Mixed Emotions

Today has been a trying day. Have you ever wanted something so bad but you just weren't sure whether it was the right thing or not?

A few weeks ago I found out about a beautiful old victorian house that was going to be sold at public auction. It is exactly the house of my dreams. Big rooms with high ceilings, fireplaces in nearly every room, beautiful woodwork, lead glass doors, and a charming wrap around porch. It even had a little land and an inground pool. I mentioned to Darren that it was going to sell and that I really liked it. Turns out he really liked it, too, and someone in his family used to own it. We studied our options, talked to the bank and went to look at it. I absolutely fell in love with it. I could envision raising my children there, decorating it for Christmas, and hosting gatherings, doing all the things that families do.

The auction was this morning. We already knew how high we could go but something else was brought to our attention that would have allowed us to go a bit higher than we had planned. Another party was interested in part of the land that we didn't want and we could most likely make a deal with them. We were the first bid in and for a time we were the high bidder but then another party started bidding and I was afraid to go any further. You see, I'm not a risk taker. I am very resisitant to change and I am a planner. I want to know how everything is going to work and in what time frame. Darren was upset with me and accused me of letting my fear hold me back. And he may be right, but on the other hand, sometimes I'm not sure he has enough fear. That's probably why God put us together. Anyway, it sold for $1,000 over our last bid.

I've spent all day questioning myself. My heart says I made a big mistake but my head tells me I did the right thing by backing away. I had thought about it a lot and prayed about it a lot and I just couldn't be sure that it was the right thing to do. As badly as I wanted it, I wasn't willing to risk everything to have it. My heart is sick but my head tells me that God has provided a roof over my head (and it's a nice roof, even) and that we just really weren't in the right place in our lives to do this right now.

Oh well, what's done is done. It's just kind of sad and I hate second guessing myself.

Uplifted

Amy and I had our first Bible study tonight. We met at 7:30 p.m. at her house and I got home a little after 10:00. Our study only lasted about an hour but then we spent the rest of the time just talking. Wow! It was so uplifting! I enjoyed it more than I even expected to....and believe me I was really looking forward to it. I can't wait 'til next week already.

God is so amazing. I really needed a connection right now. I didn't realize just how much until tonight. Isn't it awesome that He knows what we need even before we do?

Catching Up

Well, here I am again....behind. I always have the best intentions but I never actually get around to updating my blog. I realized when I looked at my blog and saw that subject of my last post that some of you may have been thinking that VBS was so bad that I never recovered....so, I thought I better get everyone caught up.

We did survive VBS. We averaged 96 kids and 50 adults each night which was less than we hoped for, but not at all bad considering that there were 5 other VBS programs going on the same week. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and we're working on putting together a Sunday night program similar to VBS so that we can hopefully draw some of the kids we had back with us.

Darren's mom had knee surgery on the 4th of August. She spent about 20 days in the hospital but is recovering at home right now. She's done remarkably well but we've spent a lot of time back and forth between home and the hospital, and now her house, trying to do things for her. Oh, and we dog sat her little house dog Angel until this past weekend. Noah really loved having Angel with us and she really is the best little dog. I'm not sure Angel loved spending time with Noah as much as he enjoyed playing with her but at least she tolerated him. He didn't want to send her home and even tried to convince us that "Angel" ran away and that the dog at our house was actually his new dog "Jennifer" so he could keep her.

The kids went back to school on the 19th. Jarrod started his freshman year at Fleming County High School and Jacob started 4th grade and Flemingsburg Elementary. Jacob likes his teachers and loves changing classes (which is new for him this year). He seems to be adjusting well and so far is doing really well. He's becoming a different kid right before me eyes and I like what I'm seeing. Jarrod came home the first day and said "Don't even ask. I hate it." Since then he's adjusted a little more and is settling into a routine. I think he's just not used to the whole block scheduling, rush between classes thing. He only gets to go to his locker once a day and complained that he barely had time to go to the bathroom. And of course it doesn't help that he only has one class with his girlfriend. But it's getting better day by day.

We broke ground at New Life for our classroom addition about three weeks ago, but we've hit a small snag with a changeup in our plumbing plans so they have to be resubmitted to state before the rough plumbing can be done. Sooo we're in a holding pattern for now.

Darren preached at Whitewater Family Camp in Rising Sun, Indiana a couple of weeks ago. We went up on Friday and came home on Saturday. One of the men there had heard him speak at Delmarva and asked him to come. We really enjoyed ourselves. The people were so nice and they have a beautiful facility complete with a swimming pond. We also enjoyed some great messages and teaching on unity. One of the elder's wives did a class for the women on Unity in the Home and it was very uplifting.

That brings you pretty much up to speed with what has been going on around here. Now for a couple of things coming up that I'm really excited about!

Starting this Thursday night one of my friends, Amy, and I are going to start getting together for a weekly one on one Bible study. I so need this and I am really looking forward to spending time with Amy. She is so sweet and so much fun. We're going to be doing a study about giving everything to God. We've talked about doing this since we went to Mexico together in February but we've just now been able to put it all together. I can't wait to get started!

I am taking on a new project at church which I am totally fired up about. We really don't have a ladies group at church per say and I think that is such a shame. God is calling me to put together a bi-weekly ladies Bible study group. This has been bearing on my heart for some time now. We are blessed with such a diverse group of women at New Life. I believe that there is so much that we can learn from one another. I really want to put together a group of women with a zeal for God and hearts for service toward others. Please keep this project in your prayers as we work to get it up and running.

