And, here... we... go...

This is not exactly the announcement I was hoping to make on my blog. (most of you know what I mean by that.) In fact, this is really far off base and unrelated, but it is an exciting one nonetheless.

We are moving to Oklahoma.

Wow, I said it.

Bobby has been offered a church planting apprenticeship through the Southwest Church Planting Network, and so for the next two years, he will work alongside Rev Mike Biggs at Christ the King Church (PCA) in Norman, Oklahoma as their Assistant Pastor. (was that a long enough sentence?) The job begins September 1st, which means we will move sometime in late August, which puts us in Oklahoma just in time for my sister-in-law, Mindy's, wedding on August 29th. Good timing! We are leaving tonight to drive out there to look for a house. We have two days to find one. (please pray!)

Bobby told our session last week and we told the youth group last night. The second announcement was much harder. Almost as hard as telling my parents! We have become so attached to the kids and their families, that really makes it hard to leave... But we have already started to pray that God will send our replacement to Greene Valley quickly and the new guy will minister & care for them well and that they will love him (and hopefully his wife.)

As hard as it will be to leave our church family here and move a million miles away from my family (and everything I'm familiar with), we're both really excited for this new opportunity and to see what the Lord has in store for us where the wind comes sweeping down the plains.

Do I have to start ending all my posts now with Boomer Sooner?!?

Two of My Favorite Things

Recently I was wasting time on You*Tube and came across a video that combines two of my favorite things... Friends and Brad Paisley. I love this song and I love all of these clips. Kuddos to the person who wasted even more time making this collage so that I could enjoy it and share it with you.

My husband went to Disney World and all I got was a (yummy) soft pretzel from Philadelphia

Is that the longest blog title you've ever seen or what? In fact, I think it's not just long, it's quite clever. Even clever enough to make a t-shirt out of it.

























I love the internet.



Last week was our denomination's week long business meeting - the PCA's General Assembly - and it was held in Disney World, Orlando, Florida. Bobby has wanted to go to one of these since he joined the PCA back in 2001/2 and his dreams finally came true. He had a magical time. We were fortunate that our church paid for him & our senior pastor to go, but unfortunately the wives (which also includes the church secretary) had to stay home. But no fear, we joined forces and had a truly wonderful girl's week (rather than stay at our house alone all week, I stayed in the manse, next door to my place of employment. And even though we weren't in Disney, it was still magical.)

I bet whoever made this didn't know two pastors were staying in that room. haha



















I have heard that most of the week consisted of committee meetings, committee reports, overtures, seminars, book tables, eating, mingling, friends & hot weather. But he had a break one afternoon and drove a few miles off the compound to go visit my sweet great-grandmother. She is 97! This made my heart melt that my husband who has only met Tillie three times would go out of his way to visit her. Look how sweet she is.



















So how did I end up with a pretzel from Philadelphia you ask?

Well....

Bobby & Keith's flight was scheduled to leave Disney, I mean, Orlando, at 7:00 am on Friday. They had rented a car so they had to get up at 4:30 to get ready, return it, and be at the airport on time. Well, apparently a slew of little things kept going wrong (missed a turn, couldn't find the gas station, misplaced the keys, etc) so by the time they got to the airport, they were short on time, but made it. Then Bobby realized that he had left our camera (our blessed camera that contained that adorable picture of my sweet great-grandmother!) in the rental car. Oh no! So he had the rental car shuttle take him back to the car to get it and by the time he made it back to the airport, he missed the flight by a mere 3 minutes. He called me around 7:15 to tell me this, but I was still asleep (we must have been on the same forgetful, absent-minded wavelength because I had turned my alarm off and fallen back asleep. oops) and did not understand what he was saying and truly thought he was joking or I was dreaming. Unfortunately that was not the case.

At this point, I have to give a shout-out to Southwest for being the greatest airline on the face of the earth because they rebooked him on the next available flight, which included an extra leg (thus the trip to Philadelphia) and they didn't charge him extra. And his luggage stayed with him. By the time he reached Philly I was awake and alert, and when he called me he was starting to feel a little guilty about causing an extra 60 minute commute to the airport, so when he saw those yummy pretzels in the airport, he picked me up some. That guy knows my love language because as annoyed as I was on my way up to the airport, once I tasted those pretzels, my temper make a quick change. Oh, yeah, and I was super happy to see him too!

