Yes, it's been another week

Creative title for this post, eh? It does seem the weeks roll along with some real speed. My dad always said life speeds up as you get older, and it seems like that is definetely true. I wonder what people who aren't Christians have to look forward to at the end? Seems like the older you get the scarier it would be if you didn't know where you were going. I didn't used to realize how fast life was passing by until we had kids. They seem to grow so much week to week, and especially year to year that I am now marking my years by theirs...I guess I never noticed before that the years really were passing by.

Now that I have waxed thoughtful for a paragraph, on to the usual stuff that makes up a week. Monday it rained and rained, and Tuesday it rained and rained, thanks to the tail end of Fay. We needed it badly, and I guess it's been so long since we've had a really good rain that it was kind of amazing to see it coming down for so long. It didn't stop until Wednesday afternoon. Tuesday we had playgroup at our friends the Knott's house. The kids always want to stay after it's time to go home wherever we are for playgroup, and invited themselves to stay for a sleepover. (That's the latest thing to talk about doing, for some reason.) I did manage to get out of their house without tears this time, which is unusual. Usually the kids are that unhappy to leave whoever's home we're at for playgroup. I guess it's because home is so awful since we have NO toys, NO books, NOTHING to do! Maybe some kind soul out there can send us a toy so we'll have one?

I was bummed about the rain hanging around Tuesday though, because Tuesday evenings have become my time at the barn. My friend Susan who has been a professional dressage trainer in years past (and has a REALLY awesome horse she lets me ride) has been giving me and a friend riding lessons. It's a lot of fun and I've learned a lot in just a few lessons. It's been a long time since I've had someone instructing me, and I've really enjoyed it.

Wednesday was gymnastics. Shannon only had to sit in the green time out chair once. The time out chair gives him a place to rethink how he should channel his sillies for good and not for evil. The kids are enjoying their class. Wednesday night we had church, and the kids are enjoying their new classes there as well. I tend to float around on Wednesdays when James and I don't have nursery duty. This week I spent nearly the entire time catching up with a couple of friends who were working and/or hanging around the front nursery desk. It's amazing how you can go to church with people and never get the chance to talk to them.

One friend, Nicole, was expecting twins and had a C-section scheduled for mid-September. She said she was having a rough week and was very uncomfortable. The very next day she was in the hospital, and now identical twin girls Bree and Aslyn Burkett have joined the world! Their story is truly a testimony to God's faithfulness. At 22 weeks she was diagnosed with twin-twin transfusion syndrome, where one twin "donates" blood to the other through shared blood vessels in the placenta. If left alone they had a 100% mortality rate, so Nicole was rushed to Cincinatti for a procedure to cauterize blood vessels between the babies. She then carried a normal twin pregnancy almost to term. The babies are doing great and are truly a miracle!

The babies were born on Thursday, which was also a fun day for us at home. We had a visit from my sister-in-law Lisa Adams and my niece Jordan who just turned one in July. I hadn't seen her since she started walking, and she's truly a cute little busy bee!
It was a fun visit and we vowed to get together more often. They live in Marietta, about an hour and a half away.



I love this face Jordan makes! She's still working on getting top teeth so she does a great little old lady impression.


Lisa and Jordan









Thursday night our dinner group got together at the Hicks house (good friends, also the youth minister at our church), and we enjoyed hanging out with friends and gorging on awesome stuff off of the grill. Try grilling a pineapple rolled in cinnamon and sugar- an absolutely wonderful way to become miserable after already eating too much!

This morning I left the three oldest kids with James and took a couple of horses up to our local primary school, J.P. Nix. Rebecca who works in the office here at camp and Becky who worked at the barn this summer went too, and we talked to the whole first grade about horses and answered questions. They just did a unit on farm animals so this was a fun way for them to end the week. We did it last year too, and I enjoy it. Most of the questions were very good ones. I asked them questions too, and loved the answers. Did you know that a horse weighs anywhere between 65 and three million pounds? And they can live for 150 years? And that they have tails so they can wag them? My favorite question of the morning was, "So where is Strong Rock Camp?" It's like I paid him to ask that.

Good old Taffy and Maverick!



After showing the kids what sweet feed looks like and giving Maverick a bite, I had to hide it from him. He REALLY likes it.



Elizabeth got to ride along today too. I figured James wouldn't like being left with a hungry baby for too long.


Tonight we packed up the kids and headed into Gainesville. We ate at IHOP (yum!) Did you know that for each adult dinner you order you get a free kids meal up up to the age of 12? I wish we'd get an IHOP in Cleveland! The kids ate like it was their last meal and then begged off of our plates. We then made a marathon trip to visit friends and new babies at Northeast Georgia Medical Center. We saw the Burketts who had the twins, and also our friends Tara and Jeff Golden who had a baby girl, Carly Grace, this morning. She's a cutie too! James and I took turns staying in the waiting room with the kids so we didn't descend upon the new moms and babies with a herd of Himstedts. At our church since January there were 8 new babies born, four this week! (Another couple from our SS class, the Woody's, had yet another baby girl on Tuesday.) Out of the 8 born, just one was a boy, born to my good friend Alison Hicks last month. Poor guy, he'll be grossly outnumbered in Sunday School. Hope he likes to color...

This weekend is Labor Day weekend, and we have made plans to do pretty much nothing. James is heading to the hunting club to set up a stand or something like that tomorrow. Every day is the same to me anyway, so I guess I'll do the usual- laundry, clean up a mess, dishes, pick up toys underfoot, meals, clean up another mess, oh yeah, and play with the kids. Sunday the kids' choir Amelia is now a part of will sing at church, so that will be fun. That evening we'll attend "Sunday at the Park,' a big deal our church puts on for the community.

That's all I know for now. And I'm off to hit the hay!