Springfield by the numbers

1,571 - total miles traveled

1:32 a.m. - arrival time in Tulsa Thursday night/Friday morning

35 - my Sleep Number on the bed at the hotel

1 - pillow (MY pillow) left at the hotel in Tulsa.  Boo.

4 - hotel nights

2 - days of school missed by my kids

180 - miles driven back and forth (and back and forth) between Springfield and Branson during the weekend

14 - flying hot rolls caught by my family at Lambert's Cafe, Home of the Throwed Rolls

 17 - of our original 23 team members who were at the movie premiere!  Woohoo! {Yep, I can count. This was the pre-party, and some people had already left for the theater. ;)}



I hate that the flash on this picture made us all look like evil-eyed zombies! 
We were all so happy to see each other all dressed up, with our hair and
make-up done! ;)

 47 - cool-guy handshakes between Jacob and his new idol best friend, Cory Cotton from Dude Perfect

Kloe was hor.ri.fied. at my "inappropriate" choice of....um....undergarments on this day.  Ha!  Sorry babe, you probably should get used to your mom embarrassing you!

0 - movies watched in the car during the drive (can you believe this?)

10,000 - tears shed by movie watchers during the premiere of Man Up and Go

We had such an awesome weekend in Springfield.  Because of time, we didn't do a lot of vacation-y type things while we were there.  We did spend a few hours at the Bass Pro Shop Man-Mall and had a delicious lunch there.  (Where are those pictures??  Ahh, on The Mister's phone.)

We also got to Ride the Ducks in Branson.  That was a lot of fun, and the kids both got a turn driving the boat, which they loved.

It was so good to see so many of my teammates again.  The last time we were all together, we were exhausted, had no makeup on, and were covered in the red dirt of Uganda.  We clean up pretty well, I must say!

And the movie was beyond incredible.  It was amazing to sit in a theater in Springfield, Missouri, while looking at the beautiful faces - and hearing the beautiful voices - of so many people I love from the other side of the world.  And what a precious surprise it was to see my sweet Christopher in the film! 

It made my heart ache for Uganda even more.

Down memory lane.

Oh man, did that post on Sunday ever send me strolling down memory lane. After I looked up the Angels video, I spent I don't know how long watching video after video of Amy's and Michael's on you*tube. I had such a great time reminiscing...and laughing at their hair. :)

Anyone spend hours dreaming about YOUR place in this world to the crooning of Michael W.?



Ohhhh, those eyes, right? The eyes that made every tween-age Christian girl dream of marrying a man who was as gorgeous as Michael AND loved Jesus the way he did!

But this....THIS was my favorite MWS song of all time....



....minus the muscle shirt and the mini-mullet. ;)

(Notice that even Jesus has 80's hair in this video - hahaha!)

Who remembers this?

Hahahahahaha - I heard this song today and HAD to look it up on You*Tube. Oh, how I looooved Amy Grant back in junior high! Anyone have her Straight Ahead CD cassette tape? You better believe I did! And just about wore the thing out listening to it over and over and over while dreaming about being best friends (forever) with Michael W. Smith the way she was.

This video was cracking me up. SUCH classic 80's...I love it! They just don't make music videos like this anymore. Ah, 80's music, how I miss you. ;)

From my bookshelf

It's been a really long time since I posted about anything I've been reading. When we were on the cruise I felt like a freak, having never read a single Karen Kingsbury book. I'm telling you, it was like a Karen Kinsgbury groupie fest on that ship! In fact, I kind of think I had intentionally never read any of her books, just because of all the hoopla about her. I'm a little stubborn that way. Well, after I actually met Karen on the cruise, she was so warm and friendly and down-to-earth and wonderful that just being around her made me want to read her books.

So when we got home, I buckled down and forced myself to finish up this book, even though it was eating my lunch:



and after I made it through that, I was in serious need of some lighter fiction fare. Perfect time to try out Karen's books. On the cruise, she gave everyone a copy of Book 4 in her Above the Line series (great marketing strategy, huh?), so of course - just like she planned - I had to go out and buy books 1 through 3, right? Luckily I found all of them on the bargain table at Mardel. :)



Well, let me just say, after book one in that series I was almost ready to join the groupie club myself. Almost. I slurped up all four books in the series, and then my mom gave me the 4-book series that came before Above the Line. I read the first one of those, but then decided I wanted to start at the very beginning of the Baxter tales, which includes something like 22 books. So, to pass the time while I'm trying to locate the very first book in the very first 5-book group of the series, I'm reading this as a little easy-reading passtime:



HA! Just kidding. :) I'm actually reading this....



while I'm scouring PaperBackSwap for Karen's early books.

What are you reading these days?

A little hodge and a lotta podge.

Seems like it was about this same time last year that I found myself doing a makeup post of all the stuff I'd missed for the past couple of months. Guess there's just something about fall that snows me under. Sorry - I hear through the grapevine that makeup posts are lame, but not-lame is something I never claimed to be. :)

50th Day of School / 50's Day. Even Josephina dressed up. :) We were running late, so Jacob had to roll his jeans up in the car on the way to school. And you can't really tell in this picture, but his hair was slicked back, too. One benefit of buying dress up clothes at the thrift store....Kloe was able to wear the same outfit she wore last year. :) They looked so cute!



