Happy Veterans Day

As I sat at church on Sunday, I reached into my new purse to find a scrap of paper to take a few notes on our excellent sermon on Hope (a welcome message after the elections), no scraps were found as I only move useful things to the new purse and leave all the scraps (trash) in the old purse. What I did run across was a little composition book (the little one that is like less than 3 Inches by 5 inches) that I had covered with cute paper and recorded thought-provoking things in exactly 2 years ago. I cannot tell you what the challenge was in life at that time but my mother had emailed me a couple of things that I felt strong enough about that I created a place to keep them (even hand writing them in it, not just printing and pasting).

Today, on a day we have our thoughts on the veterans that have given tirelessly to keep this country the free one that it is, I thought I would share one of these things from my Thought-provoking Notes book.

"How often do we say we are involved in a project or commited to a project? We may say it about our religious life, our home life, etc. The analogy I came across was both humorous & yet thought provoking. Next time you sit down to an old fashioned breakast of hand and eggs, remember this thought. When you look at the eggs, the hen practiced involvement. When you look at the ham, the pig practiced total commitment!! Are you involved or commited?" (email from Mom 11/9/06)

Wishing you all a thought provoking day as we remember the veterans in the world and those in our families as well.

I Shall Not Be Moved

Mackenzie has really become my singer. She loves to sign and can be caught humming songs most all of the time when she is playing, particularly alone. My sister gave us a great CD called One Voice that is all acapella songs that are found in the songbooks we use at church. The kids previously had some Cedermont CDs that I had recorded acapella for them and they loved those and had a few songs they liked better than others. On this new CD however, Mackenzie has become quite opinionated about which SONG she likes best (track 20, I know). I ask one of the song leaders at church to lead it about a month ago and she was amazed that we could sing it at church. Now she goes to the song leader EVERY WEEK and asks "Will you sing MY song" and they of course oblige her, EVERY WEEK. I took a moment to record a simple vidoe with the camera of her singing this song as we hear her singing it several times each and every day and I wanted to save it for her to see. I had to post it here to share as she is so expressive as she sings - I Shall Not Be Moved.

Best wishes to all!

Church with kiddos

The kids are down for naps after church this morning so I thought I better take this chance to blog for today. They were both very good getting ready this morning and in fact we were ready 45 minutes before we had to leave. I was worried without Daddy's help to get ready we might have trouble but we didn't. They were very excited to go pick up Frances for church and they chatted with her the whole we to Pateros.

Today's class was on Moses parting the Red Sea and they loved it. They have both brought their projects home to show Daddy what they learned. They both broke away from me and went around the auditorium visiting with all their favorite ladies and then came back to sit with me. It is nice that they are getting so comfortable with the people there that they will break away from me at times.

Dave is about 40 minutes from home and we cannot wait for him to get home. The kids will be excited when they wake up to see Daddy home.

New machine @ Store & fun time out with kids

Dave left out of town with a friend last night and will not be home till tomorrow afternoon. We all miss him a lot but the friend was really in need of support and we are supporting Daddy as he does that for his friend. With Dave out of town, I got to go to the store this morning to get the machine for our new 24 flavors of soft serve and get a lesson in how that works. It is quite the machine and I got lots of samples and I don't usually eat ice cream at 11:00 AM but it was good and quite the program that I think will bring a lot of return business once people come in and try it. We have the machine on a 2 week trial basis and that will include the week of spring break here so that should give us a good idea of how well this program would work for us.

The kids didn't get to get out much today as the weather was not that cooperative so we headed to Company Creek Pizza for dinner. Mackenzie had a cheeseburger and fries - with sauce of course and Chase had "new" fish and french fries with tartar sauce. They each played their dollar of quarters in video games. They are still at the cheap age as they think they are still playing even when the big "game over" is flashing in the middle of the screen.

Chase and I spent a long time today working on writing his letters. He finally seems interested in that and is recognizing letters on the frig and putting them together to try to spell words now. His speech is getting much clearer every week and his talks a mile a minute (I don't have any idea where he got that, probably from his Mamma). He called Mamma tonight to tell her that he learned to write his own name today. He now just wanted more paper and more words written for him to copy. It is nice to see him becoming interested in that.

Kids are in bed and I have things ready for class at church tomorrow when we will be studying Moses parting the Red Sea. It think the kids will enjoy that. They still play Moses and Pharoah at home and tell one another to "Let my people go" and play Joseph and the Innkeeper and "sorry no room". They absorb so much of this at this age and they so look forward to it each week. It is a lot of work for me but thanks to Mom and Dad I have materials from the extras they have at Roseburg and it is all put together by week and I just have to supplement with activities each week. It may be a lot of work but the rewards are eternal and I can't think of a better way to spend my time than on my children's walk with God.

One last thing, praise the Lord - Chase is at the end of his first week with no seizure meds and all is going well with no signs of any seizure activity.

Good night and sweet dreams.