Pixiemom

and I’m passing them along to my Prayer Warrior readers.

There’s a baby in California who has been in and out of the hospital with RSV and Pnuemonia since she was born in Feb. Drs recently diagnosed her with Cardiomyopathy and she’s been placed on a heart transplant list. She has a lot of spunk and has had to have her arms restrained to keep her from pulling out her vent and IV line.

A friend in St Louis is needing a job and also expressed a desire to grow in his faith.

Another friend in St Louis has a year old baby girl who’s had a lot of digestive problems. She gained a few lbs at her last dr appointment, but we would like to see more progress. Also, pray for her family. This is a rough ride on all of them, I think, though I enjoy seeing the faith of the mom as they have to try new formulas and amounts and whatever else comes up.

A friend up here in Chicago, Crystal (you remember praying for her daughter, Emily?… her blood work since that scan that found no cancer has all come out so beautifully.) Anyway, both her mom and her husband’s grandmother are having surgery today.

One of the women at our church is going through some rough chemo treatments for the cancer they found in her lungs about a month ago. When she’s able to come to church, she still has her joyful smile on, which is such a sweet testimony by itself.

A Praise… My cousin had his second child born yesterday morning. Now he and his wife have a son and daughter. She was on some oxygen last I heard because she’d had to be born C-section and still had some stuff in her lungs, but otherwise was doing very well. I hope to get an update on her again soon.

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Well, that’s what I have for now that I can think of. I’ll let you all know if I get some more.

Edit to add: My friends’ mom in AZ is having an MRI today because her leg is hurting and the drs can’t give her a reason.

The temperatures have been mostly cool up here. Most days I am wearing a jacket or sweatshirt. We’ve had about three days where we had to close up the windows and turn on the air conditioner, but most of the time we’ve just had the windows open. It is kind of nice, but I’d like it a bit warmer. You know, warm enough to wear a t-shirt with no jacket. I guess those days are coming, but there isn’t enough of them before it gets cold again up here. I’m thinking that it may not be worth it to put winter stuff away. We did put a bunch of the girls heavy sweaters in a bag, but it’s not been put up into the attic.

Now on to a totally different subject:

We have a few different people coming up to visit us here and there this summer. First, we had an old college buddy of mine from Lincoln Memorial University come up. Martin came last week and we took him into Chicago. He got his first train ride and his first time in a big city. He seemed to enjoy it. The kids loved showing him the Bean in Millennium Park. Since it is right near the train station, they like to go up to it every time we go into Chicago. We also took him up by the riverside and he got to see some different places where “The Dark Knight” were filmed. When we came back to our house, Jeremy had the grill going and so we had a yummy dinner. We used skype to talk to a friend of ours who is currently in NY and then somehow we got the kids into bed and talked a little while before we went to sleep ourselves. In the morning, James made him an egg for breakfast before he headed out.

Our next visitor is coming in two weeks. Michelle will be up here for a little while. In July, we go to a family reunion for the second weekend. We are looking forward to that quite a bit. August will bring Jeremy’s brother, Andrew Read, and we’ll have VBS during that month. Another friend, Angie, will hopefully be coming in the fall.

We love having friends and family come visit.

Those of you who know how much I love photography and taking pictures will know how long I’ve wanted a really good digital camera. Not a small point and click one, though I have one of those that is handy for certain things. I’ve wanted a good SLR. I have been saving up $5 or $10 here and there for a long time and finally I realized that I had enough to get a Nikon D40. On Sunday, we went out and got it. Today, I’ve been experimenting with it. I have a few close-ups and some action. The kids really had fun with the cereal pictures. I wanted to see how well the camera captured small objects in action, so I had them throwing around cereal. To see my pictures, they’ve been uploaded to Facebook and Flickr. I can’t wait to see what else I can do with this.

