I went for WHAT?

Somebody's birthday is upon us... so this evening I trekked to Big Lots! to see what I could find for a birthday gift.

I have two Fiskars paper punches, and I really enjoy using them, so when I saw these neato paper punches (imitations of Fiskars to be sure, but not in price, cuz these were a mere $3 each!), I couldn't resist getting them. (Click on the picture to get a closer look.)

On a clearance shelf was a bin of ties. Ken has fun wearing ties, which is a bit of a switch for me since nearly all of the 23 years I had my dad, he didn't wear a tie (personal conviction), and my brothers wear conservative to very conservative ties. We've looked for an Easter tie but haven't found one we liked. I thought this one was pretty nifty--reminds me of the hand-painted Ukrainian eggs. At 30% off of $5.19, I couldn't get outta the store without it!

Surprise! I found Herr's potato chips in TN! I had to buy a couple bags just to enjoy the back home flavor. Yummmm...

Found some stamper markers and more nameplates for Tab's school in South Africa.

Asked an employee to reach a couple paint-by-number kits from way up high.

Snatched up 5 rolls of plain brown wrapping paper for $.70 each for the books I'll send out on Paperback Swap.

And came back home with no birthday gift! Go figure.

Blessed are they who having nothing to say...

...shut up! :) (Yes, I've used that line before, but it's true!)

No, I can't accurately report that I've shut up for three whole weeks (I already know you already knew that), but you should probably be glad only Ken had to listen to me! lol

One benefit of not much happening is it isn't hard to catch up on blogging! Oh, it also saves money (read: locksmith).

Which reminds me of our highlight of the past three weeks!! After a second lock-out that happened due to our doorknob flying off and jangling down the front steps but from which we were able to rescue ourselves by reassembling the pieces inside the doorknob and getting it back on the door, we bought a new knob at Walmart for a measly $12. (Something in me wants to diagram that sentence! lol) We've had trouble with the old door knob for years, but nothing drastic enough happened to motivate us to investigate how much a new one would cost because we didn't realize that even we could install a new one! If only we had known, we could have been enjoying our new door knob long already.

Just under the highlight of a new doorknob is a jumble of

• working;
• keeping up with and fussing about 08 election news;
• ranting against all the Chinese propaganda of Olympic proportions (literally!) spued out through the Olympic venue;
• following Michael Phelps' Olympic gold medal quest (Ken is also from Baltimore, so he was very interested... and wishing a little bit that we still lived in Baltimore);
• being stirred up again to pursue making a move to SC (or GA?) which means checking out the availability of jobs, houses, churches, etc. and deciding to sacrifice our "stay-cation" (stay-at-home vacation) for gallivanting to various companies in sundry places. (We will appreciate any prayers for this situation to be resolved and finished!)

I'm not changing my blog into a political soapbox, but today, since the Democrats' convention has started, I've been fussing about election stuff and nonsense. I can't really pin down when I started being somewhat interested in politics. Perhaps an accumulation of experiences drew me in:

• attending Memorial Day and Labor Day parades with my dad and listening to all the speeches;


• shaking hands with Bob Dole when he visited the campus of KCCBS;


• shaking hands with Ronald Reagan at a campaign rally in Kansas City;


• the thrill of casting my first vote (back when they had those massive lever machines--you pulled that lever to cast your vote and felt like you had just changed the world!);


• meeting and campaigning in Dallas for U.S. Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX) when he ran for his first term, introducing him to residents via knocking on doors for literature distribution as well as working in his phone banks (he won in a HUGE upset and then was reelected 8 times before he retired!);


• working the polls several years in both Dallas and Baltimore


• keeping my students in Taiwan abreast of daily American news (actually, my interest probably fueled this flow of information rather than the other way around!);


• shaking hands with Pat Robertson at a Dallas campaign rally--my friend and I stole front row seats to qualify for that privilege (Robertson didn't win, of course);


• attending the historic "Rally for Life" in DC;


• teaching American Government to a lively group of 9th and 10th graders (we spent the first part of every class listening to and discussing the latest news coming in from Desert Storm). Ok, I'll end my list with that.

So what raised my ire today? I'm so glad you asked! :)

1. Tonight's news mentioned this month's Rasmussen poll that revealed an all-time low approval rating of 9% for Congress (which is Democrat controlled) and a tie for an all-time high for a poor rating, 52%... and yet 45% of the American public can hardly wait to resolve such incompetency with what else but Democrats for President and Vice President!

