Brazil Mission Trip

Our church received the most exciting email today from our pastor who is in Brazil with a mission team, including my husband Marty.

I have heard doubts from many about Marty continuing on this mission trip with my problems recovering from surgery. Today's email confirms without a doubt that we came to the right decision that he should continue his trip as planned. I told him last week that God must have great plans for this team otherwise why would satan be throwing so many stumbling blocks before this team? Here is my pastor's email and the photos he sent with it:

"I know that some of you have already received updates from your Brazil team,however I wanted to share with you a couple of photos from today. One is ofthe afternoon VBS class (about 45 children) and the other is of the Rodriguez family. Marty shared the gospel with the adults of this family and five of them accepted Jesus Christ as Savior. The people of the First Baptist Church in Luis Correia, with whom we have partnered, are doing a wonderful job with us, as are the interpreters. Pastor Julio this afternoon said, as he was wiping his brow, "wow, and it's only Monday!" Thank you for your continued prayers. We will be conducting an evangelistic service tonight in the home of a lady who lives in Coconut Beach. Her daughter, a believer, is the headmaster of the school where our VBS is being conducted, but she was not a Christian until this morning. One of our team members led her to the Lord. As you can tell, God is already doing great things and it has already been worth all the problems we had to overcome. Give Him Praise and Glory!

This photo is of the family mentioned above with Marty (in the yellow t-shirt)

VBS in Brazil

Our God is an awesome God!

Update

To my faithful readers, friends and family thank you to all of you who have kept my family and me in your prayers. Thank you all for your kind comments, emails, phone calls and even comments left on Erica's blog inquiring about my welfare, etc.

I am spending some time with my mother in law for a while during my recovery and didn't even bring my camera (not that I'd be posting any photos of me laying around anyway!).

It's been an interesting few days with Heather spraining her ankle at dance practice just before a football game Thursday, my recovery, Marty's mission trip, Hurrican Ike, etc. When it rains...it pours! Thankfully Hurricane Ike missed us but I know so many were not as fortunate.

I will try to be back to blogging regularly as soon as possible! Be patient, I won't be giving up that hobby any time soon! :0)

Mmmmm Mmmmm Good!

Soon after I arrived home from the hospital Friday afternoon my mom, my sister Regina, and my niece Danille arrived after their long drive from Missouri to stay with me a few days. They'd been planning to come down and help take care of me as I recovered from my surgery. I spoke to Mom a few days before my surgery and she was in the middle of canning jellies, pickles, and was hoping to get some apple butter made before the trip so she could bring me some treats. Yum! My mom is the BEST cook!!! She specializes in southern foods, especially those foods which we like to call "comfort foods." Her homemade chicken and noodles is to die for!!!

I have never liked pickes. Can't. Stand. Them. She makes a version of pickles that even I like. They're called cinnamon pickles. They're made from the cucumbers that are too large really and have too many seeds to make good pickles from. I'm not sure how they're made except that lots of red hots are used. They are so sweet, cinnamon-tasting and so good!

Cinnamon Pickles:

She brought me 3 jars of elderberry jelly. I don't even know what an elderberry is. She and Grandma always made elderberry jelly and it's my favorite jelly. I've never seen it in stores and people from places other than the Ozarks have seldom even heard of the stuff. I'm not a huge fan of jelly anyway unless it's grape...or of course elderberry.



She also found the time to make apple butter from apples off my grandpa's farm. I knew she was bringing me the jelly and pickles but the apple butter was a surprise. She wasn't sure she'd get it made before time to leave for Texas.



Now I'm hoping I'll feel up to making some biscuits very soon!!!

Friday Night Lights

I've been home, sleeping most days, as I recover from surgery. Unfortunately I missed last Friday night's first football game. I will have to miss this week's out of town game as well but hopefully will be ready for the following game.

Thankfully Marty and our friend Billy were both able to capture some photos of Heather for me during the halftime show. I thought I'd have felt like catching up on blogs by now but no. Keep watching. I'll slowly get caught up again.

The dancers in the stands

Heather with the band

Heather's the one in the very center here

Heather during the dance portion of the half time show. She's the center one in these photos:

Thanks again Marty and Billy for getting the photos I could not!!!

Missy

It's been a while since I've posted any new photos of our dog Missy. Tuesday I stayed home and I was alone except for the dog. She seemed to wonder why I was there and not her favorite people Marty and Heather. But she was happy enough with me as long as I let her out in the living room to play and look out the windows.





She will be spoiled rotten this weekend when my mom arrives for a short visit. Missy was a gift to us from Mom but Mom still adores her.

Don't talk to me before I've had my morning coffee kibble!

Awwww doesn't she look sweet?

Can I go outside to play now???

Is it almost time for Marty and Heather to be home to play with me???

Starsteppers 2008

Heather recently recieved this year's dance team and individual portraits and I just never got around to posting them. While I have some time to work on "pre-posts" I thought I'd work on some blogging so you have something to look at while I'm away from my computer for a few days. I found plenty to post on my other blog, but am not finding much to post here. I spotted Heather's photos and decided now is a good time to post them and I'll just wait and post the band portraits by themselves when they arrive.

I can't wait for football so I can see what the girls have been working on this summer! I didn't make it to one day of dance camp this year to take any photos so I have no clue how they look yet.

