The Honeymoon

Well I guess it is finally time to post again. Thank you so much for praying for my sweet niece, Sarah. She is one of my heros and I am so thankful that God has tenderly cared for her and her family these past weeks through His people. Praise the Lord she will be 29 weeks along Sunday. One of the best consequences of Sarah needing help, is having the need to be there more often. I am enjoying my Fridays with Sarah & Bekah & Bailey.

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Two weeks ago I took these pictures of Bekah. They are from my cell phone so they're basically pretty lame, but what a cute little subject! At first she did not want to cooperate, but then she decided she liked posing and immediately checking out the results. Each time she took the phone in her hand and giggled at her picture on the screen was just precious. I ended up taking about twenty shots because I was enjoying her giggle so much.

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Though I had planned to be there yesterday, Chris ended up home early, so I stayed home to take care of some of the more pressing needs of my children. Between the pressing needs, I filled much of my unexpected spare time playing with facebook. I signed up for my own account about Midnight Thursday, so on Friday, I was set to go.

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I have to admit I am having fun. I remind myself of someone who just gets email for the first time and thinks it is the best thing since sliced bread, drools over every mass-mailing coming in and forwards it to 100 of her closest friends. Thank goodness that phase of email does not last long --unless you are retired. (I've found that retired folks still think their friends and family like to receive every forward that comes through their inbox.)

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Yes, I am in the honeymoon phase. Thanks to Michelle, I learned all about flairs yesterday--though my own collection is pretty lame in her eyes--I designed a stick figure family complete with the pets and even a few dead fish to honor those we used to have--I adopted a pokey*--I sent and received flowers--and I'm up to 41 friends!

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I was pretty fired up about My Space a couple of years ago, but I quickly lost interest and only signed in often enough to change my age to 29 whenI had a birthday. And then, I even got too bored to do that -- I am now 30. When I first got my blog, I was posting almost every day. I usually do not post quite that often anymore (cough, choke). And, though I check my email often, it is against my religion (almost) to send on a forward and quite honestly, I have certain relatives relegated to my "junk mail" because that is all they send! So, knowing my electronic communication history, I am not expecting my current enthusiasm for fb to be a sustainable phenomenon.

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However, I am finding it really cool to reconnect with friends I have not caught up with in years. I also was added to the loop for a possible multi-class RVCS reunion in the next couple of years. So right now, I am enjoying the honeymoon and I think facebook is pretty darn cool.

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*My pokey's name is Bailey and she's a lovable chocolate lab who is really bad at catching the frisbee. Feel free to stop by and play with her anytime.

Please Be in Prayer

Just wanted to ask for prayer for our niece, Sarah, and her baby. I lifted the beautiful picture from her sister, Megan's, blog. Here's the email that was circulated by our church earlier today:

Chris and Sarah have asked prayer for Sarah and their unborn baby. Sarah is 26 weeks along and started having contractions last night. She is currently in the hospital and they have given the baby medicine to help develop his/her lungs. The earliest the Drs. like to deliver is 34 weeks. Sarah will be in the hospital till Thursday and is on possible bed rest. Please pray the baby will continue developing and wait to make his/her arrival as well as peace for Chris & Sarah.

“For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.”
Psalm 139: 13-16

A Handful of Memories

Here's an ecclectic offering -- some of my memories from the last couple of weeks.

1. I will begin with VBS -- I was in the 4th grade this summer and thoroughly enjoyed my class. God was so good to provide me with energy and a sense of humor for the week and amazingly gave our high energy group some really good listening skills for the Bible stories. There were some exceptions though and that's when the sense of humor came in really handy. At one point, as my co-leader was encouraging the kids to quiet down and "pay attention", one of our more boisterous fellows looks at me in all seriousness and told me, "I'm just not the 'pay attention' type." Good to know!

2. My next thought is from today when I took Catie driving in a parking lot. It was her third time practicing in the empty parking lot and I must say I am very proud of how relaxed I've been. What she lacks in skill, she has compensated for in carefulness. Until today, that is, when she mixed up the break and the accelerator! We were innocently parking when all of the sudden we're on the side walk and headed for a tree. It wasn't completely a life-flash-before-your-eyes moment, but it was close!

3. We joined the Partners in Christ fellowship group for camping at Hende Woods this past weekend. It was so pretty and so much fun being with great people. Getting to meet my little grand-niece, Taeya, for the first time as well as spend more time with my little grand-niece, Bekkah, made it oh-so-sweet. (I'll have to post some sweet pictures of them, although you can check out their mommies' blogs and see quite a few.) Oh yeah, it was fun seeing their parents as well! Anyhoo, we were the old folks with old kids. While everyone else was up and running at the crack-of-dawn, my teens were still snoozing at 9:00. This picture is of some of the Boyd boys staking out our trailer in hopes that Johnny would be up to play with them soon. The quick checks began at about 7:00 and continued about every five minutes, but after a while, they just stayed. At one point, when the boys were peeking in the window next to Johnny's bed, Johnny created quite the stir and I could hear Joe saying, "He rolled over! He rolled over!" Scott tried to tell the boys that someday they would want to sleep in too, but they couldn't believe anything that crazy!

4. The next memory, also with a picture, shows Beamer sporting his newest hat. I love the "Sausage" motto on the brim. Not only is Beamer built like a sausage, but ever since Ando posted a commercial about dogs being able to talk, we have associated "sausages" as Beamer's most likely thoughts. He looks pretty cute doesn't he. We took him along on our camping trip and like several of us humans, the silly boy got carsick both coming and going.

5. My last thought is centered completely around this picture. Sam asked me to take it at our ISP orientation barbeque last night. After taking it, he wanted to know if I'd post it on my blog. I told him I'd post it if he'd comment. So there you go Sam -- I've fulfilled my half of the bargain!

I find myself wishing I had a couple more months of summer to gather a few more handfuls of memories. Who decided August was a good month to start school anyway???