Do you want to go to bed?

You never ask this question to my daughter in the evenings. MOST kids when you ask them this will straighten up and act right, and cry and beg to keep from going to bed. We tried asking Anna this when she gets a little fussy in the evenings and we want her to behave. Big mistake. If you are not ready right then to take her and put her in bed, don't ask. She whines more trying to get you to put her in bed than most kids do to stay out of bed! She is the only child that I have ever known of to be GLAD to go to bed in the evening. I guess we can just thank the Lord for that. Now if she will just learn to go to bed by herself.

I guess I could have just titled this all about Anna.
She has gotten very good about helping out around the house with cleaning and keeping it cleaned up. She loves to takes clothes out of the washer(the new front-loading washer is great for this), and taking dishes out of the dishwasher(now to wait until she is tall enough to reach the cabinets!), and putting things up in closets. When I get home from work, when she realizes I am taking off my jacket/coat, she immediately runs to the coat closet and opens the door and says "Mon", the closest she gets to Come on right now, while motioning with her hand. Since this house has lever handle doors, she can usually open any of the doors. We have got to get a new door handle for the guest room as it has no lock on it and she will be prone to trying to open it when guests are staying here.
She also love our office. Right now it basically just has the childrens Sunday School stuff in it, but it has double doors and she loves going in there and closing them. She did so many times Sunday and after realizing it was awfully quiet in there I began to investigate, the first time I found a little girl taking a bottle of glue out of a moving box so that box had to be moved to the garage. Next I found a little girl climbing on one box to get to an open box stacked next to it, so that box had to go as well.

Ok, one last thing about Anna. Praying is very important for meals and before she goes to bed. One time she ended praying for supper three times. She prayed for her food. Everyone else a short time later prayed. She didn't realize they were praying until they were almost through I guess, because after they were done, she insisted they pray again. When putting her to bed she often starts trying to pray before we get all the hugs and kisses.

We finally have most things unpacked, most light fixtures up(having to replace 9 that were taken),(back now after we took a little break for finger painting) and all of our furniture. We had someone give us a sofa, loveseat, and tv to replace those that were lost in the flood. Those were the last items to be moved in. We have one more desk, but will not be getting it until Joe, our former neighbor and current church attender, gets moved. I have most of the curtains up now as well. We are getting settled in pretty well.

Well that's all for now.

Strive to be all that He has called you to be.

Finally!!

We finally moved to our new house. Praise the Lord! Most things are in order, but still have a lot of little things to do. Hopefully, I will be able to get back with more info soon. Today is our first day with internet since we have been moved, so I have a lot of catching up to do with reading.

God bless

Bonfire Pic's

My lil' punkin playing with Mr. Murray

I guess the fire was still too warm so Joe decided to cook inside
Gotta finish with a good photo of myself!

Try to get some more pic's uploaded later. With 21 people we had a lot of different pictures taken. Just got to sort through them and figure out which ones are the best. Also, with it being dark outside it was kind of hard to get any wide shots with everyone in it, especially with half being inside and half outside. Hope you enjoy this little taste.

Catching up

Well, we didn't get to move in on the 15th. Our closing date, if nothing else causes delay, should be Oct. 31! We are ready to be back in our own house. Grateful that we have family that are so generous, but ready to go.

We had a good ministers' convention last weekend. Good preaching by the guest ministers. We topped it off by dedicating our new regional parsonage. We are glad to be able to provide a parsonage to our overseer. Which, please pray for Sis. Jernigan's mother. She fell and broke her hip, necessitating a quick trip back to OK for them.

Our church had a bonfire/cookout Friday night. We had a good turnout with 21 in attendance. We had 7 that had never been to our church before. There was a lot of good fellowship. The fire, after it got going was about 20-30 ft high and 15 ft wide. Way to large to roast anything on. But finally, it burned down enough to roast dogs on while still leaving the skin on your hand. We had a couple of cameras taking pictures, so hopefully, after they are uploaded, I will get some on here.

After the bonfire, Kelley and I left for the weekend. Today is our 6th anniversary. We just left for two nights and a day, but it was good to get away and do pretty much nothing, even if just for a day. We ate at the Cheesecake Factory yesterday. The prices there are in the higher range, but since you really get two meals with one order, it is worth it. I can't eat all of the lunch size portion of what I got, and they gave me the dinner size. I also got a Chinese massage afterward. At the mall there is a Chinese massage place in the middle of the walkways. Man, you better be ready for some pain. Those guys press HARD. The guys kept saying my shoulders were tense and that I really needed the massage. The real problem was I was in pain and I was tensed up because of that. But all in all I felt pretty good after it was all over.

We had a good turn out for church this morning and are going to have a fellowship time after.

Keep looking up.

Almost at the end!

We received word this week that our loan has been approved from the SBA. One more person has to sign off and then we should know for sure what our closing date is! As far as we know it should be Oct. 15th.

Please pray for the other people in this community that flooded. We had a meeting Thurs. about the city buying our flooded house and many people expressed some pretty difficult situations that they are having to endure. The Lord has really blessed us and we have not had to deal with many of the problems. Some are paying for their old house as well as renting a place to live. Some have been dropped by their insurance and they are still required to have it on the flooded house. One lady had gotten estimates for work and her insurance had given them $75,000 LESS than what the estimates were! I could only sit and just thank the Lord that we have not had these problems. We have had a place to live. The insurance has not fought us at all on our claim. And our agent has worked with us to get whatever we needed.

We will be leaving for Ministers' Convention sometime Friday. I am looking forward to seeing everyone and worshiping with them. We are glad the region has purchased the Jernigans a parsonage. It will be great having them closer. I know it will make things easier on them visiting the local churches as well. I hope to hear how things are going in the new fields in our region as well.

We had a fun day yesterday. Tried out the new donut shop. It was good! We then spent a bunch of time downtown Franklin at the Fall Festival. Checked out the booths. Saw a few people we knew. Got a bunch of free stuff for Anna. Then we watched the parade. I wasn't thrilled about most of the parade. A bunch of it was just Shriners riding around in their little vehicles. People who don't realize that Masons are their own religion should easily be able to see. One of the vehicles had Potentate on it and another had High Priest & Prophet. One good thing about the parade was that one local church had a lot of people in it. They were passing out flyers for their church. After the parade, we walked to our flooded house so that I could mow the grass. I guess the only good thing I can say about mowing grass at a house you can't live in is 1) The mower I use doens't use gas(it's a reel mower) so it doesn't cost anything other than time, and 2) It is a pretty small yard so it doesn't take too long(about 15 min.).

We had a good service at Wheeler Mission last night. It was pretty full. I guess with the nights getting colder, more are showing up. No one publicly accepted Christ, but the service went well, and a majority seemed to participate.

Keep looking up!