Well, Grassroots Homeschool group had it’s last gathering last week. The kids had Art Day. Last Tuesday, we took a trip to JoAnn’s Craft Store and each of the kids picked out an art project to do. That afternoon, we spent doing the projects. Christine picked a drawing kit with a little wooden figure in it. Amie picked a picaso-ish painting kit with watercolor pencils. You color the canvas in with the paint pencils and then use water and a brush and it spreads the pencil strokes out with your brush strokes. She really likes it. James picked out bake-able clay and made a dog head and we baked it in the oven to harden it. AnnaBeth picked out a Hello Kitty pillowcase that she had to sew. It had cross-stitching thread to use for the thread, a big plastic needle, and small holes in the fabric to show where to put the needle. She really enjoyed it doing it and she’s proud of her sewing project. Noelle just picked a wooden figure to color. It was Belle from Beauty and the Beast (which was her favorite movie until Tinkerbell came out). She colored her and then had a lot of fun putting glitter glue all over her dress. The good thing… she was very careful and didn’t get it on her clothes. The bad thing… when she was done, she laid it upside down on her bed. *laugh* Oh well, it happens. They each enjoyed talking about their projects to the kids at the group. James told how the clay has to be worked until it is soft enough to mold and to make sure there are no cracks in it. Amie told about how her painting pencils worked and Christine told what her little wooden human figure was for. They each showed what they’d done and they were good and listened while the other kids showed their projects.

The only thing left for our homeschool group to do is graduation night. It is a week from this Wednesday, which is June 3. They give awards to the kids for everything they participated in during the year and they do graduation for Kindergarten, Eighth grade, and High School seniors. AnnaBeth is graduating from Kindergarten this year. She looks forward to wearing her little blue cap and gown. Thankfully, I’ll save some money and can use the same cap and gown for Noelle next year.

Guess who’s been doing the Adult Choir directing during the church the last 3 weeks. Yeah, me. The first week, the head choir director had been sick on Wednesday and so the pianist and I came up with a song for the choir to do. That Sunday was Mother’s Day, so the Children’s Choir was singing as well. It was a very full Sunday for me. The next week, something came up and our head choir director had to leave town on the weekend, so I took over directing the two choir songs we had planned during service. This Sunday, he picked one of the songs that I direct for them to do, so he put me up there. It was ok, I know he’s been needing a break, but it was kind of interesting having to do this three weeks in a row. Truthfully, I love doing it, but I backed down because the choir preferred him over me. I almost wonder if it’s better this way for me. I don’t have the pressure I had before and I enjoy doing it when I have the chance to do it.

Have I told you all how much I enjoy doing the Wii Fit? I love it. AND my chiropractor has used me as a test to see how the yoga and exercises on there help with the flexibility and overall health of a person. She is pleased with the results she’s seen on me. She also likes the fact that many of the exercises it has are some that they recommend for people to do. The list of exercises she gave me last time, I took the sheet and looked over it and told her that I already do them on the Wii. Since it’s warmer out, I’ve been doing more walking or outside stuff and haven’t been on the Wii as much, but I’m getting my exercise. I love it.

I have some pretty pink flowers in my yard. I have no idea what they are, but they are cute. The kids picked a lot of the buds before they bloomed though. I got pretty upset with them. I am loving springtime now that it’s getting warmer. I like the green leaves and the flowers around and the grass and growing my tomatoes and green onions. I take a chair and a book out there and enjoy some reading time out in the sunshine. Today is a bit cooler and I’m wearing a hoodie, but it’s still nicer than last month.

Anyway, I am open to questions if anyone wants to ask some for blog fodder. If you want to know something (as long as it isn’t too personal) then ask away and I’ll answer it. I’ll talk to you all later.

I’ve really had some studies on Hannah in the last few weeks. It was our Sunday School lesson one week and then Pastor talked a little about her in his Mother’s Day sermon, but we really dug into the story yesterday in our evening Bible Study. We finished the book of Ruth two weeks ago and then we didn’t have any Bible Study last week because of the holiday, so we started 1 Samuel yesterday.

I kind of liked the story of Hannah before, but as a mother, I can say that I really enjoy it much more now.

Something that really struck me was how devoted she was to God. When she was done at the temple, she was no longer downcast. She had given her prayer request for a son to God completely. I don’t know if Eli’s blessing helped, but I do know that she trusted God to help her. Later, she gave her first son to God, not just as a dedication as we do with our children these days, but actually gave up her parental rights and gave Samuel to the temple as a toddler to be raised there. Her husband must have been just as devoted to the Lord to agree to this as well. I wonder how far away they lived, but probably far enough that they couldn’t make the trip more than once a year. I wonder how often Hannah thought about Samuel and imagined how he’d changed since she’d seen him last. She made sure she had his robe made for him. She was still a devoted mother. Giving up Samuel was probably the hardest sacrifice she ever had and God blessed her for it. She later had 3 more sons and 2 daughters.

