Tiny Talk Tuesday (on Wednesday)

A few nights ago as we were eating dinner, I signed to Jacob "I love you".

In his own brand of faux-sign language he signed back to me. Luckily for me, he also gave the verbal interpretation at the same time.

Jacob (with dramatic, fake signs): You....are....as....beautiful....as....a....girl.

Me: I am a girl. :)

Jacob (more faux-signing): You....are....as....cool....as....a....boy. :)

Family Night Rodeo

One of this little boy's most favorite things in all of life is dressing up like a cowboy.

(tough cowboy face)

It's a regular occurrence around our house. Daily almost.

(isn't this a great picture? they look like Jesse James and Billy the Kid.
I think the blurriness just adds to the authenticity.)

And so it seemed that a Family Night Rodeo was most certainly in order.

We started the night with some traditional chuckwagon grub. Beans, cornbread, fried potatoes, and iced tea. Only I forgot to start the beans cooking in the crock pot over the camp fire that morning, so we had to improvise and trade a couple of chickens for some already-cooked beans at the mercantile.

Then after dinner we mosied on out to the arena for a bit of friendly competition.

Miss Kloe designed and created our programs for the evening....

....and also proudly carried the banner of our great nation.....

....while honorable cowboys paid their respects as the National Anthem was sung.

And then the festivities began!

First up....barrel racing! Mom logged a respectable time on Cinderella....

but Kloe took first place with an amazing time of 14.5 seconds!

Next on the schedule (check your program, folks)....calf roping. The calf put forth a valiant effort....

but when matched up against these talented cowboys and cowgirls....

....she didn't stand much of a chance (the calf, that is). Jacob took home the prize money in calf roping, with two winning throws!

[Ah, the love of a cowboy and his dog. Our Miss Annie is a true cow dog....half blue heeler and half border collie. She is Jacob's right-hand girl. Although no herding was allowed during the competition.]

After the calf roping was the ladel race. Contestants use a ladel to scoop water out of a bucket, run to the other end of the arena, dump the water into a bowl, then race back and hand off the ladel to the next person on their team. The first team to fill up their bowl with water wins.

We declared the ladel race a draw.

Moving to the indoor arena (to get away from the mosquitoes), the cowboys (and cowgirls) prepared for the most daring and dangerous sport in the world of rodeo....bull fighting!

Jacob tried some steer wrestling moves on the bull....

but, sadly, the bull was victorious in the end.

We skipped the closing sarimony (quoting the program here) in favor of a snack.

After the rodeo, Jacob offered to pay me 6 pieces of silver if I would let him park his horse at my hitching post during the dance....

....except, instead of going to the dance after the rodeo we decided to invite over a couple of friends....

....and watch "The Ballad of Little Joe".


What a great night of cowboy fun!

Ok, this post took me forever. Seriously. Like, days. DAYS! Moving photos around and trying to get all the spacing to look right in blogger is infuriatingly time consuming. I've seriously got to take a class or something.

Remembering Johnny Castle

I was so sad to hear this news late tonight.

Long years have passed and life has certainly changed a lot since the first time I sat transfixed, watching starry-eyed as the exceedingly handsome and impressively cool Johnny Castle danced his way into the heart of Baby and every other girl in America between the ages of 10 and 40. Oh how he could make my 16-year-old romantic heart swoon! :) Don't we just love to love the bad boys? Not that bad of course, but the guy with the checkered past, from the "other" side of the tracks. And Johnny Castle was all that....wrapped up with a gentle heart and a soft spot for girls who were hurting. Just what every girl is looking for.


But long before Johnny Castle taught us the difference between the mambo and the merengue, insisting that "Nobody puts Baby in a corner", there were those other bad boys we loved to love....The Outsiders.

Darrel (Darry) Curtis was the lone father figure for his two younger brothers, Soda Pop and Ponyboy, and a stand-in big brother to the nicest bad boys around. Ponyboy was really the star of the show, but Darry....there was just something about Darry that made you want him to be your big-brother-father-figure.

Man, I loved that movie! I think somehow I felt I could relate, as a shy 12-year-old who had already gone to seven different schools. Outsiders? Yeah, I understood where they were coming from. I wrote a creative-writing paper (loosely) based on the movie when I was in the sixth grade, and got a commendation from the school principal himself! My dog was even named Dally.

And can I just say....could there BE any more stars in this movie? (I copied that line from someone, but I can't remember who.) Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, Ralph Macchio, Diane Lane, Leif Garrett. If you're too young to have ever seen The Outsiders, you should have your local movie store dig it out of the attic so you can rent it. It's old. Sometimes cheesy. No modern special effects. But it's a classic. A must-see. Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold.

