Summer Happenings take 3

Well so I turned 30 on July 1st. It was quite a day. Actually, it was incredible...
The day started with a cup of coffee under my nose. RD woke me up and said "You have 25 min. to get showered and ready." So I quickly got dressed. One of my friends (Erin McMillan) showed up at my house before 8 AM. She put me in her car and drove me down the street to Cafe Scramblers for breakfast. When we walked in, my mom, sister, sister-in-law and another great friend were sitting at a table to surprise me. We had a great breakfast together!

Erin then drove me down the street to Kohls where RD and my girls were waiting for me in the parking lot. We all browsed around in there awhile and I got to do a little shopping. Fun for me of course! :)

RD took the girls home and said he would see me back at the ranch. Well, of course that didn't happen. I NEVER knew where Erin was taking me or what was next but we didn't head to my house. We drove pretty much all over town, just chit chatting. We hit up a cemetary and just enjoyed talking for a bit. We ended up in downtown Toledo where we pulled into a parking lot I didn't recognize. She told me to get out of the car and go into the building. (yeah, kind of freaky! Although I figured out it was Grumpys, a super yummy hot spot place to eat downtown Toledo). When I went, none other than Christy Mitchell popped out from behind a menu and said "you can sit here!!!" I seriously screamed. I NEVER thought Christy would drive from Stow, OH and surprise me for my birthday, but apparantly her and my hubby made arrangements. Such a blessing. Such a highlight of this great day. We had a fabulous lunch together, great talks, etc. We walked through Wildwood park for an hour when we were done. Awesome time together.

I then had about an hour and a half at home with NO ONE there but me and the girls. We took a walk which was great. Erin McMillan then showed back up, I thought just to visit for awhile because we were supposedly headed to my brother and sister-in-law's house for a family birthday dinner. When RD got home from work he told me he decided to do something else. So we hopped in the car (Erin stayed and babysat my girls) and headed out to a nice dinner. He took me to Ciao. Of course there was a surprise there, too. Our great friends Mike and Emily Jones were sitting there waiting for us. So the 4 of us dined and had a great dinner together!! (that picture is coming soon).

We headed back to our house after dinner to put the kids to bed. Well....

I was a bit surprised YET AGAIN that like 20 or more people were screaming at me when I walked in my back door. They seriously scared the snot out of me. Friends from church, small group...and my whole family. SO SPECIAL!

Once everyone had a slice or two of cake, a huge book was given to me. Erin McMillan had put together this book for me...her and RD had contacted all sorts of people in my life and asked them to write me a note or something about our friendship, or create a page of some sort to put in it. I have NEVER been given anything like this before. It is something I will keep forever. Erin made it into a beautiful scrap book type thing and it was beyond amazing.

Of course the night didn't end there. At 9:45 pm the few girls that were left after the cake and ice cream festivities took me out to the Docks downtown Toledo where we all enjoyed a martini at the Navy Bistro. What a super fun way to end the night. Loved it. Loved the day. Felt so incredibly special and loved. It was awesome...can't even explain it!

Way to go you two...you made the day amazing. BEST. BIRTHDAY. EVER.

4th of July Weekend...

El went out on the boat with us (we went to the lake)...she stayed up till after 11 that night. I think we set a record for her bedtime. But she truly LOVED the entire display.

Fun times at the lake!!

Deep questions from my 4 year old

(Summer Happenings, take 3 will be posted soon. My hubby has the computer where the pictures are stored and so they are not all loaded yet...maybe tonight?!)

Anyways, El and I were just watching PBS kids. On a commercial they showed someone going on a rocket ship to outer space. Here is what my daughter asked me. I think somehow I have cursed her with a mind that thinks too much about this stuff cause I have ALWAYS been a question asker. But I have not MADE El think about these things?!

El: "So mommy, will we take a rocket ship to God?"
Me: "No El, we won't do that."
El: "Then how do we get up to God?"
Me: "Good question El. God will come and get US."
El: "So once we're up with God in heaven, how long will we be died (meant to say dead) with him?"
Me: "Well peanut, forever. We will be up in Heaven with God forever. But we'll be alive when we're there and it won't be sad at all."
El: "Will we be able to walk and run?"
Me: "We sure will."
El: "So someday we will die and go to heaven? And that means we will be healed up there right? Or do I not know what I'm talking about?"
Me: "Yes El that is exactly right, we will be healed up there. We will be with God and with each other. And that is a great thing, I love that you are asking questions, even if mommy can't answer them all very well."

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I mean for real?!

Summer Happenings Take 2

We took a few days at the end of June and headed to Southern Ohio. Well not too Southern...we started out visiting Mimi in Columbus. We enjoyed some of her fantastic Italian cooking, some fun swimming time in her condo's pool, GRAETERS ice cream (of course), and then our time with Mimi was done.But it sure was great to be together. She is doing ok as far as her health is concerned. Still no significant growth in her cancer, but she is tired and sleeping poorly. Hanging in there, keeping positive, and praying a lot.

From there we headed to Springfield to see Grandpa Snowman and his family. El enjoyed a ride on Grandpa's lawn mower, RD enjoyed 19 holes of golf, and we all enjoyed a nice meal out together.

