My Cup Runneth Over

This has been an amazing week of revival.

I will not lie, the first 2 preachers we had for Sunday evening, Monday and Tuesday were great story tellers.

They made everyone laugh and we had a great time with some Bible thrown in there.

Maybe my heart just wasn't right with the Lord, I don't know, but the preaching did not speak to my heart.

Last night, we heard God's Word preached through Bro. Guy Roberts.

*You can read a slight testimony on His Precious Gems and scroll down to the post from April 17, 2008.

I knew when he mentioned that tonight's message would be on prayer from Matt. 6, I knew that I would have sore toes tonight.

Boy, was I right.  He stepped on my toes and kicked me in the shins, so to speak.

I needed tonight's message not just on prayer, but coming clean before the Lord.  I will have to add the link to the sermon on here after it is put up on the church website.

It was the kind of message that brought me to my knees, crying to the Lord at the alter. 

It was exactly what I needed, especially with the rough week(s) I have experienced lately.

I really didn't mean to say all that.  My purpose for this post is to brag on my oldest daughter and the youth at our church.

Something amazing happened in many lives last August at youth conference that is continuing still today.

I am amazed at how God has worked in the lives of these teenagers.

Tonight, the teens did everything except the preaching.  Dustin led the music, Mark prayed the opening prayer, J.D. prayed for the offering while the boys took up the offering, Rebecca played for the offering, Mr. Dave had the opening, the girls and the boys both sang wonderfully, and Daniel ended the service in prayer.  Sorry, I probably left someone out, but they'll never see this.

Rebecca played Holy, Holy, Holy for offering.

The Lillies of the Valley singing group

A great group of young ladies serving the Lord with their voices.

*It was Thursday when I started typing so I'm listing it under the Thoughtful Thursday Label even though it's well after midnight- and my bedtime! 

I have so much to be thankful for!

Closet Confessions

 I love reading the blog, Confessions of a Slob.  It makes me realize that I am not the only one out there that is a slob.  I work at it very hard to keep it under wraps, so shhh don't let my secret out.

So every once in a while, I feel the urge to just completely ignore everything that needs to be done, like educating our children, and clean.  I usually get in these cleaning moods when I am procrastinating, but not today.  Today, I opened a closet door and had had enough.  One of my children, whom shall remain nameless, had recently decided to go looking for treasures in the closet under the stairs.  Her idea of putting those treasures away was to just throw everything in there and quickly shut the door. 

This has happened before so it's nothing new in this home.  *See picture below of our school room closet.*

Not a current picture.  This closet has been gutted and looks pretty and organized...
(unless Emily has been at it again with her wonderful cleaning skills recently and I haven't caught on.)

So, school was left to the girls to take care on their own while I tackled the closet.



I took everything on the floor of the closet and chucked it out in the foyer.
 I had the bright idea to photograph it after an hour or more
of clean up so it was originally worse than this!



I did get everything picked up, put away, or thrown away.
It is cleansing when I just purge junk.

Now if I can just figure out what to do with these left over
decorations from Emily's birthday party.
Any takers?

So, not exactly what I had in mind, but if I had a before pic, you'd see a major difference.
Besides all those boxes of Jay's precious stuff that I am not allowed to mess with,
I moved all of the heavy stuff out of there, making our *safe closet* accessible in case of an emergency.

So, yep, that's what I spent my morning doing.  After that, the girls and I wasted a lot of time viewing home movies that were unearthed in the great cleanup.  That was great!  We needed those laughs.

Lesson Plans Are Out

I am a list type of person and have always lived by lesson plans.  Unfortunately, the lesson plans just weren't working for me this year.  Things kept getting pushed back or one of the girls would work ahead, making it full of arrows or eraser marks.  In order to keep track of what gets done on a daily basis, both the girls and I need some kind of accountability.  I ended up going into Word and making a chart with every subject that needs to be done.  We hung it on the wall temporarily and the girls are responsible for filling in their school work after each subject.

I will find a prettier way to display these charts along with a spiffy pen when I find the time.



We don't get to every subject every day and I took this on Tuesday morning
which is why only 3 subjects have been done. 



Just a closer view of Emily's chart.

One of these days, I will get organized and have cute little charts all over my house... probably about the time the girls are getting ready for college.

Punkin Pickin

Rebecca, Niece, Emily

She didn't get that one.

Or this one.

Madison likes this pumpkin.

Aunt Misty found hers.

Decisions, decisions.  Rebecca had a difficult time picking her pumpkin.
She resorted to asking her cousin.

She's no help.  She picked both.

Is this the final one?  There were so many that were *it,
I lost count of which one she actually did pick.

Maybe Rebecca prefers this one instead...

Lunch time!

Short stuff

Posing pretty.

Madison had a blast!

Shooting corn was pretty cool, I guess.

I admit, I used my neice as an excuse to get in the corn pit.
It was fun.

I love her hands in this picture.

I look hideous, but those girls sure are cute.

National Fire Safety Week

In honor of Fire Safety Week, we went on a field trip to the *country* to a small volunteer fire station.

We did the fire station field trip thing several years ago when Emily was preschool aged and I thought it would be a good reminder to do it again.  Reviewing fire safety is always a good idea, huh?

The volunteers at this fire station definitely went above and beyond my expectations.  Although Rebecca was the oldest child at this field trip, she did learn several things about fire safety, like how to use a fire extinguisher, that will surely be beneficial.

Apparently, Rebecca wasn't ready.

Aren't they just beautiful?

Emily had the oppertunity to meet Smokey the Bear. Afterwards, I had to explain who he was:)

She was in a posing mood, always a good thing.





I guess it'severy little boy's dream to use a fireman's hose.
*He wasn't the only man to do this!





The children sat out in the field while they watched a pile of hay burn,
then fireman come barreling down the road, sirens and all.

Afterwards, we enjoyed a picnic in perfect weather with great friends.

Of course, the kids had to let off a little pent up
energy by running around in a large field.