Haircuts!

I finally took the kid's in for some much needed hair-cutting!

And then we went and held the new baby!!! I love when other people have babies and let me hold them. What a precious little miracle!!!

Notes From Gil's Sermon

Although the day started out kind of crappy- unfortunately, most Sundays do- it turned out to be a fine day. Gil's sermon was about not fretting and worrying about things. I started out just doodling key words on a scrap piece of paper during the sermon and soon found myself drawn in by the message. I don't think I worry so much about things but I do find myself fretting a lot. Maybe there isn't a difference but it seems to me that worry is more about a big picture and fretting is in the details. I justify my fretting by calling it planning, but it sure causes a golf ball to form in the pit of my stomach. Here are my notes in a nutshell:

Quiet

Surrender

Yielding up of our expectations of what God should do

Submitting

Freedom

Listen to God

Waiting patiently (oxymoron?)

Not idleness

A choice to wait

To draw near

His Voice

His Touch

His Direction

We are not in charge

We are born impatient

If only- not living in the present

Impatient with ourselves: work harder, get smarter

Impatient with God: worn out from pleading

Waiting for God

Rely on His promise

Complaint with God- His timetable is different than ours

God is always on time

How can we be still and know when our lives are so noisy??

Noise drowns out the voice of God

compassion

mercy

tenderness

We need a sabbath- everyday

Carve out space to listen

Most given command in the Bible: Do not worry (fret, be afraid)

So while none of this is new information (except that I always thought "love your neighbor" was the most given command), it's all stuff I've been processing and know that I need to do something about. . . right now it's just something else to fret about!!

Thankfully Kristin brought her camera to church today and took pics of the kids for me. Gloria is going to be such a good babysitter someday. She loves on all the little ones at church and they all love her back.

Zach and Andrew:

After church I went with Kristin to her mom's house. It still doesn't seem real to me that Kathy is gone so it felt really strange to be sitting in her bedroom trying on her shoes. Kristin has the really hard job of figuring out what to do with all of her mom's stuff so she offered me some shoes. I ended up with about 25 pairs!! I don't think I've owned that many pairs of shoes in my entire lifetime!! Thank-you Kristin and Kathy!!!

Saturday

I won the camera I've been watching on Ebay today!! It will be shipped on Monday so I should survive until then!!

My broken camera came to life for a few minutes tonight:

Gloria and I walked to a yard sale today and she found these fabulous shoes:

I know I'm going to be in big trouble in a few years. . .

Rob and Dale ran sound for the pre-game Hawks concert. I stayed home and cleaned house. I'm not sure if I got the better end of the deal. . .

Happy Birthday, Jeanie!!

Rose Room Event

The dunking at the lake has made my camera very unpredictable so when it turned on this morning, I woke the kids up to take their picture!! I guess I'm a little obsessed. . .

Tonight we ran sound for a big 50th birthday party blow-out. While we were setting up in the afternoon, the professional photographers "borrowed" Gloria to be their model. I guess they were checking for lighting and stuff so they took a bunch of pictures which, obviously, thrilled her!

From set-up to tear-down, we were at the Rose Room from 2:30 p.m. to roughly 1:30 a.m. Well, I excused myself around 11:00 to pick up the kids at Kristin's house and Dale came back and helped Rob pack everything away, so really, Rob was the one that was there for 11 hours! This was a party that my sister was invited to so I got to hang out with her and meet her friends (our worlds collided!!) so that part was fun. The room isn't terribly large and there were, I'm guessing, 500 people there dancing to music from a very loud, live band so by the time I left I had major sensory overload. My camera made a short come-back and I was able to take a couple of pictures.

4-Day McCall Vacation

One of my stipulations to Rob for this trip was that we had to camp at a place that has both showers and electricity. I need my shower (and a toilet!) and my coffee. I'm pretty low maintenance most of the time so these are simple requests. We used to camp a lot and it was always in tents and usually in some remote location that we had to hike into. One year for my birthday, before we had kids, he told me he had a great surprise for me. He was very excited as we got into the car and started to drive. He wouldn't give me any hints at all but he told me I would love it. He had everything we would need packed away in the trunk. Keep in mind that my birthday is in December so I started to get a little nervous when we headed for the hills. . . We ended up at one of his favorite campsites up by Idaho City; unfortunately, it was snowed under. . . imagine, Idaho City being snowed under in December. . . Anyway, I couldn't be mad because he was such a kid about it, so we actually hiked in and set up our tent- IN THE SNOW.
We have had many camping adventures like this in the past but because we've been so crazy busy, it's been a few years since we've really been able to camp. I think we've camped twice in the last four years. Anyway, when we saw an opening in our calender, we jumped at the chance to get out of town. I'm just too tired this summer to deal with hiking into remote places and peeing in the woods so Rob readily agreed to camp at Ponderosa State Park in McCall. After getting a pretty late start on Sunday, we arrived at the camp ground around 11:00 p.m. I thought for sure the campground would be full and we'd have to search all night for an open spot. Rob had called ahead and was told there would probably be open spaces but they wouldn't take a reservation that late in the day. It turns out that there was one open space for that night but we'd have to vacate it in the morning and hope another would open up. Rob was at the visitor center when they opened at 9:00 a.m. on Monday morning and was able to get the only available space in the campground- it just happened to be right across from the one we were in! It turned out to be the best spot in the campground, in my opinion- the closest spot to the lake and only a 50-pace walk to the bathroom. We spent the day Monday at the lake.

