What a week!

I have always wanted the hang out house and now we have it. It has been a prayer of mine that our kids friends would want to be at our house and that we would have the hang out house. Well, it turns out that God has answered our prayers. In the one mile radius around our house, the only boys that are close to Griffin's age are right within our "village" as they call it. When we moved here there seemed to be no children around so we would go to the playground by the marina and play there. It turns out that our neighbor's grandson visits most days out of the week and our other neighbor's son comes and stays a couple days out of the week. They have a blast together. On a rainy day this week I was overwhelmed with the amount of dust and cobwebs that collect around here. I get tired very easily so I have to watch how much I do (however I regret that my thighs are showing the effects-oh well. I will have to start walking after the baby is born). So anyway, I was praying that God would just send someone to clean my house or give me ideas of how to get it done. The dust on the baseboards look like they could just get up and walk away. Well, Kevin that is over almost everyday loves to hoover (vaccuum), so I asked him if he would hoover the baseboards on half the house, and then Griffin wanted to wipe the baseboards on the other half of the house. I paid them for doing this. It is not a big house but it sure helped my back!!! Ruthie even pitched in by putting the dishes away. She loves to dust and put dishes away. She even puts her dirty diapers (nappies) in the trash can (rubbish bin). I usually do homeschool while she naps so cleaning is done while she is awake, but it is like trying to work harder and faster cleaning and putting stuff away than she can undo what has been done.


. Because of my laziness on matching socks, when they are dry I just stick them in a bag. Well our family ran out of socks so we had a stock matching contest. Both participants got candy but the winner with the most pairs got extra gummies.

Ludie had a couple days off this week. He has been working (as well as the rest of the OM team) day and night for at least the past 3 weeks. It has been so good to have him home. I hugged him so much, he asked "what did you do?". The first day he just chilled and spent special time with the kids. Griffin has been eating it up. They made a pallette and watched Clone Wars and fought with light sabers. He also put up a post for the hammock we gave him for Father's Day. I think Griffin is more excited than anything!


Dax and Sarah Bryant from Las Vegas are joining the OM team on Monday. They are flying out Sunday with a 7 hour lay over in Chicago. She is 7 1/2 months pregnant and they have a 2 year old and 4 year old. I am so excited about them coming. I think just to be able to help someone else and make their transition easier based on the things I have learned or mistakes that I have learned from.

Anyway, there was a car donated to OM for them to use so we went to Kilkenny today to pick it up. We made a family outing out of it and went to Kilkenny Castle. We had a picnic, rolled down hills, played on the playground, climbed trees and toured the castle, oh and had some ice cream of course!!! Mmmm! It was such a great day! I love my family! The last picture is one of my favorite house on the way to Kilkenny. It has a thatch roof. It was not a good place to stop and take a picture so I had to do a drive by shot.





The last thing to mention was what happened in the middle of the week. I don't really know how to put this in a blog without just seeming like something in passing, because it is all but that. This week our friend and Sunday School Class member from FBCW passed away. At the age of 42 he died in his sleep of a massive heart attack. My heart just aches for Teresa and the kids. Please keep them in your prayers. I am so thankful and praise God that there is no doubt that Todd is in the presence of Jesus Christ. He dressed up as Elvis at a Sunday School Class fundraiser to help us raise funds to come to serve with OM in Ireland. My disc that has that picture is in storage back home. If anyone has a picture, please send it to me and I will post it. Todd and Teresa were and are some of our favorite people in our Sunday School class. We always sat right in front of them and joined on the same Sunday. Todd loved racing and had a prized Home Depot racing helmet that he willingly gave up for a abused children's Christian charity. That is just the kind of guy he was. He was always laid back with a smile on his face and you just felt comfortable around him. We are blessed to have known him.