At My Church Yesterday!

Going to church is always enjoyable. I love the particular congregation I'm a member of and the way they have welcomed and loved on my family for the last six years or so.

Yesterday, during the worship music time I notices so many neat things. Really, I wished I had my camera, although I debate the merits of taking photos during worship. But to keep my thoughts organized and preserve the moment, during offering time I jotted down a few notes to share.

• Children (mostly boys) were spontaneously dancing and jumping joyfully during the singing of These are the Days of Elijah - They've all gone to camp together and learned the same motions and dance moves, and can't resist using them when singing that "rockin' song."
• My niece Danielle wrote "I love you God, always" on her bulletin cover - not bad for a 6 year old!
• We prayed for orphans since it was Orphan Sunday across the country - and we honored adoptive families, and we have a lot of those in our church.
• The worship team drummer was barefoot - is every Sunday. And sometimes he jumps over the chair in front of him during prayer to get up to the platform after the sermon - but only if there is nobody in that seat.
• Speaking of the worship team, our electric base player is also the electric keyboard player, and yesterday she played both in the same song - although not at the same moment.
• We had a college age guy with dreadlocks and a college age girl about 7 months pregnant with no husband, and they were welcomed and enjoyed.
• We honored Veterans, including an Iwo Jima (sp?) survivor who was wearing his medals - my husband commented that he was amazed at the percentage of men in our congregation who have served in some capacity.
• I saw spouses holding hands as they sang.
• And college age daughters holding hands with their mothers.
• One of the men there is the father of a child in a case where Andy represents the mother - but we can still exchange the warm smiles of fellow Christians.
• Because we have a Life Recovery Group hosted at our church, services are often attended by people battling sever drug addition, and particularly men who are in the "Pre-Release" program at the jail.

Frankly, I could go on and on. I'm sort of proud of my church. Not because they have the best music (although I really like the music), and not because we have the biggest numbers. No, I'm proud because when I am there for worship on Sunday it is easy to see the love of Christ between people, and the comfort of the Holy Spirit in people's lives. Because my husband is a criminal defense attorney I sometimes see people there and know more of their story then they might be comfortable making public - but I keep my mouth shut and just celebrate the fact that they are there and the Lord has the opportunity to work in their lives.

So that is my post about my church. Sorry no pictures. I just don't have the nerve yet to take pictures during the worship service.

Kittens, sheep and a turkey

We went to my friends house meet our soon to be family member:

We can't wait to bring our little baby home in about three weeks.

Along the way we met some siblings of our new baby:

And we were introduced to this gentleman:

And these fine ladies:

It is always so fun to go to Tamara's house! J loves playing with her son! We had a great time, so thank you to Tamara and her three beautiful kids! And thank you for the eggs! We love farm fresh eggs!

My boy called me to the front porch yesterday evening to take this picture. He has an eye for what is good! I just wish I had the skills to get it right!

The light of the moon has blown out the branches that we could see in front of it. I just didn't have time to play with the exposures, etc. Maybe at the next full moon.

Thinks I'm thinking about:

• Want to get to the project I need to do for a Keepsakes Event in early December, but I've got much to do before then!
• I finished all the time sheets and got them mailed off yesterday - boy does that feel good.
• I was pretty tired last night, and my hands ache, so I'm fearful of the dreaded mystery disease coming back, but I'm trying to be courageous and just keep going.
• A lot of time needs to be spent editing photos over the next few days! Time to get at it!
• I'm making progress on several projects I want to do for Christmas - have two completed and seven significantly progressed. Guess that's pretty good, except I want to work on those instead of photos - responsibilities first!
• It is probably time to get out and do some exercise - soon! Like this afternoon, with J, after school. It's a date - hope he wants to come along!

Have a Great Wednesday!

Oh, and please pray for Michael Jullian, a one week old baby of my cousin and her husband, who is in the hospital because he's projectile vomiting and not keeping any food down. My heart goes out to them, as I am certain this is a very stressful time. God is good, and will provide what is needed here, but He loves our prayers too! So, please, a little time on our knees is appropriate!

Randomness!

So, it's the second day of November, and things are humming along here.

I feel better. Yep, completely better. Since mid-July I struggled with mystery disease that caused extreme physical fatigue. Now, I don't. Deserves a post of its own some day, so I'll think about how to do that. Just a hint, prayer is a big part of this story!

Last Friday was the recitation at J's school. He had a big part in the Latin class' play:

And his forth grade class recited "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" - a very exciting poem, I might add! It was wonderful.

Sometimes people who don't really know much about our school assume it is a serious and relatively unjoyful place because it has high standards for character development, behavior and academics and because any school that teaches Latin to elementary age kids must be terrible, don't you know. But I think the sheer glee in this young man's face (below) is evidence that we are not unjoyful, and the tie is absolute proof that we are not overly serious.

This young man was part of the fifth grade play which was absolutely hilarious! Those kids have them some dramatic flare!

It was so fun to see all the kids reciting poems, performing in plays, and having a great time showing off their wonderful knowledge and skills! I LOVE this school!

J is home from school today - parent teacher conferences - and has a little buddy here to play. They are tromping around in the brown fields looking for things to shoot with the bow and arrow.

We had a wonderful dinner with friends over last night. Fellowshipping with dear friends just warms my heart and reminds me of how good God is. Just think about it: he made us social beings to be in relationship with people. What a gift that is!

