Thursday Meanderings

Welcome to Thursday! That means the weekend is almost here! Yeah! My absolute favorite part of the week because my sweetheart is here all weekend! And this weekend will be a first in out almost 5 year married life...Katie, Will & Amy will be attending our church's Disciple Now weekend, so Greg and I will be alone from Friday night to Sunday morning. I am seeing date weekend not just date night!

The kids and I have gone overboard with buying seeds for gardening this year. We are trying some new plants this year: cantaloupe, peas, & more peppers, just to name a few. I've tried growing tomatoes from seed but haven't been successful. So I will stick with little plants from the garden shop. Mom sent me an article last year about a guy in GA who grows tons of tomatoes every year and the article included his "recipe" for what he mixes in the dirt. So I am going to try that this year. My tomatoes were a total flop last year, which was very disappointing. I love to eat cherry tomatoes right off the vine. We are ready for spring and getting outside but the cold weather is not letting go yet. Maybe Mother Nature doesn't know its March on Monday.

Greg built me an awesome 5 square foot gardening box for cucumbers. He, with the help of the older boys, got it into place last weekend. Now to fill it up with dirt and compost and get warm enough to plant. We will be planning other boxes and relocating our compost bin. Should keep us busy and out of trouble (yeah, right!).

In Sunday School our book has been "Fresh Encounter, experiencing God's power for Spiritual Awakening" by Henry & Richard Blackaby. I've done some of their studies before and always learn something new and have something that applies with my life and this book is no exception. What I read yesterday, got me to pondering my situation last week, my response to it, the others involved, etc. I had my friend read it and then Greg read it last night. Greg's response confirmed what I thought the Lord was telling me. Me serving in this capacity with our group is not beneficial to me, my children, or my family. It is taking me away from the family for 4-5 hours every month and causing loss of sleep, worry, and busy work. So its not something I need to be involved in. I am finishing out my term, but not participating in this again. We think the prior conflict was the Lord's way of pointing out to me the error of participating. Since the decision to quit was made, several exciting opportunities have opened up for next school year that we are all excited about. My friend 'Rie and I are starting a history/science co-op to meet several times a week. I am going to teach the ABeka Biology to a multi-age group of kids and she is going to do History. I did this with my kids 3 years ago and they really enjoyed it. We are going to "notebook" biology or scrapbook. Lots of pictures, graphs, word searches, vocabulary, classifying, etc. We may also start a small support group for field trips, etc. Plus our quilting classes and Keepers at Home group. I'm excited to see where the Lord will take us on this adventure.

Yesterday, Keepers at Home was great! We had a housefull of kids and their mama's. 11 girls participated and our craft was decoupage. They all decoupaged a wooden item that we can enter in the fair. All were different and turned out beautiful. They are creative girls. All the boys and younger sisters had a lego/k'nex-a-thon in the living room. There were 8 or 10 kids in there. It was noisy and full. They all behaved great and cleaned up at the end. What a blessing to not have a huge mess to clean up after everyone leaves. We just had to put our paper up and sweep up some scraps on the floor. My little friend Kaytee Beth wanted to see my pool, so we went outside to look. She very sweetly told me that she had 2 swimming suits (what a cute way to ask to come swimming...she is almost 4 years old). So a pool party is in our future! Come on warm weather!

Tonight we are having an easy dinner and then settling in to watch "Survivor". Gonna be a good family night!