Fish and Food

Summer is flying by so fast!  It makes me sad how fast unstructured time flies by between school years.  We try to make the most of each day in the summer.  This past week we have had freakishly cool temperatures which has kind of been awesome. 

Wednesday we hit the lake to tube and fish a little.  This little fisher woman caught the most with four!! We all tried our hand at fishing and poor Pops was kept busy putting the worms on our hooks and then taking the fish off of our lines.  We are high maintenance fisher people. 

Fishing teaches patience and I love that!  David was excited to catch a big one!!

Our Kyle on the cusp of the teen years.  I am thankful for moms at church and in my life that have done the teen years and can encourage me as they are on the horizon for our family.  Kyle is an awesome kid but the teen years are going to be a new challenge for our family.

This picture melts my heart.  They have fought like cats and dogs this summer, but they truly are best friends. 

There is no where my kids would rather be than on the boat at the lake.  They love times with their Pops and GG having fun in the sun.  It makes me happy that my kids love the same place that I loved as a child. 

Brave Dave on the tube!  He has fallen off a few times this summer and has handled it well. 

Yesterday we spent a good portion of our day at church.  Each week a noon meal is served on Thursdays with a devotion and hymns.  It touches me that the folks that come to this food and fellowship meal each week consider these Thursday mornings their church time and that this is their church home.  This week the food boxes were given out during the monthly food distribution.  The youth are involved in helping move the boxes from the off-site storage back to the church to give out. 

Working with youth is not my spiritual gift at all.  I much prefer the younger children but we are blessed with a pretty awesome group of teens at church.  Jackie and Glenn Wilson do amazing things with this group and balance the service work, bible learning, and fun very well.  It is so tempting as a youth leader to lean towards fun to make kids want to come, but Jackie and Glenn are great at balancing it well.  Kyle's life has been enriched by being apart of this group.

Yesterday the youth cooked, served, and cleaned up the noon meal.  It was amazing to see youth jump in and serve.  All an adult would need to say is "I need someone..." and six of them would jump at once.  This group wants to work and serve and I was so proud of them! Here is Kyle serving plates of food to the group. 

This little love thought she was one of the youth!  She jumped in and helped too.  She would give out plates of food and say "here you go!"  It was precious  to see her servant heart in action. 

 

I was trained this week on how to do the paperwork for the folks to get their USDA box of food.  It is humbling and overwhelming to sit across from another and ask them questions about their income and what benefits they receive to make sure that they are indeed eligible for their USDA food.  I was touched and changed yesterday listening to story after story from these folks. 

 

So many folks thanked us for the meal and for the large box of food. Most were so grateful for the hot meal and the food box to take home to share with their family.  Little did they know that I was the one blessed.  This ministry is meant to serve our neighbors in need but yesterday watching my oldest and youngest serve and listening to the stories as I helped fill out this paperwork I was the one overwhelmed in thanksgiving. 

Birthday Babies

I love having two summer babies.  It is fun to be able to celebrate outside and these two love celebrating together.  Because summer is so busy with baseball and such, we often have to be very flexible about when we can fit in a party for them.  Last Monday I literally looked at the weather forecast and saw that the weather for the upcoming weekend looked good.  I called the pool and blessedly they had an opening on Saturday night.  A few facebook messages and emails later lots of friends were invited to swim and party with us. 

Our big ten year old and our sweet five year old!  David thinks he is capable of amazing feats now that he is ten. 

Blessedly the weather was beautiful and we had such a fun night at the pool with friends.  With vacations and such we missed many friends, but we threw it together in five days:) 

David with the Hash girls and Kelsey.  These girls are amazing to David and it makes my heart so happy to see them together.  They were in class together this year. 

Last week I saw this princess cupcake dress on Pinterest and sent a picture to the amazing Bryan Underwood begging him to make this for Hope.  This is what he showed up with for her party.  Not only are they amazing cupcakes, but my birthday girl was thrilled! 

Sage and the Jonas made the trip from Bristol to celebrate with us.  Anytime we can spend time with them is awesome. 

David insisted I watch him jump in a million times and take a million pictures.  He likes to pose  when he jumps in.

Hope had such fun with her Daddy throwing her in!

Then Mike thought it was so easy to throw Hope in that he would try it with Kyle!  Ha!  Kyle is almost as big as we are. 

Hope had some preschool friends and some Tball friends there to help her celebrate.

Hope picked out the cupcake princess dress cake and David got an Avengers cake.  Last week while we were throwing this party together he was too lazy to go to the store to pick out his cake.  He had the idea to shop online for his cake! Sure enough we looked online and then I called in to the bakery. 

We sang to each birthday kiddo and this picture is SO David.  While everyone sang to Hope she hid behind me and was shy.  While everyone sang to David he danced front and center!  Love this little turkey!

 

While David was going through chemo and radiation at UVA, anytime his port was accessed he was allowed to visit the toy closet at clinic to get a new toy to play with.  We have received many many toys during his eight months of treatment so we thought their birthday would be a good way to help UVA restock their toy closet.  Thanks to our amazing friends we are going to be able to take all these amazing toys to UVA!!  We are so thankful to our friends for supporting this in lieu of gifts for David and Hope and we are so excited to deliver them!!! We will deliver them August 8th when David goes back for his next scan.

 

We are so thankful for these two precious kiddos, so thankful that David is here with us and able to celebrate another birthday, and we are thankful to our friends for celebrating with us.  Above all, we are thankful to our amazing God! 

Cancer Absolutely Stinks

We have truly lived and loved every moment of Summer 2014 thus far.  We have camped at church camp, boated and tubed on Claytor lake, cheered on our baseball boys, watched beautiful ballerina friends twirl and tap during summer dance, and spent many hours of sun and fun at our neighborhood pool. 

We have done lots of bible study and scripture study this summer.  This is our current family scripture to help our youngest work on their work ethic:)

We have spent lots of time with friends.  During the school year life is often too busy for spontaneous play dates and adventures, but the low key summer schedule allows lots of fun to catch up. 

Life feels almost perfect on Pop's boat on Claytor Lake especially when friends are with us. 

 

Summer dance has been a treat for this little tapper and her friends. 

 

Despite the joy of the summer and our sun tans suggesting that life is carefree, I woke up in an absolute panic last night due to a nightmare that David had relapsed.  The nightmare was so real and vivid that it has rattled me this morning.  I firmly believe in God's plan for our family and trust in Him completely, but the reality of childhood cancer sneaks back in like  wrecking ball and tries to destroy my peace and my joy.  It also doesn't help that he has a scan coming up on August 8th. 

 

So pardon my language, but childhood cancer you suck.  You and the devil are an evil team trying to rob this Mom from the joys of summer.  Go away relapse nightmares and go away stupid Satan we still have a vacation in Pennsylvannia to look forward to and my favorite week of the year-Vacation Bible School at church.  I am standing firm on the promises of God this morning from Isaiah.

 

But now, this is what the Lord says, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel; Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have summoned you by name, you are mine.  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you, When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned, the flames will not set you ablaze.  For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

 

Isaiah 43:1-3

 

Those  verses give me the chills because I love that strong statement "you are mine."  Oh that is so comforting to know that I am His!  It is also amazing to me that this verse tells us that bad and hard stuff is going to happen to us-he never promises an easy life, he just says that because of Him the hard stuff will not overtake us.  His word is more powerful than any nightmare I can ever have!