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...new coffees, back on the road again, insurance company call, back to school, puzzles and games, thunderstorm... updates coming soon...

Belt Consultant

We had a really fun morning this morning with a bit of a martial arts-themed skit at KidPak.  It's our "Path of the Warrior" series, pretty much the same thing as our "Kung Pow" series we did some time ago.  In the spirit of things, we watched a few episodes of "Kickin' It," and we got all the cast members their gi uniforms (with white belts).  Maddie, our BELT CONSULTANT, was on hand to make sure that everyone's martial arts belt was tied correctly.  As for the skit, it was super fun.  Maddie got some good pictures this morning not only for that, but also the worship and the message today about obedience.  She also got some great pictures from KP Discovery too, with the little ones down there.  

We went home after this, although we did a little bit of grocery shopping as well.  We picked up some taco shells, some milk, and went ahead and got these amazing seasonal friends!

The Monster Cereals are back!  And it's super cool that they are back as Muppets again, and this time with a cut-out design so that you can create your very own Count Chocula, Frankenberry and Booberry puppets.  Yes, this is what I'll be doing this season.  Absolutely.  And have I already eaten a bowl of Count Chocula?  Absolutely!

We got home and watched the Braves win a game with Matt Olson's ridiculous home run towards the end.  I got my walking in, more along the virtual path in Yellowstone.  There are so many POV hiking trail videos from that park, and I'm getting them all in as I walk - along with this one Disney special from a long time ago about a mother bear and her two cubs, who get separated and get into a bit of mischief at the park.  It's so dated, and I couldn't believe some of the stuff that was going on with people feeding the bears.  But it's been fun.

 Tonight's movie was "Interstellar," a super long movie, and one of those raises all kinds of questions - we hadn't seen it yet, and it's a long one.  We got upstairs pretty quick afterwards, said our prayers, and got some sleep.

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 .... another day of classes, boring lab, Braves get shut out, Nana's birthday at the Iowa State Fair, Christmas in Narnia, ... updates coming soon...

Camille's Last Day

Today was Camille's last day with us as an employee at the church, and of course she'll be greatly missed.  And of course, we made a huge deal of her last day, pretty much celebrating her the last half of the day or so.  We had fun songs on AI, Ansley made a really nice velvet cake, and we gave that Build-a-Bear we had made last week, while other gifts were given too.  

It was just a nice last day, hopefully, but certainly a bittersweet one.  Maddie and Mom were with me at the office today to enjoy the festivities. Again, she's going to be with us from time to time from this moment on, just not as an employee - she "retired" so she could be a mom, which is certainly one of the more noble reasons to leave the workforce.  It helps that her husband has finished his schooling and got a nice job down in Alpharetta.

  

Maddie had taekwondo tonight, and we were over there - I was getting a few things done, including our next "Spy Games" booklet, plus a new skit for this weekend.  I was doing that from my little perch while watching everyone practice their taekwondo.  My hobby of putting all the Psalms to music is really moving on, as I'm at Psalm 109 now.  There were a few recent ones that were more challenging due to their length of words, but I got through those.  The biggest challenge is of course Psalm 119, a super long chapter of the Bible.   Eventually those will get shared here, I think, but they're turning out well.

 

Tonight was the Field of Dreams game, played on location in Iowa.  Mom and I watched that in its entirety, including all the ceremony at the beginning, Hall of Fame players emerging from the corn field just like in the movie.  The game wasn't terribly close, as the Phillies hit quite a few home runs into the corn fields.  Still, the whole event is just amazing to watch.  There's a wonderful nostalgia  about the whole thing, and I'm glad they do it once a year - the only official MLB game in Iowa each year. 

We went to bed early today, this after reading and after saying our prayers.  It was a bittersweet day.

Car Becomes a Limousine

Well, Mom wasn't feeling great so we didn't get to go to the Braves game tonight.  At least the tickets did go to a good cause:  David Austen, our nephew, got to go and he had a great time.  We were watching on BravesVision, who were the ones kind enough to send us the tickets to begin with.  Sadly, I just picked the wrong night to try to go.  The bight side of things is that the Braves won the game with some authority, something pretty fun to watch tonight.

Maddie was back at school today, of course, and this time around I was the one dropping her off at school again.  Which is not ideal, but we'll get the vehicle looked at by an adjuster as soon as things line up.  These things take time, including of course getting the car to the appropriate location to have it fixed up.  

Here's a diagram of the incident that we got from the police report (a few days from now!).  On it you can see the car struck Maddie's car from behind, drove into oncoming traffic, into a ditch/creek bed, and apparently became a stretch limousine.

We told my parents what happened to their car - again - and once everyone knew that things were okay, we all laughed because for some reason there seems to be an invisible target on the back of that car.  So yeah, once again we're getting it all fixed up.  But until then, I dropped Maddie off, and will likely do that again in a few days.  Hopefully we'll get this all worked out.  This afternoon, she went back to Nate's house after college and eventually came back home.  

We're working on a new "Spy Games" booklet, and also getting some things done for this weekend.  It's been a busy week, especially with Camille retiring this week.  Sad upcoming day, but she's going home to be a stay-at-home mom, and that's nothing you can be upset about.  We're happy for her.

Maddie and I continued reading tonight, more of Susan learning of her family heritage in "Soul Music."  It's been fun to read this one again.  We said our prayers after this, and got some sleep.

Prophets and Cookies

 

So we're working on this one message about the book of Amos.  And I'm glad this one came around - I read Amos and developed a decent message with help from God of course.  The fun part were these activities in the book that were centered around Amos.  I'm not kidding:  every single one involves chocolate chip cookies.  We don't mention "Famous Amos" by name anywhere, but for some reason there are chocolate chip cookies all over this part of the book because there's a cookie brand called "Famous Amos."  So we just sort of had fun with that.

Compared to yesterday, it was a quiet day.  We saw the Braves win tonight, and it was great to see them challenging some of these bad calls by the umpire.  Enough's enough, right?  Anyway, it was a solid win versus those Mets, the bums!

We read some more from the Discworld novel "Soul Music" tonight, continuing with the adventures of Susan Sto Helit, although I think we're going backwards a bit as we've read "Hogfather" a few times thus far, and in this book Susan is just starting to remember all her associations with her family.  Regardless, it's been fun reading about her journey until now - although she is tasked with visiting someone with a familiar name soon, and we'll have to see how that goes.  Ulp!

Okay, time for some rest.  Tomorrow Maddie's back in school.  We said our prayers, and got some sleep.