AACC and Play Therapy Confernce

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Nashville for the American Association of Christian Counselors at the Opryland Hotel. It was a great confenrence with some great speakers - Max Lucado, Larry Crabb, John Eldridge, Dan Allender, Kay Authur, among others. And I got to see several people that I had not seen in a long time - Adrian Hickman and his daughter, Andrea and his sisten-in-laws who were visiting him at the Capstone booth, Sharron Pharr and Kim (I can't remember her last name). I also saw Dr. JoNeal Kirby and Elaine Denman. It was good to see my friends from Harding and catch up.

I'm leaving this Wednesday to go to Orange Beach, AL to a play therapy workshop on Thursday and Friday. I'll get to see Vivian and eat some crab claws. I'll spend the night with Vivian on Friday and drive home on Saturday. Now I just have to figure out how to make the navigation system in my car work like I want it to. When we went to Branson this summer, Tim fixed it so it wouldn't keep directing us to interstates and I ended going way out of the way to get to Opryland...I don't want to do that going to Orange Beach!

I think I could spend all my time going to seminars and never seeing clients...

I am so Thankful!

I guess you wonder why after a year's time, I would post a photo of Laura and John and put a title that says I am so thanksful! Well, life has a way of catching your attention sometimes...sometimes good and sometimes, not so good. This week my heart is breaking for some friends that I grew up with in Indianola. They no longer live there, but their daughter, Heather, who was the same age as Laura, was murdered by her druggie boyfriend...beaten to death with a hammer. He had hit her once before and she required 50+ staples to put her head back together and though her family and freinds encouraged her to stay away from him, she with her good heart, after he had finished a stint in a drug rehab program took him back. Just a few days later, she was dead. Somehow that seems to be the pattern a great deal of the time for battered women. The saying goes, "the first time you get hit, you're a victum, the second time, you're a volunteer." But somehow, it's just not that simple. For whatever reason, Heather looked for the good in him and after his stay in rehab, thought that he would be "cured" and that her Christianity would be a light for him...

So today, I am especially grateful for John and his love for Laura. When I am around them, their love for each other is obvious and his protection of her is quite visible. If I ever say or do anything that upsets her or makes her uncomfortable (which I do usually unknowingly with my big mouth...you know I have this problem of saying what I think when I think it...), he calls me on the carpet and lets me know that I need to be more careful about what I say so that I don't hurt her feelings.
So, John and Laura, I love you both very much and I love that you are so in love with each other. I am so proud of you both and of your accomplishments in every area of your lives (except for one and you know what I'm talking about - that I can't change, I can only pray about!). THANK YOU SO MUCH, JOHN, FOR LOVING AND TAKING SUCH GOOD CARE OF MY LITTLE GIRL! AND HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY ON THE 18TH!!!

AWH and Searcy Friends

I went to Searcy on Thursday of this past week. I had an AWH National Council Meeting on Friday morning with a luncheon with the AWH scholarship recipients. I even got to sit by Sun (sp?) who lived with John and Rose Kennedy the last couple of years. It was great to see and talk to him for a while. It is always great to see the kids who benefit from our work...makes baking all those pies and cakes and casseroles ( and the stuff I volunteer to buy at Sam's - because you know I don't cook!) worth it. But I went early so I could play with my friends on Thursday night and take my nephew, Wil, who is a Harding student out to dinner. Beckie and Gene Weaver, Mike and Beth James, Jonathan James and his girlfriend and Wil and me all went to Doc's Grill. Food was good...fellowship was even better. We laughed until we cried...if you're reading this and you know Mike or Gene, ask them about the Mens' bathroom door in the Reynold's building.

Labor Day Weekend

We had a fun Labor Day weekend with my nephew, Wil, and two of his friends, Jordan and Caroline, from Harding here for the weekend. We cooked out burgers and Tim made a big pot of spaghetti on Saturday. It's always fun to have college kids around - makes us feel young again!



Sunday afternoon we went to see Mr. Bean's Holiday with Leslie and Rick Gillespie and Leanne Braddock and Ed Cookenham. As you can tell from the photo, we had a great time and everyone at the theatre thought we never got out we were acting so silly. We came home to find Daniel and Suzane Hurd here (actually, we knew they were going to be here because they called before we left and told us they were coming to spend the night on their way from Searcy back home to Nashville -Caroline was funny - she was like, "So, do you always have people calling and dropping in to spend the night on the spur of the moment?"...she hasn't known us long enough to know about our revolving door!) and they already had the grill going and so the Gillespies and the Cookenhams ate with us and we had a really nice evening with friends.

