This Is What I Did

Yesterday I was blessed to spend time with Celine and Carissa while their mother did some things she needed to get done. I enjoy having them so much. Celine was almost the age Carissa is now when I started keeping her. And Carissa looks exactly like celine when Celine was her age. They are definitely sisters, that's for sure! And both of them are beautiful.

This is Carissa. Her bib says I'm the little sister.


This is Celine. She can talk like any grownup. And says exactly what's on her mind. She's hilarious to have a conversation with. Carissa was sitting on the area rug like she is in the above picture, when Justin came through the house and sat down in front of her. He got in her face and said, "HEY!" And oh! The pitiful look she gave. She pooched out her lip and her eyes got big and she started to whimper. Celine piped in and said, "Well, goodness, Justin, you scared her. She's just a baby. She's just seven months!!" ha HA! It was so cute.

Sword Book

I was going through my books today and ran across this Sword book called Woman to Woman. If you're not familiar with Sword of the Lord books you should be. These are books that you do not have to worry about having things in them that you know are wrong or that you have to "read" around. You don't have to worry about the kids getting them and being falsely indoctrinated when you are unaware. They are all wonderfully sound books.

Anyway, I thought I'd give you a snippet of this book. I've read it through several times and am always impressed by some of these answers. Woman to Woman is a compilation of questions that have been asked to women such as Mrs. John R. Rice, Beverly Hyles, Gerri Hutson, April Kelley, and many other wonderful Christian women and Pastor's wives.

I chose this question because although this book was written many years ago, this subject is continually thrown in our faces today concerning hyperactive children.

Q. Do you believe that there is such a thing as a hyperactive child?

A. By Joy Rice Martin
"Yes, if by hyperactive you mean extremely active. We have six children. Two were extremely active. They were never diagnosed by a doctor as being hyperactive, but a six month old knocked the slat off his crib and crawled through four rooms to get to us! He also walked at nine months because he had to be doing things. He's the first baby I weaned early too. When he nursed he was constantly moving and he wore me out!

Of course, there are hyperactive children. I would be very cautious about embarking upon a drug routine for hyperactive children. I think most children who are extremely active need a great deal of cuddling, and mother needs a great deal of patience and prayer.

In most cases a lot of things are related to age. That little boy I mentioned above who was extremely active, is the one who last night installed our dishwasher. That same little mind that kept him going and figuring out things is the same quality that has given him today a drive in other areas.

Prayer and patience will do much. From a practical viewpoint a Christian psychiatrist from Chattanooga, Dr. Ross Campbell has a little book called How to Really Love Your Child. While you may not agree with everything he says, he has some wonderful insights we ought to heed. One chapter says one of the very best things for a hyperactive child is cuddling, especially at a stage in his life when he needs reassurance. That book would give you some ideas. But be very cautious about a drug routine unless you have very sound medical advice."

Elizabeth Rice Hanford: "Also may I add that firm, consistent discipline is helpful!!"

Jessie Rice Sandburg: "We do have to accept the fact that sometimes we do have to invest more in one child than in another. One child may take three times as much attention and care as another. But very often the difficult ones end up being leaders."

There was one more answer, but it was actually irrelevant to the question. Anyway, I thought those were pretty good. I am not totally against children needing medication for hyperactivity, but it is a fact that most children just need love and attention from their parents or a good whop on the hind end. Again, I am not TOTALLY against medication, so please don't jump all over me if your child is on something for that. This is just one of those issues where I believe that doctors have over medicated our children, and in a great deal of cases, with legalized cocaine. No wonder they calm down after taking their meds.

Anyway, the sword books are wonderful books. If you like to read like I do, they have some great ladies books. Check 'em out! If you're a man, well, they have great books for men as well.

What? Huh? What Did You Say?

Speak up! I can't hear you!! My hearing was impaired during Saturday's Monster Jam in Greenville, SC. Let me go into a little more detail......