2. Did you catch that the Democratic convention is hosted by a pastor, opened and closed with a Christian prayer, pledges allegiance to the American flag including the phrase, "under God," traipses a traditional family across the stage, and features a children's choir all while they meet precisely to promote candidates who want to remove Christianity from American culture, silence Christian prayer, remove "under God" from the pledge, dismantle traditional marriage and family and promote unnatural, unintelligent unions instead, and continue the slaughter of millions of unborn children as well as some who have miraculously managed to survive the horror of abortion? No worries about separating Church and State--an issue they totally misunderstand*--while "core values" voting Americans might be paying attention! Wolves in sheeps' clothing indeed. Pulling the wool over many Americans' eyes. Dear God, help us!

Blessed are they who having nothing to say shut up. Umm, that was about the last three weeks, not today! :)

* Separation of Church and State does not mean separation of faith and politics.

The mind is a wonderful thing...

It forgets some very important stuff sometimes and then hangs on to some of the weirdest minutiae, e.g.:

My lunch plate "inspired" this post.

I was probably 17 when this happened, but I never eat an English muffin without remembering this episode. One morning I was leaving for school and running late (of course). Mom, insisting that I eat something for breakfast regardless of the time, toasted an English muffin for me, spread it with butter and topped it thickly with peanut butter just like I like it. Yum!

I came out of my bedroom, my left arm and hand wrapped around a stack of books and holding my keys, popped into the kitchen to gobble the first half of the muffin, then grabbed the second half and dashed off. Between the breezeway and the garage of the Beavertown parsonage, was a jalousy door which was a little heavy to move. Carefully balancing my stack of books with one hand and verrrrry carefully holding my peanut-buttered muffin in my other hand, I contorted my pinky finger and palm to fit around the door knob and managed to unlatch the door.

With my pinky finger still on top of the knob, I stepped back, then jerked my arm to swing open the door. When I did, faster than the door could swing, the peanut butter on my muffin fwooped right offa the muffin and onto the floor--still in a circle!! Actually, it was sorta awesome (I hadn't realized until then that peanut butter could do such a feat!) but at the moment, I was late, so it was only aggravating. I hollered to Mom for help, and she came with a rag, pushed me out the door and cleaned up the mess.

Waaaaaaah!

In the hubbub of being locked out and being shellshocked for shelling out the down payment on the locksmith, I forgot...

Last Tuesday evening, suffering pizza withdrawal, Ken suggested we go to CiCi's Pizza for supper on Wednesday. On Wednesday, mouths watering (and, unknowingly, sans house key!), we headed out for CiCi's.

When we turned into the parking lot, our mouths dropped open. The restaurant is closed! The papers posted on the doors state that their 10-year lease here has expired, they may reopen in another location in Blount County and until then enjoy pizza at their Knoxville location.

* sigh * Cheap pizza isn't cheap pizza if we have to drive to Knoxville for it!

Locked out

If you have been following my blog for any length of time, you may remember the hullabaloo we endured over the keys to Pete and Repeat. As a result, we have ended up with four sets of keys. Ken carries keys only for Repeat, I carry keys only for Pete, and we have a set of Pete keys on a ring and a set of Repeat keys on another ring. Whenever we go on a trip, we drive Repeat. Ken leaves his regular set of keys (which are Pete's) in his bureau and grabs the extra set of Repeat.

Due to Pete needing serviced, Ken drove Repeat to work this week. There's no house key on that set, but I work from my home office, so I let him in when he comes home. No problem... yet.

We shopped for groceries the other night and came home to discover that only Ken had keys and the keys were only Repeat's keys. We were locked out! We tried various methods we thought might grant us entrance. Nope! A locksmith was our only recourse.

Thankfully I had my cell phone with me (although it would have been far better if I had had my keys!). We called Pastor Bentz and asked him if he would look up a locksmith in the phone book for us and give us the number.

We called the locksmith who showed up at our door about 10 minutes later. A squirt of WD-40, a few strokes with a tool, a little twist, and the door swung open. Whew!

"Thank you soooo much!! How much do we owe you?"

Do you know how much a locksmith costs? Well, we didn't buy the locksmith, but we surely made at least a downpayment!! $71.01!

P.S. You betcha, there's a house key on that ring now!

Crazy, Mixed-up Vacation (Cont'd)

The rest of the story. (Yep, this is going to be TMI [too much information] for most everybody, but hey, this isn't required reading! lol If you prefer not to read the entire post, at least don't miss our story about Elisha. It's at the beginning of the post.)

Sunday evening we visited with Rose (niece) & Fanie and family. Abigail is Daddy’s girl.

