bye bye, colors

Tuesday evening Micah and John Mark were laying in the floor coloring in his new coloring book. They were having so much fun and looked so cute. John Mark has a newfound love of coloring on anything. We are learning "only write on paper."

Anyway, after his bath that night, I was getting him ready for bed. I got up to get his milk and I could hear him talking. When I turned around, he was picking up all of his crayons saying "bye bye colors..." "colors all done..." "night night colors..." It was the absolute cutest thing I have ever seen!!

Please excuse how disgusting he is in this last picture... he had just eaten something (shocking, I know!!)

long overdue (again)...

I am so sorry for my lack of recent updating. We have so much going on, which is leading to some hilarious pictures and video, but it is also keeping me from having the time to post!!

We have now crossed Middle School camp, VBS and the 8th Grade Trip to Six Flags off our summer "to-do" list. Now we have High School Camp and Kids Kamp left. Fortunately those things are at the very end of the summer. Unfortunately, so is John Mark's birthday and our anniversary! I like being busy though. I seem to thrive in chaos. John Mark is being quite the trooper too and going with the flow very well.

Before you start feeling too sorry for us and the insanity that is our life right now, know that we are having plenty of fun family time in our down time. We took John Mark to see "Kung Fu Panda" at the theater last weekend. He loved it and sat pretty well through the movie- that is until the snacks ran out. At which point he loudly proclaimed "eat pizza now." Fortunately we were near the end of the movie and he held through to the end and we got to eat pizza in the food court.

Here is the promised picture of the black-eye that was the result of last weekends dancing incident. It is looking better now, but he keeps falling down and getting more bruises. My parents got him golf clubs and he uses them as a horse, guitar and umbrella. Yesterday he decided to try all 3 at once and fell down the steps to his playroom, resulting in a bruise and bump on his forehead! Silly boy!

Last night we made a quick trip to Central High to wish Jonas a very happy birthday. The party was a kiddieland, which brought back lots of memories of my childhood. I am pretty sure I have this same picture of me and JJ (Jonas' mom) when we were about this age, riding these very same airplanes!

I think that brings us up-to-date. Micah is doing awesome at his job with the Middle Schoolers. They are starting to figure him out and I can see them growing to love him. It makes me so happy every time I see him talking with the kids... speaking messages that I know God has given to him... even showing off his sweet dance moves! I can see the light in his eyes that comes from doing what God has called him to do. I am so proud of him!

hair cuts and owies

This is John Mark modeling his new, super cool, summer, big boy hair cut. I was tired of how sweaty and gross it gets every time he gets hot (which is ALL the time) so we decided to just cut it all off. He looked in the mirror and said "non-nart hair... go?" But I think he likes it. It makes him look a lot older.

He also got his first major owie- a nice, fat black eye... just in time for Father's day and all the fun pictures I wanted to take tomorrow. He was dancing in the office with Micah- to Jordin Sparks' "No Air"... make fun of Micah for that later :) He decided to start spinning, lost his balance and hit his eye on the corner of the file cabinet. Poor little guy screamed for about 30 minutes. We turned on cars, gave him juice and animal crackers and he finally calmed down. I didn't get a picture of the damage... I'll have one after tomorrow and will post it then.

We finally decided to buckle down and hang things on the walls today. Our office/guest room had just been the holding room for everything we hadn't found a place for and it finally drove me insane. Somewhere in the midst of everything I was going through, John Mark found the glue gun. He carried around everywhere, hitting walls and doors. When Micah got on the couch to hang the pictures over it, John Mark got up behind him and said "daddy fix it... non-nart fix it." It was the sweetest thing I have ever seen!

sweetness

It's been a whirlwind two weeks.
We spent last week in Gerty, OK at Camp WOW.
It was an awesome week full of Middle School students,
crazy games and of course Jesus.

Hearing the gospel presented is always so inspiring.
Late Wednesday evening, I walked across camp
thinking about the songs we sang,
the beautiful simplicity of the gospel.

Micah and I were discussing how the older we get,
the more complicated salvation becomes...
more difficult to explain.

And then today, at VBS,
I heard the gospel presented to 600 elementary kids.
The beautiful story touched my heart.
I remembered what it was to have true faith...
the faith of a child.

I want that again-
to know that I don''t have it all figured out,
but it's okay because HE has the whole world in His hands.

"Jesus, Jesus how I trust Him
How I've proved Him over and over
Jesus, Jesus precious Jesus
Oh, for grace to trust Him more."