Heather will be one busy beaver this year during football if all goes according to her plan. She will again participate in band, dance team and is also the photo editor of the school paper this year. She always performs part of the half time show with the band, wearing her dance team uniform, then when the dancers take the field she runs her horn to the sidelines and joins her team's formation for the dance then leaves the field when they do. This year she wants to do all that, then be able to photograph the last half of each game for the paper. She is working with her dance teacher to see if that will actually work out. Heather had a plan in place to present to her not knowing the reaction she'd received. Her dance teacher thinks it might just work. This Friday's the first game so we'll see how it all comes together. I have to miss the first game but Heather's youth worker at church, Billy has agreed to take some pictures of Heather for me since I can't and I have photos of her from every game. Thanks Billy!!!

Heather is in the back row, 3rd from the right hand side.

Heather's friend Ryan will be the mascot this year so I'm looking forward to getting some photos of him as well!

Happy Birthday, Heather!!!

My baby turns 17 years old today. My how fast the time has gone! Seems just a few years ago that I held her as she was looking up at me with those huge beautiful eyes for the first time. And wow how we've filled the time since then!



We celebrated her birthday last night with dinner in San Antonio at the Magic Time Machine. It was a fun place for her! Movie characters were the wait staff. The hostess was dressed as some sort of animal and everyone was in character.

We didn't tell Heather her cousin Chris was home this week so she could be surprised when she saw him. He will be transferred to Arizona (Air Force) soon. This is Heather with Chris' wife Cil and Chris:

Heather with her buddy Ryan. They have been friends since 7th grade and we were so glad he was able to come with us to help celebrate her birthday. What a couple of cut-ups they were the whole evening!

The salad bar in the restaurant is a car:

Ryan's and Heather's talents extend even beyond their musical abilities in the high school band! It would appear Ryan is more talented than Heather in spoon balancing!

Napolean Dynamite was our waiter and here he fits Heather with a special birthday girl hat!

Another waiter Shaggy from Scooby Doo dropped by our table from time to time as well. Here he's just jumped through a window to come after my niece Cheyenne who's just shouted across the restaurant that something he said was lame.

Heather was brought a plate of cookies that made a lot of smoke. She was trying to figure out how they made it smoke so much.

Shaggy, Napolean Dynamite and Jack Sparrow all sat her in a chair and sang "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" to her. It was so funny!

Jack Sparrow singing to Heather.

Shaggy's dance was a little disturbing....

Our friends Reva and Mitch (also our pastor) joined us to celebrate as well.

Heather and her grandparents: Freddie, Heather, Granny (Billie) and Freddie's Mom, Jean.

Mitch began spitting lemon seeds through a straw at Heather.

Heather retaliated by spitting ice chips back at him!

Heather and Aunt Debbie.

As we were leaving Shaggy tried to steal Heather's gift.

On the way out the door Heather and Ryan found a booth with a peace sign window in it and wanted their picture taken peeking through the peace sign.

Happy Birthday Punkin'! What a fun way to celebrate!

1st Day of School

Today was Heather's first day of school....even though she's actually been AT the school for a couple of weeks now with band and dance camps.

I can't believe she's a junior in high school already! When we moved here she was in 3rd grade and she seemed so little and that seems like just last year!

I teased Heather that she'd already put all her stuff in the car and it doesn't look like a 1st day of school photo without the backpack, books, etc. She just gave me that look that those of you who know her, know. I threatened to take a photo as she got out of the car to go into the school but was told that would be lame and people were behind me in the car line. I did almost feel sorry for her as she lugged her horn in its big case, her dance bag, her purse, her school camera, and her school stuff out of the car.


She said she had a pretty good first day, but it was kinda boring. Hopefully it will be a great year for her!

Lana's Baptism

Our friend Lana was baptised at church today. This may sound selfish but I was so glad when the pastor told me last week there'd be a baptism today. I knew it would be Lana's and I knew I'd get to be there for it. I'll be out of church the next couple of Sundays so I was glad the date she and the pastor scheduled was when I would be there.

End of Summer Bash

Summer's over and school starts Monday. I decided to have some friends over to splash in the pool, roast hotdogs over the fire and whatever else we could find to get into. I thought we'd play some volleyball as I'd finally convinced Marty to put up the volleyball net this weekend too. But, with all the trees everywhere we could not find anywhere that worked very well for volleyball. We'll have to work on that....besides it rained most of the afternoon anyway.




The adults opted not to swim even though the rain stopped. The water was much too cold for us, but not the kids! They swam anyway...all but Heather. She had to work but she got off early enough to join in some of the fun before the evening was over.

Our friends Dave and Lana

Marty was trying to frown for the camera!

Male bonding??? Marty, Dave and Jason

Jason and me roasting our dinner

We're always teasing Erica about what a pyro she is because she loves helping build the campfires. So, here she's very much acting the part of a pyro! Too funny!

Erica and I look like we sure take dressing our hotdog buns seriously!

Heather got home in time for food!

Dave and Heather

We sure enjoy these evenings of hanging out around the fire pit.

Can you tell how much Holly loves marshmallows???

Ashley looked so sweet trying to roast her hotdog all by herself.

Riley, Marty and Ashley

After they ate the kids started a game of keep away. Here Holly is trying so hard to catch the bottle they were throwing!

When we'd all had enough of hotdogs, marshmallows and playing in the fire we went inside. While the little girls played Barbies, everyone else played 3 rounds of Catch Phrase!!! Thanks, Paula for loaning us your game!!

Of course as always: Girls Rule and Boys Drool! The girls won 2 out of 3 rounds!

Cameron played the game for the first time and was really good at it! I loved how animated he became when describing his words for his team!

What a fun night and a great way to end our summer. Although I'm sure fall will still find us sitting around the fire with friends on occasion!