God sometimes forces me to clean out!

Sometimes in my life (like Noah and his flood) God has forced me to prioritize and clean things out.

In the past I have had some incidents with water (a leaky storage unit, water from a cracked humidifier, etc.), but this time is it something more pleasant. A student who is leaving to do student teaching in a foreign country in the Spring, was looking for housing in the Fall. She is a student I happen to know from previous opportunities I have had on campus. So we have cleaned and moved things around and we will have an undergraduate living in what was our guest room. It promises to be an interesting Fall semester!

Rev Jim

Our minister was on a trip today...so Jim preached. His verse from the lectionary was about the mustard seed. So Jim talked about the necessary conditions for our faith to grow. His "soil" was being in the word, such as spending time in a devotional each day. His "water" was small accountability groups, such as a Sunday School class. His "light" was the Holy Spirit/Jesus.

He through the children's message to me....I brought a balloon and likened a balloon to our faith. It may start out small but when we let God work within us, our faith grows.

Fig!

It is fig season here. We took probably about 20 pounds off the tree in one picking. Josie loves eating them straight off the tree. I dipped a bunch in chocolate and we took them to two different potluck dinners we had. We got lots of positive comments on them.

Summer...It's flying by

I compose blog posts in my head...but obviously they do not usually make it to the blog these days.
I have been uber busy.

• We (Doug, Andy, and I) were involved with a summer enrichment camp (Doug & Andy attended while I supervised teachers).
• We have been enrolled in swim lessons.
• We have gone swimming on our own.
• We have visited friends and relatives.
• We have tried to keep the house a little cleaner than what I manage during the school year.
• I have done a little data collection for my dissertation.
• Doug and Andy are learning to ride their bikes without training wheels (we need fine tuning but basically have it).
• I am also that mean mom who is forcing the children to do some school related work during the summer so that we are not losing what we learned.