Carving Pumpkins

Tonight was our annual pumpkin carving night. Each year it is so difficult to decide what our pumpkin will look like. After much deliberation we settled on a leopard gecko this year to honor Geico and Big John! If you are wondering who in the world Geico and Big John are, they are our leopard geckos.

The fun began with my favorite part...PUMPKIN GUTS! The kids are willing to get spoons in there but they will not use their hands. They say it's "GROSS!"


So I decided to chase them with pumpkin guts!



After we got our pumpkin nice and clean dad sketched our gecko and got to work carving.


So what do you think?


Is there a resemblance?


This is Geico. Big John was shedding tonight, he wasn't camera ready :)

Back from the land of the Hoosiers..

You can see that I did not get the chance to update while we were out of town. We had a wonderful trip and stayed rather busy. We arrived in Indianapolis on Wednesday and drove to a suburb called Noblesville to stay with the Williamsons. It was wonderful to be among old friends again! Thursday we headed to Fort Wayne. After Larry's meeting with the hotel staff to discuss the conference we were able to break away to see Fireproof. It was a wonderful and much needed date! On Friday we got started on a full weekend. Friday is Larry's busiest day. He is on the go from about 6:30 am to about 10:00 at night. He spent the whole day setting up the ballroom and preparing for our conferees to arrive that evening. Friday night's conference went great and we quickly realized that we were in for a treat because we had 3 great speakers!
Saturday Larry was up early again to prepare for the day. While the conference is happening I usually stay with Larry and sit with him back by the sound table. I usually bring something to do or read and also listen to the speakers. I never tire of hearing these talks, and come away with something new each time. I also run some errands for Larry throughout the day. Saturday night is date night for our conferees and we go to dinner with the speakers and some other members of our team. That is a fun and relaxed night.
On Sunday morning we have a staff opportunities meeting to tell people about joining the staff of FamilyLife. It was a very nice size group which we were very excited about. Many of them felt led to pursue this opportunitiy and will be contacted by one of our HR staff soon to get the application process rolling! On Sunday morning the men and women split up for their sessions and these are often the most powerful sessions. It is not uncommon to find men very emotional after their talk. Larry has seen men leave that session and in tears apologize to their wives and commit to being better husbands. I can speak from experience when I say that the women's talk at our first WTR altered my thinking about what it means to be a wife and mother. At the end of the day on Sunday, which ends right before lunch, the conferees have an opportunity to share what they took away from the weekend. One man said "I am leaving with a wife that I didn't have when I came here." Before leaving they renew their wedding vows:

After the conferees leave we tear down and also look through their evaluations to see what God had done with the weekend. At this particular conference we heard many stories of couples who were separated before this conference and are committed to trying again, couples with affairs in their marriage who are looking forward with hope, and couples who came with a great marriage and have been strengthened with the tools needed to stay strong for the long haul. The thing that was most amazing to us; however, was the number of salvation decisions. 47 people indicated first time commitments to Christ which was about 10% of the conferees in attendance! We were all celebrating big time!
After tear down was complete and Larry finished some paperwork we drove back to Noblesville to spend another night with the Williamsons. Monday morning we got to meet with our friend Scott, who is on staff with Keynote. Keynote is the music and performing arts ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ and is located just about 15 minutes from the Williamson's house. It was great to visit with Scott, tour Keynote's facilities, and get a better vision of what God is doing through their ministry. After many goodbyes it was back to the airport. We arrived back in Little Rock around 8:00 Monday night and it has been non-stop since! In fact my typing time is over...it's back to school for my kiddos!

Headed out of town...

Larry and I are looking forward to a fun week. We are leaving tomorrow morning for Indiana. We will arrive in Indianapolis where we will stay the night with Heidi and Chuck Williamson. If you are a Calvary person you might know them. They moved to IN shortly after we moved to AR and we are very excited to see them again. On Thursday we will drive up to Fort Wayne and all of the preparations for the Weekend to Remember will start. The conference is sold out and runs Friday through Sunday. Sunday evening we will go back to the Williamson's house to stay the night. Monday morning we will visit with friends from Keynote, Campus Crusade's performing arts ministry. They are based in Indianapolis. We are excited to see them and tour Keynote's headquarters. Monday afternoon we will head back to Little Rock. My mom will be staying with the boys so I'm sure they will be good and spoiled by the time we get back!

I'll try to post pictures and updates on the conference while I am gone.

Fun with Friends

We had such a fun morning! At 9am we picked up my friend Karyn's boys, Devin and Drew. We took all four boys downtown for a sculpture show. It was so cool. The artists loved having the four boys there and every artist wanted to tell them how they created their sculptures. One artist even put the boys on a horse that he had sculpted and took a picture of them for his display. They had so much fun picking their favorites from each display and learning more about sculpture. After the sculputre show we went to a fun park that they just put in downtown. Then after everyone was worn out we met Karyn again and had lunch together. Here are some pictures of our fun...

