A City Life For Me

One benefit of the mission house where we are staying is that the kids have seen a lot of wildlife.  I posted the groundhog pictures earlier.  We have come down the driveway to see deer.  We are enjoying the bird feeder.  Today we spotted a woodpecker.  Though we had seen evidence of him around the property, we never got a glimpse until today!  My bigs were especially excited because they just watched the woodpecker episode of Wild Kratts.  A couple pics are blurry, but I took them zoomed in from quite a distance and three stories up!  And woodpeckers generally have their heads in motion…

    Baby in a Basket!  Best bushel ever!   This happy guy is 8 months old!  We have been home for much of the month, and things seem to be flying by…I can hardly remember what was “new” for him!  (That’s what Evernote is for, though!) Henry got to meet Ben’s Aunt Paula this month, and visit the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY.  He enjoyed his first ride in the swings at a playground near Cincinnati on a beautiful, spring day (April 5).  We started handing him food at the table even though it’s guaranteed to be spit back out.  He still prefers just milk!  He enjoys gnawing on a celery stick or carrot stick, though.  I think it sooths his teething gums! We had a meeting in Queens on Sunday and took the evening after the services to enjoy our city.  We rode the Staten Island Ferry from SI to Manhattan.  We walked past Wall Street and enjoyed a pizza (though it wasn’t the best NYC pizza we’ve had!).  This was Henry’s first boat ride, first NYC adventure, and first time past the Statu

Since I shut down my Facebook a couple of weeks ago, I have had a little more time to read and catch up on some favorite blogs, etc., and also to listen to some more podcasts.  By far, this is more helpful to me than Facebook!  Here are some helpful links I came across this week. ADORATION I have been going through a dry spell in my walk with God.  Every week we are serving and ministering at churches.  When I sit in church, Ben is usually preaching and he uses the same handful of messages to communicate to the people during our deputation process.  My personal quiet time is sporadic in time of day and duration during our travelling. Because of these things I’ve noted that I need to simplify while still trying to nourish my soul.  I’ve incorporated daily adorations from Every Bitter Thing is Sweet into my daily routine.  I can read the passage and journal in a few minutes, and then meditate on that one truth throughout my day.  It. has. been. wonderful.  ( You can download a

We’ve been back for a bit now and life is perhaps starting to settle in a smidge of a routine.  I hesitate to say that because I’m sure it will spin out of control on me again at any minute!  This is what we’ve been doing recently… We are learning about the sun, moon, and stars in science class.  Elaine and Nolan enjoyed making some moon crafts (complete with glitter – one of my least used craft items because of the mess!) Elaine’s Nolan’s Then we conducted a project to visualize the size difference between the sun, the earth, and the moon. The large make-shift paper circle represents the sun (54.5” wide).  Ours is about three inches too small because that’s just how it worked… A mini-marshmallow (1/2” diameter) represents the earth.  The sun is 109 times larger than the earth, so we lined up {almost} 109 mini marshmallows across the center of our “sun” to visualize the vast size difference.  It was very helpful that we had just visited the planetarium at the Creation Museum, w

Our most recent deputation trip took us to Maryland, Ohio, and New York.  After Maryland we stopped by to see Ben’s Aunt Paula near Washington, D.C.  There was beautiful weather so we ate lunch outside! We tried out a selfie-stick, but the kids weren’t really paying attention! While we were in Wilton, NY the kids got creative and turned our deputation table into a tent.  I was standing there talking, and this little hand crept out with a yellow taxi in it’s grip.  Liberty and Henry thought it looked fun, and the games commenced!    We stopped by Ben’s parent’s home en route to Mountainville, NY.  This allowed us a brief visit and we also picked up our bikes from their storage shed.  Now that we have a bike rack and a place to ride them, we wanted faster access!  The kids did painting with Grandma, too. Elaine painted our van with the new bike rack installed! Nolan painted Elaine (see her round head and triangle dress in the middle?) and then filled in the rainbow around her.

One of our supporting churches in Ohio is Kings Mills Baptist Church near Cincinnati.  Last year Ben and I stopped by to present our ministry after the BWM Orientation Seminar in April.  This year we got a call a few weeks ago asking us to be a part of their mission’s conference, since someone else wasn’t able to come.  We agreed, as long as we could miss the Sunday services (we already had a meeting scheduled). We enjoyed each evening service.  The music was wonderful and we enjoyed the other missionaries in the conference.  I felt refreshed, and it was so nice to have familiar people come up to speak to us at the table after the services.  We talked for quite a while after each evening service! This conference was also full of surprises for us!  Each evening Ben and I had to introduce ourselves during the service and present either a need or a want.  We feel so blessed and in need of very little…we really struggled to come up with things to share.  And it seemed like the few things

   His shirt says it all – “Happy.”  Every church we go to brings a deluge of comments about how happy and easy going he is.  And it’s all true.  In fact, until last week when he was cutting a tooth, I haven’t had to pull an all-nighter with a grumpy baby.  He hasn’t been sick.  He never spit up.  He’s just always happy!  Henry is enjoying the warmer weather and being outside a little. Can you see it?  The big milestones this month include that little white tooth sticking out of his bottom gum, and the fact that he is very mobile and pulling himself up to standing on everything!  We are back to the stage of filtering out small toys and being uber careful about papers, wipes, diaper bags, and more than usually sits in the floor.  Because if its in the floor, it will eventually be in Henry’s mouth! Okay…he does cry every once in a while! Photo Bomb!  This lucky guy has four older siblings.  These five are my handful – literally – of blessing, tiredness, activity, and craziness! “