Ghost. Red Dawn. Point Break. Youngblood. Road House (don't tell anyone I've seen this movie). To Wong Foo (haven't seen this movie). North and South (loved this movie).

The bottom line is that I'm sad that Patrick Swayze is gone. I'm sad that he had to leave in such a terrible, devastating way. I'm enormously sad for his wife, Lisa, the love of his life for 34 years. And my heart can't even begin to contemplate the question of whether, at any point in his life, he ever made the choice to say "Jesus, I need You."

Oh, how I pray that you have made that choice....

Praying for Our Kids

Marybeth Whalen has an awesome post on her blog today from guest-poster Christy Baca about praying for our children. It has some great information and suggestions. I hope you'll check it out!

Family Nights - Take 2

After the resounding success of Family Night Olympics, we could hardly wait for Family Night #2.......Under the Sea!!!

I may have gotten just a tad bit carried away with the decorations. I do that sometimes. You certainly don't have to decorate for family night, but we sure had fun with the streamers and balloons creating our underwater ambiance. :)

We made these cutie little jellyfish out of paper plates and curly ribbon. Aren't they fun?

After craft time, we had a picnic dinner on the sandy beach (aka, a tan colored vinyl table cloth on the living room floor). The menu consisted of fish sticks, beach-sand couscous, seaweed salad, sea cucumbers, baby goldfish, and ocean water (blue gatorade).

Dinner entertainment was provided by our local hula instructor, Kahiko Kloe.

And then we headed out to the shore to catch some waves in our gigantic wading pool.

You can't see it in this picture, but Kloe is actually surfing on a fence picket. :)

We are loving this family night thing. You guys should give it a try. Need some ideas for getting started? Head over to Lost in Laundry here or here. I'd love to hear about how your family spends time together!

Whatever works....

Remember what a great cook I am? Dinner tonight revealed the truth of the matter....

Jacob: Mom, look, the carrot is a log and the ranch is the water....it's the log ride!

Apparently he has to disguise his food to trick himself into eating it.

Whatever works for you, son.

And by the way....yep, that's a paper plate you see. The dishwasher is still broken and I'll go to extraordinary lengths to reduce the number of dishes I have to wash by hand.

Whatever works for me! :)

Thankful Thursday

Aren't there just so many things to be thankful for?

I am oh, so thankful for this....

And for this....

For these....

And for these....(mmmmm)

And for these sweet ones....

(The sweet kids, not the popcicles. Actually, I'm kinda thankful for popcicles, too.)

Seriously, we have so very much to be thankful for in this country. So many gifts. So MANY blessings. How could we....how could I....presume to take them for granted?

I am truly thankful for....
....doctors and medicine.
....the freedom (for now) to worship God in the way I believe.
....my car.
....doors that lock.
....weathermen who keep us informed during those raging West Texas storms!
....cream for my coffee. :)
....shoes.
....a coat and gloves in the winter.
....air conditioning (ever had to go without it? we have. for about 2 weeks once. in the hot part of summer. in west texas. it's mis.er.a.ble.)
....friends who love Jesus.
....puppies.
....computers and printers (no more typewriters! yeah, I'm old.)
....my husband's job.

....my job.
....cell phones.

I could go on and on and on. God's bounty and grace toward us truly are measureless. And I am so thankful.

What are YOU thankful for today?

The Beginning of Family Nights

A few years ago we tried to start a weekly Family Night using the Heritage Builders Family Night Tool Chest book.

I love the book, and it is packed full of fun ideas for spending time together as a family while teaching your kids the principles of God's Word. My kids loved it, but it required quite a bit of planning ahead, which I am...ummm...not very good at. I think we did exactly two of the weekly lessons.

For months afterward my kids would ask all the time, "When can we do family night again? Can we do family night this week?" It just seemed too daunting and overwhelming and we never did it again. I felt terrible.

Until last month.

After reading about the weekly family nights that our youth pastor's family does, I caught the bug again. Starr keeps everything really simple (simple is good for me) and doable, and makes sure the focus is on having fun and spending time together as a family. It is, after all, family night.

Now I know what you're thinking. I know the Word says we are to be teaching our children about God and His ways literally every waking moment. And please believe me, I am so completely for that. And I absolutely DO believe that learning God's Word can be fun. But, you know, sometimes we just want to......well, be silly! Like pushing eggs around with our noses or carrying buckets of water on our heads or playing charades.

