I am still here!

Wow! It has been a long time since I have posted a regular post here. The summer brought about a great deal of activity and kept us pretty busy.

The activity started in May. The Children's Pastor from our church was co-writer/ co-director of a movie that will probably come out next year. It was filmed in Kentucky and my kids had a chance to participate.

First, our six youngest and I were extras in a wedding scene. We had to wake up really early and drive about an hour away to get to the filming location. It was an incredibly long day. Being an extra calls for sitting around  for a lot of hours and having a great deal of patience. Our son Josh was an intern on the set, so it gave him wonderful experience for his future. Josh is going to school studying Media Communications and plans to make movies. Josh's fiance, Jillian, joined us that day and sure made they day a whole lot more fun!

The following week we spent three days at a school so the kids could be extras in scenes there.They were long days, but the kids enjoyed having their chance of being in a movie. I think it can be more tiring just sitting around not doing much than actually spending you time doing something.

This is a Christian Movie and I really believe that it is really going to be awesome! I cannot wait until it comes out. My children will probably been seen a little bit. Micah was in a classroom scene and I think that there will be a shot of him sitting at a desk.  He and the rest of the kids also participated in hallway scenes and on the playground. It will be fun to see if we will see them.

June rolled around and that started Musical rehearsals at our Church. This was the sixth Summer our kids spent a great deal of their summer doing a  musical. Our Children's pastor was responsible for this as well. He wrote the script with his sister. Each year the musical is about a character from the Bible.

Micah is a tourist in this scene. He is the one with the blue visor.

Here is Micah in the basic costume, singing and dancing.

This is the only picture I have of Anna right now. She took this with her ipod. I hope that someone else has pictures of here that they can share with me.

Each year the musicals have grown and grown and so many kids have become involved that they had to make two musicals. One for the older kids (7th -12th grade) and one for the younger kids ( K-6th grade). This year was Ruth for the younger kids and Rahab for the older kids. This year brought on a new adventure because so many kids were participating. They divided the older kids into two different casts! It turned out well because it allowed so many more kids to get parts.

Since I had 2 kids in Ruth and 3 in Rahab, this required a lot of back and forth to our church which happens to be about a 45 minute drive. Yes, it was crazy, but it was worth it in the long run.  The performances started about mid August. Ruth gave two performances and each Rahab cast gave 2 performances. We had to be at every performance since Tori had to sing in both casts and Matthew helped with the Lights during the other cast's performances.

Matthew and Samuel are in the Roman Guard Costumes. They are characters named Diamedes and Ulysses.

Matthew by his "drum". This year they did a really cool stomp routine using buckets, trash cans and some other things! It was really cool! They did an amazing job!

Tori's character was a set builder. She's too pretty to be a guy, don't you think?

Here is Tori with some of her good friends.

Samuel with our Children's Pastor.

I must share that these are not just any ole church plays. There is tremendous quality associated with them. From the writing, acting, to the singing, to the choreography, to set design. Everything is truly amazing!.

On a somewhat sad note, our Children's Pastor has since resigned to take a job to make more Christian movies full time! He is such a talented man and I pray that God will use him mightily for His Kingdom! We are going to miss him terribly but at the same time, we are excited to see what God is going to do through him.

In July, we did mange to sneak in a visit to visit my mom and extended family in Virginia. It was so great to spend time with family and I wish we could visit there more often.

The public schools in our area started in mid August. We did not end up starting until the day after labor day. We had spent so many evenings at church for dress rehearsals and performances that it just made more sense to wait. We are finally falling back into  the groove of things. It kind of feels good to be back into a regular routine, but Summer is always welcome back any time!


Well, that is all for now. I hope to be back real soon with more!

Have an Awesome Monday!

 

May Happenings

Sorry I have MIA. It has been quite busy around here, so it has been hard for me to get here very often. Here is a little update on what has been happening in our World.

Our 5th born and 2nd daughter celebrated her 14th Birthday. Victoria is beautiful and very sweet and sensitive. She loves all things girly. She also does not like to have her picture taken. This was the best picture I could get!

Happy Birthday Victoria!

The Hubby and I celebrated our 26th Wedding Anniversary. We have been through a lot together, but I am so grateful that God gave me this wonderful man to be by my side through all the ups and downs.

Twenty-six Years Ago

Taken about a year ago!

Rebekah and Victoria both participate in TBQ (Teen Bible Quiz). I am so proud of all their hard work. Both of their teams went to the Regional Competition. At Regionals, Rebekah's team came in 4th. Victoria's team came in 7th. The top 5 teams are automatically qualified for Nationals. There is a certain number of teams that participate at Nationals. After all the Regional Competitions were over and some teams opted out of going to Nationals, more teams were invited. Victoria's team was one of them. So this year we have two quizzers going to Nationals.

This has been a bit of a challenge especially because the cost of going to Nationals has gone up quite a bit this year. We are hoping to do fundraisers to help offset the cost. If anyone knows of an effective way to raise money please let me know. I don't want to sell useless stuff to make a buck. I know I cannot afford to buy the stuff we all have bought to help someone out. Our group is working on doing a big yard sale and car wash.

