Smart Dog

Michael had a piece of food in his hand and began pacing. Yuuki paced after him. Michael went around the island twice; Yuuki followed. THEN - she turned around and doubled back on him.

 



Smart Dog

Choosing Joy!
©2014 D.R.G.
~Coram Deo~
Living all of life before the face of God...

Cleaning Day

 

And with ANY move in comes - CLEANING. This is magnified if you are moving into an old school building that has set empty for 10 years.  Several of us have already spent many hours clearing furniture and STUFF out of the rooms which are to be our new home, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning....but it still needed a good cleaning.

 

Tuesday Chapel staff will move stuff over from our current facility. A group of us met over at the Far West Campus to clean before the furniture arrives - again.

 

Looks much better with sparkly windows....

 

She's a communication fiend....in contact with grandparents and siblings every day.....on a break

 

The carpets have been professionally cleaned - with a truck. Each and every surface has been scrubbed several times. It still looks old - but at least we KNOW it's clean - right? 

 

I especially loved that this was a joint cleaning project between PWOC and CWOC. I love that - working together for the good of all....

Choosing Joy!
©2014 D.R.G.
~Coram Deo~
Living all of life before the face of God...

"That Place"

Tuesday was spent preparing for Wednesday. Wednesday we left home at 0740, arrived back at 2030, ran out to pick up some donations for the new chapel facility.....

We kicked off our PWOC Bible Studies today. We had a combined study with the Catholic and Protestant women and learned about spiritual gifts and how they should function. It was GOOD STUFF. I should have taken more note of all those saying they have the gift of admin. It's a running joke around those who know me well that  God ALWAYS stacks boards I lead with lots of admin types....and he has this year.  Unfortunately, one of our sweet gals is going home for an upcoming deployment. She's been amazing at her role...God will provide.  One thing we've implemented this year is moving the participation tables to the parking lot and having "greeters." Think the OLD SCHOOL Walmart.  It was fun to see our women out front welcoming new gals.....I smiled when I heard Gen's cheery voice ring out, "Welcome to PWOC" at Rally.

Honestly....God is screaming at me that self-care is not selfish. August has racked up 109.5 PWOC volunteer hours - not total hours; just PWOC hours, we're also moving chapel facilities. The Rally and Kick Off are over. Things should begin to settle down....

But I've not worked out on a consistent basis since right before the Board training retreat..... I realize much of "this pace" has had to do with moving things from two chapels to a new facility, setting up for a new year, having a "retreat" without a retreat coordinator....but I'm aware  God worked drastically in my life to teach me margin and self-care....and I need to do better to carry those lessons into this season of service.....

Not much more to say about the past two days. It's been wonderful. It's exciting to see a new team begin to pull together - I've seen that. God's moved. Women have shared some of  what God is ALREADY doing in their lives this year and it's exciting to be a small part of it. I'm excited about our upcoming studies.... I just know I need to dial back the volunteer hours now that things have "kicked off" - or I will end up burned out as I was 2 years ago - and I'm not going back to "that place."  Or maybe I have gone to the outskirts of "that place," but my eyes are opened and I'm pulling back.

The other big thing happening this week is our Protestant Ministries/Service and some Catholic Ministries are moving into an old school. We've worked a lot already but the final push is this week and next....and then we'll have a spacious facility, in housing with room to grow. PWOC and CWOC meet together here and we've really maxed capacity at both of the current chapels.  We knew in the spring we'd have to make changes or find a bigger place to meet. At that point nothing was on the horizon. We prayed. God was already working to provide the answer.  It's worth a few busy months to see the fruit for the upcoming year.

PWOC and CWOC are women's ministries of the Chapel. Protestant Women of the Chapel and Catholic Women of the Chapel.

Choosing Joy!
©2014 D.R.G.
~Coram Deo~
Living all of life before the face of God...

Hello

Last week was busy (and the couple of weeks before that too come to think of it). This week will be busy. BUT  today was not busy.

I actually got a work out in. I committed to take care of that from here on in.....Self care is not selfish. I've been pushing so hard with every spare kid-free moment that I've not taken the time to work out for about 6 weeks.

Today I got to say HELLO - Holly! Holly is a new chaplain's wife. She and her daughter, Eliza, have driven all the way from NC to CA by themselves!  They're rock stars.  Tim, Mr. Chaplain, is at COT - officer's training school of some sort. This is their first assignment.  When we found out where they were staying we offered to give them a base tour and host them for dinner. The Gherkins were 100% supportive of our endeavors to pull this off. Keep in mind this is MONDAY  - they day after SUNDAY - AFTER a Fall Rally - AFTER a vacation....so um...this house needed some TLC to be company ready.  I was proud we didn't let the lack of fancy food rob us from visiting with Holly and Eliza. LOL I'm progressing in this hospitality thing. I was hardly flustered at the lack of fancy food at all. ::wink::

We had a great time figuring out which base home may be the one offered to them....we even got out and looked as closely as we could. LOL

It's been a wonderful day. The Hellos make the Goodbyes a bit easier to handle.

