Women At Rest Weekend Retreat

This past weekend, WAR-Missouri had our first Fall Retreat at Whispering Winds Camp near St. James. OH MY GOODNESS!!!!! This is the land that God blessed.

Here are a few pics from our weekend. These pictures here are of the campgrounds. I laid under this tree and took an hour long nap. All I could hear was the wind and occassionally a little rooster. When I woke up my cheek was warm - the sun was shining through the branches above me, as if God was sending down a gentle kiss on my cheek. I tell ya, those kinds of moments are the things that beautiful poems are written about. I felt like I was in a scene right out of a book or movie. When was the last time that you laid still, in the middle of a field and heard NOTHING?? "Be still and know that I am God." -Psalm 46:10

The House Of Yummy

The Dining Hall at Whispering Winds was affectionately dubbed "The House Of Yummy" and became one of our favorite parts of the weekend retreat! I don't know that I've ever eaten so well in my life! Each meal was completely home made from scratch. I think I helped myself to seconds on everything at every meal! Another favorite at the House Of Yummy was the "Magic Window". When you set your dishes in front of it, they disappear!! Even better... Magic Window came with Magic Man... and sometimes Magic Man came out of Magic Window and picked up your dishes for you!!! We all want to know where we can order a Magic Window/Man Deluxe Combo for ourselves!!!!

Here I Am To Worship

Friday night we learned about different creative forms of expression to incorporate in our worship time. Here we learn how to use the billows.

Riley.... or Kenny Chesney??

Riley just cracks me up. He came in posed like this and all I could think of was "Give the kid a shell necklace and he looks like a little Kenny Chesney!"

A Few Pictures From Orlando

Here are a few pictures from the Women At Rest conference that Melissa and I spoke at in July. These are 2 pictures of the church we spoke at. A picture of Melissa and I. And a picture of Sandy LeSourd and Sandy Wellman.

Life Got Busy

It seems that when the school year started, life got busy!

On Sunday evenings I have Christmas Dinner Theater rehearsal and Women At Rest. Rick has a men's Bible Study. Mira has WGTA (Worshipping God Through the Arts). Riley and Joey have the Joyful Noise choir. Sundays are a busy day! I can't believe we're all working on Christmas music already! I'm blessed this year to have been asked to write the Christmas musical that will be used for our second annual dinner theater. It's so exciting! My WAR group has taken off and is AMAZING. We're averaging 16 women, all military wives, and so many prayers have been answered in this group; so many lives have been touched.

Tuesdays at 5pm Mira & Riley have gymnastics... and Mommy is one of their coaches! Rick has Fire Dept training each Tues evening, too. On Wednesdays all 3 kids are in the AWANA program. Friday nights we have our cell group which we look forward to all week. There's so much to do!

The kids are adjusting well to public school - Mom's just having a hard time keeping up! Spelling words and vocabulary tests seem to take up the evenings we have "off". And even tho we're always gone, we some how still manage to always make a mess at home! lol

I'm hoping to get some more pics of the kids this week to post.

Joey Starts School

Joey started school this past week. We absolutely love his teacher, Mrs. Shelden (she's our pastor's wife!) and her assistant, Mrs. Hackney (a friend from church and Mira & Riley's gymnastics coach!). On Joey's first day, his Daddy got to go with him. Here are pictures of him and his daddy... and him with the bags of candy he (squished and) brought to his teachers on his first day.