I forgot to mention that I was able to travel with the girls to Regionals. This was my first trip with TBQ. I really enjoyed myself and hope that I get more opportunities to travel with them. It was fun being with my girls and also getting to know the others better as well. I believe it was a good break for me to be away from home for a few days. I felt a bit refreshed however exhausted (if that makes any sense) when I returned home.

My garden has been neglected so far this year. I planned on working on it this week. I still hope to get to it, but it is supposed to be hot all week long. High in the 80's. I am not a fan of the heat, but I really need to get things going. I should have made myself get out there when the weather was a bit cooler.

Last week we saw a beautiful rainbow. It was actually a double rainbow, but the second one was a little more faint.  It was raining and the sun was shining at the same time. It was quite interesting, I thought that it made for good conditions for a rainbow. A couple of minutes later Sammy looked out and saw it. Most of us went out to look at  it. It was only sprinkling at the time. Here is a picture. It doesn't do it justice one bit. You have to look closely to see the second one.

The children are working hard at their schoolwork in hopes of being done for the Summer. I too look forward to our Summer break! I think I look forward to it more than they do, but don't tell them that!

I really need to work on decluttering the house and reorganizing all of our school stuff. Sounds like I have a fun Summer planned ahead. It looks like our Summer will be very busy. Our church is doing 2 separate Musicals this year, so I will have 4 children in one for the 7-12 grades and 4 children in the other for K-6 grades. Their rehearsals are on different nights of the week. Yep, I think we are going to be a bit busy.

Well, that's all for now. Have a Happy Tuesday!

 

About Us Part 2

After Timothy was diagnosed with Leukemia at the age of 4 1/2, life became a bit challenging to say the least. He spent the first week in the hospital to get stabilized and started on Chemotherapy. Having a newborn that I was trying to nurse proved to be quite a challenge. They would not allow me to bring her onto the floor where Tim was staying. At first, I had my sister Debbie, and then my dear sweet friend Becky that came to the hospital with me to help. They would take care of Rebekah while I was with Tim, and then we would switch when Rebekah needed to nurse. After the initial first week stay, we brought Tim home for a couple of days, but then returned for a couple of more weeks. The hospital eventually changed their policy to accommodate nursing mothers, but it was too late for us!

It is quite amazing how God puts two people together in a marriage. How we react to things and how we handle things can be so very different, yet it can be so good! The night Tim was diagnosed my husband Mike was pretty much a basket case. I on the other hand seem to be handling things pretty well. The doctors actually thought there was something wrong with me because I wasn't a basket case. Six years prior, my sister's son had been diagnosed with Leukemia, and I was familiar with some of the things going on. I just had to function so that we could get through this. Mike had mentioned that we should not have any more children . I am not exactly sure of his reasoning, but I told him that I did not think that this was the time to make that kind of decision. After a few days, Mike was doing much better, and I became the basket case. After all, I had just given birth, so my hormones were going crazy, and my son had just been diagnosed with Leukemia. God's presence was felt so much during this time. I not going to say it was easy, but God's Hand was quite obvious. Tim had Chemotherapy for 2 1/2 years. He had a central line that made life a little easier. It gave access so that he could have blood draws and transfusions without having to be stuck. We actually did some chemotherapy at home as well as other transfusions. Mike and I had learned quite a bit of knowledge that we probably assumed that we didn't have to learn.

Tim did so very well, and didn't get too very ill. He only had a couple of hospitalizations due to running a fever. Both times were on a Friday . They made us come in any time he would run a fever. Both times proved that he just had a virus like the other kids and no big deal. He got out on Monday and was good as new. We were very busy with four kids, school and Chemotherapy. In September of 2005, we found out we were expecting baby #5! This was a few months before Tim finished Chemo. Victoria was Born in 1996 and this was after Tim was all done with Chemo.

When Victoria was nine months old we had a very big surprise! I had become pregnant again with baby #6. We were not exactly expecting this because the rest of the children had pretty much been "planned out", but we were still very excited. Matthew was born in 1997.

When I was pregnant with Matthew I bought a book called A Full Quiver by Rick and Jan Hess. I had bought it because I was seeking encouragement about having a large family. After having more than two kids, people generally feel they need to make a comment about having so many children. It was wearing on me even though I enjoyed my big family and I needed some encouragement. Reading the book really spoke to my heart. It talks about letting God have control of your fertility, ( also known as being quiverfull or QF) . I really felt that is what God had called us to do, but I needed for Mike to be on the same page. This is not something I wanted to talk him into, I wanted it to be from God. I had asked him to read the book and then let me know what he thought about it. I was very anxious to know when he was done,and what he thought, but I gave him time and space. Eventually I did ask him if he was done with the book yet, and he said yes. I then asked well, what do you think about it? He said that it made sense and agreed that is what we should do. So that is when we gave our Fertility over to the Lord.

Samuel was born in 1999 followed by Anna in 2001, Luke in 2003, and Micah on in 2005. So it seemed we would have a baby every two years. Micah was born five days after my 41st Birthday. It seemed that my fertility was slowing down. I was starting to think that my baby days were coming to a close. In March 2008, I was pleasantly surprised by a positive pregnancy test. This meant I was due with a baby in November 2008! I will share more about this pregnancy very soon. This is how baby Faith came into our lives.

Until next time,