very much I love the Lord and how very, very blessed I am. His love and His mercy and His power and His grace and His sovereignty... seem so much greater to me than they ever have before. I feel like my faith has been strengthened these past weeks and like I have a "bigger" picture of who God is. And He is just so BIG. I love Him so much and am soooooo blessed to be one of His own!

SO! Where do I start? It's tough to back up a whole month to play catch-up, but it's been SUCH a month that I can't exactly skip over it and act like there's nothing noteworthy. Besides, this is my "diary" and I can't bear the thought of forgetting all about the craziness of it all.

It all started on a Thursday in mid-June... (Great start, hu?) Jon & Em and the kids, plus Persephanie and Kristen, came and stayed the night with us. It was such great fun, just way too short of a visit! They were on their way to Arizona to visit Grandma Bunny and we got to play motel for the night. :-) The most memorable thing (as seems to be the case when company comes nowadays) was the soda making! Unfortunately, all of the pictures I took were taken with Emilee's camera so you'll have to go to her blog to see them. It will be worth the trip over there. Ha! I love the pictures of Em making her soda! :-)

The Smith crew headed out Friday and the next crop of company arrived: the Hays, the Wantuloks, and Sister Clarkson. If I remember correctly (it has been a few days!) we stayed up until 3 something in the morning playing games. Sma-a-a-a-a-a-art. I wouldn't miss it for the world. James' soda keg holds 5 gallons of carbonated water and he was sure to have it filled and pressurized and ready for the crowd. Good thing, because I think Mr. Hays downed about 3 gallons himself. Ha! Okay, okay, so it wasn't quite that much. I think it was just 6 sodas that first night and another one or two for breakfast. Right, Brother Dustin??? ;-)

He sort of became the unofficial soda jerk and actually handled the machine about as well as James does. (The rest of us make a terrible mess--there's so much pressure that it's difficult to get it to not spray full blast and splatter all over the place!)

The next morning James needed help moving a boulder and actually asked Brother Dustin to help him. Can you imagine?! Dustin Hays... on our property... with a BOULDER??? Some people are slow learners, I guess. I immediately sent all of the children inside (especially Joe) and grabbed my camera.


They were making little to no headway with the rock until I finally felt so sorry for them I put the camera down. With the three of us it slid easily into place. I love it when they can't do things themselves and NEED me like that. Ha!

Back inside the house, Daniel was helping himself to some cereal... in a glass. I'd never seen such a thing and had to take a picture.


I really, really like Brother Daniel. I'm not sure I "get" him all the time... but I really, really like him! Ha!

That was the big shop-for-Camp day, so we all loaded up (minus our three kids and Sister Clarkson, who was so gracious as to stay behind and watch them for us!) and went to town to buy groceries. It involved 5 or 6 different stores in all, but it saved us a whole bunch of money doing it that way and we were able to get a whole bunch of candy bars donated for the snack shack at the last minute. Wa-Hoo!

We went to the campground and discovered people. Hordes of them. We were aware that a group would be using some of the facilities that night, but weren't prepared for the number of them! It was obvious right off the bat that the Hays & Wantuloks wouldn't be able to stay the night there, as was originally planned. So we unloaded all of our groceries and the whole crowd came back to our house. :-) Mom & Dad flew in that night, so I think it was a total of 17 people here... and somehow we managed to have only children sleeping on the floor--everybody else had a bed or at least a couch. So it worked out great! We were wise enough to not stay up until 3:00 again that night... though I can't recall a single detail of that night! Who knows what we did?! I'm sure it was fun, whatever it was. :-)

Hhmmm... The next day starts the story of Camp and I'm not up to jumping into that one tonight, so it'll just have to wait until next time. Probably won't be tomorrow. Maybe Monday? In any case (or "at any rate," as my new pastor prefers to say :-) Ha!), I'll leave you with a few more pictures, just for fun.

Here's a picture of a recent sunset...

There have been numerous snake catches this summer. Sammy had me measure this one... 24 1/2" -- a new record for the boys.

And here's a picture of some of our church folks after service the other night...

It was my VLB service and I spoke about how we are aliens here on this earth--we're only here temporarily and we don't really belong here. We don't fit in and we will be rejected and thought of as weird-o's and freaks by the "earthlings." I made antennas and some people were gracious enough to wear them through the entire service! Ha! I don't know if anybody got anything out of it or not, but it was certainly enjoyable to see everybody in their alien antennas. :-)