Our family got up Saturday morning to work in bus ministry and we were given a blessing as usual. There were two special visitors at bus church. Brother Jay Carr, who is leaving for Mississippi to train for Afghanistan. He was over there almost two years ago and is going back. My son said on the way home that he wonders who the heros were in our hero's lives. For Jay, it is wife, Paige and his two little boys for being so supportive of him and what he does for his country. Their country.

Our other special visitor was brother Dave Douglass, our missionary to South East Asia. He is leaving for a ten week stay this week and is so excited. I missed his presentation at bus church and really hated that!! But Bruce and I had an outing with the youth group.

We took the SIGMA kids to Monster Jam in Greenville, SC, and it was a lot of fun. Very loud. I was fortunate to have Justin's buddy, Jeremy, give me some ear plugs. But you still walked out with ringing in your ears. LOL I had never gone to anything like that before, and it's probably not something I would mark my calendar for every year, but I had a good time and think the kids did too. I forgot my camera *shocked* but snagged some off the Internet.

Here are a few shots of what we saw.



Basically, it's a bunch of men who never grew up, driving the biggest Hot Wheels they can build and demolishing other vehicles. Boys will be boys! LOL


The half time show was some arenacross stunts. They were really good, but I know their mother's don't watch them do these things. I nearly had a heart attack watching them myself. Honestly, they took my breath. I'm just glad Harrison wasn't there to watch it. He'd be trying it tomorrow! LOL






Sunday is our busiest day of the week. To be at the church at 4:00 every Sunday evening is the norm. So tonight I met with a group of our youth choir to go over some parts in a new song the youth choir was singing. The song is Stand For Jesus. It's absolutely beautiful. After I helped them I slipped off to teach one of the Lady's Trio ladies a couple of songs I had written and typed up the words for them. Then I hustled back out to the auditorium to go over a song with another girl that we'll be singing with the orchestra soon. After that, I went back out to the piano player for the lady's trio and he had already learned one of the songs. He's GOOD! Then I grabbed my nursery list and rounded up my nursery workers for the evening service, changed some crib sheets, made sure we had PLENTY of goldfish and animal crackers for the ankle biters, and scurried off to choir. I sang I Bowed On My Knees And Cried Holy with the choir. Presently, this is one of my Pastor's favorites. LOL

The evening service was dedicated to Jay. He had a slew of his family there and most all of them are unsaved. So it was good that they were able to be in an old fashioned service and see the Spirit of God fall on His people. At one point, one of the men in the family got up and took Jay to the alter to pray over him and the entire family (had to be thirty people at least) came and prayed with him. It was really sweet. Pastor called the veterans of our church to come up and pray over Jay. And then the young men in our Sunday school class came up and prayed over him. Us ladies prayed over his wife. Jay was certainly covered in prayer tonight.

Our Sunday school class had a send off party for him after service and we had a nice time.

Here are a few shots of that.

Obviously the cake


Jay, his son Jaythan, and Jeff


OH, this wasn't at the party, but somehow this picture got mixed up in with them. This was actually taken at the close of the service and the "Front Porch" boys, as Pastor calls them, played Sweet By and By while a love offering was being taken for Brother Douglass. That's my sweetie with the guitar on the left.


Jay's wife Paige and their youngest son, Jaythan. Their other son, Kayson, never stands still long enough for me to get his picture. LOL Pray for Kayson if you think about it. He's at an age where he really does not understand what's going on and he's going through a difficult time. His mom is really worried about him.

Brother RJ....don't ask.

Michelle and her new baby girl.

Jeff, Jay, and Bruce

Hannah's friend, and the daughter of our Sunday school teacher, Cheyenne.

The kids sure did have a good time. They found some decoration garland and decided to make a jump rope out of it.

Abey, our Sunday school teacher's daughter.

The food line

That's all folks!

How's Your Grammar?

