Catching up: Another Favorite

All of last year, we intended (with our friends the Cunninghams) to visit Science City in Union Station. It's one of the few outings that we failed to follow through on. However, C and I were able to forge some new memories with our new friends, the Registers, there! First off, I was impressed by how much there really was for small children to do. I had expected the facility to cater moreso to school-age children as opposed to my little preschooler. I was wrong. The first thing the girls discovered was a huge tree, with stairs so they could "climb". Then they found the music park. Amazing. They ran on the piano, checked out light-reactive chimes, banged on a giant xylophone, played trashcan drums, and activated wind chimes. I think they spent the longest time experimenting with sound out of everything they found. They played with water flow, were mystified by the illusions, monkeyed around in the indoor playground and explored tons more! I don't think they stopped moving during the 2 hours we spent there. In fact, if they hadn't gotten hungry, I don't know that our visit would have been that short! This is definitely going on our list of "repeaters", the outings we'll go on again, and again.

Catching up: A favorite place in KC

I've been really quite lazy over the summer about chronicling our adventures. However, now that autumn is here and we're starting our fall outings, I suppose it's time to go over some of the major events from our summer. One of the first things people told me about when we moved to Kansas was the Deanna Rose Children's Farm. We managed to get there a few times last fall, and C enjoyed the animals and activities then, but all she could really do was feed the goats, look at the animals in their pens and climb on a limited amount of the playground equipment. This last spring and summer we made it twice with our friends and the experience was so much more enjoyable. While we still fed the goats and looked at animals in their pens, C could play on more equipment, really ride the pedal tractors and was old enough to ride the ponies. She was also a bit braver about the process of feeding the baby goats and petting them. Still wonderful, these experiences brought about many more smiles than on our previous excursion. If you're ever traveling to the KC area between 1 April and 1 November with a young child, make sure you put the Deanna Rose Children's Farm on your agenda. Admission is free; you pay for the feed for feeding goats and sheep, the pony rides and for treats at the snack bar, of course.

Open Door Morning

One of the blessings about our housing assignment is that our across-the-hall-neighbors have a 2 year old (6 days older than C) and the girls really enjoy playing together. Today they had a play date that started in their place and then C had a meltdown and needed Mommy. Because we were standing in the doorway talking, Pammie came into our house and started playing. After laughing about how the girls kept just making themselves at home, Rachel (P's mommy) and I decided to put a baby gate across the stairwell and just leave the doors open so the girls could come and go into the apartments and we Mommies could get our things done. At lunch time, Rachel and Pammy joined us to help out with our leftovers. It was so much fun, we decided we ought to have open-door-mornings more often!

What a privilege

I just have to share this testimony about the working of the Holy Spirit. I didn't manage to check my email on Thursday and Friday, so it wasn't until yesterday that I learned my friend Melissa had her baby. I hadn't even known she was in labor. However, she's been on my prayer list for a week or so, and I've been praying about her birthing process. On Wednesday night I couldn't sleep, so I went through my prayer list. The rest of my list went first, and quickly, but my prayers over Melissa seemed to linger. I felt moved to pray in depth for her and specifically for her labor. Finally, I felt like I could stop praying and could finally sleep, without any effort at all; I just drifted off. It was just after 11:30 pm. On Thursday and Friday I didn't feel the need to pray for her delivery at all, and just dropped that off my list for the moment, intending to pray for it later. Evan was born at 9:37 pm PST, which would have been 11:27 pm, my time. The Holy Spirit had led me to pray for her through her labor and delivery. I feel incredibly blessed to have been allowed the privilege to pray through that time for her, even though she...and I didn't even know it. How sovereign is the Lord our God!

Homeless

As my Gr'pa used to say/sing, "We're on the road again..." That's right, our household goods are all on a moving truck, we've cleaned and cleared housing ($560...not bad, all considered) and are currently in transit. C keeps asking to go "home" and we explain it over and over again, but I don't think she's going to really comprehend it until all our things are in the new house. I've had her say "good bye" to as many of our friends (that we could fit in) and familiar spots at Fort Irwin, but she just waved and said "see ya later," to them. Perhaps she's following my lead, since I'm not saying "goodbye," just "see you later" out loud. The packup went reallywell, and I was pleased with the way I saw things going, but won't know for sure how well they did until we're unpacking them. The loadup didn't impress me as much. The guys were too anxious to "get 'er done" and moved too fast with our furniture and boxes for my comfort level. I hovered a bit much and I'm pretty sure they were glad when I had to absent myself to go handle a childcare issue. During this whole leaving process, I just have to publicly praise God for providing such care from our friends. Several gals helped watch C during the busy-ness, and one family even invited us for a home-cooked dinner on our last night on post. It was incredibly restful to be able to eat a dinner that wasn't at a restaraunt, since we'll be getting our fill of those during this move. C was able to play while we ate (after she was done), and it tasted wonderful! Some others offered to bring us meals to the house, but we couldn't accept, because it was the place to eat the meals that had us most challenged at the end! Still, the thought meant so much to us.

Tonight's stop was Auntie Irene's house for dinner with their family and Auntie Jennie's too. One blessing about living out here in California was having some of F's aunts and uncles close by. We didn't see them as often as we'd like, but we're at least trying to see them one more time before leaving. Auntie Irene fixed an incredible dinner (can't wait to try out the chicken recipe on my own in the new home!) and we just got to relax. What a treat to have a dinner I didn't have to cook, rush away from in order to get things done to get ready to move, or do dishes. I felt so pampered! Thank you so much Auntie!

In other news, I can tell that I'm getting into a really bad habit with the television shows and C. After exploring Auntie Irene's house a bit, she found the television there. She sat right down and here's the coversation:

C: "Watch George please?"
Mommy: "No, Auntie Irene doesn't have any George."
C: "How about Bob?" (as in Bob the Builder)

I laughed so hard, I couldn't figure out what to say to that one. After I could breathe again, I told her that we'd watched enough shows for today in the car, and we were going to play. She accepted that, and we moved on. But how's that for some early creative thinking!