More Pictures from LTC

Checking out the hotel room.

Outside the puppet rooms.

The kids waiting for Bible Bowl.

Emily's sculpture...

Emily in the room.

Around the atrium area

Our First LTC

The Hyatt Regency hotel where we stayed.

Our competitors--Emily and Jacob!

Wandering the hotel, taking in the sights...

Hanging out in the room.

On the second floor of the hotel....

Waiting for Bible Bowl to begin.

The view from our room.

Elizabeth by the elevator window on 6th floor.

Clay and the kids by the lobby waterfall.

This was our first time to attend LTC, Leadership Training for Christ. It is a competition for all North Texas churches of Christ. The event took 3 large Dallas hotels. Ours was the Hyatt Regency. Never have I been to such a fancy place, and man, was it crowded! Completely booked, was what we were told, mostly with LTC families. The kids in 3rd-12th grades competed in videos, art, drama, filming, essays, puppets, chorus, bible quiz and bible bowl, to name a few. They got to choose what to participate in. The theme this year was the book of John.

It was a bit hard to get to, and once we entered the hotel, we had no clue where our group was, but luckily after about 10 minutes we saw someone from JSCOC. We finally got everything figured out and headed to the room only to discover that Kimberly and Elizabeth are terrified of escalators and elevators--I mean screaming afraid. Made getting to a 6th floor room with a family of 7 loaded with luggage and food kind of tricky. But once we got settled and had Emily's sculpture entered, everything was much easier. The kids watched some teams do puppet shows and we ate in the room. Then from 6-10pm all JSCOC kids did Bible Bowl. After one round of Bible Bowl, Clay took the 3 youngest to the hospitality suite to get snacks and settle in and I stayed with Jacob and Emily at Bible Bowl. They had fun, and said they will do this every year. I think we had some younger kids who wanted to participate, too.

It was kinda crazy, but I was pleased with our kids and their behavior. They stayed with us and didn't wander. It was amazing how many young kids roamed freely without adult supervision.

Sunday night we will have a sandwich supper for LTC awards. I am curious how the Bible Bowl turned out, and Jacob's bible drama video of the resurrection of Lazarus, and Emily's sculpture of the empty tomb. We will be back next year!

Is March almost over???

What a great weekend, but so tiring! We had Saturday Annie practice with costumes and makeup and sets. It was so awesome! I love spending time with people from homeschooling group. They are like family extension. Then we did some shopping,and vegged on disney movies. Sunday was spent with our other family extension-church congregation. Wonderful time visiting and even had an evening potluck with frinds who cameinto town. Tat was really great. So was seeing the youth group boys run the evening service. They are going to be wonderful men of God! After lunch we visited family,and the kids hunted for crawdads in the creek with dad and grandma. W even caught one to bring home! All very fun, indeed. (We released the crawdad in the creek near our house)
Today was slow to start and we all had some crabbiness due to being tired, but we got our work done and chores completed. Now we are resting and gearing up for a library trip before supper. I made calls to Texas reps to oppse HB 188 and the big kids learned about sound. Lizzie practiced reading and math skills and Jordan did a lot of preschool work. kimberly is recovering from ear infections and almost feeling normal. She was in the yard a lot today, but napping now. Lizzie has iced her left foot due to a slight sprain at church last night. It's not too swollen today, feels better.
I just can't believe it is about to be April!!! So much going on! Tis will be a crazy month, but all worth the effort in the end.
Hope your day is filled with prayer and blessings!

What's Going On...

Jacob and Emily sharing the DS.

Jordan working on preschool stuff...

Hamantashen from Purim. Very tasty!

Jordan and Kimberly playing in the yard...

A model of chromosomes in a cell--science, ya know!

Picnic lunch on a sunny day!

Well, I have been weaning myself off FoxNews for a bit. It is just all too emotional for me. I feel like I am watching the Constitution being burned by a bunch of radical socialists every time I hear what our new anti-President is up to with his congressional minion evildoers. Prayer, prayer and more prayer followed by many phone calls is all I can do. But the stress of possibilities is horrible!!! Where in the world can we go live if this country goes socialistic like Europe!!! This government wants to run banks, send everyone to their godless, humanistic indoctrination camps called public school, and run our health care system, take away gun protection, and infringe on our rights as parents and our religious rights! I hate to even entertain the thought of where we might be headed! But God has a plan..it just may not be the one I hoped for.

But on with more pleasant things. Here are some pictures (above) of life the past few weeks. We have been super busy with Annie rehearsals and working on LTC at home. Sunshine and outdoor play are great stress relievers, too! Oh, and per the last post--I am loving the skirts and getting back to my real self. I guess I got overly caught up in "self" the past few years and wanted to feel more modern and stylish ( not that there is anything wrong with wanting to look and feel stylish), but I partially lost sight of what is most important--pleasing God in my appearance and in all I do. So I should probably say I'm sorry for the first paragraph, but I think God might share my feelings so I won't apologize.