Just 10 min. from their house was Echo Ridge Farm...a family's farm that is not only beautiful and serene, but the family who lives there (Kyle and Katrine Koehler and their 5 kids) make it the most welcoming place ever. We had an absolute blast. Yes...El rode a horse, Em carried kittens around, we all ate meals together at a table that sat all 11 of us, and yes we also certainly felt our time together was too short. Kyle was RD's Young Life leader back in the early 90s and God has allowed them to be in touch again in the past several years. Being able to talk with them and watch them interact with their 5 children was absolutley incredible.

Summer happenings Take 1

I have been horrible at blogging. I don't think many people even read this blog, it's more for me to look back on later. SOOOO I feel the need to blog and catch up on what's been going on this summer. Bottom line, it's been great. I love being a teacher and having the summers off. I love being a wife and mom. I love that my girls are El and Em...they are precious, they make me laugh like crazy.

Some funny things that Em has been saying lately:

*Mommy, See?!!! (she always want to show me what she's doing or seeing, even if it's literally nothing at all)
*HAAAAAAY (in the most high pitched silly drama queen voice ever)
*Noooo WAAAAY, Ohhhhh goooosh
*(craziest of all....) not knowing what she's saying every now and then, she sounds like Eddie Murphy with a dirty mouth. She is still working on those consonants and vowels!

Some things keeping El busy this summer:
*Swim lessons at the JCC---she has no fear of the water, which kind of scares me
*She loves to ride the jet skis at the lake and always wants to swim at the sand bar
*She rides her bike at least 2 times a day...she is nonstop. Sadly, she had her first hard fall in *June---got a boo boo on her knee pretty bad
*El got to ride her own horse when we went to visit some friends. It was for like an hour--Rd and I and El took these horses out and it was amazing. El had a little help steering the horse by our friend who was on the horse in front of her Here are a few pics from a two day trip RD and I took with the Mitchells in June...

Mud pies

Summer is great because we can play outside. The pool, bike rides, evening runs, washing the car, playing in the sandbox...and playing in the mud. This week El asked me if her and Ems could play in the mud. Why not? I told her as long as she was ok with being hosed down before we went into the house to shower, they could get as dirty as they wanted. So I put on their old T-Shirts and panties and we headed out to play with MUD. Ohhhh the satisfaction in their faces as they were hard at work carving trails, making "piles," and covering their appendages with the goopy, sloppy stuff! I sat watching for awhile, but then something came across my mind as I watched them do this. So of course I grabbed my camera!

Playing in the mud as children is truly innocent. Yes it gets them dirty and gets under their fingernails. Yes it's kind of gross and absolutley an unclean and unsanitary activity! Yes sometimes what one of them was doing in the mud affected the other because it splattered. And even one time I caught El rubbing it all over Ems. Pure joy and totally innocent, right?!


Well I was thinking how playing in the mud is just like our adult life and how we want to pursue and play in the mud, many times this being totally offensive to God. Yes it's gross and unclean to be judgmental and materialistic, but we are. Yes our bad choices and sin are dirty, but we still find ourselves being greedy and impatient, rubbing the mud into our hands/feet even more. And worse yet, just like my sweet innocent El who was trying to "help" her sister get dirty, we rub our mud onto other people a lot of the time. We pull people down with our anger and bitterness. Or by our short and curt reactions to someone when they don't do what we want them to do. We roll our eyes and degrade people, we think we're better than them...and we rub the mud from our hands to theirs...it affects them as well.


Sometimes we're even PROUD of the dirt and mud on us. We look at the mud as reputation building and successful, rather than what it really is; world-loving and distracted hearts and minds from what our true love should be. We shouldn't be proud of our dirty hands and feet.


The ironic thing about this afternoon activity with my girls is that even though I warned them about having to be hosed down before we went into the house, they HATED the process. The water was too cold...or it "hurt" their toes...or it wasn't coming out fast enough...or they wanted to hold the hose and squirt each other.

Man isn't that true of the process of being cleansed by God? Even though we know we need to be cleaned up, it's certainly not a comfortable process. It's awkward, it might hurt a little bit, AND it sure is easier to want to hold the hose and squirt someone else's dirty feet off than to have our own done. But the end result? The point? We become more focused and godly men and women. We can see more clearly when we go to JESUS and have the mud taken off our eyes. And it's right.

A day after making mud pies, after being hosed down and showering, my girls still had mud under their fingernails. And that's TOTALLY normal...those are the "hard to reach spots," right? Ultimately, the only way for me to get that dirt out was to cut their nails, and I did! Cut the mud out. Throw the clippings away. Of course you can see the parallel...sometimes that's what we need to do with things in our lives that are causing us to carry around mud in the "hard to reach spots."

Here's a quote that also came to my mind as I was watching this afternoon activity the other day. Problem...we look for fulfillment in all the wrong places. Just like making mud pies and calling that "fun" (because it IS for a 4 yr old and 20 mo old) rather than really experiencing life. My kids have no idea what all is out there for them to experience. Sadly, we find satisfaction in areas we shouldn't as well. And then when that satisfaction takes us in the wrong direction, we stay covered in mud rather than go to the hose.

C. S. Lews

"We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”