4 Busy Whites

Fun stuff going on today....headed over to our church for the annual Harvest Fun Fair. This is a great way our church serves our surrounding community and invites them to come on over for fun, games and free food (2,800 hot dogs were served!, cotton candy, popcorn, etc.). Doug was in charge of "Trunk or Treat" this year. There are about 30 cars lined up and their trunks are decorated and the people pass out candy. So many creative themes this year, lots of fun! As a staff, our church prays specifially over this event that people will feel welcome on our property and find many friendly people and that many visitors will think about coming back and making Southwest their church home. We'll see.....

In case you are wondering, Chelcie is Penny Pingleton from Hairspray, Madison is specifically a "woodland fairy", Kym is a pirate (thanks to a leftover VBS costume) and Doug is well...he is himself going to a Dodger game! It was fun to see Papa and Lolo come over for a while too. I keep telling everyone what a witch my mother in law is and tonight they got to see her true colors... hee hee....just kidding Sandy! I want the world to know that I have absolutely THE BEST mother in law in the entire world and count her among my bestest friends ;)

Doug has mastered the art of pumpkin carving in our house. With a little help (ok, a lot of help) from the "Pumpkin Masters" patterns, he is able to create these intricately carved pieces of art! This year he carved a castle on the front and then a moon and clouds on the back that actually cast a shadow on the wall behind it. It was beautiful and just can't be captured in a photo. Anyway, here's a peek into our evening of carving.

And that's what we did on Saturday. Our church started a Crisis Pregnancy Center several years ago and this was a fundraiser event for the center held at our church in partnership with other churches in the desert. This is a great ministry to women and girls who find themselves in an unplanned pregnancy. Such amazing ministry happens as the volunteers and staff at the center really walk along side these women and girls during their pregnancy and even afterward. The girls are given support, encouraged to keep their babies, offered counseling, given assistance with clothes, diapers, telling parents, etc. The center is also able help to connect to couples wanting to adopt or even christian adoption agencies. This year was very exciting as we acquired an ultrasound machine and now are able to have the girls take a peek inside at the amazing life growing within, long before they would ever feel their child or see their tummy swell. This allows some amazing conversation to happen about the beginning of life and the fact that there is a child with an amazing plan for their life forming inside!

It was a beautiful day and an amazing cause!

One of our highlights of the day was seeing Madison's twirling group perform. They are so cute! We are so proud of her stepping out to learn something new (she just started in April) and going out there to perform. We love you Peanut!

We are thanking God for the recent shift in the winds making the firefighting efforts alot more manageable. This wind shift now has the smoke and ash covering our desert. Couldn't believe I could actually watch it appear to decend upon our desert on Thursday as I looked out my office windows. By evening we had the red, glowing sun. The views of the mountains all around us is completely obstructed by all the smoke and ash too. Very eerie outside actually.

We have several friends and family of friends affected by these fires and we are praying daily for the victims of this devastation.

Our home group Bible study talked about this and we need to remember and remind others of God's love, provision and ultimate protection of us. We can know from His word that He loves us! (1 John 4:16), He will never fail us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). He causes ALL things to work together for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28). These things are at times so hard for us to remember but we must consciously remind ourselves and others during times like these.

Monday night means Lolo is here! Tonight she brought her sewing machine over and helped us to hem Madison's pants and to sew on her final Brownie vest patches. Lolo told us that she learned to sew from Grandma Bev (who is an amazing seamstress) and from her sewing teacher in Jr. High, Ms. Keith. Madison was intrigued by this project and was so excited when Lolo let her take a try at sewing on a few scraps of material.

Thanks Lolo for years of sewing on Brownie patches too!

Acts of Random Kindness is a great spiritual growth campaign that our church is going through. The idea is this, to get into home groups to do Bible studies together and grow spiritually. The next element is to get out there with your home group and do some good deeds for people in need. These are ideas are consistent with the scriptures in which we are told by Jesus that the greatest commandment is to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength. The second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself." (Mark 12:30,31) Our church is encouraging people to get out in our community and "let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your Father in heaven." (Matthew 5:16)

Today our home group met at a neighbor's house. She is a sweet lady named Barbara and her husband passed away a few months ago. Her flower beds are bare so we all went and planted flowers and even a small palm tree for her! It was a wonderful way to spend our time. She was so thrilled when she came out to see it all completed. We were so blessed to see her expression.

Doug and I love hosting a home group on Tuesday nights and absolutely love the people in our group! It is a great group of friends that we are able to grow spiritually along with.

The kids even helped out too!

And that's just what Doug did today. He left this morning with his buddies Todd, Dawson and Louie. They all headed to the Palm Springs Aerial Tram. They traveled up the tram about 8,000 feet and then hiked the rest of the way to the 10,000+ foot summit of Mt. San Jacinto. It was grueling and Doug is barely moving as I write this! It took them about 3 1/2 hours to hike to the top and another 2 1/2 hours to get back down to the tram. They took about an hour rest at the summit and Doug said it was amazing to just take in God's creation. There is a stone shelter at the summit and there are lots of initials and memorabilia in there. People have left very interesting things in the little cabin. Handy in the event one gets stranded there I guess.

So hard to believe that this area is right in our own backyard. You can see the valley floor (and even the I-10 freeway) below in some of the pictures. We live about 25 minutes east of here.

The girls and I had a very relaxing "down day" today and were so excited when Daddy made it back home tonight.

Boys will be boys and I am glad Doug had a great day of adventure with these boys!

Oh yeah, Doug says he will NEVER do this again!

Chelcie and I headed out on Friday to the Pond in Anaheim with friends Michelle and her daugther, Abby for this year's Revolve Tour. This is a great event for teen girls that is put on by Women of Faith. It is a great time of worshipping God, hearing from speakers with amazing testimonies, learning from a great guy about guys and what think and why they act the way they do, great music and lots of friends!

