It runs in the family...

So, I told you about Nat's song in the last post. It went pretty much like this..."You are 1 year, 2 year, 3 year, 4 year, 5 year, 6 and you get older every day."

Turns out, she gets her songwriting talent from her mom. I was walking by the computer in the church the other day and found a silly little ditty written to the tune of "I'm a little teapot". It's silly and fun and made me smile.

It started out like this:
"I miss my Brittany yes I do
I miss when we sing & take off our shoes."

Music world, watch out!

35

Where to begin...

• G.G. and I began Baby Tour 2009 on Thursday morning. We started with Payten, catching up with Aunt C and Uncle K as well. Lil Bro and New Sis surprised me with a birthday cake, complete with candles. I don't have any pictures of that but it was cool. Payten was the youngest and skinniest of the babies on this tour, 4 weeks old and weighing in at 7lbs. She's got really long feet though. It's as long as my thumb!
• Baby Tour 2009 headed to Colby's house next. G.G. and I had fun trying to get there. We found many places in CA without traffic! Though our blood pressure was rising quickly when the guy in the big truck refused to pull over even though he was going much slower than the rest of the cars on the road. Argh. Colby and I had a great time bonding, he's got a great smile, though I never caught it on camera. Colby's 11lbs and 7 weeks old. Colby's Brother, Brody, was a lot of fun too. Such adorable guys...the picture I would show you is not cooperating right now. Sorry.
  
• Baby Tour 2009 continued for me with Sammy. Another young man with a great smile not caught on camera by me. He is a charmer and the oldest on the tour coming in at 11 weeks and weighing 16lbs. I had a fabulous time reuniting with Sammy and his parents. Why is it that the ones that live the closest are the ones I don't see enough?
• This morning I turned on my cell phone and found this picture. It was a great way to start the day. Nat, the one on the right, also made a card/book... and wrote a song, reminding me that I'm getting older everyday but that Jesus loves me so, so, so, so, so, so, so MUCH. Love her.
• At lunch with G.G. and B. Young, these two photos appeared on my phone with the captions.
  

Happy Birthday :)

• And tonight Super Sarah and R-Girl treated me to dinner and made me cry. They spent a lot of time putting together a scrapbook of our many youth activities and had people write in the book as well. It just about did me in. I am blessed by them.
• Overall a good way to end my 34th year and begin my 35th. All day I've been at a heightened level of awareness of the goodness of God...I have great friends, kids to love (and hand back to their parents) and family. Life may not look like what I thought it would look like at this point in time but I have nothing to complain about and God has reminded me of that all day long. God is good, life is good and it's been a great day.
  

Quick check-in

It's been a whirlwind few days and it's not slowing down yet. There are a couple of posts brewing, some fun, some serious. We'll see which one makes it out first!

In the meantime, I'm gonna be bold and ask those of you who are the praying kind to pray for my friend Karl. Some of you know him, some of you don't and I'm not going to share details, God knows them. Thanks.

Evading a rant...

I can feel a church rant coming on. It's brewing, my mind is whirling, stomach churning and I'm trying to think happy thoughts but, grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

In other news, in a week I will be hugging this little one.And in a week and a day I'll be hugging this other little one.
I'm gonna focus on that today.

Skunked!

Got to work this morning, got out of my car, coffee, keys and cell phone in hand and got a whiff of skunk. It's not unusual around here to smell that smell. With so much in my hands, I opened a different door than usual to the church, one that will stay open and not just close automatically. That's when the pungent skunk odor really knocked me back. Yuck.

The downstairs hallway, the upstairs hallway, the custodians closet and now my office all reek of skunk. Luckily the youth room seems to have been spared. It would be a perfect day to work from home...except it's Parent/Youth Night and I have to be here.

Candles lit, windows open, hoping the smell of skunk goes away.

Baby recap

So, as far as I am aware, baby craze 2009 has come to an end. They have all made their arrivals and are doing well. Thanks to the tiny little SD card I bought today, I can now show you all the pictures I've gotten of the precious ones without having to text them to Meg who would then email to me. Such a process to get pics off the phone but no more! Woo-hoo! Here's the recap:

This is Kylie, she was the first. I'm hoping that we get to meet face to face sometime but she has this trip to Hawaii with her parents and grandparents coming up and her social calendar is pretty full. She's a cutie!

Sammy came second. Such a great picture, such a happy guy! Sammy and I spent some time together a few days after he was born, which was lovely. I'm hoping that we can reconnect sometime later this month...if he's available. M & L, I'll be calling!

Colby was the third arrival, stubbornly waiting until after I had to go home to make his way into the world. (Yes, it's all about me, clearly!) If you can't tell by this picture, big brother Brody is pretty protective and happy he's here.Payten was the last one and probably the one you will see most around here. She gave us a little scare this week but has rebounded. She's looking pretty serious in this picture. Her Auntie B is having a little bit of a problem living so far away but pictures help!

Found

I've spent the last two days working on my office. It's been the same for a few years now and I got bored with it. A few years ago I painted one wall blue. Just one small wall. I went out and bought more paint to continue onto another wall and never got it done. So yesterday I decided it was painting day. I now have two blue walls.

In the process I moved the gigantic filing cabinet and cleaned behind it, finding CD's that had been lost, a picture that I really didn't miss and a never used phone cord. That started my cleaning, rearranging jag which has resulted in everything that could possibly be moved, being moved. The floor has been vacuumed, the bookshelves dusted, books rearranged, things taken to the thrift store and more never used phone cords have appeared. I really don't know where they came from but at last count there were 4.

Things collect in a Youth Directors office. I found copies of birth certificates from a trip to Mexico that was taken WAY before I started here (which reiterated what I thought when I first started and had to clean out my predecessor's office, when it's time for me to leave, I'm taking a week and going through everything that will be left behind. Someone new shouldn't have to deal with my junk.) Then there are the bags of fake Easter Grass that I bought one year on the advice of Songfriend who would put them in the bottom of his youth members sleeping bags. It sounded like good clean fun...never did it though. There are the 3.5inch floppy disks with worship songs on PowerPoint from the days after the slide projector and before MediaShout. Coffee beans from a fundraiser 5 Mississippi Trips ago, protective glasses from the Mexico 2005 trip and the folder with all the information from that trip. And let's not forget the aforementioned 4 never used phone cords. The garbage and recycling bins are my friends this week.

In other news, Papa Bear has started his own blog. He's political, opinionated and isn't afraid to talk about it, so if you're up for reading you can find him here. Just remember, I warned you.