On my plate this week:

• Andy's time sheets need to be turned into office billing and submitted;
• Hoping to get a peek at the kittens our friends' cat had a couple weeks ago - so we can pick one out to be our own when it's old enough;
• Going to a friends house to help plan a scrapbooking/papercrafting event;
• Dinner at my sister-in-law's house (I'm to bring dessert, and my boys want a pumpkin pie);
• Working on the five crowns I'm making and Christmas gifts for J and some of his cousins;
• Hopefully re-instituting a daily walk for exercise!
• Finishing up my last senior photo editing and moving on to editing some family photos I've taken over the last many weeks - I'm still behind in editing (see mention above of several months of fatigue), but I'm catching up, and that gives me great hope.
• Getting at least one, and maybe as many as four more trees to cut up for firewood.

Whew! That's a fun week, but probably kind of busy too.

Hope your November is off to a fantastic start!

Halloween Costumes!

Here it is for all those interested to see.

J wanted to be a ghost like the one in Charlie Brown. We had lots of discussions about our limits on scary costumes, and came to the conclusion that this was okay. Andy and I draw the line at blood and gore, and at mysticism. This is about as close as he will ever get to that. But, I was concerned about how KKK it looked when done with white, so we got some grey fleece and covered it with spider webs and bat lace. He love it.

And it was nice and warm!

Our friend NM joined us for trick-or-treating, as that is just how the day worked out. His family was hit with H1N1 this week, and he is better, but easily tired. He's wearing part of J's costume from last year, which is what we had that would fit him. He seemed pretty happy with that!

We joined a cousin and her family (she was a beautiful queen, but I do not have a photo to share) and some friends (the dirty laundry basket for one, and super girl for the other) and off we went on a relatively warm night here in the greater Bozeman area. Lots of fun for every one.

Happy first of November - refermation day for many, Day of the Dead for those of Mexican descent, and generally the first day of Christmas preparation panic for me. Oh, and I'm so excited for the extra hour today! Yahoo!

Seniors

Just sharing a couple - three of the results of my senior photo taking this year.

Two more seniors to finish - by the beginning of next week!

Then it's on to family photos for four families.

Busy with photos is fun and exciting.

And also a bit of pressure because I really want these photos to make my clients happy.

That takes time and attention.

Time and attention that can't be focused elsewhere!

To give time and attention I need to be organized.

And there in lies the issue - I need to be more organized. But with so much on my plate it seems an insurmountable task. With out prayer it is.

A Prayer:

Thank you God for all my many blessings. Please give me the insight to see them as blessings and not just as another thing on my plate. I humbly ask for the ability to prioritize in a way that brings glory to you. And then to let go of the things that won't bring you glory, knowing that when the time is right you will bring them to me in a way that can glorify you. Please grant me peace to do my work in your name! Amen.

And with prayer, I head off into the rest of this day, joyful and hopeful that God will be glorified in what I do, and the priorities will be where they need to be.

Smells good here!

Making bread today to go with the homemade chili for dinner.

Spent the weekend quietly allowing J to recover from a cold. I don't think it was the flu, but he was pretty happy snuggling up at home most of the weekend. He did go out on Saturday afternoon with his dad to cut down a tree. But otherwise he did a lot of this:

He's really into crafting and drawing and painting these days. And he got out his legos this weekend, which is really rare - he's not generally inclined towards activities that take small motor skills. But he's having a spurt of it, and I'm over joyed because he could use development in that area so that his handwriting can be smaller and neater.

I did some crafting too:

Actually, those were done on Thursday when I had my friends over for some crafting - hi girls! It was fun! I'm focused on using up some of my "older" papers, and finding that I have some treasures I'm excited to work with in my stash. Probably only need to be adhesive for the next couple of months, and that just might fit in my budget - adhesive above the black line, new papers and embellies BELOW!

I did more scrapbooking over the weekend, but they are as a gift for someone so I can't show them. Let me just say I'm keeping them very simple because I think that is what will be the most appreciated. Not my usual style, tons of photos per page, minimal embellishments, and surprisingly satisfying! I am going to do some similar for myself for those series of photos where I just want to get those family photos and stories archived in a way that they can be passed down to future generations.

That's Not My Job!

This boy really is so wonderful!

But, he's nine, and there are some little annoying habits that he and I have gotten into lately. So, I'm going to put a stop to it by no longer doing things that are not my job.

It's not my job to nag him in the morning to get everything done. What is my job is to make sure he knows what is expected, and then let him experience the consequences when he doesn't meet expectations. I'm done with "warnings" which are really just a euphemism for nagging. I'm done with "reminders," yes, just another euphemism for nagging.

It's not that he was suffering from a bad attitude in the morning. In fact just this morning I was musing about how he is so cheerful in the morning, especially compared to the complete grump I was before school at his age. It is, however the fact that he is rather happy go lucky in the morning that leads to some of our problems. He's so joyful that he kind of wanders around the house aimlessly.

The one with the bad attitude is me - after nagging all morning, I'm not really very nice anymore. I want to be nice. I want to be peaceful in the morning. I want to start the day off right.

So, under the new plan, if he hasn't brushed his teeth, fed the dog, put on his belt, tucked in his shirt, tied his shoes, put his lunch bag in his back pack, or whatever, he just can't leave for school. The "school bus driver" (either Andy or I) will just sit on the couch and read until he has accomplished all of his responsibilities. If he is late, well, there are consequences at school for that - and he will have to pay them.

We've done this for two days, after letting him know that we would not be "reminding" him of what to do. And so far he's made it to school on time both days. But this morning, it was close.

Long term goal: he needs to take more responsibility for himself.

My job is to help him learn that responsibility, not to take it away from him before he's had a chance to master it.