Our kids have so many wrong messages thrown at them in our culture that it is great to spend a weekend surrounded by positive, relevant and inspiring messages. The girls are told that they are truly a treasure to their heavenly father and that they are deserving of God's very best life for themselves. They are reminded that they are responsible for the message they send out to the world (and guys!) about who they are and how valuable they are. With so many pressures on the girls today, they are reminded that they can unload their baggage (heartache, disappointment, pain, sin issues) at the foot of the cross and that they can rest in Christ and He will take care of all the "junk" and that they are made new in Him.

There was also great music! Natalie Grant, Yesha Woods, KJ-52 and the ultimate favorite by far was HAWK NELSON!!!! My girls love them so it was great to see that excitement on Chelcie's face and to sing/scream along with her to the songs that I know.

We went with a group of about 100 moms and daughters from our church so it was nice to spend time together. It is great to have these families to live life alongside of!

The event was over Saturday at 4 p.m. and we headed home....that is after a stop for chow at CHIPOTLE (yes, Dad....it was as amazing as ever!).

Chelcie and I had a great weekend and wonderful conversations about the amazing young woman she has become!

Madison went to her Chozen Girlz Bible study today and still just loves it! This week the girls were given bookbags to carry and keep all of their quiet time things in. Things like a Bible, quiet time notebook, colored pencils, pens, etc. Madison just loved her bag. When she came home she showed us her bag. I was telling her that when Chelcie was in 4th grade and was in the very first "Chozen Girlz" pilot program, they got bags too. One of their activities was decorating their bags. Madison's is so cute with an official Chozen Girlz logo that we made up but we thought we could kick it up a notch and make it her very own! We busted out the rubber stamps and paints and got to work on it. We stamped her name, a bumble bee and even some multi-dimensional daisies. It is definitely her very own and will not be mixed up with anyone else's bag! Madison's assignment this week is to read Luke 10:38-42 each day. She also is tracking her daily schedule/activities on a day timer type of thing. They are working on tackling the excuse of not having time for any quiet time with the Lord. This has been a helpful reminder for me too! Madison and I have agreed to keep each other accountable for our quiet time.

What to do with all of our apples?! I told the girls about this wonderful apple cake that my Nana would always make and how it reminded me of the fall season. After some digging in the garage (sorry Nana!) I found a wooden recipe box of my Nana's and was so excited to find the apple cake recipe. This was amazing to me since there are only about 15 or so recipes in the box and I only remember about 3 of those dishes. None of her recipes that I have fond memories of are in there....let this be a lesson to all who read this.....WRITE THESE THINGS DOWN! Anyway, Madison and I made the apple cake and it tasted like a memory. Her recipe did not include the powder sugar icing that I remember it being topped with but after some searching on the C&H website, I found one that worked great. It was neat to share this memory of my Nana with my girls in such a tangible way!

One of our family traditions for the fall season is to head up to Oak Glen to pick apples. This town is about 45 minutes away and is filled with apple farms where we can pick our own apples. We love making our family outing with beloved friends! This year we went with Lolo, the Sawdey's (missed you Darren!), the McGlades' and part of the Hilbich's (we missed Mary as she was diligently studying for her ER physician license renewal exam). Our favorite first stop is Riley's Farm. This family run farm is pretty neat with some colonial activities for the kids. They tried archery and also grinding Indian corn into corn meal. Here are some pics.

After sampling a few variety of the apples that are grown on this farm, we settled on our favorites: Northern Spies and Winesaps.

After we finished at Riley's Farm we headed up to the next favorite spot, Los Rios apple farm. This is the place for yummy apple desserts! Doug went for an apple turnover with ice cream, Madison had a carmel apple, Chelcie had a chocolate chip cookie (big surprise!) with ice cream and I had the warm apple crisp with vanilla ice cream! YUMMY! We also love the fresh apple cider so we brought home a gallon. The farm also had a pumpkin patch so we picked up a couple of pumpkins there too. Chelcie, Sarah and Anita were invited to play in a "band" there too....very cute seeing them play their instruments (a wash board, spoons, etc.). Chelcie says it was her most embarassing moment ever, don't worry Boopers, there will be plenty more that will be captured and blogged! Just noticed, Sandy has a video of the "band" on her blog! It was a beautiful, crisp fall day spent with wonderful friends!

Madison started her small group Bible study on Tuesday. Their group is called "Chozen Girlz" and their key verse is from Deuteronomy 30:20 "Choose to love the Lord your God and to obey Him and commit yourself to Him, for He is your life." This is a very sweet group of 4th grade girls and they are led by my wonderful co-workers, Susan and Alice. Madison just loves them so much and we are thankful to have their great influence in Madison's life! The group will meet together each week and are learning different principles and practices of quiet time, daily time spent quietly in God's word. They were given a quiet time notebook that they can use to track prayer requests (and praises and answered prayers too!), write personal notes and prayers to God, and each week they are given an assignment of some kind that will deepen their walk with Christ. This week the assignment is to read Psalm 139 every day. Madison was so excited to get right to it today and she underlined some passages that she told me were special to her! We are so thankful for this group of girls and the fact that 4 other girls go to Madison's school. This is an answer to our prayer over the past year that the Lord would bring good friends into Madison's life at her new school. Last year was a bit rough for her with various influences and some not-so-good friends so we are very thankful for wonderful new friends that God is surrounding Madison with. I do pray that God grows in Madison a hunger for His word, His ways and the amazing life He has in store for her by following Him. I am so thankful for this amazing quiet time tool....sure wish I had this in my life before I was 30! Oh well, I am thankful to the Lord for His perfect timing in drawing me to Him and His continued guidance in my life!