Christmas Party

Samaritan's Purse (http://www.samaritanspurse.org/) is a Christian organization ran by Franklin Graham that provides international relief for those around the world who are suffering secondary to natural disasters, corrupt governments, and other situations. One of the most well known relief efforts of Samaritans Purse is Operation Christmas Child. Each Christmas millions of shoe boxes are shipped to countries all over the world. The shoe boxes contain items such as soap, combs, toys, hard candy, and hair clips. Typically a family will fill a shoe box and drop it off at a collection location.

This year Steve and I hosted our First Annual Operation Christmas Child party. Each family brought 12 of the same item and worked together to fill 12 boxes. We chose to provide for 6 girls and 6 boys ages 5-9. We had the boxes placed on the table and one at a time families came in and the children distributed the items they bought.

We had more kids in the house than we could count...somewhere around 27, which by the way is just the way I like it! We talked with the children to make sure they understood why we were putting the boxes together. Our children know absolutely nothing of poverty and can not even conceive of not having a single toy...comb...or crayon. In our age of wealth and excess we as parents must be intentional in teaching our kids to practice generosity and to develop a compassion and concern for those less wealthy (about 99% of the world right now).

Most importantly, each box contains literature about the Greatest Christmas gift of all, Christ, in the child's native language. Many children hear about and experience this love for the first time when they open their box.

Our good friends, Matt and Sarah with their son Isaac and daughter Gracie, placing items in the boxes.

Happy Halloween!

Notice the scary man in the background.

Lydia has been wearing this pink pig costume around the house for 6 months...finally she gets to trick or treat in it. Joshua had to label all the bones of his costume before we'd let him wear it...okay not all of them :). Katherine loved trick or treating, running up to each house excitedly.

Happy Halloween!

Huber's Farm

Each October we go to Huber's Farm with Steve's family. We eat a great lunch and let the kids play. Following Hubers is the annual Pumpkin Patch Hunt at Steve's parents house. Grandma B. hid 114 small pumpkins this year for the kids to find. We came home with three large pumpkins and 42 small pumpkins! We will be doing alot of painting this week! It is a fun filled day as we also celebrate three birthdays, draw names for Christmas presents, and eat lots of snacks. Some years it is hard to get everyone together, but thankfully, this year everyone was able to come. What a wonderful family tradition!

The grandkids!

Remember when even the everyday, routine things in life were so much fun?

Campbellsville

Steve's job does not often provide much adventure for our family. But this month has been different. He is spending the month of September in Campbellsville. It is a small town in the geographical center of Kentucky (a little under 2 hours from Louisville). It is also the home of Green River Lake which is where Steve has been living. We visited him on the weekends and it provided quite an adventure.

Our first weekend was spent on a house boat. The kids had a blast, Joshua drove us all over the world! In reality, Steve was on call the entire weekend, so even if we had wanted a boating adventure...it could not happen.

Then he moved to a floating cabin. Literally a cabin that is connected to a dock about 30 yards from the rivers edge. We enjoyed a relaxing (that term is relative-relaxing for a family with a 2, 4, and 6 year old) weekend at the lake.
We went to Lebanon Co. Ham Days and the annual Pigasus Pararde (much to Lydia's disappoinment-there were no real pigs), hiked, swam at the beach, and found some great playgrounds; but best of all we spent time with Steve!

Joshua's thinking

I love a six year old's mind! Here are some examples of the reasoning skills of a six year old boy:

Joshua "Grandpa's are always older than Grandmas"

Me "Most of the time, but not always."

J "But Grandpa T is older than Grandma T and Grandpa B is older than Grandma B...and your grandpa was older than Mammie."

Me "yes, but I am older than your dad so when we are a grandma and grandpa, I will still be older than him."

Joshua, thinking very hard about how to solve this issue says, "well, maybe you could miss a few birthdays, then he will be older."

I think he may be onto something really big!

Joshua saw Ice Age for the first time the other day. He wanted to know what was the name of the large elephant-like animal. It was not in his animal dictionary that is about 500 pages thick (I broke my toe on it last week...literally). Anyway, he found the elephant section of his dictionary but there was no Wolly Mammoth to be found. I told him that they lived a long long time ago and were now extinct. He said, "I bet when you were a kid your dictionary would have had a wolly mammoth in it."

Mammie is his great-grandmother. She is 90 years old and his reference point for "old". He asked me this morning if there were dinosaur bones under her house.

Joshua had to move his Behavior Bear to the yellow box at school the other day for talking in the hallway. I asked him what happened and he said he forgot that rule. Not being satisfied with the "I forgot" excuse I pushed him further and said, "Aren't the rules hanging on the wall in your room?" He says, "yes, but my teacher has not taught me how to read so it just looks like a bunch of letters up there. I think by the end of the year I will know what they say." Typically, Joshua would have been devasted at being reprimanded by a teacher but he did not seemed phased talking with me so I inquired about that as well. He responded, "I just don't want my bear in the black box...that means you have to go to the principals office!"

Labor Day

We went to the lake this weekend with Steve's family. We celebrated his dad's birthday and spent lots of time outdoors. We have a cabin but his family is large so we decided to camp in our tent. It seemed to be a great idea at 9:00 pm...at 9:15 when the thunderstorm began, it seemed maybe to not be such a good idea...and at midnight I was lying in the tent with a wet pillow thinking maybe it was a bad idea. However, the rain stopped and the thunder began to rumble a little more quietly until finally at 12:30 am it was over (and I could run into the house to pee!). Anyway, our tent does leak. Not alot, but even a little leak in a few places quickly makes for a problem. Life is a constant learning experience:

• Next time there is a chance of rain...take some towels to soak up the water coming in


• Make sure the all windows are completely closed


• Summer thunderstorms are not always short, but can last a long time...like 3 hours!

We toughed it out, actually, the kids fell asleep quickly and slept through the whole thing while Steve and I contemplated what to do if the tent flooded. We had a great weekend and will definitely camp the next time...a little more prepared. Here are some of the fun we had:

Lydia learning to fish. Of course, her fishing pole is pink!

Steve and I tubing. My brother in law tried to hit some big waves fast to throw us off, but succeeded in only throwing one of our kids across the boat...

Joshua fishing in his PJs, don't you just love it?!