I Really Have Been Productive

Wow. So I guess I took a little break from posting. I really have been getting a lot accomplished. I just haven't taken the time to post ;)

Last Sunday and Monday we had to go to Idaho Falls for doctor visits. We took the opportunity to pick up a small New Testament for the two year old. Whenever we do our family devotions (each night) he thinks he has to have a Bible too - so we got him his own. He's still pretty rough with them. He was so excited. Now he runs around with it, saying, "T---'s Bible!" (his own name). He gets so excited when it's time for devotions. We just love it. The other night he knew it was getting time for devotions, and he ran around telling everyone "Get your Bible!" and then went and gathered up all of our Bibles for us so we could do devotions. :) I love the tenderheartedness of children, and the desire to be in God's Word. I wish as adults that we were always so enthusiastic about it.

We are currently having special services with Evangelist Ken Lynch. What a blessing that is. He plays all sorts of instruments beautifully - including the musical glasses and a Stradivarius violin. He is very talented in music, and his preaching is excellent. It is always such a blessing when he comes.

Last week I was working on a secret project. Here's a little peek. I won't tell you any more about it for awhile. You will have to believe me that it was a lot of fun to work on, and it is nearly done. That's why I didn't do much posting last week. My daughter and I got 90% of this done on Friday afternoon, working together. She actually said, "This is fun!" while we were working on it. I consider that a success. She told me not to go posting that she likes sewing now, but I say progress is progress, and she definitely got into this project. Even the seven year old got into helping, and told her that someday he's going to be great at sewing, and not need his Mom's help with it. It was a slam, but she didn't mind. She told him that was fine because she doesn't like sewing - especially not by herself. (But for not liking it, she sure had a fun time :) and she sure does have a lot of projects planned - including ones she will do alone!)

Here's the other thing I accomplished last week. I took along my hand sewing for the doctor's visit. My 7 year old is in a medical trial study, and we have to go every 6 months to get blood work done. We are always there from 8 am to about noon, so there is plenty of time to work on little projects (if I think to pack them - ha). With the sewing I did on these on Monday, and then working a bit on them the first part of the week, I have added another 89 to my stack. This is just the few I got done Monday and Tuesday.

My goal was to empty the box I work out of, which I did, and to use up all the thread that was left on my spool - which I almost did. If you look toward the top of the picture you will see that I still have a tiny bit of thread on the spool - about enough to do four more hexagons. I have been using this project to use up the little ends of thread I have on spools that aren't long enough to bother to thread the machine with.

Now I need to break out my new turquoise and red fabrics that I bought on the shop hop, and get some squares cut so I can add them to my hexagon pile. I'm about to need to start sewing some of these together - I'm running low on papers. But I wanted to have every fabric represented before I did that so that the whole quilt will have all the fabrics in it instead of each section having different fabrics. I'm pretty sure I've got enough fabric now (I really should do the math on this). I figure I can always add a border if I come up a little short - or purchase more of some of the fabrics I'm already using, so they'll all blend in.

We've also been trying to get more organized here at home. We have a goal of going into full time ministry, but have a lot of loose ends to take care of first - both in our household and family, and our finances. We are determined to get there though. So we're buckling down and working to improve in many areas, and one of those areas is organization. We want ourselves and our kids to do better at keeping the house in order - our theme is based on the verse that says "Let everything be done decently and in order." So in order to accomplish that, I made up 3x5 cards for every area of the house. Things like - Front entry, hall closet, master bedroom closet, etc. Basically if it's in our home, there's a card for it. The card details absolutely every step that must be completed for that area to truly be clean and organized. The idea is that we can assign a card to a family member (parents included) and not have to explain how to do the job, or argue about whether it is really done or not.

We also came up with a master menu for a month of meals that are all different - designating Mondays chicken days, Tuesdays Mexican, etc. That way we get a good variety of meals and never get sick of the same things over and over, but still have a master shopping list so we only buy what we really need. We've done once a month shopping for a few years, and it is much cheaper than running to the store every time you need something. Being organized is the key to making it work. There are a lot more little things we're doing - and some bigger things, where the budget is concerned - but I'll stop with that. We're all excited to enter the next phase of ministry, and we're looking forward to how God is going to bring it all about :)