Well, that was far mor random than I intended, but I have extremely strong feelings about the future of this family and this country. I know about half or a bit more of the country agrees, while the other half sides with the new administration. But only in America can we speak our feelings without persecution--so far.

Please pray for our leaders to turn their ideology to what would be pleasing to God, and for them to stand up for freedoms rather than trying to squash them, and not try to control citizens through government. Pray for America to remain a free country.

Annie and other things

Well, I was really hoping to post a video from last Saturday's Annie rehearsal. It was sooooo gooood! Maybe I will get some more video this weekend and be able to post it. The homeschool group I belong to has about 96 families, give or take, with collectively over 300 children. About 36 of those families participate in our co-op and about 40 of those co-op kids, all homeschooled, are putting on a production of the musical, Annie, this spring. The show is going to be fabulous! Tickets will be $5.50 each and can be purchased shortly at www.chefsupport.org. They will also be available at the entrance on show nights. In fact, the video I tried to post is on the CHEFS website under the topic "Annie". The video and sound aren't quite coordinated, though. Still, you hear the kids singing and see them practicing the NYC number.
On a completely unrelated topic, I have been (as always) trying to make sure I am pleasing to God in all things. So for some reason modesty has been on my mind. I do not condemn pants, except really tight, and short ones, or skirts, unless they are above knee. We do not wear traditional swimwear with high leg cuts, and do not wear sheer stuff, extreme low cut tops, strappy tops, short shorts, short skirts. But for me, I have decided that I need to be more modest than I have been. So, I packed up the jeans that were totally fitted, and some of the pants, got rid of all the skirts that were immodest as I sat (above or at knee)and made sure I had higher neck tank tops to go under all questionable tops. Now I am on the search for long skirts. I used to have many, but over time they got ruined or given away. My feeling is that I need to not show my figure to draw attention to it, (not that it is anything much to see), but that it would be non-attention grabbing and covered. I especailly feel the need to do this as my girls get older, and my boys. They need to know what is acceptable and covered so as not to lead themselves or others into temptation. If I want them to behave in all purity as they should, they can't be immodestly dressed. And I have to set the example. Not that we can't be stylish and colorful and pretty, I just don't want us to be dressed so males say, "ooh, she's hot!", but that the godliness shows more than the figure. Still working on this transformation.

Jordan turns 5!!

We are taking a short trip down memory lane with our adorable Jordan bug!

Typical Jordan face!

Loving to spend time with big brother!

Enjoying a good book.

And asleep with a sucker!!! Too cute!

On the day of his party, he hid behind dad's leg while we sang to him.

Then the little sister joined him for some mishcief.

And presents were opened.

I can't believe Jordan is 5!! He was my baby boy, and now he is almost ready for some schoolwork! He is so smart and very handsome. A real treat, he is. He can also be a class A stinker when he has a mind to! He has had my heart racing more than any of the other kids, I think. He hides, escapes, plots, sneaks, grins and is generally mischievous! But he is as sweet as a big puff of cotton candy and as cuddly as a favorite teddy bear.

He picked out lots of guns for his birthday. He loves guns: star wars guns, water guns, toy old west guns, pirate guns, nerf guns and others. He also got a new sleeping bag, which he loves, and a star wars costume and star wars t-shirts. He is not one to like being the center of attention so he was very quiet, but he had fun. Don't grow up too quickly little boy. You are precious!

King Tut

Tuesday we took Jordan to see the King Tut exhibit in Dallas. I hate going into downtown, and all that traffic. I am just not a big city person. The exhibit was really interesting and I think the kids liked it, but the staff was horrible. Our kids stayed right with us, weren't

loud, didn't push in from of people. However, Emily accidentally touched the 1 inch thick glass enclosing one of the displays and a guard immediately got all over her about not touching anything. Mind you, there were no signs saying do not touch the glass, and it was an accident. Then we went to a different part of the museum to a light display and the kids were in a light changing room. They were excited and all talking to one another about the cool colors and a guard came to tell us we had to be quiet, and that we were way too loud. Then we went to view paintings. There was a ledge under the paintings about 3 inches off the ground and about 2 feet deep. The little kids stepped on the ledge to see the pictures better and 2 guards came running over telling them to get off and stay off. Then they followed us through 3 more rooms and kept making comments about how they couldn't believe the kids had done that! Mind you, again, there were no signs. We decided we better leave. So we go outside to get a picture with the big statue in the photo above. You can see how far we are from the entrance, right? We are only about 20-30 feet from the street. When the kids sat on the edge of that rock ( for a picture) that the statue is on, I kid you not, a woman came RUNNING from the entrance yelling at them to stay off the statue! We were the only ones in the entire courtyard! I was never so irritated! They were all so rude to us and acted like they didn't want kids there. We asked the kids if they liked the exhibit. They said they did. We said, "Good, because this will be the last time we ever come to this museum."