When we visit, we try to bring little goodies for the children. This time we gave each of the girls a little puzzle game (the object is to get two tiny balls in a certain spot in a maze). You can see Liliva concentrating on her game—she mastered it! For the boys, we brought each one a “sticky foot.” Too bad we didn’t have sticky feet for the girls too—they were a big hit! Kezia is experimenting with stretching the “string” attached to a sticky foot.

Daniel’s sticky foot boomeranged and hooked around his ear!

The boys were nice enough to share their sticky feet with the girls. Liliva wasn’t quite sure what to think of such a peculiar toy, but she got the hang of it.

Elisha certainly got into the swing of things with his sticky foot.

His foot dropped off the ceiling and splatted right on his face! “Take a picture!” he laughed. Gladly!

Uh oh! Elisha accidentally let go of the “string” on his sticky foot and it stayed on the ceiling. “Uncle Ken, will you get it for me?” Sure.

Elisha got a kick out of the foot sticking on the ceiling… and looking at Uncle Ken so pitifully that Uncle Ken would get up and retrieve the foot. Again. And again. And again. Finally Uncle Ken told him, “If you let go of the string again and your foot sticks up there, you will have to wait a while for me to get it. I can’t keep getting up and down to pull your foot down.”

Elisha winged the foot to the ceiling… to the floor… to the ceiling… to the floor… to the ceiling. Uh oh! There was that irresistibly pitiful look again. Uncle Ken sympathetically reminded him he would have to wait a while. After the group of us had continued our conversation for several minutes, Elisha came and stood in front of Ken, put an arm on each of Ken’s legs, looked imploringly into Ken’s eyes and said, “Grandpa, will you get my foot?”

We laughed so hard!! I guess as long as Ken was getting up and down, he was Uncle Ken. Once he got too old for that, he was Grandpa! Once we regained our composure, Kezia and Elisha tried to pull Grampa up from the couch so he could get the foot off the ceiling.

Our little buddy, Elisha. Every time we are with him he gives us so many laughs!

Quiet, sweet Liliva. Lotsa love wrapped up in this little gal!

We also gave the kids a story mat. I forget the name of the company that makes it, but it is for Bible stories and the company also makes action figures to go with the mat. I happened to see the mat on a clearance shelf at Wal-Mart… sans action figures. I figured they could still have fun telling stories with it. They weren’t quite sure about that, so Ken demonstrated by telling of the boy with the lunch of loaves and fishes. That was all they needed to get started!

Abigail is quite the young artist! She started drawing and cutting out Jesus, the disciples, the lunch, the baskets of leftovers… soon she was retelling the story. Before long, she had drawn and cut out an impressive outlay of figures and accessories for a number of stories.

While we were eating a snack, Rose was explaining to the children that I am Grandma Becky's sister. Abigail had only pondered that for several seconds when you could see that a light had turned on in her head. Glowing, she announced, "Well then you are Grandma Faith!"

As the children were settling down, the adults started into serious conversation, sharing our hearts with each other about a number of things. Who knew time could fly by so fast?! One by one the kiddos curled up and went to sleep. (They didn’t want to miss anything by going to bed.) We knew it was getting late and we were staying too long even though we only get to talk like this about once a year, but we were still surprised when Fanie said, “I need to leave for work in about five minutes!” Yikes! We had talked until almost 4:30 AM. (I think they have forgiven us for a sleepless night.)

A few minutes after Fanie left, we said our goodbyes to Rose and left to return to Tim’s.

Before we had traveled very far, Ken mentioned that he wasn’t feeling so good and needed a pit stop. Thankfully Denny’s is open 24 hours! We still have no idea why Montezuma was seeking revenge against Ken… but wow, did he ever attack. Ken was very sick all through Monday. Tab called asking if we wanted her to buy us a couple whoopie pies—you betcha!!—but Ken was too sick to eat his (he couldn’t keep down anything he ate). You know you’re really suffering when you’re too sick to eat a whoopie pie!

Andy offered to share his cable internet service with me, for which I was grateful. Several projects had been left in limbo when I had closed up shop on Friday, so I had told the clients that I was going to be on vacation but that I would complete the work and email it to them. They were gracious and said that they could wait until I returned from vacation, but I really wanted to have these jobs behind me when I got back home because other jobs would be waiting then.

Technology is great when it works. No matter what I did, I could only download about half of my emails and couldn’t send anything. I tried several more times throughout the week to no avail and finally gave up (for more than one reason).

