Bloom and Booklets

Mommy pulled out all the KidPak booklets we've been accumulating in the basement, and it's largely me really putting things in boxes.  Anyway, the boxes are piling up, so we decided to reduce that quantity, and that's okay as we've got digital files of all or most of these, and the idea is to keep at least one or two of the originals of each, and then putting together packages of the rest so we can give them to other staff members or volunteers.  Currently, they're all lined up in the living room in individual stacks, and it's an impressive collection.  Some series will see three different covers, even though it's the same series.  Still, we put those in the same little individual pile, the end result being a huge collection of piles of books, including devotionals, sermon booklets, Summer Xtreme booklets, and fasting booklets as well.  Each one is at least twenty-eight pages of writing, some as much as fifty or sixty pages.  There are so many books in our living room now.  We've done over seventy series by now, and it's just amazing to see this collection all together like this.  It's not even all the books either - there are a few that we're missing at the moment.  Again, fortunately, there's digital.  Anyway, I'm looking at "my life's work" there, all these books I've written over time, and it's certainly added up over the years.  It's hard to believe there are that many.  I remember when we started in 2006 with the official series booklets.  I still have the first one, a devotional I thought I'd write entirely based on pirates.  I still have about five or six of these original booklets, the first actual books we've printed at KidPak.

Today, Madison was working on her brochure advertising for the Piedmont area of Georgia, a large expanse of geography between the North Georgia Mountains and the Southern Plains.  As this area features Atlanta and Athens (and us!), there's plenty to write about.  She was writing her notes and even drawing a few pictures as well for her brochure.  It makes me want to visit the Piedmont area some time.  of course, that's the joke:  we live there.

Tonight we wrapped up season five of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."  It ends with the episode entitled, "The End," which is somewhat appropriate - in a way.  We were remembering at the time that nobody knew if this show was going to continue even up to the day this finale aired on television.  I'm not sure even the cast knew, and then suddenly there were two more seasons approved, and "The End" wasn't really the end at all.  And that was good, because the series finale we just watched was a much happier ending for the characters.  

Madison did some piano practice today as well, but today was largely a day to stay home, although I was at the office for a bit, setting up for the big morning tomorrow.  We'll be having outdoor services in the morning at a few of our campuses, and it will be very nice being all together again.

We read tonight from "Allegiance," and from our devotional as well.  Right in the middle of this devotional I had a made-up character that Madison created, one called "Bloom."  She's got "plant powers," which were pretty similar to the ones we saw from Layla Williams in the movie "Sky High."  For a long time, on the way to school or elsewhere, Madison made me tell stories and adventures of this character amongst the other X-Men in the mansion, and it was fun.  We sort of made up the stories together as we went along.

It was a good day though a quiet and uneventful one.  We discovered a pretty big leak in the basement, something from the sink in the kitchen above that will have to be dealt with eventually.  It's going to be a challenge.  But we wouldn't have discovered it if not for the booklets being arranged and so forth.  We're cleaning out that basement gradually, and even giving some things to Ye-Ye and Nana for their online auctioning.  They sell a few things just for some extra cash, and we've got plenty of that sort of thing in the basement.  

We prayed for everyone tonight, and got to bed earlier than normal.  The reason, of course, is that we're going to church again tomorrow.  And we just can't wait!