One more for July!!!

I can't believe July is almost over! It seems like we were just celebrating Christmas! This year is flying by... or maybe it is just because I am getting older! Speaking of Christmas, I am going to get shopping done early this year!! I want to enjoy the season. I know, I have a while, but it will be here before you know it. I've already ordered more Christmas music. Jim Brickman just put out a new cd, and I pre-ordered it.

Anyway, last Sunday (yes, a week ago) we finished up camp at Big Sandy, TX. You can see pictures on the Pilgrim Nazarene website, as well as watch video or listen to the services. I am putting some of my favorites in an album below, most are taken from the website.
On the PNC website, there is also a link to Andrea's CarePage, Troy and Jenn have been faithful to post updates, so we know what is going on and how to help pray. My heart just goes out to them all. Andrea is having a hard time with all the "pokes." But she enjoys visits from the "Toy Man" and family and friends.

Our church is doing a "Summer Bible Club" next month. I will be busy with that - I am using my program that I used at camp. We are praying that this will be the start of a good kids program and bring in parents as well. We really want to build up our church.

I guess I don't have a lot of other news, and I haven't spent a lot of time philosophizing, so you don't get any deep posts for now... maybe later. I have spent my "deep" thinking on my other blog. I did a lot of study on modesty for Sunday School, and I felt that the Lord wanted me to make available to more young girls. So therefore the blog. It really hasn't caught on yet. I want it to be interactive. I am still working with it, and making it more appealing.

Anyway, here are the pictures:

PNC Camp Etc...

Oh, and check out the poll to the right. It's a fun little gadget! :)

Prayer Request

Please help us pray!! My cousin, Troy, (second or third cousin, something like that) is a minster in Missouri. He and his wife, Jennifer have five children from three to thirteen. Their youngest, Andrea, was diagnosed Sunday night with Pre B ALL Leukemia. Thankfully, this is the form with the highest cure rate and doctors know the most about it. However, she has a rough road ahead. She had surgery to put a port in her chest, a spinal tap, and her first chemo yesterday. The following is a quote that Jennifer put on Andrea's patient update website:

Troy and the kids stayed up for several hours [after surgery Tuesday evening] and played with Andrea then went back to the motel to get some rest. While my mom and I were cleaning up the room and getting ready for bed, Andrea was laying in her bed and she started singing a little kids chorus that I didn't even know she knew. The words are " I am just a child, my life is still before me, I just can't wait to see what God has for me, but I know that I will trust Him and I'll wait to see what life will bring for me" My mom and I felt angels all around the room as she sang in over and over! I believe that God has something really special in store for Andrea's life and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that He will be with us every step of the way!

Please help us pray that the Lord will continue to strengthen this whole family.

Andrea (3) center. Clockwise: Lauren(13), Tyler (8), Luke (11), Troy, Jennifer, Travis (6)

Nothing New....

I know it's been a while since I posted, but all I have to do to catch you up on my life is to quote my previous post " working, knitting, blogging, reading, babysitting, cleaning and the list goes on and on..." :) I'm not complaining, mind you!! I've had enough excitement to enjoy the normal days!! :) My recent fiction reading hasn't provoked anymore profound thoughts, at least none that I can remember. :) Although I do find it interesting the style of different authors, such as transitions between different scenes.

And I have been rereading Created to be His Help Meet by Debi Pearl. Great book for married or engaged women! It is important to remember God's design for marriage and not to get caught up in what this world portrays as the ideal woman or marriage. I've also read a little of the Pearl's book No Greater Joy - an excellent book on raising children. Hopefully we will need the information some day! :) but, until then maybe it will help me with the children I am dealing with right now - babysitting and at church. If you haven't visited the No Greater Joy site, I encourage you to do so... and also to sign up for their free newsletter. It has great articles for couples, families, and about the Bible.

Happenings....

Well, what can I say but, rain, rain and more rain!!! I certainly won't complain about the temperature though. July is usually HOT! I guess when it does stop raining it will be hot. Anyway...

I have been doing other things than just reading and blogging! :) Mark's brother Ryan and his wife Mary came down for the fourth. The rest of our immediate family is spread hither and yon... Mine to Idaho and Mark's to Michigan. I guess they will all return to their homes next week. So what have I been up to? working, knitting, blogging, reading, babysitting, cleaning and the list goes on and on...

Here are just a few picts from the last week:

July 2007

I have been knitting away!!! Some of my projects are classified information. (I have to plan ahead for Christmas!!) :) But I have been doing some un-classified stuff. I feel like I have been knitting tons of dishcloths... I have to keep up with all the weddings!

Here is a basket I put together for my friend Bonnie's wedding at the end of June - we went together with my parents to get some nice kitchen stuff and I made the dishcloths.







I finished fixing Faithie's hat, and of course Gracey has to match! :) Hers is the work in progress. This is a really simple "pattern" I adapted after looking at several different hats online. I just cast on about 70 stitches, knit until it is tall enough, use a three needle bind-off for the seam at the top, and tuck the corners in and tack down. The nature of the knitting on the circular needles is such that it makes the rolled brim automatically (stockinette stitch). I then add the flower and sew a few french knots inside it.

I really love my circular needles... I now use them for about everything - even the dishcloths! :) Since they are connected, I never have to worry about dropping a needle or losing it out of my bag in the car. (I usually always grab my knitting on the way to church.) I guess I have become a "Knit-a-holic" - it is so relaxing and portable and I enjoy making things that are attractive and that people will use.

Happy Fourth!!!!

To all of our friends and family... have a safe and happy Fourth of July.

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! ~ Patrick Henry

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master. ~ Thomas Jefferson

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. ~ Voltaire

Michael W. Smith: There She Stands

More Books.... Second installment

Excerpt two (see previous post): I love the descriptions! This is a familiar author, but a lesser known work.

In 1830 it was a snug little collection of modest one- and two-story frame dwellings whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from sight by climbing tangles of rose vines, honeysuckles, and morning-glories. Each of these pretty homes had a garden in front fenced with white palings, and opulently stocked with hollyhocks, marigolds, touch-me-nots, prince's-feathers, and other old-fashioned flowers; while on the window[sills of the houses stood wooden boxes containing moss-rose plants and terra-cotta pots in which grew a breed of geranium whose spread of intensely red blossoms accented the prevailing pink tint of the rose-clad house-front like an explosion of flame. When there was room on the ledge outside of the pots an boxes for a cat, the cat was there - in sunny weather- stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose. Then that house was complete, and its contentment and peace were made manifest to the world by this symbol, whose testimony is infallible. A home without a cat - and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat - may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

More Books.... First installment

Ok, these aren't ones I am currently reading, but I have read them in the past few years. I thought that I would post some excerpts and see who can guess the authors. (Hint: think old, all over 100 years) :)

This first one is a familiar author and familar story. Any guesses?

The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground which last deposit had been plowed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons, furrows that crossed and recrossed each other hundreds of times where the great streets branched off, and made intricate channels, hard to trace, in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the shorter streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles descended in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear hearts' content. There was nothing cheerful in the climate or the town and yet there was an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavored to diffuse in vain.