Happily Ken improved as the day progressed Tuesday. We decided he had been perhaps too tired or overstressed or something since he hadn’t eaten anything different from the rest of us.

Tuesday evening found most of the gang at Andy & Joy’s for some family time together. Ken and Tony, and later Tim Jr and Tab too enjoyed playing several games of Carroms. Talk about entertaining. Oh, my! Andy got in the mix too sometime. (I think he took Tim Jr’s place after Tim went home.)

Ken ready for action! You can tell what Tony thinks is going to happen.

Kristan is Grandpa Andy’s flying angel. He taught Kristan how to “fly” when she was just a little thing and she can still fly high!

Joy (she and Becky’s Rhoda are the flutists in the family) purchased a small pan flute some time ago and brought it out Friday evening. I bought one very similar to this one several years ago from the Ecuadorians who were playing during the “Festival of Nations” at Dollywood. On the way home in the car, I toyed with it, trying to play “Jesus Loves Me.” I thought I had managed a fair-to-middlin’ job for an amateur, so I grinned at Ken and said, “Not bad, huh?” To which he replied, “Were you playing a song?!” * sigh *

Joy toyed with it for a while, and we actually recognized what she was playing: Jesus Loves Me!

Alicia wanted to play in the worst way, but it wasn’t happening.

I knew we were staying too long again when Mrs. Claus (Alicia) made an appearance in the kitchen! (The kids were playing with a box of dress-up clothes.)

Grandma Joy loves being with her little ladies, Kristan and Ashley.

Wednesday Ken was back on his feet and finally able to eat his whoopie pie! Happy day!

Also we were able to stick to our plan to hear Tabitha speak at the Sunbury God’s Missionary Church about the mission work in which she is involved in South Africa. We let Tab drive our car to the meeting for old time’s sake. (She had been with us when we test drove Pete all those years ago. We didn’t have anyone to test the back seat when we test drove Repeat! She also drove for us several times back when we traveled from TN to PA and back together.)

Here’s Tab and Abigail standing by Tab’s missions display. Somewhere I have a picture of Tab and Abigail from when Rose & Fanie visited us in TN when Abigail was just a wee thing, but I couldn’t put my hands on it tonight! : (

We really enjoyed hearing all she had to say about the mission, school, hostel, South African culture and what God is doing there and how He is using her to be blessed and be a blessing there. Near the end of the meeting, she particularly focused on the various languages spoken among the children at the school and demonstrated various sounds from two or three of the languages. She steered clear, however, of Afrikaans. That was because Rose & Fanie and family attended the meeting too! Tab admitted that she was a little nervous speaking about South Africa, its culture and languages with a South African sitting in the audience, but Fanie said she did a very good job. : )

I love this line-up: Rose, Kezia Faith, Liliva, Daniel, Kihannah, Abigail, Fanie and Elisha! : )

Another version of the line-up—okay, crooked line-up.

Check out this line-up: Tabitha brought these glasses to us as souvenirs. The glasses feature the “Big Five”: rhino, water buffalo, cheetah, elephant, and lion.

I thought I was going to elude Montezuma, but throughout the day Wednesday I had a hunch he was stalking me. By the time service was over, I wasn’t feeling so well, but we had two stops we really wanted to make. First was the house Tim Jr & Amy bought and are remodeling. (The word remodeling certainly doesn’t do justice to what they are actually doing to the house!) I had no idea Tim Jr was so widely talented!! He’s not just about computers and music. What an awesome deck he designed and built! What a beautiful kitchen is in the making! (They were able to purchase a $400 dishwasher for only $150—that inspired me to get watching our local Lowe’s/Home Depot/HH Gregg. Ours has never worked properly. It’s just a big drying rack with a door. Guess what’s on my birthday list!) What a superbly nice house they are going to have when they are finally finished!

From there we went to Wal-Mart where Tim Jr helped us select a wireless router and we looked for several things Tab still needed to find before she returned to South Africa. Then we dropped Tim Jr off at his house, drove around Penn View campus to see several projects in progress (it was close to midnight by this time, so we didn’t see much!), and dropped Tab off at Andy & Joy’s house (where she was staying so we could have a bed). By the time Ken & I reached Tim’s, we were both feeling pretty sick. Perhaps I should rephrase that. It wasn’t pretty!

Most of the day Thursday we barely moved. So much for the visiting we had hoped to do with some friends who live in Penns Creek and others who were in town for annual conference. We did manage to reach the front porch and sit on the glider and swing. That was somewhat relaxing although it brought back memories of Ken saying, “Why don’t we just move 1000 miles away and start all over?!” * shudder * (We moved to TN after that statement eleven years ago.)

