Family is Home!

We don't get to all be together very often, but this past weekend was very special. They even brought their solid color shirts for pictures! I have great kids. We enjoy them so much. Kayla, Jade and Eli got to stay until Tuesday and we went to Target to shop a little. Such fun. I played with Eli and watched all my beautiful girls try on clothes. Doesn't get better than that.
I love for them to go to church with us. Our church family feels like they know them but hardly ever get to see them. Sometimes I worry that our kids don't think we have time for them because of the needs here. When they come, my prayer is always that they will see again God's hand in this place and know again that He brought us here to do His work. I know they already know that.
There is nothing in this world I love doing more than serving our sweet kids.
God chose to put us all in different places to serve Him. He wouldn't have done that if we weren't trusting Him enough. We would still need to depend on each other being close by until we got strong enough to serve elsewhere. They are strong enough to serve elsewhere. Lord, bless them in their service for You. I pray for their faithfulness to You. Let them by in Your will so they will hear Your voice.

Papa and Eli

There is such a sweetness having this little guy around. Poor thing, when he is here he never gets a complete nap, has kisses all over his face, and has tons of pictures made. We don't get to see him often, so we take advantage of every second we have. Expecially his Papa. Jade is an angel to let Michael have him even when it means getting off schedule, because she knows we have precious little time. Thank you, Jade.
We don't get to hold him in our arms often enough for me, but we hold him in our hearts and pray for him more than once or twice a day. God bless you little man, Jesus hold you precious one.

Want to see a picture of grandbaby?

Imagine you are driving into a grocery store parking lot and you pull in beside a minivan with a Cowboy Church sticker on one side of the back window and an OSU sticker on the other side. There's a "Honk if you love Jesus" bumper sticker on the back bumper by another sticker that screams "Want to see a picture of my grandkids?" Okay, I admit, there are no stickers on my vehicle, but when I pass another vehicle going own the interstate with a Cowboy Church logo on the back, we all wave and smile really big. When I pass a vehicle with an OSU sticker, I do the Cowboy "guns up" while the girls slide down in their seats. Sometimes I do honk because I love Jesus, but mostly I just clap and sing if my seat is high enough for my knees to touch the steering wheel and drive for a bit. I also don't have a little Grandma's Brag Book that accordians down to the floor full of pictures of the little darlings. So if you do see the minivan outside the grocery store, it is perfectly safe to go in. If I had one of those little books, I promise whenever I got out of my vehicle, I would tuck that thing under my arm to whisk out at a moment's notice. So instead of having to be polite to my face as I go through picture after picture and explain everything he was doing before, during, and after the shot, you can just browse through on your own time. Feel free to copy any of them for your screen saver, or to print off and show all your friends, because I know you'll want to. Oh yeah, and just a warning. I have six children. I plan on having LOTS of grandkids. You can bow out at anytime. I, just for the life of me, don't know how you could.
Isn't he precious?

Can I have a pony?

I know at some time in every child's life they ask their parents for a pony. I wasn't one of those children. I liked kitchen stuff. My daddy made us a sink and stove that we kept in a little play kitchen at the back of the Montgomery Wards store in Denver City. Mom and Daddy owned that store so we would go there after school and play in the back. I loved it.
Back before Christmas a couple from our church asked Michael if we would like to go on a trail ride with them. My first reaction was "no". I then remembered the number of times I have shared with newly married girls the importance of doing things their husbands enjoy. So "no" came out of my mouth as "sure, that would be fun"! Okay, it really came out as just "sure". So we loaded up Lily, our big draft horse, and The Old Man, our big old man horse. I love them because they are pretty. I like pretty horses. I rode Lily and Michael got on The Old Man. We got to the end of our trail and turned around to ride the four miles back. When we would go up a little hill, Lily would kind of trot up so she would get both me and her up the hill. I didn't really want her to trot so I would pull back on the reins. We did okay until there were two hills in a row. She trotted. I pulled. She trotted faster. I pulled harder. She kicked. I flew. I did a very graceful Superman impression as I catapulted to the ground, landing on my back. I jumped up to see if I could find my finger I thought I left in the reins, and saw it was still attached to my hand. There are two good things about falling off of a horse. One is that it happens so fast you don't realize what happened until you are back in the saddle. Two is that if someone asks you to go ride and you go with your first reaction and say "no", they completely understand.
People that know me well know falling is something I do often. My kids are never surprised when I tell them I've fallen off of something. I have weak ankles. When I was 28 living in Houston, I fell off the curb while checking the mail and broke my hip. When I was digging a hole in Stillwater to plant a tree, I fell off the shovel and fractured a bone in my ankle. I fell down a step in our bedroom in Snyder and off our sidewalk in the front of our house here in Chatfield. These are only examples of when bones have been altered. There are countless other times you would be bored with. Sometimes my foot even falls off the gas pedal when I'm driving. If I was Indian my name might be something like "Come Tumbling Down". If that is my lot in life, so be it. I'll do it with as much grace as I can muster.
Back to the kitchen/pony stuff. I hinted to Michael a while back that I might want a new kitchen sink for my birthday. The big day was on a Sunday and when we got home from church there was a brand new pony. Actually it was a horse. A very beautiful horse. She is a paint with the thickest black mane you ever saw. Her tail is white at the top and black at the bottom and almost drags the ground. She is so pretty. Someone very dear to us in our church got her because she would be good for me and the girls to ride and we wouldn't have to be afraid of falling off. Thanks, Jim, we thank the Lord for you and love you very much.
It was tough coming up with a name for her. Michael mentioned "Jubilee" because in scripture the 50th year is the year of Jubilee. Her tail kind of looks like a skunk so I was trying to think of some girl skunk names to fit what she looks like. I was trying to think of a name that had something to do with her tail end because it was so pretty. Meet Fannie Jubilee.
I may never have asked for a pony growing up. Now that I have one, there's a certain amount of pride when you get to say "My horse". I'll take good care of Fannie, and I believe she will take good care of me.
Oh yeah, I'm going to Lowe's today to pick out a sink! I love my life.