***************************************
Fall Festival

Cutie Queen Bee (see her tiara?) and Ninja.

(Personally, I prefer the homemade kind of costumes, but neither of these little munchkins would have ANY of that!)

***************************************

You can tell who this is, right? Haha. Don't you just love concert pictures? They always seem cool when you're taking them....


(Michael W. Smith, Toby Mac, and Mac Powell of Third Day)

The Mister and I had tickets for the Make a Difference Tour the weekend after I got back from the cruise, but he ended up having to go out of town for work, so my sweet friend Veronica went with me instead.



(TM and MWS - LOVE!)

In addition to Toby Mac, Third Day, and Michael W. Smith, can you tell who this is.....?

Max Lucado - so cool! Love his books. Such a fun night - it was like 3 concerts and a mini-seminar all in one! :)

******************************************
9/11 Memorial



One of our local banks honors the victims of 9/11 every year by sponsoring this 1,000-flag memorial for several days in September. It's really neat to drive by and see the field of flags. When they take them down, they sell them to raise scholarship money for a local nursing school.




********************************************

After we missed football sign-ups (because I forgot), Jacob decided he would play Upward soccer this year. Dad decided he would coach. It was so much fun for both of them. The Mister woke up on the Saturday after the last game and said, "I'm glad to get to sleep in this morning....and a little sad, too." :)

(Jacob is #2.)



(That's him showing off his fancy footwork, below.)


We only won one game all season, but it was a lot of fun. Jacob played 3 seasons a few years ago, and it was amazing to see the difference between then and now! He's come a long way, even with not playing for so long! I'm secretly hoping he'll want to play soccer again next fall instead of football. :)

**************************************
Kloe's field trip to the corn maze.



Learning about how they make the maze. Did you know they spray out the pattern by hand?!

For your post-cruising enjoyment

(yep, I took that picture. isn't it the coolest?)

Since I know you've just been chomping at the bit, anxiously waiting to see more pictures from my cruise (you have been, haven't you?), without further ado (further adieu? no - that means goodbye), here ya go.

Key West....



Look! Just like Gilligan's Island! :)





I loved the architecture in Key West. Many, many of the houses and other buildings had this sort of design. I'm not a real architecture person....anyone know what this style of building is called? I love it. Would love to live in a house that looks like this. :)



This cute mama hen and her babies were just strolling on the street, hiding from the sun under this little step. Roosters and hens were everywhere, just walking around the streets of downtown Key West. So fun! (maybe not if you live there)






Cozumel.


Our neighbors in port....




Ooooo....niiiice hair. I loved this cool iguana! Her name was Maria. I'm sad that the pictures of ME holding her were on my mom's camera.


This is the hotel where The Mister and I stayed on our honeymoon. Isn't that fun? :)


On the ship...

Life boat drill. Whew! So glad we didn't have to use those!


My mom and I, ready for dinner the first night....


....and for the formal dinner.


Watermelons! How cool are these?


The parade of nations. There were over 50 countries represented by the crew. So cool!


And...I forgot in the star parade in my last post....Rebecca St. James was there too.



AND Mark Harris. For some weird reason I don't have any pictures of him at all. But he was amazing, and if you don't know who he is you can see one of his videos on this post of mine from last June.

And our host was none other than Karen Kingsbury! I'm a little embarrassed to admit I've never read a single one of her books, but I will be now. She gave everyone in the Premier Christian Cruises group a free copy of her new book Take Four...which of course is the 4th in a series. Good marketing, huh? ;)



Karen is fabulous. I loved her. She is warm and friendly and easy to talk to. She has such a gentle spirit - someone you would want to be friends with. Just being around her and hearing her speak made me want to read all her books.

During the cruise we watched the movie Like Dandelion Dust (click to watch the trailer), based on her book with the same title, and I have to tell you - I came this.close. to having to get up and leave. Oh.My.Goodness. It was soooo hard to watch. Really hard stuff. About a 6-year-old boy. I almost couldn't take it. In case you don't remember, I'm one of those weirdos who actually DOES want to know how a movie (or a book) ends before I start it, but I know most of you DON'T want to know so I won't spoil it. But go watch the trailer and then you can decide if you want to see the movie. Or read the book. [I just watched the trailer, and something is messed up with my computer so I didn't have any sound, and I still almost couldn't even watch the whole thing.]

And that's a wrap. Looking back over this post, it appears that I LOVED everything, and everything was SO COOL! haha :) Loved the ports. Loved the baby sea turtles. Loved Karen and Lysa and Renee. Loved Shanti, Melissa, Nicole, Rebecca and Mark. Loved the desserts. Loved the ocean.

Oh yeah, and did I tell you I tried escargot for the first time? Didn't love that.