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???