Celebrations and a Concert

We went to a baby shower to celebrate Parker!  

Pharmacy staff and spouses with Baby Parker in photo above. 

                            Pharmacy staff plus Baby Parker below.

Parker's mommy is one of Allen's pharmacists and she has been on maternity leave.

The party was at her parents' restaurant in Wichita.  They were so very generous providing such delicious Asian cuisine!

Seems like there are so many babies recently!   We have had several at our church.  I took meals to 3 families with new babies in one month!  Our church nursery is growing!  When I was the Nursery Director many years ago, I asked those who had started our church to quit praying for families with babies!  We couldn't keep up with the growth!  Seems like there is another growth spurt!

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This past weekend we went to the Jeremy Camp concert.  Not sure why an ambulance was parked there?

The Orpheum is an amazing old building!  Such character!

Toby, the guitarist above, is the youngest son of our dear friends, Steve and Bobbie, who are in our community life group.  Steve grew up in Japan and his sister and I were room-mates our freshman year at CAJ (Christian Academy in Japan), so we go way back!

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Another celebration was Mother's Day - My children called me and I also received a beautiful FTD bouquet!  How I miss the children's presence but I am grateful for Facetime and texts and phone calls!  I ended up getting sick in the afternoon so spent the afternoon/evening resting.

I was reminiscing with our daughters how we used to spend Mother's Day going out to eat - just we women!  We had so much fun while the Daddy's were on duty.

Sure miss my Mom!

End of school year

It is that time of year - many end of year activities.  Our Arkansas grandchildren have already finished school and have started summer jobs!  The Wisconsin ones still have a little more time.  Tenley in Colorado finishes preschool next week.  We have several graduation parties to attend next weekend!  Our niece is graduating from K-State! And another niece graduated in Kansas City today!

Our Awana program has come to an end.  How I've enjoyed teaching the 3-5 year old children!

Every week they would find Psalm 119:11 highlighted in the little Bibles we hand out.  "I found it!!"  Then we'd sing the song of that verse:  

"Oh, Your Word have I hid in my heart....

that I might sin against You,

that I might not sin, that I might not sin,

Your Word have I hid in my heart."

Over the 2 year period, these little ones memorize 85 verses and review them too.  I generally had 8-10 kids in my classroom and there were about the same # in the other class too.  I enjoyed teaching the combined classes the Bible story.  They also had singing, puppet time and game time.  I've been teaching since 2009.

Awards night was last Wednesday night.

On Mother's Day, there was child dedication.  I was thrilled to see 3 of my Cubbies up on the stage!  Some were sibling dedications.

"One generation shall praise Your works to another

and shall declare Your mighty works."

Psalm 145:4

My young mother's Bible study group that I co-taught with my young friend Sarah, came to an end in April.  Several missed our last session due to conflicts/illnesses.  Sadness.  We are already looking into what we should study next fall!   We had women from 5 different churches!

I am also in a Bible study with peers my age-ish and we still have a couple of weeks to go before we finish.  We plan to meet off and on through the summer for what we call Coffee and Conversations.

Our community life group from church is taking somewhat of a break this summer.  One of the couples left this week to live in their cabin in New York State for a few months.  

Some of us went to see the production of the play "Voiceless" at the Ellsworth Correctional Facility.  

The residents made the meal and also served it.

The men had to play both the male and female characters in this play.  Great job!  Some of them had LOTS of lines to memorize!

Looking forward to a break and a good summer.  We haven't made too many plans yet, but we are going to be celebrating 50 years of marriage!