new england bound

these are some of wonderful friends in New England.

we said goodbye to them a little over a year ago.

we miss them terribly.

this weekend, we get to see them.

looking forward to catching up and being back ‘home.’

see you all Sunday!

summer reading update

well, I made an ambitious reading list for the summer…and I have to admit, I’m not making much progress.

I finished Unlikely Disciple… and highly recommend it. It was a great outsiders point of view of Christian culture…and not in the negative, critical way. Kevin Roose, the author, spent a semester at Liberty University, ‘undercover’ as an evangelical Christian college kid. His insights and observations are right on in many ways.

I found myself laughing several times…mainly because I often felt like he was describing my Bible college experience. Maybe that’s why I liked it so much!

I’m now about half-way through The Hole in our Gospel… and am enjoying it thoroughly. I’ll post more when I finish…hopefully soon!

wheresthesteeple.com

I just read this post at RagamuffinSoul.com today.A great example of a church that is taking a huge step to make an impact in their community. Read the original post and let me know what you think.

ethan’s favorite past-time

This is Ethan’s new favorite past-time.

And with it comes many changes of wet clothes each day.

Ah…summer!

spontaneous get-together

This past weekend we had a spontaneous get-together with several friends from my EIU Campus House Days. We had a great time catching up while our kids played together on the Magruder’s trampoline… a great evening! So thankful for these wonderful friends…and look forward to getting together again soon.

Update: Gretchen is far more poet than me and she blogged about the night too. She even has extra pictures!

a mighty wind…

That’s my grill…and two deck chairs…and a bench of our Little Tike’s picnic table.

That’s what happened when a huge wind (or something of the sort) came through late Friday night/Saturday morning. We were just heading to bed when this huge thunderstorm was approaching… the lighting was amazing as it was off in the distance. But then we heard this horrible noise…and this is what I found. It lifted our grill off of our deck (and trust me…this ain’t not wimpy grill) as well as everything else on our deck and tossed it into our yard and outside our fence.

Just another summer night in the midwest!

Here’s another view of what we awoke to Saturday morning…

aubrey turns 6

My sweet Aubrey turned 6 today…

We celebrated her birthday all this weekend. It started on Friday with a day at the St Louis Zoo. Grandma and Grandpa Hahn came up from Joplin and met us there…

Then it continued on Saturday with a pool party with family and friends. In spite of the fact that it was about 70 degrees, the kids still had a great time swimming and playing together.

Sunday, her actual birthday, was a bit more quiet… went to church, said goodbye to Gma and Gpa and took Colin to church camp, hanging with all our small group kids.

I think she enjoyed her special weekend… Happy Birthday Princess!

e & a at the nacc

We went to Louisville last week for the NACC… we took the four kids. Call us crazy! Some of the highlights of the week:

• The six of us slept in two double beds.
• The fire alarms went off one night at 3:00 am.
• Ethan threw so many fits, I lost count.
• We came home with only one of Ethan’s crocs.
• Colin and Aubrey got to hang with Braden and Elana for a few days.
• The four of them went to Six Flags!
• Ethan likes to lock doors and shut them…not good in a suite hotel room.
• Tired toddlers and TGI Fridays don’t mix well.
• It’s always fun to see friends from all over the country, from various times in my life.
• E or A crayoned the bedroom mirror…never found the crayon.
• I got to take in some of the convention… especially enjoyed getting to meet Mel McGowan from Visioneering… a cool ministry doing some amazing church design.

We were exhausted by the time we got home… but so glad we got to go.

E & A posed for some pics outside the convention center one afternoon…