By Friday, we were improving. I called Shrawder’s to order ham and cheese subs—something we always look forward to when we are in Penns Creek—for our lunch (to go along with a bag of Martin’s Kettle Cooked Chips). Yum! The girl who answered the phone had no idea what I was talking about, and, for the life of me, I couldn’t think of the word hoagies! Have I been out of PA so long?

We had so hoped to attend Penns Creek camp meeting for the one evening service we could, but we didn’t think we should venture too far away from the house yet. Friday evening the whole gang of us met at Andy’s again for another family time. More Carroms, more dress-up for the kids, more just enjoying talking, playing and being together. Tim Jr set up our wireless router so it would be ready to go (hopefully!) when we got home.

Saturday we packed up, left Tim’s about 1:30 and headed to Andy’s to complete the last of the sewing projects Joy had been working on for me and to say our goodbyes to them. Joy wasn’t feeling well, but, bless her heart, she kept sewing until the job was done since we were leaving that day.

We stopped at the IGA in Middleburg to pick up several packages of fresh sausage (sausage isn’t the same when you leave PA—understatement!) and several whoopie pies (unheard of in TN). The real ones were gone. We had to settle for the chocolate with peanut butter and banana with vanilla variations.

We didn’t hit the road early enough to travel much in daylight. Ken is always happy to see this sign, although this time he expressed feeling a little confusion since MD hasn’t been his home now for 11 years and his parents moved from MD to SC last year.

The picture we took of the welcome to WV was just a blur of reflectors and lights.

Once we hit VA, the trip seems never ending! We stayed in VA overnight and didn’t check out of the motel until the check-out deadline. I finally downloaded the rest of my emails!

Was this ever a welcome sign to see! Only 2 more hours to go.

We arrived home about 7 PM. Since the temp and humidity was still miserable and Ken was starting to feel not good again, we waited until later to unload. I connected the wireless router and booted up... it works!!! Thank you, Tim Jr! :)

Ken pushed himself to go to work Monday, but crashed when he came home at the end of the day. On Tuesday his supervisor sent him home at noon. Basically, he dragged himself through the rest of the week. (Yes, the past tense of drag is dragged, not drug! Funny, but I have had several former students tell me that when they hear people use drug as the past tense, they remember us talking about that in class and correct it, at least mentally [as well as sneaked being the past tense of sneak, not snuck]. Heh, small wonder! How many times did they hear me rant about drug and snuck?! Sadly, dictionaries are actually including—next step is accepting—these substandard words.)

Whew, we are actually glad vacation and recuperation is over! The normal routine sounds pretty good right now. : )

Heading North

Well, I guess since it was two weeks ago today that we left to visit my family in PA, I had better get blogging!

We don’t get up to PA very often, so we try to see as many of my family as possible when we are there. This trip, however, didn’t lend itself to spending very much time with part of the family. We wanted to see my niece, Tabitha, who was home from South Africa for a few weeks, and we had to choose a week, of course, that Ken could get time off from work. That left us with one option. Sadly, the only week we could be in PA was after my nephew, Daniel, had moved to western PA which meant we wouldn’t meet his new little guy; only one day after our arrival, two more nephews and families were headed to AYC; Andy had two bus trips to drive; and Tim and Andy both had annual conference to attend. I guess somewhere in all that mêlée we should have expected to dive into one crazy, mixed-up vacation!

Over the eleven years we’ve lived in TN, we’ve made this trip so many times through the evening/night in winter that traveling during daylight in summer was delightful.

Wytheville, VA, has become a favorite stop for us although we usually stop because it is suppertime and only get off I-81 as far as the Shoney’s. Since we arrived early afternoon this time, we decided to take the time to enjoy the Visitors’ Center even though it was a little off the beaten path. Ironically, as many times as we have vented our frustration at how to pronounce the town’s name, instead of remembering to ask the ladies at the Visitors’ Center, we ended up doing a little online investigation after we returned home to finally learn that the official pronunciation is WITH vil but that the natives run the syllables together and get WI full. (Same way we get MUR vuhl / MARE vuhl out of our town of Maryville, I spoze!)

Here’s Ken relaxing in one of the rockers on the front porch of the Visitors’ Center… quintessential Southern architechure!

We did ask about these beautifully flowering trees we noticed at the edge of the property and learned that they are chaste trees. (Lots of interesting info online.) When we walked close to the trees, we also noticed loaddds of bees!

