Giveaways going on now!  Don’t forget to sign up to enter here and here.

We had the privilege and excitement of hosting this young, Young, family (hahaha), the weekend of our mission conference.  The Youngs are missionaries with Biblical Ministries Worldwide and will, by God’s grace and timing, be going to Scotland to work with church planting there.

We were thrilled to host this family and their fun children.  Their two little ones just fit right in and Nathan and Krystal (the mom and dad) didn’t seem too disturbed by our plethora of children.  Mark and I were thrilled to have them in the home and talked with them late in to the night on two occasions, not even realizing what time it was.

These are all the missionaries who attended and spoke at our church’s conference.  I’d love to get the videos for the Louks up, but I can’t figure out how to embed it in here, so I’ll just point you to their website and tell you, you must go see what they are going to be doing in Romania starting this summer!

And if that isn’t enough jabber, one of the reasons we were thrilled about having the missionaries in our home was because of the great influence they can have on our children.  It is our desire that our children seek to serve Christ and to bring Him glory through all they do, whether that is living in a hut in Africa or working inner city missions or a “regular” job in the states.  We also want them to be aware of the great needs that are both here in the US and abroad.  Hosting missionaries for a brief time gives them faces to the names that they hear so much about.

This story of absence is nothing short of well, interesting…

It all started when I requested that Papa and Mark work on the front flowerbed while they were visiting a couple of weeks ago.  They obliged…somewhat happily.  However, they didn’t have time to finish it completely because we were celebrating some special little princess’s two year birthday. 

The Before:  That pile of rocks is our altar.  We really need to get into the New Testament during family worship time!

Papa “working” hard!

The Helpers!  We chose this project because we knew that everyone could pitch in…and they did!

This is the side of the house that connects to the front bed.

So, that left the finishing touches to be completed by us the next weekend.

We got to work bright and early on Saturday morning.  Everyone really pitched in.  We saw a ton of lizards (yay, they eat mosquitos…the more lizards the happier I am…as long as they don’t come inside), frogs (they eat bugs too…stay on little frogs…outside), and a snake.

Trust me.  He’s in there.

Yeah, a snake.  Just lounging around in one of our azalea bushes in the front yard.  One of the azalea bushes in the azalea bed that we were clearing out and Mark was throwing lyme (lime?  whatever…the acid neutralizer stuff). Mark threw some lime and then jumped back a few feet.  We got out our handy dandy google and realized we weren’t dealing with a poisonous snake.  Just a little garter snake.  However, they eat lizards.  I like my lizards (outside), so I knew we were probably going to need to kill him.  But first, I wanted the kids to see him.

So, after several attempts, Mark was able to pin him down with the shovel while I picked him up.  Whether we were going to kill him or not was not questioned after that as we realized he was hurt in our jaunt to get him out of the bush, so after letting Ceili Rain touch him (the only one who wanted to), Mark took him off to the side of the house to give him his final resting place. (Sorry Jacie…but it was better than letting him suffer)

It just so happens the place Mark took him was where our cable line was buried.  Just so happens that cable line is the same cable line we use for internet and our landline phone service.  Just so happens that it’s not buried very deep.  And, as you can guess, it just so happens that when Mark sent the snake in to utter darkness, he sent our internet and phone in the same direction. And, we learned all of this on Monday when the cable repair guy came out and found the cut line.
 
Oh well!  He was super nice and did a quick great job fixing it up.  He greeted Mark at the door telling us he liked our bumper sticker (about abortion being wrong and such).  That was a nice visit!

And now you know why I did not post on Monday!

But hey, we got a nice cleaned up low maintenance flower bed…and I got my azalea bed cleaned out and mulched up.

A side view.  I’m going to add a couple of more plants to even it out but that won’t be until the big nursery near here has a warehouse sale and I can get them for dirt cheap…haha..dirt.  cheap.  I’m so funny.

Ahhh…what a little landscaping fabric and mulch can do for a yard!

Yep, I know.  It’s almost Christmas.  I know.  I’m a month behind.  But this was worth sharing, for the first time ever, we actually had guests for our at home Thanksgiving celebration!  Mark had to be on call this past Thanksgiving so we actually had to stay at home!  I can’t believe it either 🙂  Mark’s parents were able to come and help us celebrate so we pulled out all the stops.  Place card settings, beautiful folded napkins (by Zoe), fine china, and our nice tablecloth.  Not to mention our first ever whole turkey roasted, sweet potato casserole, cream corn, green beans, homemade dressing, and the cranberry jelly from a can (yuck on that one).  And for dessert, apple cake and pumpkin pies.

We all enjoyed it and I think our guests did too!

Mark was the turkey man.  I bought it (on sale for a great price) and found the recipe, and he dug out the gizzards and such, and cooked it!  We’re a great team.  He also got to carve it.

Stop taking the picture already and give me some food.  Peeaaasss!