Gloria has always been my little fish. She loves the water and has no problem with the chilly lake temperatures.

It took the rest of us a little bit longer to get in. . .

Emma loves the water and had a great time fetching a plastic water bottle:

Lucy wasn't sure if she liked the water or not but she really likes to be wherever Emma is:

She finally gave up and cuddled in a towel:

When the dogs were good and tired, we took them back to the motor home so we could get on with our next adventure. . .

We decided to row our two blow up rafts into McCall. After all, we were out of ketchup and I forgot my hairbrush, so we needed to stock up on supplies. I took my camera along to get pictures of us floating along and that's when tragedy struck. . . .

. . . yep, my camera got wet. It didn't actually fall in, but it was in one of the grocery bags in the bottom of the raft and there was just enough water in it that the camera was dripping when we pulled it out. . . :( I was so sad. The kids spent the rest of the day drawing pictures of our vacation to cheer me up.

This is the local celebrity, Charlie the Lake Monster. When Gloria heard he was around, she wouldn't venture very far out into the water.

We took a long hike on Tuesday and Gloria was our trail guide. She deftly pointed out the difference between the "Ponderoscious" Pine and the other local trees. She also told us to be on the lookout for the "black-tailed tree-monk squirrel". We were instructed not to eat the berries because we needed to save them for the bears. The hike was beautiful but very long and we were all exhausted by the end of it.

Apparently I turn into an ogre when I fall asleep in the woods.

Gloria and Lucy took a sweet nap.

Zach sketched a great picture of the campground for me.

We had a fire every evening and roasted hot dogs and had s'mores.

My camera made a momentary comeback on the second night after it got wet so I quickly took pics of the kids. It was short lived. . . :(

All in all it was a lovely vacation. I had some camera-withdrawal symptoms but my family was very sympathetic about it. We spent a lot of time on the lake, went on hikes, played games, and just hung out together. We came back on Thursday morning determined to do this more often.

Sunday. . .

The kids and I went to church this morning. . . it was different but good. Gary and I led worship and we had two great helpers- Megan and Gloria. They did a great job. I think it threw some people off just a little bit because it was so out of the realm of what we usually do (many songs had actions!!!), but I had several people express their appreciation after church. The whole service was really meaningful to me. Karen McConaughey brought the message and it was clearly from her heart and touched many others which was obvious during the sharing time.

After church we went home to recover from the weekend events and to pack the motor home for a 4-day camping trip!!!

Rob actually pays Gloria to walk on his back and he always feels better afterwards:

Lucy thought she should get in on the act. We were told that Australian Shepherds need to have a job to channel their high energy- this could be a good one!!

It took us most of the day to prepare for our trip, but we were finally ready to leave around 9:00 p.m.

Lucy found the coolest spot in the motor home and rode there most of the way to McCall:

Saturday, High Desert Harley Grand Opening

Up at 6:30 a.m. again. This is becoming a very bad habit. Our good friend, Ric, agreed to run the Harley event until Rob finished up at the Idaho Center. I arrived around 8 a.m. and fired up the system and set up the mics. By the time the band and Ric got there, we were ready to go.

The first group up was the Blue Rays. They were great. The bass player has known Rob for a long time and remembered that I was a singer!! That made my day right there. Very few people on the business side of my life are aware that I sing. My memory isn't as good as his because I don't recall meeting him before but it was good to talk to him off and on during the day. Everyone in the band was cool and they played straight up, no frills, Rock and Roll.

Lori came by with Henry.

Unfortunately I forgot the pretzels and he didn't want much to do with me.

We both got a big kick out of the great lengths he would go to to avoid me and my camera:

Once the band was set, there wasn't too much for me to do so I experimented with the settings on my camera. This one's pretty funky:

Somehow I managed to get a darker setting for this shot, but then I couldn't remember what I did to get it that way. My camera has too much light in many of my outdoor photos.

The Harley Calender Girls threw t-shirts to the crowd off and on during the day:

Rob made it back in time to catch the last couple of songs and Ric took off for another show. The next group wasn't a group at all but just a guy with his guitar. He was good, but I really wasn't needed for this one so I went home to download my pictures and check on the kids. Grandma is keeping them very busy sorting through their stuff and encouraging them to get rid of some of it. I live with a bunch of stuff-collectors. I got back to the event just in time to set up for the Rockafellas. These guys are great. We've run them a few other times and they've told us how much they appreciate the way we run sound.

Dale finished up at the Idaho Center and unloaded the truck at the shop so we could load it up with all of this stuff tonight. He took my picture at the monitor board. This board has become my friend this summer and I'm not at all afraid to use it anymore.

http://www.rockafellasrock.com/

Rob had a great time running this band:

John is an amazingly talented drummer/singer:

The band played from 3:30-8:00. I left around 7:30 to grab Dale and Rob a bite to eat and got back just in time to start taking everything down at 8:00. Around 9:45 the guys told me to go home and do whatever I needed to do to get ready for tomorrow. I was just tired enough to take them up on it. I couldn't find my keys anywhere and really thought I must be losing my mind. I looked everywhere before I finally decided I must have left them in the car. I had parked quite aways out in a dirt parking lot and as I approached the car I could hear the radio playing. I couldn't believe it when I walked up and found that the car was still running. . . I guess I really am losing my mind. . .