Captive Audience

Evan's new favorite thing to do before bed is read stories to Bella. He is convinced that she enjoys it. Unfortunately this is her bed time too so she couldn't keep from falling asleep during story time!

Neighborhood Friend

I think we have aquired a third child! Back in the spring the boys and I were out playing basketball on the driveway and a boy about Clayton's age was riding his bike by. He stopped and played with them for awhile and then off he went again. He was very quiet and all we found out is that his name is Alex. After that day anytime we were out and he rode by he'd stop by and play for awhile. I was pretty excited because there don't seem to be a lot of kids around here that are the age of our boys. This summer we didn't see him at all. It gets pretty hot here so I guess we weren't out much or we were at the pool. Well yesterday we were out inviting neighbors to a block party that we are helping to organize with some other FamilyLife staff on our street and we saw Alex. I told him that he needed to come play again and that he didn't have to wait for us to be out, he could just ring our doorbell. Half an hour later our doorbell rings and guess who it is?! Alex! We invited him in and he played until the sun started to go down so we sent him back home.

This morning at 7:30am our doorbell rings and guess who it is? Alex! He wanted to invite us to come to the yard sale that his family was having. I was excited to meet his parents so Clayton and I went up there and they are very sweet people. We left and walked around the neighborhood a little bit and when we came home guess who was at our house?! You guessed it...Alex! I just started laughing. He just had lunch with us and I guess he's here for the day which is fine with me. He's such a sweet boy and we are thrilled to have a friend so close but I think I'm going to need to get accustomed to having 3 boys in my house!

Homeschool Happenings

One of the things I love most about our new curriculum is the Bible class. The boys learn God's word, memorize scripture, learn hymns, and do lots of fun activities. Recently Evan learned about Jesus as his shepard and made these little shepard and sheep finger puppets:



On the same day Clayton learned about Jonathan Edwards, a hero of the faith. Jonathan Edwards had an analogy about spiders to help people understand God's sovereignty. In quick basic terms there is a spider that represents the ugliness of man's sin, a stone that represents the weight of our sin, and a web that represents our good deeds. If God let us go the weight of our sin (rock) would cause us to fall into hell and our good deeds (web) could not stop us. But of course, because of His great love, mercy, and grace, God does not want us to fall into hell and wants every sinner to come to Him and ask for forgiveness. So for a project he made a spider's web with glitter and wrote a scripture around it to remind him of God's goodness:



Even Bella likes Bible. Here she is learning the hymn "Anywhere with Jesus"!:

To my friends back home....

I just found out that Fireproof is opening at St. Charles 18 this weekend! If you haven't seen it yet start calling your babysitters and make it a date night!

You love me, but do you like me?

At each Weekend to Remember there is a session where the men and the women are separated. While the men are encouraged in the area of being a husband and father, the women are hearing a wonderful message on being a wife and mother. Larry and I were recently listening to a CD of one of the sessions for women. The speaker said something that really struck me. She asked a group of men if they thought that their wives loved them. They all agreed that their wives did love them. Then she asked if they thought that their wives liked them and almost none of them could say for sure that their wives liked them. My first reaction was "How can that be?" Well, she answered that too. She reminds us that growing up our husband's parents cheered them on, encouraged them, and told them "Good job" in many areas of their lives. As they grew and became more independent they got a job and their bosses praised them for their hard work. There were probably many areas in their lives where they were encouraged and told "good job" for what they did. Then they get married and their wives say "Why can't you take the trash out when I ask?" or "Why are you at work so long?" and all they hear is "BOOOOO"...."You aren't doing a good job." Hence the reason that they now think their wife doesn't like them even though they love them.

That was eye opening to me. The first thing I did was ask Larry if he thought I liked him. To my relief he said yes but I wanted examples. I didn't want him to just say yes because he thought that is what I would want to hear. I wanted him to tell me what I do that makes him sure that I like him. After I was confident in his answer I made a commitment to myself to be careful that I convey to him through my actions and my words that I don't only love him, I also like him. I want to be the person that he hears "good job!" from. That doesn't come easy when I am being selfish (who me?!) but as is always the case in marriage this is more about making me more like Christ than it is about making me happy.

On another note Fireproof was #4 in theaters opening weekend! It showed on 839 screens and shocked movie critics who didn't think it could make it into the top 10 since the other top movies played on thousands of screens! The weekend of October 10th they will add 300 new screens because of the overwhelming success. Praise God!

Also, this weekend I will be attending a women's retreat in Hot Springs Arkansas. It is all FamilyLife staff women and should be a lot of fun. I come back home on Sunday and then Monday night the couple that we are coaching will be staying with us. We are very excited to see them again.