New clothes for new life

Just wanted to post an opportunity to share some spare change and buy some new uniforms for some precious children in the Dominican Republic.

Several months ago I posted about God opening doors for us to come alongside Makarios International by sponsoring a child. We have been blessed to support & pray for "our girl" and hear updates, not only about what she's learning and how she's excelling in school, but also about how the other children are being impacted by God's work at Makarios.

At the beginning of this school year, just like we do here in the States, Makarios has costs for new uniforms for those growing kiddos, among other starting expenses. Consider whether you could help any of these kids through this ministry.

Don't quote me on this, but I believe that $10 will help to cover the costs of a new uniform for each child.

You can simply send a donation to the address listed on the bottom of their homepage. If you have any more questions about sponsoring a child or about the ministry, their people are so caring and helpful...I'll send you one of their email addresses. And while you're checking out their homepage, dive a little deeper to learn more about their passion to reach the Haitians & Dominicans there! It's pretty amazing...God is doing a great work!

Love this computer

Brent did a work on this computer...after we took it to the Geek Squad and they told us what to do. But he did the work and now I can log in to my favorite stuff again! I'm pretty excited about a faster computer back in action. Let's see if it actually makes an impact on my blogging frequency. I was ready to send it back and jump to mac...but we're not ready for that price increase quite yet!

In other news...our hermit crabs are still alive, after 2 days. In fact, they both moved to a new "home" the day that we brought them to OUR home! After our day at COSI, the boys found a new shell for them from a random collection here at home. They put them in the crab's containers, we left for a couple hours to run some errands & we returned to find original shells were empty. The boys were so thrilled! Just wish we could have witnessed their moving skills! Little Brudder's actually moved again that night while we slept, after we had offered him yet another shell from the collection. What fascinating creatures!

The boys and their new pets - "Crabby" & "Hermit"
Wow, we exude creativity!

Feeling a bit more energy these days. Felt quite productive today, which hasn't really been the case for quite some time. Now that I have this computer back at my disposal though, the productivity around the house may decrease again. I can still play that pregnancy card, I think. Brent may be on to me soon though! :-)

Catching up!

It's been quite a month full of wrapping up summer vacation! My mom came for her annual Longaberger Bee and stayed with us. It's always fun to have her out here for a few days. She's usually back and forth from downtown Columbus, where her meetings are and then to the Longaberger Homestead, for her big shopping & basket-making day. We did a little shopping while she was here and she also watched the boys for us while we had a date night!

We turned around and drove her back to Iowa with us when we took our annual trip to visit our families. A week at the Bower's and a week at the Bailey's...we kept going, but also had some nice "down" days too. More on that trip later...but no promises with the way I'm blogging lately.

Back to Ohio for a week of catching up before Brent went back to teach and Big Brudder went off to school for his first time!! We were all very excited for school to start and see what this new world holds for all of us. Our school system does a staggered start where 1/3 of the class begins on Tuesday, 1/3 on Weds. & 1/3 on Thurs. Then they all return to bombard the teacher on Friday! I think the 2nd day was harder for me to let him go than the first.

Little Brudder starts pre-K next week and we are looking forward to his first experience there also. We think it will go well, but you never can tell, so we just keep praying.

Today we had some fun as a family and went to a COSI Hermit Crab workshop for the boys. (COSI is the kids' science center here in town. It was rated #1 in the US by Parents Magazine recently! A good friend of ours is director of membership there, so we just had to get a membership. :-) It's a treat to go whenever we have a chance!)

Back to today...the boys have been fascinated by ocean and water animals for quite some time. After our pet fish bit the dust, they started their request for hermit crabs. So this seemed like a perfect introduction to the creepy, crawly creatures. I signed them up ASAP when we learned about it!. A cool surprise was that each kid in the workshop was going to be taking home a pet crab after the class! The class was wonderful and had a great mix to keep them occupied. It was well worth the investment!

We had some lunch there and checked out the outdoor exhibits before catching the Extreme Screen movie. "Fly Me to the Moon" is now showing there in museum length (45 min...just perfect for their ages) and it's in 3D!! I don't know if all their movies are shown like that, but this was a neat one for the boys. Their first 3D movie, so we weren't sure if they'd keep the glasses on. If you didn't, it wasn't near as cool to watch. Kind of blurry and annoying, actually. It was very funny to see all the kids in the theatre reaching out to grab for the flies and other objects in the movie! The movie got poor reviews for the full-length movie, but we thought it was perfect for kids that are our boys' age! We say "Go see it!" if you're even considering it!