I want my kids to have fun learning about God, but I also want them to grow into their teenage years with a boatload of memories of having fun with their family. I am convinced that a sense of belonging and bonding with their families is a major factor in helping kids maintain a sense of stability and security during those tough adolescent and teen years.

Don't worry. We're not abandoning the Family Night Tool Chest forever. And we will definitely have plenty of life lessons incorporated into family nights in the weeks and months to come (stay tuned for a family night about God's TRUTH, coming soon!).

But for now, may I present to you the Posts on the Path inaugural Family Night:

Family Olympics!

(I had no idea what order the colors of the rings went in....and I only got the green and yellow backwards! Pretty good, huh?)

We played balloon volleyball, had egg-roll races (pushing eggs with our noses)....

and cotton ball relays, carrying a cotton ball with a spoon (ever tried it? it's harder than you'd think!)

I don't know how we came out with so few pictures. It was our first go-round, and I think we were just pre-occupied with getting everything to run smoothly. We had so much fun! It's been a long time since our family has laughed so much together!

And that's what I want. That's the whole reason we're doing this. There is so much to be serious about in life - school, work, chores, discipline and training, homework, doctor visits, sibling rivalries, money issues - I want "family" to be a place of joy and smiles and fun and laughter. I think it's working. :)

I'm running a few weeks behind in getting our family nights posted. I'll try to get caught up in the next week or two so that I'm posted them on a more timely basis. If you're interest in starting a family night of your own, or if you already do family night and are looking for some new ideas, check out WhittakerWoman or visit Starr at Lost in Laundry. You'll be glad you did!

Thankful Thursday

My kids went to the most-wonderful-in-all-the-world PDO and preschool (CWM). The school also offers kindergarten (though not any higher grades), and since Kloe's birthday is in August, when it was time for her to start school we decided to send her to CWM to see how she would do and to give us the option of repeating if we felt that she needed to.

She did great and at the end of the year was very ready to move on to first grade. And so the debate began. Public school or private school? The church we attend also has a school, and I so desperately wanted her to go there. I prayed and prayed and cried and prayed, asking God to make a way for us to be able to afford for her to go there.

Along about February of her kindergarten year I began to sense that God's answer was NO. I ignored Him as long as I could, continuing to pray and pretend that I hadn't actually heard Him right - that it was just my fear making me think He was going to say no, and in fact He was going to come through at any moment and show us some miraculous way we could afford private school. After all, God is never late, but He is seldom early. :)

After a couple more months, through some group intervention wise counsel I finally admitted that God was choosing public school for Kloe. I was devastated and petrified all at the same time. I felt like I would be sending my baby girl out into a den of wolves every day. But my sweet friend Ashley gently reminded me that Kloe would always be safer inside of God's will - even in public school - than she would be at private school if that was not His plan.

So....now you're all caught up on the story behind today's Thankful Thursday post. I am humbled and grateful to be able to say that I am SO THANKFUL for the school Kloe (and now Jacob) goes to. God has been so faithful to provide for us in awesome ways. We have had fabulous teachers, many of whom are Christians, and a principal who is a Christian too. We have made some great friends, I've gotten really involved with PTA, and last year a couple of other moms started a Moms in Touch prayer group for our school.

It's still public school, and there are definitely things about it that still frustrate me. Like some of the movies they show the kids. Or the book that Kloe's reading class is reviewing right now. Jacob told me yesterday that his teacher "doesn't even let us pray before we eat!" That just doesn't make sense to him.

I still sometimes long for my kids to be learning science from a Biblical perspective and to have chapel every day. To be in a place where their teachers will pray with them and train them in Godly life principles. But God has them there for a reason. I pray that He will use them to be His light in the dark places. To be His witnesses to those kids (and teachers) who need to know Him. If every Christian kid only went to Christian schools, who would take the light into the public schools? Today Jacob told me that he used the "moment of silence" they have every morning to pray that God will be with him and help him do his best. How great is that?

God knows what He's doing. He has a purpose for my children. And for that, I am so very, very thankful.

The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your love, O Lord, endures forever -- do not abandon the works of your hands. Psalm 138:8

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you and appointed you.... Jeremiah 1:5

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," declares the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8-9

What are YOU thankful for today?

Will you pray?

Dear Friends, will you please pray with me for Linny at A Place Called Simplicity? Linny and her family are trying desperately to bring home their new daughter, Jubilee, from Ch*na and have just received word that the previous acceptance of their application has now been withdrawn. They are understandably devastated.

Will you please join me in asking God to move on their behalf? I would be so grateful, and I know Linny would too. If you feel so inclined, I know she would also love a word of encouragement and support from you in her blog comments.

Thank you so much!