Half a Century

A couple of weeks back, my sisters, nieces, cousins, Mom and Aunt Nancy all got together at Grapevine to spend the weekend together. We had such a good time. A few days later I couldn't figure out why my hip was hurting so bad. I battle with arthritis in that hip but this was a different kind of pain. I bent over to pick something up off the floor and as I was contemplating my next move (how to get back up) it suddenly hit me why I was in such a painful mode. I flashed back to the hotel swimming pool. Someone had the bright idea to do a synchronized swimming routine. I don't know if you can call one move a routine, but nevertheless a routine was in the works. We all stuck one foot up in the middle of our circle and held on to each other's shoulders. That is when the hip cramp reared it's ugly head. If I hadn't been holding on to someone, I might have drowned one week before my 50th birthday. I didn't drown, but it is quite amazing how long a muscle will stay sore if it hasn't been worked in awhile and all the sudden it works real hard.
Christy sent me an email the other day to let me know that 50 years equals 600 months. That is a lot of full moons. It also equals over 18,000 days. There are several of those days I wish I could take back. I don't want to do them over, maybe just photoshop them a different color or maybe soften them a little. I know that even all the mistakes I've made in these many moons, have helped write my story. Thankfully, the Lord never left me. No matter what I did.
Speaking of photoshop, enjoy the pictures of the weekend with the girls and one boy. Little Eli came to celebrate with us. He's so beautiful. We also had little Avery there. She is my cousin Allen's granddaughter. She is precious. Allen's wife Gini is such a good grandma to this little doll. We set the lights up in the lobby of the hotel and took lots of pictures. The folks there were very gracious. Too gracious, if you ask me. They also let the girls put pictures of me all over the wall. Don't worry, girls, the tiara is in a safe place ready for the next 50th. I hope Randy won't mind wearing a hot pink shirt and let the rest of us wear black. I'm sure he'll be a good sport.
Maybe the whole hip thing means I really am getting old. Maybe the fact that I'm wearing pink and red glasses down on my nose to type this means I really am getting old. Cary Ann gave me a card that said " You're not old until the fat lady sings". You open it up and there is a picture of a fat lady with an opera voice holding a high note until you close the card. It is hilarious. I've been told that being old is just a frame of mind. So I'm going to take off these glasses (as soon as I'm done), take me some Tylenol Arthritis, ask Michael to rub my feet and forget that I ever heard that fat lady sing.

I Had A Dream - We Had a Dream

Last night I had a dream. Actually it was this morning right before I woke up. I was in this small house and there were lots of church people there. When I say church people, I mean people from previous churches and our Cowboy Church now. We were packed in this house. I went into the bedroom and made my way through the laughing crowd of people to take some pies and put them on the bed because we ran out of room in the kitchen. There was so much love in that place you could feel it. I was trying to hurry because I knew I needed to get to the church service when I saw a woman dressed in a very expensive, beautiful dress. She was someone I hadn't seen in while so I went over to hug her and when I did I knew her hug wasn't genuine. I kissed her right on the cheek and stepped back. Her beautiful dress had become wrinkled and ugly and it was too big for her. She was still smiling like, as the girls would say, "she was all that". I told her I had to go, and as I was leaving the room she was shouting compliments at me and she said "I can't wait to eat the cheesecake!" I don't make cheesecake, I make pies.
I walked out the front door and to my left was a young girl running my direction in the middle of the street. She was slender and she had long tangled hair hanging in her face. All I could see from her face was a tootsie roll pop stick hanging from her mouth. As she got closer, she slowed down and I saw that she was filthy. I looked down the street in the direction she was walking and saw a huge stadium packed with people. Kinda funny to me that I could see lots of orange in that stadium. That stadium was our new church. I was worried because I didn't think she would be able to find her seat because she was a freshman. Weird, I know. I felt a little relief to think that the sections of the stadium were numbered, but knew I needed to go help her find her way. About that time, a very overweight boy (I watched Biggest Loser last night) came running around the corner to get to the stadium. He was filthy too. We all started running to the stadium. Then I woke up. Pretty stange dream. Strange in many ways, but one specifically: I don't run.

About five years ago God gave Michael and me a dream. A dream to be in a place where hearts were fertile soil that we could plant His Word into. We hoped it would be with people who wouldn't go to a traditional church. We have been packing 200+ people into our quadruple wide mobile building for the last month and a half. Yesterday the bank here in Ennis approved our request for a loan to start building our church to hold all this precious family. Praise You Father! I wish I could tell you all the little things that have taken place in the last 6 months to let us know God was ready to give us our new home. When we first came here, Michael took off his watch and told the people we were now on God's time. We would not step out of that. Some people left because we didn't have a building on the ground as soon as they wanted. We HAD to wait on the Lord. I'm so glad we did. After Michael talked with the bank yesterday, he called to tell me the loan was approved and that the timing of everything was continuing to show that we are in God's timing. He said that the government had even lowered the interest rate the night before. Isn't it nice that the whole country gets to benefit from us building our building when God told us to!

I don't know the significance of the dream this morning, except the obvious. I do know the significance of the dream about five years ago. Thank you Lord, for giving us your dream and for letting us live it out in real life. As we go into the building time, protect us, guide us. My prayer is that we are here in this "dream" until You call us home! You are so good to us.