This week we said goodbye to a dear elderly man at our church.  He crossed over to the other side Wednesday.  He was such an inspiration to everyone, always giving a word of encouragement and exhorting us to keep pressing on in the Lord.  When he would come to church, which he and his wife were faithful to do, he was like a ray of sunshine, with his handshakes, smiles and greetings being spread around.  And love.  You always felt loved by him and that he cared about what was happening in your life. He died from kidney failure caused from diabetes.  He was 77 years old.  I feel like he was a man who lived a…

What a great time our family had this week playing a game together.    My dh had the most fun…    Ten minutes later he was still having the time of his life… And by the end of the game he had collapsed with the sheer delirium that comes when you’re having too much fun. I confess it was me that came up with this fun evening. (blush)  If you would like to duplicate our rousing family night all you need is.. Monopoly + 7 noisy, you-have to listen to me, got-to-tell-everyone what to do, highly distractible players and you’ll be guaranteed  similar results. Here’s to your family night…  

We made it to TeenPact in spite of our creek!  We thought the water had gone down enough but we didn’t know it had actually washed out part of it; so, when we started to cross over Monday morning, we got stuck, as this picture atests. It took us about an hour to get out – we had to use our neighbor’s backhoe, but finally I was on the road with my two boys, Seth (17yos) and Zachary (15 yos). TeenPact was a great experience for the boys.  They both were not too excited about going but once there, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves.  There were about 80 kids involved and they…

Yesterday, we had quite the adventure.  While gone to church and a nice 2-hour lunch afterwards, the creek that we have to cross to get home, started rising from all the rain we were getting.  My dh did not feel comfortable trying to cross without someone being on call in case we had trouble, so we prevailed upon a neighbor (who lives 2 miles from us, but he’s our closest neighbor) to stand by with chains and ropes if we should get stuck, or worse, started getting washed downstream.   My two oldest boys were in Tucson for the weekend, so it was just my husband, myself, 4 of our children…

Yesterday, our local homeschool group had their spelling bee, for which I’m the coordinator.  We have two bees, one for grades 1-4 and another for grades 5-8. I’m pleased to announce that my own dear Serenity won 2nd place for Grades 1-4. I’m so proud of my little girl and all the kids who participated.  It’s hard to get up in front of everybody and take a chance that you’ll spell a word wrong.  There were kids there who probably can spell fairly well but was out on the first word.  Nerves can do those kind of things to you. Serenity is pretty quiet but yet she was brave enough to…