Every time we have made this trip up/down I-81, I see all the cows dotting the hillsides and hafta hum the little chorus, “He owns the cattle on a thousand hills…” These cows are in a level pasture compared to many of them. Most of the cows we see in VA need to have longer legs on one side of their bodies!

We had to get a photo of this sign. Friends of ours who used to pastor in Staunton, VA, now pastor in Stanton, AL. Believe it or not, both towns are pronounced STANT on.

Sometime when we make this trip again, I will try to keep my camera a little more handy. Probably a half dozen specially decorated towers announce the names of towns. This one is for Mount Jackson.

When Ken said we should stop soon to eat supper, I admitted that I had a vote. He guessed it first guess: Chinese! Then he countered, “Yeah, but they don’t advertise, so how will we ever find one?” We were coming up on Martinsburg, WV, so I suggested we take the first exit and see what we find. Amazingly, a large Chinese restaurant was directly across from the end of the exit ramp! We managed to squeeze into the parking lot, but since the restaurant was jammed and the buffet sorta pricey, we decided to drive on and find another one.

Ken looked at the atlas and thought US Rt 11 appeared to run parallel to I-81 through Martinsburg, so we chose that option for finding another Chinese restaurant. Well, 11 wasn’t exactly parallel, but it was a nice jaunt through downtown. Three times on every block, variously painted palettes were mounted. I was so busy looking at the different pictures painted on them that I didn’t think of my camera until we were halfway through town! When I did grab my camera, every light was green and I couldn’t focus on a palette long enough to snap a picture. Ken finally slowed down and held up traffic just a bit so I could get one picture. When Ken saw the photo, he thought it pretty cool that I caught the hanging planter in the side mirror too.

Just before the signs to return to I-81, we spotted another Chinese restaurant, but too late to make the turn we needed to make to get to it. After some maneuvering, we managed to get a Chinese supper after all! The restaurant was somewhat of "a hole in the wall," but the food was very tasty.

Here’s a sign I was happy to see! : )

After traveling all day, we weren’t overjoyed to see DETOUR signs directing us to Paxtonville as we came down the hill into Middleburg, PA. Ken was sure there had to be a shorter option, but I assured him that there is no other way to get around the first bridge (that used to be by the ice cream shoppe) which was apparently the one that was out since they detoured us already at Paxtonville Road. I wished it would be the second bridge (that used to be by Cole’s Hardware) that was out because I know how to get around it. * sigh * Sunday morning when we asked Tim & Ruth to refresh our memory with directions to their church, we discovered it is the bridge by Cole’s that is out. All that long, roundabout detour for nothing! They’ve been driving the short detour, but didn’t think to mention it to us when we had called.

Perhaps that was a “Here’s your sign!” moment for one crazy, mixed up vacation straight ahead. …we missed it!

Sunday was a wonderful family day, however. My brother, Tim, conducted the ceremony for my nephew, Philip, and his wife and family as they dedicated their little Micah to the Lord. Niece Rose and nephew Stephen and their families as well as their Grandma & Grandpa Stence were also present for the service. We were so happy to be there for the baby dedication and delighted to hear Tim preach too! He posed a question that has been mulling in mind from time to time since that morning: Would God have become flesh if there had been no fall? Hmmm......

I didn't miss my opportunity to hold Micah!

Afterwards, all the family met at the parsonage for a picnic dinner. I tried to get photos of all the kids for their Grandma Becky (and me, too, of course!).

I absolutely love Hana's grin. You can't look at her when she's grinning like that and not smile!

Liliva doesn't quite know why Uncle Ken is snapping pictures.

Something has Kihannah's attention. (I was so focused on Kihannah, I didn't realize I chopped Rose & Fanie's heads. Sorries!)

Uncle Ken was nervous to hold one-month old Micah but didn't want to miss his only opportunity!

I tried most of the afternoon to get a picture of Allanah, but she was on the move until Daddy Stephen sat her on his lap and gave her an ice cube. Shylah Faith looks like she wanted an ice cube too!

This was one of the rare times LaDonna was not chasing Alannah! That ice cube kept Alannah occupied long enough to give Mommy a break. Mommy thinks Alannah is into the terrible twos a year early!

Abigail's a great mommy's helper! She's holding Micah and hoping for her own baby brother come December.

I can't resist Hana's grin! I asked her if I could take a picture just for Grandma Becky. She nodded a happy yes.

Micah is safely sleeping in Daddy Philip's care.

More to come... this doesn't even finish our first day in PA! :)