Your Language Arts Grade: 100%

Way to go! You know not to trust the MS Grammar Check and you know "no" from "know." Now, go forth and spread the good word (or at least, the proper use of apostrophes).

Are You Gooder at Grammar?
Make a Quiz

I am a grammar fanatic, so I just had to try this test when I found it at Midnight Madness.

Lunch With Daddy

I hesitated to write this post because I know my brother is going to read it and be jealous that daddy took his favorite child out to eat, but then daddy told me that he took John out for a hot dog last September. So I suppose he won't be too jealous.

My dad said that he wanted to take me to lunch once a month this year and since he couldn't find my mom this afternoon and it IS the twenty-sixth of the month already, he took me out today. We had so much fun! I think both our sides hurt from laughing. You should know that we have no concept of behaving ourselves in public. Other's opinions of us matter very little.

He knows I love FATZ so we ate there. The poor server wasn't sure how to take it at first, but eventually she caught on and decided to just go with the flow.

Daddy wasn't very hungry so she helped him choose off the children's menu. Of course the way he was behaving, he needed to order from the children's menu. He ordered a sweet potato with brown sugar and butter and was supposed to say the calabash chicken but said, "....and some of those little finger chicken thingys."

That cracked the waitress up. He asked for a diet coke, but they only served Pepsi products. So she asked if Diet Pepsi would be OK and he drew up his face and snarled his nose, threw up his arms and said, "Yeah............I guess." So later she brought a cup with just diet pepsi in it and asked him if he wanted her to top off his drink. He said, "Sure......WAIT! Whose been drinking out of that cup?" Without missing a beat she replied, "Just me and a few other servers." LOL He had a gift card with $15 on it and the bill came to $14.38. So when she came to get the payment, daddy told her, "You said there was $15 on this card and the bill is $14.38, right?" She said, "Yes, sir." So he gave her the thumbs up, knodded his head and very Fonzie like said, "Keep the change." Of course we giggled and he did tip her but it was funny how he tried to be all cool when he told her to keep the change.

We left Fatz and went to Chik-fil-A for a milkshake. When he drove up to the window he asked the lady if it came with whipped cream. She said yes.
"Does it come with a cherry on top?"
"Yes."
"Does it come with duck butter?"
"Duck butter?"
"Yeah, duck butter. You know.....duck butter!"
So she turns to her coworker and asks if she's ever heard of duck butter. She actually thought he was serious. I'm surprised he didn't ask his typical question of "Is this guaranteed not to rust bust or collect dust for ninety days or double our money back?" Which always gets that blank look as though they're trying to figure out exactly what he just said.

Instead of driving home, we decided to sit in Wal Mart's parking lot and make fun of more people.

It was a good time and we had a lot of fun.

Thank you, Daddy!

I love you.

Cute Babies

I received this email today from a friend of mine at church and thought the pictures were cute so I decided to post it. One of them reminds me of Brittleigh's niece and nephew. Can you guess which one??

Things to help you through 2007:

Sleep as much as you can.


Read good books that you enjoy


Play with simple things


Enjoy the peaceful moments


Be affectionate


Be serious once in a while


Forget about diets


Let those you love know you love them


Don't be easily angered


Change your looks a little


And above all, be happy no matter what your challenges may be. Have a peaceful and happy year!

Sunflowers and Tomatoes

Before the big boycot of 2006, I found these "ready to plant" sunflowers and tomato grow kits at Wal Mart for a buck! Harrison has been on pins and needles ever since to do his. So we pulled them out today and started on them. I really hope we have some green thumbs in this household. The only thing I can grow are artificials. LOL

They're supposed to place them in a warm and sunny spot, but you know what? I really don't have any sunny spots in the house. So we picked the sunniest spots and that's where they'll stay until they're ready to be transplanted.

They had a lot of fun doing this and are eagerly awaiting to see the growth of their plants.

Hannah and Harrison each have a sunflower and Justin has the tomato plant.