Today, I studied all day. Tim and Daniel went out flying (Daniel just got his instrument rating) and Suzane went shopping with her granmother. I had class tonight. Harding doesn't count Labor Day as a holiday! But, it was a good weekend anyway!

Guelph II

This is the wonderful dinner that John cooked for us last night. Everything tasted as wonderful or better than it smelled. Most of the ingredients were fresh from the farmers' market making the dinner even more tasty...fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, apples for the apple crisp... We enjoyed the evening just sitting around the table and visitng with each other.













This is another photo destined for our "Hall of Fame" with the "Pole Pictures." (Laura and Joe with one in North Carolina and the other in South Carolina, Vivian and Joe singing in the rain at DisneyWorld, Vivian and Joe in Liverpool, Cristen and Laura in Colorado, etc. each time they are hanging onto a pole of some sort.) I finally figured out a way to keep John from putting horns on my head...

Guelph

This is downtown Guelph. It is a really neat "little" downtown area. The city has about 100,000 people, but the downtown area is neat and quaint.







Laura and John took us to a little town called Elora today. It was a really neat little town, too...lots of little shops and original art in galleries.




We enjoyed a wonderful butter tart, which is a native Canadian treat, coffee for Laura and John with cappuccino for Tim and me at this cutest little "patisserie." Laura and I decided that we would do a "seefood" pose for Tim; I can remember when Laura would have been embarrassed to death to do this with me...she's mellowing out in her old age. John almost decided that he didn't want to be in our family anymore if we were going to act like that!






All of us in the patisserie. John deserved what he got with the seefood picture! Every group picture we've made this weekend so far, he's put horns of some sort on my head!

Right now we are back at John and Laura's and he's cooking dinner for us. It smells great!

Just A Little Note

Not much to say this morning, but I wanted you all to know that I am still alive. Had a terrible headache Thursday - Sunday...it eased up on Friday a bit and finally went away completely on Sunday afternoon..what a relief! That's going to be my first question when I get to heaven, I think, is why did I get to have those headaches? Tim took good care of me though. We're going to see Laura and John this weekend. I'm really excited about going to Canada. Never been there before and even more excited about seeing my babies. (I know they don't think of themselves as babies, but they will always be my babies-even John because he loves and takes care of my Laura so well!)
I'm starting a new class tonight at the Grad school - Career Counseling. Gotta go get my reading done before class.

New Photo

This is a new photo for the church directory. I am trying to add it as my blog photo but I have not yet quite figured out how to do it yet.

Tampa Trip

This is the seafood resturant where we ate the first night. We had coconut almond shrimp. It was good, but not nearly as good as at the Rainforest cafe in California.
This is me in the bushes outside the Salvador Dali Museum. It was a really neat exhibit that we went to today!
We ate gelato here today. It was good, but not as good as Italy.

California

We had a great time in California. The highlight of our trip was getting to see Allen and Sarah Gillespie for a little while. They are doing great and Allen seems really exicted about his work with Pepperdine.

Our limo picked us up a the airport and took us to the hotel. Those seminar people really know how to treat their people.

Our bag got to LA about 12 hours after we did...so the first order of the day on Friday morning was to find clean underwear...I always take a backpack with my meds and clean underwear, but this time, I didn't...fortunately, there was a Wal-mart across the street from the hotel so we could walk over and get what we needed. I can wear that outter wear for several days but I gotta have clean underwear! There was also a Starbucks for which we were very grateful...the coffee at the hotel was nasty! The rest of the breakfast was really tasty though. Friday was a very relaxing day...since we didn't have our bag, we didn't feel the need to get up early and pack every sight seeing thing we could into that one day. We went to Downtown Disney and ate at the Rainforest Cafe (photos are on Tim's blog). We had the best coconut shrimp that we have ever eaten there!

On Saturday, Tim went to his training and I laid around and read a novel and visited with Allen and Sarah and then that night a hummer limo picked up me and the other wives and took us to meet out husbands for dinner at the very nice fancy resturant.

On Sunday, the limo took us back to the airport and we had an unevenful flight back to Atlanta but then, we had a seven hour delay in Atlanta because of the weather so instead of getting home at 7:00 it was almost 1:00 am...It was quite interesting...Delta kept chaning our departing time and our departure gate...we're supposed to go to another seminar in Tampa this weekend...hope the travel will be less trouble free but I will be taking my backpack with my meds and clean underwear on the plane with me this time!