I would be remiss if I didn't also mention that we are starting Bible Bowl again. We've done a few fundraisers and ordered our materials. The older ones have started practicing and I guess I'll start with the beginners this week. Now, mind you this isn't something I'm looking forward to, but it is a big part of my life for about 8 months of the year. And I have to admit that it really is a great learning tool, even for me.

Well, now you know all the recent and upcoming events. I'll try not to get so behind in the future...but I can't promise anything!

VBS 2008 Opening Night

We kicked off our VBS program last night with a carnival like last year. The day was hot and miserable and we had a thunderstorm just as we were getting started but it was short lived and didn't affect us much. We are competing with 5 other VBS programs (3 of which are right here in town) this year which really stinks but it didn't hurt us great deal. We still had 88 kids and about 65 adults so that's not too shabby. Plus, it was amazing how smoothly everything went. Hopefully, we'll have another good crowd tonight. Pray that the rain doesn't affect us much this week since, like last year, we have to utilize our grounds for classroom space. With any luck this won't be a problem next year since we will soon begin construction on an addition with approximately 7 or 8 much needed classrooms and two bathrooms!

Our program this year is based on the adventures of our two not-so-super hereoes, Gospel Man and Bible Boy, as they search for the lost treasure. The kids are all really excited about it and we can't wait to share God's word with them. Pray that seeds will be sown and hearts touched this week!

Delmarva Family Camp

We returned from our week in Laurel, Delaware on Friday. We had a really good time and it was a nice break for both of us. We heard A LOT of uplifting messages and enjoyed awesome fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ. Darren gave his message on Tuesday afternoon and he did a great job. I was so proud of him. Out of all the messages we heard his was in the top 2 in my honest opinion. Ray asked him to come back in two years and an elder from a church in Indiana asked him to come preach a revival, so I guess there were others who thought he did as well as I did. All in all it was a great experience. The drive was a little long but other than that we had fun. Next time we plan on taking the kids (Noah will be 5-1/2 and hopefully a little easier to handle) and making a family vacation out of it. We're hoping to plan a little more time off and just hang out at the beach at Ocean City which was only about 30 miles away.

Confession

They say that confession is good for the soul, so here goes.....

Darren and I are leaving for Laurel, Delaware bright and early Monday morning and we'll be back sometime on Friday. He was asked by Ray Bennett to come up and preach at Delmarva Family Camp a couple of years ago so the trip has been planned for a while. He initially planned on going alone because there was no way we could afford to take the whole family with gas prices the way they are. But he really didn't want to go all that way by himself so we finally decided that I would go with him. Mom is going to watch Jacob and Noah and Jarrod is working a week at camp so we are going to get to go for five days ALL ALONE!

Now comes the confession part.....I am so excited to be going somewhere alone with my husband and specifically going somewhere without my children, that I can hardly stand it. Does that make me a bad mother? I think this is the first time we will have been anywhere without the kids since before Noah was born. We went to Mexico in 2007 without the kids but we weren't alone. There were like 16 other people with us. I just can't even begin to express how happy I am about it. Of course, you would have to understand how trying the last few days/weeks have been with Noah. He's been up to his old tricks again...keeping me up at night (he wet the bed not once, but twice, in the same night last week)....messing in stuff he shouldn't (he got into my makeup, wasted a bunch and put mascara all over his face)....destroying things (he wrote all over the leather recliner with a black ink pen AGAIN)....and just being bad in general (talking back, being mean, etc.). I have just about had it with him. He's driving me absolutely crazy. So this trip comes at just the right time....The right time to keep me from being reported to child protective services. Just joking, but seriously no way am I going to tell my mom how rotten he's been lately. I wouldn't want her to change her mind or anything!

Near Disaster

Saturday started out as a normal enough day but soon things went very, very wrong. I went to my laptop to check my email and noted that it was acting a little strange so I decided to restart it. No big deal, right? Well, that's what I thought, too, but boy was I wrong. It restarted and then proceeded to log off. So I tried again. Same thing. And again, and again, and again.....Nothing worked. I was just about to cry and became literally sick to my stomach. You see, I had 5 years of tax returns for about 250 clients stored on my laptop and payroll records for two companies. Now, I know it's not smart, but I had no backup of these things. The tax stuff was bad but I at least had paper copies and could have rebuilt them if necessary (although I certainly wouldn't want to if I didn't have to), but the payroll was nowhere else and I had no way to even rebuild it. All I could think was what was I going to do when it came time to file quarterly payroll reports in July.

Fortunately my somewhat tech savvy husband remembered that he had some type of apparatus that I could use to hook my laptop hard drive to another computer so I could copy things off of it. So the plan was that I would take my hard drive out of my laptop, hook it to Jarrod's computer and transfer the things I needed off of mine onto his and then reformat my laptop hard drive and start fresh. Sounds fairly simple but it was far from it. We fiddled and fooled and finally (after a couple of hours) got Jarrod's computer to recognize my hard drive and then I began the transfer process. About an hour later Jarrod came in and asked if I shut his computer off. Of course, I hadn't. As unbelievable as it may sound, his computer had died. It wouldn't do anything. Fortunately it was only the power supply and we had an extra so Darren was able to get it back up and running yesterday. I reformatted today and am now back up and running.

I'm starting the tedious process of getting things reinstalled but so far I've got my payroll files back so I can deal with the rest if I have to. I'd like to say that I've learned my lesson and will do regular backups in the future, and I am going to try, but I know from past experience that it'll probably be short lived. Oh well, at least all is well for now.