Community Life Sunday

This past Sunday was Community Life Sunday. Community is the middle name of our church, Grace Community Church. And we celebrated together.

Hog Roast

Cotton Candy

Photo Booth

Dunk the pastors!

Bouncy House

A fun evening together!

Dad

We celebrated my Dad's 87th birthday this weekend. Here is a picture of him in the highchair when he was a baby.

We wrapped his gift with sumo wrapping paper. Most dads in America watch football or basketball, baseball or car racing. When I was growing up, my dad watched sumo. It was a favorite sport! We even played sumo wrestling on the school playground.

Trying out his new shop-vac. Dad is a joker. He makes us laugh a lot!

Happy Birthday, Dad!! We love you!

Refreshed

Seriously, these next 3 weeks are going to be most stressful.
So if you find me in la-la land, or cranky, nervous, short (in attitude; nothing I can do about being vertically challenged), running in the halls at church, forgetful, ignoring you..... please forgive me.

August is the busiest time for me, especially in preparing the nursery for the next year.

Proverbs 11:25 says, "...he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed." My friends and co-ministry workers have refreshed me lately.

Anbeth and Sarah have been working so hard to staff the nursery for August (when our teachers take a well-deserved break) and for this coming year. They have been so helpful to me!!

Elaine brought me a sack full of fresh peaches (so delicious!!) from their orchard. Yum!!

Here are Gary and Debbe, my check-in workers who so wonderfully welcome the children to the nursery every weekend.

The kids LOVE Mr. Gary. He knows just how to comfort the children. Believe me, if they come crying, he will be able to quiet them down. And yes, Lily did quit crying. It is just hard to have mommy leave at first for some of the little ones. Others come running in and give big smiles!

Debbe called me one day and told me to be ready on Friday. She had a surprise planned for me. She arrived yestereay morning at 8:15 and drove me to Marion, Kansas where I received a full body massage from a therapist she goes to. Oh my goodness!! Aaaahhhh!! Massaging all those stress points.

Then on to Wichita where we spent the day shopping. And lunch at Il Vicino's! We stopped at a knitting store where Debbe was getting some yarn to knit some scarves for others. What a caring, thoughtful friend! I know she was refreshed as she refreshed me, just like it says in Proverbs. What a blast we had!! Thank you sooooooo much, Debbe!!

One of the nursery workers caught this last Sunday.

"Take the bottle Baby!!"

Pray with us as we work to find those who desire to work in the nursery this coming year, teaching the little ones about Jesus, and giving their parents the opportunity to hear about Him too.

We are still needing 11 teachers (some teach every other week) and 8 helpers for the 9:30 and 11:00 services. We are adding a classroom so now we have 6 classes for ages 0-2. God has promised to meet our needs so we trust in Him.

Thank You, my Dearest Friend, for Your refreshing Word that encourages and strengthens me each day!

First Day of School

Today my first grand-daughter, Hannah went to school!
Her mommy rode with her on the bus and Sophia and I followed behind.

Here is Hannah's wonderful!!!! kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Burkhart. Hannah says that she taught the children to remember her name by "brrrr" "cart".

Before all the mommies left the room, Mrs. Burkhart told the children to plant a kiss in their mommie's palm and then to close up all the fingers to capture that kiss. That way, when the mommies would be sad during the day, they could open their hand, place it against their cheeks and get "kissed". And then the mommies put kisses into their children's hands. Hannah also gave me a kiss to take home. And yes, I did use it!

All the mommies and this grandma were in tears.

Good-bye hugs!

There was "coffee and cry" for the moms. Incidently, Sophie spent a good share of the morning crying. It was sad to have her sissie at school. She missed her play-mate. Soon she will realize what fun it is to have alone time with mommy.

Tonight we had a "first day of school" celebration. I LOVE the cake Jill made! It is hard to see the kids grow up!

The rest of our vacation

For the last part of our vacation, we drove to KC and stayed at the:
Our room had a kids' cabin in it. The girls were delighted!

The kids thought it was pretty neat that they had their own tv - which we let them watch early in the morning while we were still groggy and wanted to "pleetle" (I don't know the german spelling for that word - it means to slowly awaken. You know, just lay in bed a little longer.)

The grandkids - you will notice in most pictures that Sophia is a ham.

We took our own food along for breakfasts and lunches. That saved on money. Also, we shared a room with the kids and Josh's shared their room with Staci's folks. We ate out for our evening meals. The first night, we ate at one of my favorite places! It started in Wisconsin. I discovered it when Jill and Adam lived in Green Bay and I would drive the long 14 hour trip there. Culvers is slowly making their way to various states. There are now restaurants in KC and Lawrence and I hope they trickle down to Wichita!

Here are Staci's parents who came on vacation too. Sweet friends!

And Al's brother's family from Pretty Prairie. What a fun party we had!

The first morning there, out of nowhere it began to pour rain. Plans to go miniature golfing were cancelled and we went to the indoor water park instead. It was really good to see rain though. We are parched here in middle Kansas and my plants and lawn are gasping for water.

Silly faces.

The indoor water park was soooooo much fun! Little slides and big slides. Little people things to do and big people things to do.

When the bell begins to ding, time to run over and get doused from this barrell that dumps all this water on you. Better hold on to your top and your britches though! I saw a couple people lose theirs!

Famous Dave's BBQ was another choice of restaurants. Jill had purchased some crafts to use in case it rained while we were at the Gulf. She brought them along and the girls made these crafts and strung some necklaces while waiting for the food to come to the table.

After supper, we went to Cabela's. What a fun place to go!

Wolves scare me! Once on a PBS show, they made the remark that wolves do not attack people. We have 3 separate stories from ancestors who would tell you differently!

We went golfing. It was free because one of the slides was broken and they gave us this in consolation.

Well, while it wasn't the Gulf and it wasn't the ocean, yet it was still a GREAT vacation! Hannah said "I wish we lived here!" I would highly recommend it for families!