Too Much Time Has Passed

So much for writing once a week. A lot has happened since my last entry. The sad thing is that Vince's mom passed away on June 16. She had gone in for open heart surgery. She was having two heart valves replaced. She made it fine through the surgery, but during the recovery, she began to lose ground. So she passed peacefully and in no pain to which we are grateful. But we miss her terribly. When I see pictures of her, I always get a little blue. Praise God we do not grieve without hope. We know she is in a better place, but we were just not ready to lose her.

We had Camp Create the very next week. If it hadn't been for my friend and Camp Create guru, Deana Cox, I never would have made it. She just took over when I couldn't be there and everything went so well that week. We had a great team from Wisconsin that helped us with the camp. It was a great week for all involved, children and adults alike.

We also took some children to Student Life for Kids camp. It was an experience driving six hours to Shocco Springs in Talledega, AL with six kids in two vehicles. It was a great camp, though, and I know Anna Marie enjoyed learning more about God during her week there. They are all ready to go back next year and are already thinking about who they are going to invite. Nathan says he's not going, but maybe we can wear him down.

The other week, Vince and I went to Orlando, FL. He is a NASA Space Flight Awareness Honoree. This means they go on and on about how he helped them get the Space Shuttle up and running again. He was given a model of a space shuttle, they flew us to Orlando and put us in a nice hotel, they threw a big banquet for all 800 honorees, they gave him a nice framed certificate, and they gave us a tour of Kennedy Space Center. The only thing they couldn't do for us is let us stay for two weeks until the shuttle launched (nearly two weeks late). However, we can return (on our own dime), and they will take us to the site where we can watch another space shuttle launch. The next launch date is December, then sometime in February. Hmm, February in Orlando sounds pretty nice. What do you think?

At Crosspoint we are starting our building campaign to raise money toward building on our property. It is an exciting time. We are also growing by leaps and bounds. We had 86 people in the second service in the children's building! God is good! Now we've got to get creative with our space because we have precious little of it when we have that many bodies here.

Check out www.mycrosspoint.org for the latest sermon series. There is a video vault with some of the intro videos used to introduce the sermon of the day. They are really cool and great fun to watch. There is also a story about a young couple in our small group. Very good.

Well, I'm at work, so I'd better get to it. I want to get done some time today.

Walk Like an Egyptian

Egypt is a pretty "hot" topic lately, especially if you talk to Mom. Apparently she had a wonderful time climbing around on the ancient pyramids. I'm sure glad she got to go. I'm doubly sure my children would've like to have gone. They were fascinated by the study we did on Ancient Egypt a couple of years ago in school. I wonder if Mom learned how to walk like an Egyptian. Hmmm!!

Possibly the heiroglyphics looked something like this. (Translation: Possibly the hieroglyphics looked something like this.)

Well we had a wonderful Easter here in sunny, hot, and dry South Mississippi. If any of you "northerners" have any extra rain you could send down here, our flowers would sure appreciate it. It is abnormally dry here. The dust is driving my allergies crazy. The children are even starting to sneeze.

At Easter we had several relatives and friends over for a home-cooked meal. There was Vince's mom and dad, his sister and her family, Uncle Forrest, Aunt Elaine, Belinda and Mikell. We also invited Katie to come. She is far away from home and was very glad to have something to do instead of hang out in her RV. We ate brisket this year along with various and sundry side dishes, casseroles, and salads. We had a couple of choices for dessert, a chocolate cake and strawberry trifle. Yummy! The annual Easter Egg Hunt followed. The children were searching for a whopping 112 eggs. Wow! They found them all (thank goodness).

I'm sorry it has taken me a long time to add to this. I guess if you never read, you'll never know what fun we have here. I'll try for once a week. We'll see how it goes.

Rainy Saturday

Today is going to be a "duck" day. It isn't even 10:00 a.m. yet and already it is raining cats and dogs. The forecast calls for rain all day. I don't know about you, but I get kind of lazy on rainy days.

However, I cannot be lazy. I have lots of good things to do today. I'm taking a meal to a new friend. Her name is Nichole and she is from Iowa. Her husband is deployed, and she is home with her little boy. I'm sure she is missing him just like all my other friends whose husbands are deployed. Anyway she recently had surgery and her little boy may have CF. They are still in the "finding out" stage of diagnosis. I think her mom has been helping her these past couple of weeks, but our small group wanted to bring her a couple of meals to relieve her. It's my turn this weekend.

My friend, Marivic, just got back from Virginia. She has been there since the storm. She has been going through chemotherapy for breast cancer. We are having a welcome home party for her today starting at noon. I'm sure she will be so tired. I hope, though, that it will be a good day for her.

Well I must finish my chores and cooking for Nichole. I will write some more later. Check out the link if you haven't already done so.

Sunday (and other days, too) Musings

Today was a great day at Crosspoint Church. Even though I had forgotten to finish my Power Point show for G-Force and had to put it together last minute, I still got it done in plenty of time before G-Force started. God is good!

Then Anna Marie and I had to keep preschool during worship. Normally, I would be dreading it, but I had decided that we were going to have kind of a schedule broken down in 15 minute increments. I had 10 kids and it worked out great! We got a lot done and the kids had a lot of fun, too.

The preceding two paragraphs were written on Jan. 29. It has taken me this long to get back to this posting. I need to put it into my routine I guess. I have added a link to the blog that all my girls need to check out, esp. if you have issues with your house. As in, you have a hard time finding time to clean it and de-clutter it. I just discovered FlyLady about a month ago, and I am recommending her to all my friends. I figured I'd let my relatives in on it, too. It's worth taking a peek at. Have fun!

We have been very busy lately. Now that I'm being paid by the church, I feel I need to be in the office more. So I go each afternoon usually after lunch and stay about 2 to 3 hours. The kids bring things to do (books to read, games to play, etc.) Wednesday is "stay home" day. I generally do a lot of my cleaning and occasional chores then. We also do piano lessons. Just my kids. I don't have time to teach other students right now.

We are waiting to hear of the arrival of Travis & Christy's baby. I have been thinking about them a lot this evening. I hope all is well there.

Well, I will sign off now and try to be more regular in my writing.

Katrina