Really, I can’t put everything I’m thinking on here. I just don’t have the words really. I just wanted to share a little of this and maybe you’ll open up your Bible to this story and study it yourself. I’d be happy for some comments from others.

We are asking for prayers for a situation of which I can’t post on here, but God knows what it is. I know we have some Prayer Warriors out there. Thanks in advance for praying. I appreciate it.

Yesterday, for our monthly 4-H meeting, we had someone come in and talk about computers. Who do we know well enough to ask to come talk to the kids? Well, he works for Google, has awesome hair like Aragorn, and lives in my house. Jeremy told his office that he was doing this and they gave him a few things for the kids. They gave him some periodic table placemats, fat Google pens, and some stickers. We never really advertised that we were doing this and didn’t get a lot of people, but it was easier for Jeremy to really teach the kids with a smaller group, I think. He took apart a dead laptop hard drive for them to look at and he brought in our non-working desktop which we still need to buy parts for and opened it up for them to look at. Our Cloverbud leader (for the younger children) got out a craft for them as each of them lost interest and needed something else to do, which helped tremendously. We got out a whole lot earlier than we usually do since we didn’t have a lot of cleaning up to do. I thought it was interesting and I hope the kids did too.

Well, after the skating party, my kids are all gung ho for some skates. James already had a pair of rollerblades and Noelle had a pair of Fisher Price blades that go over her shoes, so thankfully, I only had three asking for some.

Today, we went to the thrift store, because they had everything half price on Mondays. (I only go to that one on Mondays.) We looked for skates, but they only had blades. The girls all kind of hemmed and hawed a bit and then decided that blades would be fine, so we found some in each of their sizes. As soon as we got home, they were all outside getting theirs on. I have five kids on wheels right now. Yes, I took pictures. No, I haven’t uploaded them yet. I still have to put up our vacation pics.

Those things have nothing to do with the other, but it tells you what we’ve done the last few days.

Christine has been doing her schoolwork and chores without complaining for a long time now and we’ve been proud of how well she’s done. Because of this, Jeremy decided to get her the gerbil she’s been asking for. I think it’s been at least 3 years since she found out about them and started asking for one. On Wednesday night, church was canceled because Pastor wasn’t feeling well, so Jeremy took her to the pet shop and she picked out a pink cage and pink bedding and got a cute little black and white female gerbil who she calls Princess, or Essie for short. You can see pictures of her on my Flickr.

On Friday, our homeschool group had an end of year party. It was roller skating at a rink where one of our members works and does his magic tricks and stuff. We had so much fun. It lasted a total of three hours. James and I were on the rink almost the whole time, only stopping to get water every once in a while. When Amie first put on her skates, she kept falling and decided she didn’t want to try, took off the skates and pouted for about 2 hours (which I totally ignored.) Fifteen minutes before we left, she suddenly put skates back on and went around the wall of the rink a few times, twice with me giving her a little help, and decided she liked it. Christine cautiously went around the rink a bunch of times next to the wall, all by herself. She refused help or support. AnnaBeth spent most of the time where there was carpet getting used to the skates and practicing on the easier surface. Every once in a while, she would put her hand over the half wall of the rink as I went by to give me five. After a bit, she called me over to show that she was practicing on the smooth floor surface where people sit to put skates on. She was slowly skating from mushroom seat to mushroom seat. After that, she came up to the rink and went back and forth next to the half wall, but didn’t go on the side where it was a full wall. She started out holding onto the wall, but ended with not holding onto anything. Like Christine, she did it all herself and refused to have any support or help. Noelle enjoyed going around on her skates on the carpeted area most of the time. She and a friend played out in that area most of the time. She did ask for me to take her out onto the rink for one go around. I took both of her hands and supported her in front of me. She giggled the whole time around even though she was holding as tight as possible to my hands. One thing that James was having fun doing was coming up beside me, grabbing my hand, then I would increase my speed and fling him forward. He only fell once doing it and he laughed it off. It was so much fun, despite Amie’s pouting.

Oh, and for the record… I didn’t fall even once.