OK, I did the Simponizer thing like Beckie and Reagan and Jennifer...I don't know exactly how they came up with this image fromt he photo that I put in because I don't think it looks at all like me...Reagan's looks just like her curly hair...anyway...that's my give in to peer pressure for today!

The Kids are gone

The kids are gone. The house is quiet except for my coughing and blowing my nose (I know - that's probably too much information for most of you, but this cold is driving me crazy and making be feel very unproductive...the medicine I'm taking makes me feel like I have a sack over my head and I don't want to do anything except lay on the couch and sleep...of course, that's what I want to do most of the time anyway...now I just have a real reason to get by with it!)

The search cmmittee told us yesterday that they are essentially starting over with their search for a pulpit minister. None of the 3 they had it worked down to worked out so we'll get to enjoy John Mark Hicks a little longer. If any of you have any great suggestions, let me know.

Tim and I are leaving on Thursday to go to LA, CA for Tim's last training on his Laser equipment. We'll have Friday to play and then he'll be in classes all day Saturday. We're trying to work out getting to do dinner with Allen and Sarah Gillespie on Friday night, The Laser compnay will treat us on Saturday night (as much as that piece of equipment cost, I'm sure that we more than paid for that dinner but anyway it's a nice perk which they do not have to give). We'll be home sometime on Sunday.

Have great week!

Hard time this week

Well, I did ok last week making myself get up and going to work out, but I'm having a hard time getting motivated this week. I have about 11 kids at my house from Michigan this week (all boys) - Leslie has the girls at her house - they are here working with the Raleigh Plant chruch and the Downtown Church for the week and that really has not one thing to do with whether I work out or not but when I really don't want too, one excuse is as good as another!

Mama, Papa Mutt, and Diana were here all day yesterday so I spent the day going to the various doctors with them. It enjoyable getting to visit with them. Mama's Alzeheimier's is getting a little worse each time I see her and it's sad, but she still knows us all and she and Mutt still pick at and cut up with each other and laugh so that's really good! We met Robin and his family at the mall for dinner last night. They all came to have their teeth cleaned yesterday.

Gotta make myself get up and get dressed and go to the store. Leslie and I are making dinner for the kids tonight. It's fun having them here and hearing about their experiences. They are all fascinated by my pineapples and the ledgend of the pineapple.

3 times this week

Well, I worked out three times this week...that means I'm up to 10 minutes...

Tim is seeing a cartiologist today and having a sleep-deprived EEG tomorrow so maybe soon he will be released to fly again soon.

Laura and John got moved to Canada. She called today and said the weather is wonderful - in the 70's with a nice breeze and sunshine. Tim hopes to fly us up there before shcool starts for them in September. I am excited for them. John is doing what he loves - being in the world of acadameia (is that spelling correct?) and Laura is getting ready to apply for PHD programs in French...If you can do what you love and make a living doing it, then you are a blessed person!

We ate lunch with the staff yesterday for some birthdays and Tammy White's boyfriend, Rick, who is also a pilot, joined us...He's trying to talk Tim into buying a new plane...I told him to just go ahead and buy it and I would find more trips to go on...I mean, he's already got his three ski trips planned, so I think I've decided I'm going to Greece next March with my cousins (my nephew, Wil, will be studying in Greece and we'll have to go see him and his favorite Aunt Diana will be forced to go with us), then in May, I will have to go with Beckie and Reagan to Japan to have reunion with Mami (we did a trip to Germany together several years ago) and then in August, Tim will go with me and Leanne and Ed back to Ghana for a mission trip, so 2008 looks to be a busy traveling year for me. And of course, I'll have to go to Canada sometimes in the year to see Laura. Tim will never get to retire...We both like to play toooooooo much!

Exercising

OK, I did it. I got up this morning and joined Bartlett Rec and worked out on the elipital (SP?) machine for a little over 8 minutes. Dr. Cole told me to do 8 minutes for the first week and then build up a minute a week. I think I can build up faster than that, but I'm going to do it as he says because I don't want to hurt my back. I'm thinking maybe if I make it public knowledge on this blog, I'll be too ashamed to not do it at least 4 times a week or more. He actually says I should exercise every day that I eat...maybe I'll have to start fasting some days!

