St. Jude

My Dad recently completed the Memphis to Peoria St.Jude run. I took the kids to see him off. There were almost 200 runners and 5 of them were former St.Jude patients. It is amazing what St.Jude does and the support this community gives it. I am so honored to be able to support my Dad in this awesome endeavor.

My Mom also took the kids to see his team run when they were closer on Saturday. Elizabeth even helped make posters! She of course had a lot of questions about what Pops was doing. I tried my best to explain that his efforts help make sick kids better and that not all kids are as lucky to be healthy like her. She reminded me of a time when she got sick after eating an apple. I tried to reiterate that these kids are sick all the time. She knew that Pops was finishing his run on Saturday and Friday night at bedtime she still had lots of questions and finally said, "So when Pops is done running all the kids will be healthy?" If it were only that easy. I love the innocence of a child.

A big thank you to all of the St.Jude runners! My Dad always says, "we do it for the kids." You don't have to look very far to realize how lucky and blessed we are, even on our worst days.

New Counter Tops!

A big hats off to Brandon who worked his tail off this week and weekend to get our kitchen project completed in time for Elizabeth's birthday party.

We had granite installed on Monday and because we had already done a tile back splash earlier in the year, we had a little more work to do after the granite went in...mainly add some more tile! There was a lot of grout that had to be cleaned out and it was a noisy, dusty job that Brandon worked on after a long day at work. We cleaned up on Saturday evening, finishing the job a full 24 hours before party time, a new record! Good job honey!

A New View

Sometimes you live with something for so long that you begin to not even notice it. This is what happened to us and our "back yard." Technically we have a field behind our house. It has been used as a place for extra dirt to go when new construction goes up. Unfortunately, it also attracted a lot of other dumping and you could lose a small child in the weeds growing on top of the mounds (well you could lose Jack's frisbees). The neighborhood kids loved to ride their bikes back there and some even brought shovels to make paths. I am glad they had fun, after all riding bikes and getting dirty sounds like summer fun, but it was kind of an eye sore out our back windows.

Earlier this week a bulldozer arrived. My immediate reaction was pure panic, as I feared they were going to start an expansion. I would much rather look at dirt piles than new houses, but I got up the nerve to take the operator a cold drink and ask what was going on. Much to my relief the farmer had decided to clean it up and was ready to plant more alfalfa. Hooray!!

The kids loved watching the dozer and tractor work. Grant especially loved pressing his nose against the slider and watching the dirt move.

Blogger help!!

I am hoping that some of you that read my blog can help with an issue that I am having. In preparation to have my blog put into a book some day for my kids I am realizing that I really need to put caption with my photos. I have no idea how to do this and a few of the searches that I did for it get very intense (I am not a computer programer!!)

Do any of my fellow blogspot bloggers have any suggestions?

VBS Funny

VBS Day 3 = Success!!! I kept my distance and she did great! I think she was even dancing and singing a little at the closing :)

Ok, so here is the "funny". Yesterday she told me that a teacher said "wheat butt"....wheat butt? wee butt? What??? I had no clue what she was talking about, but the word butt was very clear. I don't like her using this word, so of course she thought it was hilarious that someone else was saying it. I have to admit I was not overly pleased that the word butt was being used, especially at VBS. I asked my friend Jessica if her little boy had mentioned anything about this and she said no.

Last night I am tucking her in and I ask her if she has learned any new prayers that she would like to share. Yes! She breaks into "Jesus loves me" and then stops.
"Do you know the rest?"
"No"
So I continue for her "for the bible tells me so. Little ones to him belong, we are WEAK BUT He is strong" A big case of the giggles follows!

It wasn't "wheat butt" but "weak but!" You can only imagine trying to explain this grammar lesson to a child that doesn't read or spell!!!

Grant even dropped his bottle and started clapping his hands as we sang "Jesus Loves Me!" Too cute! He just wanted to be part of the laughter. I love my kids!!!

VBS Take 2

A Mommy Fail Moment: When as a mother, you know you have screwed up and your child got the short end of the stick due to your actions

VBS went so well Sunday night that I let my guard down during Monday night's session. I had gone downstairs to peak at her and she was doing great. She was well behaved, quietly sitting there, being our precious Elizabeth. So I got brave and said I would help with their pictures. I had helped the bigger kids the first day and Monday was the little ones turn for pictures. Well she was doing great until she saw me. She let me help her with the picture and then when I told her it was time to rejoin her group her eyes welled up with tears. Mommy Fail Moment. I knew better. She was doing fine on her own. It took 20 minutes of water works and coercing to convince her to rejoin the group for the final few minutes. Bless her heart, she did. She sat in the pew and barely participated in the closing songs, but at least she was there and not crying.

The next challenge was to convince her to go back the next day. As we walked out she was crying saying "I don't want to come back." Well I wasn't willing to let her off that easy. I explained that it was my fault and we were going to choose not to cry the next day. We will see how she does. I will be keeping my distance!

BLT's & VBS

Brandon has been waiting, very patiently, all summer for his precious yellow tomatoes to be ripe. This weekend it finally happened! We were prepared. We had stocked up on bread, lettuce and bacon and we were ready for the official meal of summer... BLT's!! They were delicious and worth the wait!


Sunday night Vacation Bible School started at our church. Elizabeth was just a week shy of the cut off, but they were kind enough to let her join. Her friend Gavin signed up too. I was going to volunteer, but asked that I not be in her area or age group. This is the first solo activity Elizabeth has done and she was very excited about it. My friend walked the kiddos into the sanctuary and said Elizabeth was pretty wide eyed! There were about a 100 kids on the first night. The little ones were on the lower level of the church for the two hours and I never saw her. I was very anxious to hear her version on the way home. This was some of the info I got from her:

"We played a game, freeze means stop" (freeze tag I assume)
"We sang a song" (last night she said it was something about Kingdom, today in the bath she said it was about walls coming down)
"We read a book about coconuts and ABC's" (uh..not sure about this one, maybe something is lost in translation here!)
"Gavin whispered something in my ear...we are going to have a special treat"
"We had a snack with marshmallows and lemonade!"
"Can I go back tomorrow?"

YEAH!!! Success!!