New Decade

As of yesterday I am now 30 years old. A whole new decade. Some call it "old". I prefer not to. I'm sad for my 20s to be over, but mostly just because I want time to stop. I like being (relatively) young. I like having young kids and a young-ish (hee hee) husband. But I'm excited too, a new decade is a new beginning. An entire 10-year span to do what I want with. I hope I become wiser in my 30s. That's what I really want. Solomon prayed for wisdom and got it, maybe I will too!

So, how was my birthday? Wonderful. I spent the whole day with my family. They brought me my breakfast in bed - ice cream of course! (In our family the birthday person gets ice cream for breakfast!) It came with coffee and flowers. The morning continued, slow and lazy. We played some games (memory, ring toss), watched a little TV, then Chipotle for lunch! Yum! A bit more laziness before we went out for a hike, it was a beautiful day. For dinner Jeff grilled delicious shish-kabobs (sp?)! Then... drumroll please... my most favorite cake... DQ Ice Cream Cake! And I ate a LOT of it. You only turn 30 once, right? :)

Childhood Book

There was a really cool big book of Fairy Tales my mom used to have for us kids. It was gray and had great illustrations and lots of stories. I haven't seen it in years and am not sure where it ended up. I have thought about it recently, wanting my kids to know the classic fairy tales. I wondered if I could somehow find a copy without knowing the name or publisher.

Yesterday my boss and I were delivering a wedding together. We got to the church and realized we'd forgotten something, so I stayed and kept setting up while she left to go get it. Unfortunately we were about 20 minutes away from the shop, so it took a while. I finished setting up and was kind of wandering around being bored. I noticed a stack of kids' books on a table with a note that said "take if you'll use!", so I started looking at them to see what was there. I bet you can see where this is going. The book at the bottom of the pile was an exact copy of the fairy tale book we had growing up! I swear my heart skipped a beat when I saw it and the illustration on the cover took me immediately back to my childhood. I couldn't believe it. I grabbed it quick as if someone else was going to take it - even though no one else was even around!

The book was originally published in 1977, and this copy has an inscription in the front that it was a gift in 1979. Right about the same time my parents probably got it. It's in fantastic overall shape, especially considering it's age.

When I got home I told my kids all about this book I used to have, then showed them the one I found. They were so excited to hear about it and read it together. We've decided we'll read a story a night until we finish it, and we started tonight. I'm so glad to share this with them!

Here are pics of both the front and back covers, as both hold strong memories for me. Are the pictures fantastic?

JOB!!!

Jeff got a job!!! He got the official offer on Thursday, although we were pretty sure it was coming before that. It's with Ohio Health, a big company that's well-known for being a great company to work for. He'll be working in the brand-new Dublin hospital doing admissions. He's super excited about all the technology they have, being so new. It's kind of an entry type position, but their policy is that once you've been with the company a year you can transfer anywhere within. They offer great benefits too, which will be such a relief.

As far as scheduling and my job, we don't know yet. We're not planning on me quitting, but we truly have not had time to sit down and figure out what our schedule will be.

Thank you for your prayers. Please keep praying; for the craziness that is about to commence with a new job, new schedule, etc., etc., for our financial situation as it is again about to change and we're not sure how that's going to look, and for our family!

Warm!

It's warm out! At least it feels warm. And there's SUNSHINE! I'm so happy to see the sun. I never fully realize how much I miss it until it's back. And it make me feel so happy!

The boys and I went on a walk yesterday to enjoy the sun and higher temperatures. We played Bear Grylls, hiking on "glaciers" and following animal tracks (deer, raccoon, we think coyote, and of course our dogs'). We made a huge loop around some of the land here, since our road isn't great for walking on. I think we had more fun this way anyway.

Today we went to our favorite local park, Liberty Park. I really expected there to be less snow, but at least the equipment was dry for running, climbing, swinging and sliding. It seems everyone was thrilled to see the sun, there were several other families. All us moms were talking about the sun and snow and being so happy to get the kids outside. Like many other areas of the country, we've seen more snow here recently then we usually do in a whole winter.

Tonight is the second service for our new church. We didn't have a service last week because our sending church was having a special service in the evening we all went to. I am excited to see how tonight goes, and how many people are there.

Life Community North

We had our first service with our new church plant tonight! It was exhausting and hard in a lot of ways, overwhelming too, but I don't want to focus on the hard parts. I want to focus on the fact that it happened and it was great! To me, this "thing" started out as an interesting idea... then an abstract possibility... then a distant reality... before I knew it, it was something I cared about, something I was committing to. Then, suddenly it started to become more and more concrete, and now it has happened. Life Community North had it's first service this evening! We had 35 kids checked into classes and roughly 76 adults in the service! Of course, some of those are people who are excited and supportive from our sending church who won't be regular attenders, but that's okay. We actually had to set up more chairs as people were coming in, we didn't have enough ready! Amazing!

Not the best pics, but pics of a big event none the less!

Jeff and Roman putting bulletins on the chairs:

Our first service:

Kids in the gym:

Faith Like a Child

I was tucking the kids in to bed (late) tonight, then was going to post about our new church (brand new!), we're having our first service tomorrow! I'm super excited about it! ...

Then something even more exciting happened. I was putting Roman to bed when we started talking about Jesus... then Heaven... then questions about the "bad heaven"... the next thing I knew Roman was telling me "I believe in God and that Jesus died for me and loves me so I want Him to live in my heart so I can go to Heaven"!!! We prayed together, and I couldn't resist peeking at him, he was so sweet and focused on what he was saying with his eyes closed and hands folded. Roman is rarely this calm and focused!

It was so fantastic! All I was thinking about (after a LONG busy day) was putting them to bed and chillin' before I go to bed... apparently God had something else in mind first!

Yay!

V-Day

It's like D-Day, except with flowers. At least that's how crazy it seemed to me!

We were frantically busy for several days at the flower shop leading up to and including Valentines' Day. Yes, that's a good thing for business, but I was worn out! If I had any idea how many roses I processed and arranged I would tell you, but I didn't even try to keep count. I can tell you that we did arrangements as simple as one rose and as big as 40! We did tropicals, lilies, a bazillion daisies and alstromeria, and tons of my current favorite, beautiful spring tulips! It was so fun and so crazy all at the same time.

In the midst of the chaos we decided to be closed for Presidents' day on Monday... we were too tired to want to be open! Then Tuesday was another wave of the crazy snow storms that have been coming through, so we ended up being closed then too. What a relief, I needed some time off!