Pixiemom

We really haven’t done a lot yet. She got here on Saturday just before we had to send the kids to bed and I didn’t stay up too late because I don’t like to be too tired in church. On Sunday night though, after evening church, we dropped Jeremy and the kids off at the house and then went out for ice cream and coffee. We came back and stayed up talking until 4:30 am when the caffeine finally wore off. On Monday, we planned on going to the park… but it took too long for the kids to do their chores and schoolwork. Today, we planned on trying to go to the park, but the sky is gray and I don’t want to get caught out in a storm.

Tomorrow, we are going to the zoo. Gotta love our family pass. I have to be at church for our music ministry meeting. During July, we have no choir practice, adult or children. I plan on attending Bible Study. That will be nice. I think they are studying in Revelation. We haven’t really planned anything on Thursday. On Friday, Jeremy is off and we’re thinking of going up to the beach. On Saturday, Michelle and I are going into Chicago. I don’t know what we are going to do yet. We’ll see. We are going to come back in time to take the kids to our town’s fireworks. Next Sunday, she’s leaving after church on Sunday morning.

So, that’s what we’ve done and what we’re planning on doing.

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.