August Keeps us Hopping

There has been much activity in our household this month as we finally have Jim home and are realizing that Summer will be ending soon. School begins August 31st, so we have much to do in the meantime!

Rebekah's birthday was last Wednesday and we began the morning with a pancake breakfast- which she neither prepared, nor cleaned up- and gave her her gift from the family. Since she will be a Senior this year we chose something practical and hopefully lasting. We gave her a laptop. Bekah has been using a handed down dinosaur of a laptop for the past couple of years and has been expressing her desire for and need of a newer, workable system for some time. Jim and I shopped around and found as good a deal at Best Buy as on the Dell website, with the added bonus of Geek support, so we brought it home and wrapped it up.

The first gift we had her open was the mouse and some software, so she thought that we were merely updating her current laptop. And yet, she was grateful.

Then Isaac brought out the real gift and she positively beamed! Now to set it up and figure it all out! It's beautiful,... sniff.



That evening, we had a houseful of Bekah's friends over for snacks, cake, and a movie. Yum.


For the past couple of Summers Erin has been invited to a sleepover hosted by a young lady from church whose younger sister, Natalie, is Erin's friend. Kristen is now in Ukraine as a Missionary, and Erin realized last week with a panic, that there might actually pass a Summer without one of these great sleepovers! Oh no! Naturally, our house could host such an event, so invitations were written up and passed out at church. Being a last-minute event, not many could come at all, and fewer could sleep over, but we still had three young ladies spend the night Thursday.

We decided to have their creative energies set to work on gourds, which Natalie's Mom graciously supplied, Kate put together a short devotional to share with the girls, and we realized that the Perseid meteor shower might still be active and viewable from our back porch! With so much to do, dinner was almost forgotten, but none of them seemed to mind standing in the kitchen at 9 pm eating a quick hot dog to balance the cookies and ice cream which they had wisely consumed earlier in the evening.

Star Gazers

Gourds drying on the line.

How cute!

Earlier in the week a friend had given us tickets to see a Reading Phil's game, which we gratefully accepted. Jim, Erin, and Bekah have only heard us talking about how fun the games were and we were thrilled to be able to take them out to the ball game! Natalie joined us, having spent the day with Erin at our home after the sleepover. She has also been to these games before, and was just as excited to join us as we were to have her.

And what a gorgeous day for a game!

Almost exactly the same seats as last time we came- fantastic!

Isaac got to play catch on the field again, this time with Dad!

This little guy was playing with his Grandpa- couldn't have been more than 3, yet he could sure throw- check out that form!

An added bonus- it was Elvis Tribute night!!! Words just cannot describe...

Me and the girls- they don't know how much fun they are about to have!

Musical seats.

Jim really enjoyed himself- I think Elvis helped...

That's all for now. we are doing lawn work and housework today. It's simply amazing how much constant effort it takes to keep up with everything, but it is so worth it. Responsibility goes with much blessing, and we have received much blessing indeed. Jim is still looking for the next job, but we are glad to be able to take some time to enjoy having Daddy home even so.