They looked a lot like this:



















But tasted like this:















(that's supposed to be Heaven. haha)

Party Like It's 1996

Not since the year I graduated high school have I been invited to so many graduation parties in one summer. It is June 5th and we have already partaken in 6 graduation celebrations. 6! First we had Bobby's commencement ceremony at WVU, then this past weekend we attended our local high school's commencement because 6 of the graduates go to our church. That's a lot considering the class size is only 64. But out of those 6, 2 were very faithful attenders of our youth group, so we just had to be there to their high school journey end. We are so proud of them and are going to miss them terribly! Then the next day (Saturday) we went to one of their graduation parties. It was at her uncle's house, I think, and they had a pond, bonfire, bbq, and cornhole. It was really nice. I love going to graduation parties and looking through all the photos of them "through the years." One thing we think is so awesome is that a group of our kids all grew up together in the church, so every party we go to we see pictures of them at VBS, children's choir, Sunday school, etc. What a great testimony to the Lord! So anyway, the next day we had a little "celebration" for all the graduates in church, followed by a picnic hosted by Bobby & I for all the graduates and their families, then we were off to another graduation party! Whew. Do you know how much picnic food & graduation cake I ate last weekend? A lot. And that was just the first round... we still have four more grad parties (that I know of) to go to. Funny how these things happen - all at once.

Here a couple pics from our picnic under our church pavilion. Bobby and I made the most adorable little "graduation caps" and I couldn't wait to show you all, but we didn't get a good picture of them. :( You can just barely see them in the picture below... they are the little chocolate blobs on the white platter near the pop bottles. See them? We still have most of the supplies that we used to make them, so I think I'll make another batch so I can post them here. They are that cute!



















More food!



















And to prove to you that we take pictures of things other than food, here are some people!

Judgment Belongs to God

I have to keep reminding myself of that to keep from celebrating and being happy for what happened to Dr. George Tiller on Sunday. In case you haven't heard of him, Dr Tiller, also known as "Tiller the Baby Killer" was the director of a women's health clinic in Wichita, KS which performed late term abortions. I can't even bear to type the description of what that involves, so I'll just refer you to the wikipedia entry here to see the hideousness for yourself. But since that isn't bad enough, you must read this entry also. Even more gruesome is the fact that he prefered a method called dioxin injection, which was a 3 day process where he would poison the baby in utero and then induce labor. I've even read stories where healthy babies survived this poison, then were born, and no one knew what to do with them because now they had brain damage from the poison. Can you believe this is legal in this country?

My intentions are not for this to become a political blog, but the sorrow I feel when thinking about all those babies he killed is so tremendous, I just had to write about it. Folks, he killed 60,000 babies in his career. 60,000. That is more than the population of our entire county! In fact, it is 20,000 more than the population of our county.

So while there is now an end to the murders that this one man committed, his wife is mourning the loss of her husband, and we all know that while abortion is legal, this will continue. There are other baby killer doctors out there. A theme for my life lately has been, 'this isn't the way it's meant to be,' and it's not. God is the author of life and created these sweet innocent babies in the wombs of their mothers where it is supposed to be a safe place for them, not a place where poison should be injected and their brains be sucked out by doctors. Especially for someone who is trying so hard to do everything I can to have one of these sweet things in my belly, I mourn so deeply for those who have perished at the hands of this awful man. And I grieve for the many more who will follow at someone else's.

But again, a man has been murdered and that is not right. Who would I be if I said it was wrong for him to murder others and right for someone else to murder him (without trial & conviction)? Unfortunately he did undergo trial a few years ago and was acquitted. So obviously the change needs to come from the top down, and with our current administration, it does not look like that is going to happen anytime soon. So we need to just be in prayer for everyone involved and pray that God will be merciful upon those who are involved, because to be honest, I was quite sick to stomach the other night thinking about the wrath and judgment that Dr Tiller is facing currently, and you should be too.