What a crazy weekend! Steve and I decided to do some BIG entertaining....so we had a small group of 12 last night - some new and old friends from church....and then today had 40 (!) from our "State Fair" musical group for a pot luck! The photo is taken in my family room (it looks so big when it's empty!)...with Martha in the middle!

On another note - Ian was incredibly funny today! During the sermon he was listening to Bruce preach, when he turns to me and asks, "What does obey mean?" I was so happy that he was focusing on the lesson! However, shortly thereafter, he once again turned to me and asked, "Why is his voice so loud?" Ok, so he was listening - just not to the content!

Later tonight, after Ian had been playing outside with all the kids and screaming and yelling....he settled down to watch his favorite movie, "Cars". When his mom called about an hour later, and he tried to talk to her on the phone, he discovered that he had lost his voice! He was so confused and wanted to know "where did it go?" ....THEN, he lifts up his shirt, and says, "But it's still ME! I'm not wearing a costume!"

Kids! Thank you God for giving us these little bits of laughter and joy!

It is a rare moment when one can watch her offspring fully come "into her own". So it is with watching my daughter spend the last few years working extremely hard to accomplish something she once told me she could "never do". I remember sitting in my Aunt Fran's living room with Valerie (Fran was a nurse from the 40's and a professor of nursing until the 70s)...and she would hound Valerie to try and consider a career in nursing. Val was SO resistant. Then, she became a volunteer at the hospital...then a secretary in the ER...followed by being an ED tech....and the rest, as they say, is history. Science, Math, psychology, pathophysiology, biology, blood, gore and butt wiping...she's done it all now...and thus I am proud to watch her embark on a career that can only be described as extremely fulfilling while unbelievably exhausting. It will take all of her heart, mind, soul, and body to give to the patients who so sorely need nursing. Val has what it takes.......thank you, Val, for going after a dream that at one time may have seemed out of reach.
You GO girl!! :)