Tim got challenged yesterday at church to get ready to run a half marathon in December so he started running yesterday. He ran 1.7 miles in just a few minutes. I think I got about a third of a mile in 8 minutes this morning...but I did get my heart rate up good....if I do this consistently and don't see any pounds go down on the scales, I will be sorely dissappointed!

a few pics from the cousin's reunion

These are the cousins who showed up...Robin, Diana, Me, Bill, Joyce, Kim, Linda...Bob was there for a while, but he had to leave to go see his girlfriend before we started taking photos,
Mama, Uncle Tom, and Aunt Des - their only other living siblings are Aunt Grace in Maryville and Uncle Aaron in Harrison, AR who weren't able to come.
My brothers and sister.
Kim and her husband, Robbie took a fun drive in Tim's car on those little curvy country roads.
Hope we'll have more cousins to join us next time...we really had a good time catching up! Two of our cousins, Joy and Terri, when to see "the Full Monty" in Little Rock that weekend. I called to see if they still had full vision after the show or if God had struck them blind, but Terri said they could both see alright...at least out of one eye...they were williing to risk one each.

Cousins' Reunion

We had a cousins' reunion with some of the cousins on my mom's side of the family on Saturday, June 30. Only about 7 or 8 of us (out of 20 or so) made it, but those of us who were there had a great time! I was goimg to put some photos on here, but Tim has not had time to down load them to my computer and I have no idea how to do it so I decided I'd write about it any way. We did get one major decision made...We are going to try to go to Greece in March next year if we can find prices that are at all reasonalble - I've been looking, but so far I've not found anything cheap. Wil, ny nephew will be studying in Greece in the spring, so we'll get to see him, too, and it'll make the trip even better.

My cousin, Joyce, has a cabin on the Tennessee River. We all met there for the day and everyone had a great time playing in the water and on the "ski doos" (I think is what you call them) and riding the pontoon (sp?) boat and eating and laughing. It was great fun! We missed the ones who weren't there and hope they can join us next time. It's so much more fun to get together when we aren't there for a funeral, which is when most families come together it seems...now I'm trying to get on in the works for the Skelton side of my family for next summer.

That day started our July 4th celebrations and we've had two more since then,,,Tuesday night, we were with Ed and Leanne Braddock-Cookenham, who live on the lake over which they shoot of the Bartlett Fireworks. Their back yard was full of friends, Tim and I rode the motocycle over so we could park on the Cookenham's sidewalk. It took us over 30 minutes to get home because of th crowd and we don't live two miles from them! On Wednesday night, we ate with the Gillespies, Jane and Garry Manness and Lynn and Augustine from Ghanna (we're planning to go back there in August 2008 if any one wants to go with us).
We are enjoyng being off the rest of this week-or at least I am...Tim is studying for his ACLS exam.

Beckie called today and said that she would probably be here to spend the night Satuday night. I'm looking forward to that!
Hope you all have had a great 4th. Laura called today on their way from Austin (they'd been to see John's mom) and said it was raining hard on them. Pray they make it home safely. Driving in the rain is not fun! Until next time...

Going Stir Crazy 2

I guesss it would help if i added a few words with the title...I know that I have had two weeks of vacation already this summer and I know that I will be getting to go with Tim to a seminar in LA in the end of July and to one in Tampa the first weekend in August but still here I have sat for the last hour almost looking up air fare/hotel deals for July 4 and the rest of the week...I am really getting spoiled and I want to go somewhere exciting! TO PLAY!!!!! NOT to a seminar! I'm ready for Spain or Greece or Japan or Finland or Sweeden or Denmark or someplace I've never been before! Who wants to go with me and when can we go?!?

Going Stir Crazy!

Home Group

We had a great home group meeting tonight! We sang all night and it was awesome. We had two visitors with us - Gabriel from Ghana and Jeff from Searcy. Gabriel was overwhelmed with the singing. They sing beautifully in Ghana with all their hearts but most of it is in unison no harmony. He went to anaother congregation this morning with some other friends and after home group tonight, he wanted to know if the singing at Sycamore View was better or worse than home group. When we told him it was better, he could hardly believe it. We are planing a trip back to Ghana in August 2008 so keep that in your thoughts and prayer that God will lead and direct us in planning and putting this trip together.

Jeff is here from Searcy. He's taking Don Meredith's class at the grad school this week in a short course. He needs prayers, too! He will do well I'm sure. This is Jeff's third time to be with us so he's family now.

I'm ready for another trip....i know I've only been back to work for a week...I got spoiled to being off...