Choosing Joy!
©2014 D.R.G.
~Coram Deo~
Living all of life before the face of God...

A Weekend to Remember

Friday found me scurrying around, loading the car, decorating for Fall Rally and well - there simply isn't a reason to list all the snafus that eventually resulted in a great event. LOL  I spoke a bit on our local year's theme "Be Imitators,"  "Therefore Be Imitators of God as beloved children. Eph 5:1"  The remaining four sessions were Beth Moore via DVD. I believe we heard a sustaining word - a word that will continue to grow and bear fruit in our lives.

 

Stephanie

Saturday we were back at the chapel by 0715 to set up and be ready for the women by breakfast time. It was a great time.

I enjoyed working well with a new team. I enjoyed hearing women share how God had met them where they needed to meet him.

The chocolate fountain did not work. User Error - I didn't check the auger....BUT we handed out spoons, plates, and put a mess of chocolate on plates with the dippers. LOL Chocolate fondue - a pretty good idea Katie and I had. LOL

Katie and Rachel

 

S'more Bar worked....

At 1500 I saw the G team walking in the chapel....Michael and the Gherkins!  They loaded things into the van to take to Far West. The kids went with Stephanie to play with her kids - we had a party to attend that evening.  Michael vacuumed and we mopped... then we unloaded things at Far West and headed to Father Lowe's for dinner. It was nice to just relax after the busy weekend.

Sunday was church. Always a joy to gather with God's family. I made copies for Wednesday morning's study kick off.   I think I took a long nap Sunday afternoon.

Choosing Joy!
©2014 D.R.G.
~Coram Deo~
Living all of life before the face of God...

The Day After

I still have to blog Wednesday but I have too much to process to blog that tonight.

First days home are ALWAYS nutso but THIS day will go down in family history.

Arielle and I left home at 0815.  We went to the clinic and had another fun doctor appointment. This one ended in the doc agreeing with me and doing some lab work for Arielle. She is doing WELL. She is gaining weight....so since we had an appointment anyway I asked for some testing for her sleep issues. Enough said at this point.

We delivered some items to a chaplain. Headed to Foothills Chapel to check on a few supplies. Went to the commissary and ordered trays for the rally as well as finished buying food.  Took food to Katie, who is cutting up fruit for me!  Took other food to Foothills and put it in the fridges.

CAME HOME....Krista will leave early tomorrow a.m.  While they ate, I did some rally stuff. While they played a game - I did some rally stuff - and that was fine with all of us. We knew I'd have to do a bit of work today with the Rally starting the day after leave.

QUELF

 

Such an odd game....

We watched Mercy Rule together, went to Subways, walked down Plumas Street, visited a Farmer's Market, found a local business that has a fun venue for events and will do tea parties, and went to Dairy Queen.  Stacia has enjoyed calls and texts from Grandmas and older siblings all day. Oh - and sat in the hot tub....time for bed. Krista leaves in seven hours and I need to be up sprinting to the Rally.

Choosing Joy!
©2014 D.R.G.
~Coram Deo~
Living all of life before the face of God...

Tuesday in Carson City, NV

We had no idea we would end up so close to Reno or I would have called Tim and Diann.

We set out this a.m. to explore the Nevada side of Tahoe. We discovered we prefer South Lake Tahoe. I'm sure if we'd drive further around the lake we would have found nice areas on the Tahoe side - but mostly we saw big casinos, fancy house and pay areas. We prefer being able to park our car and hike.

We headed to Carson City to add Nevada's state capital to our list of visited capitals. We did a self-tour through both the Assembly and State Capital buildings.

We walked around the town following Kit Carson's trail. Visited a nice museum and had lunch at 3 p.m. before heading back to the campground. Stacia and I walked through every exhibit backwards - but we got the gist of mining, battles, coins and ghost towns.

The kids had been aching to launch into the swimming pool at our campground - so they spent a couple hours of swimming before dinner.

Dinner was followed by s'mores, Patrick McManus and reminiscing around the campfire. In the midst of it all a new family camping memory was made. I was stoking the fire and heard Zander yell, "Nolan your butts on fire."  Maybe you had to be there but it WAS very funny. I immediately texted the incident to the older kids and Bowers who all remember the "burning marshmallow in the eye incident." Ah - the camping memories.

As we shared camping memories we realized Stacia had never been camping until recently. Zander remembers only one or two trips. It's the way the assignments rolled. We camped when the older ones were younger, and still camped through our first two assignments. Got really busy our 3rd and 4th assignment. We bought the trailer our 4th assignment. We did a bit of camping for that year and then went to Japan - while the camping supplies went to storage in TX. We've been here a year and have been to Gma's homes or TX on every vacation or leave time.  I was surprised when we started sharing camping memories to discover the younger two don't have any.....so now we're on a mission to make camping memories. We've started, "Nolan......."

Choosing Joy!
©2014 D.R.G.
~Coram Deo~
Living all of life before the face of God...