Courageous Joy

Saturday – 20 May 2006

I really need to go take a nap (as I’m still not getting much sleep at night) but I’ll blog first and sleep later. Surely Stacia will sleep a bit longer. ONE of her teeth is through.

My day began this a.m. with our DOG bringing me a dead bird. I’ve always thought she had quite a bit of bird dog in her – she points – but this was ridiculous. She just did it again. YUCK. We’ve tried for YEARS to teach her tricks, to get her to fetch etc and nothing…now in her dotage she’s fetching birds.

Today our community hosted the first annual “military appreciation day”. It was awesome. It was held out at the lake. They did a fabulous job. They had those jumpy things, pony rides, balloons, tattoos, boat rides, food, rock climbing and more. I’ll try to upload some pictures later. It was a very fun day. Today is supposed to be over 101* - and I believe it made it – so we went early so that we’d not have to be out in the heat of the day.

After leaving the lake we dropped Jamin off to do another yard. He’s determined. He’ll be calling Town and Country’s offices on Monday to get permission for the three kids to pump gas and wash windows for donations towards their mission trip. The mower broke three times on Jamin. Poor kid. He did get one yard done and he “sorted glass” for another lady. UGH. She has no grass but lots of rocks and glass and wanted it sorted…took much longer than a yard to do and she paid much less. She said she’ll call him again. He plans to tell her an hourly rate or no.

While Jamin toiled in the sun…and Josiah toiled at Chick-fil-A, the rest of us went to check out a campground we’d heard of. We decided it wasn’t very promising. On the way back home we stopped and looked at trailers. We’re dreaming. We did find one that would sleep ALL of us….It’s the 31RQS here scroll to the bottom of the page for the floor plan. It has an outside kitchen, tons of storage ….lots and lots of storage…a room in the back with 4 bunks, a loveseat that will make into a bed, a dinette that makes into a bed and a double bed “suite”. It also has a TOILET! It’s only $15K over our budget – it will be a while before we purchase it…but now we know that trailer exist that can sleep all of us. As we were getting ready to leave we noticed that Zander disappeared. We thought he had run ahead to the van. We reached the van and he was not with the kids. Mike began searching. They finally found him. He’d locked himself in a trailer. The trailer hadn’t even been open so no one knows HOW he got in there. He was hot when he was found…..he said, “I know where I am”….He’s discovered hiding this week and this is the second time we’ve thought he was really, really gone and he was hiding. All of our kids seem to go through this “hiding” phase.

Mike will be explaining the changes coming to the chapel in June at all three services tomorrow. He’s preaching in two of the services, so he’s at the office “marinating” and preparing.