Catching Up

I don't remember why I didn't blog last week but I had a good reason at the time :)  I need to get a little caught up here.

Our School Supply Giveaway went very well.  We had hoped to give free school supplies to 1,000 kids but God had other plans.  This year we were very proactive in our registration time with the parents to have good one-on-one's with them.  We helped approximately 450 kids with their school supplies and had a huge amount of "warm/caliente" one-on-one's with parents that were very receptive to talking about God, our church, etc.  And we had five families from the school supply giveaway attend church last Sunday!

Part of our school supply giveaway was Bubba Dowling showing amazing feats of strength and sharing the gospel with those in attendance.  Bubba is the brother of one of the men in our church.  And Bubba was in the service Sunday seeing if our lead pastor could rip a small phone book in half - check out the pic below.

Unfortunately Josh only ripped the front cover of the phone book - a little :)

My elbow seems to be getting better from my fall at work.  The scab from the half of the scar that blistered came off today.  I'm still having a little problem with my left leg though.

The cats are still on their med to help their poo get solid - so far still not working.  I feel really bad for them.

It's hard to believe but last Wednesday (8/21) was one year that I put Butler down.  I can't believe it's been a year since he's been gone.  He was an amazingly great dog that Mike found for me.  He was a great comfort to Mike after his kidney surgery and he was at home recouperating.  I was always Butler's person but it was amazing how close we got after Mike died.  I do miss him from time-to-time but know that was the right day to let him go to the Rainbow Bridge.

Work is crazy and we haven't hit "busy season" yet.  That won't hit for another week or two and run through Thanksgiving.  I'll be working 10 hour days and probably one day on the weekend.

Thursday morning I woke to Rowdy scratching at something and I'm like, "stop it, I have 15 more minutes to sleep".  Well, I decided to get up, go to the corner where the cats were and get them away from whatever they were doing.  When I got them back from that area, the scratchy noise kept going.  I thought they had probably trapped a bug but I didn't think a bug would make that much noise.  I figured it was a mouse and I wasn't too excited about that but I could deal with it.  I was wrong - it was a bat.  Only the fourth bat in the house since we moved in, in August 1985 but my first without Mike.  I like bats but I thought I needed to get it out of the house so the cats don't bite it or the bat bite the cats.  So I call WDM Animal Control - and I don't have my glasses on - and that's when the bat decided it could fly and wanted to dive bomb me.  So I keep seeing it dive toward me, I'm on the phone with the dispatcher and occasionally screeching in the dispatcher's ear.  Animal Control showed up and I knew her so after a few minutes of the bat dive bombing both of us - Carol caught it and took it outside.

I have blogged before how I thought I should look at large, flat screen tvs, get rid of DishTV and go with a Roku box for Netflix and Hulu.  Well I got the 50" flat screen Visio tv Friday after work.  I haven't gotten rid of Dish yet - I need to make sure an antenna works to bring in the local channels but I did sign up for a Netflix account last night.  I'll sign up for Hulu next week.  Both Netflix and Hulu were "built in" to my tv already so I don't need to buy a Roku box now.  I have duct taped the tv stand to the cabinet it sits on so Rowdy doesn't knock it over on top of him and smash him flatter than a pancake.

Today I had two Living Waters Fellowship basketball clinics that I helped with registration.  The 9:00 a.m. clinic had a really good turnout.  The 11:00 a.m. clinic had maybe 10 kids so they played basketball kids vs the men that were putting on the clinic.  And it was H-O-T hot.  After that I had a baby shower at my pastor's house and I asked him if his wife would be ok with me heading to their house early and begging to use a wash cloth, towel and some soap to get some of the stink off me from the basketball clinics :)

Tomorrow will be a crazy day with church, water baptism at Easter Lake, lunch at my pastors to kill some time before a baby shower, then kill a little more time before the live Living Waters Fellowship fantasy football draft that I am involved in.  I have a fantasy football team :)  It's VJ Big Dawgs.  I have a co-manager which is a bud from work that will help me with the draft and through the season.  The name is for Veronda Joy who lives in Valley Junction (VJ) and Brad David (Big Dawgs).  A play on both our first two initials.  This should be interesting to say the least.

The last two pix are of Rowdy of course.  One is him under the covers and the other is him sitting on my tummy - that's how close he gets at times. :)

McFall Day at the Fair ~ Butter Corn ~ And More



It was a wild week with going in an hour early every day for work, to having something almost every night.

 

Monday night we had a children's ministry meeting and I was blessed to be able to move to the Puddles group which is 3-4 year olds.  Mike and I taught 3-4's at several different churches.  I am paired with my senior pastor's wife - and I am excited.  Danielle is very crafty!  We won't start the new schedule until September.

 

At work Wednesday we had Iowa State Fair Day with people bringing in all kinds of food on a stick, some brought in art to vote on, we had teams do a butter sculpture and had drawings for free tickets to the Fair.  I was going to be good and stay away from the breakroom and not sample any of the food brought in but that lasted until I ran into a friend that was taking something into the breakroom.  I came out with a huge plate full of good stuff.

 

We had 30 minutes to work on our butter sculpture - which had to be an ear of corn.  There were four teams - East Team, Central Team, West Team (which is my team) and National Accounts.  We had a blast - check out the next two pix.

When the results were in, we didn't even get second place out of four teams!  I let out a  "What, we didn't even get second place! We were robbed, robbed I tell ya".  One of my team members IMed me and told me to keep it quiet down there (at my end of the row).  I was like, you heard that?  He was like - I think everyone on the floor heard that :)

Then that night off to the first of the two women's modules where I will learn if I am a Mary or Martha when sitting at Jesus' feet.  The first night was amazing!

Thursday was my niece (Chrissy) and my Third Annual McFall Day at the Iowa State Fair.  I can't believe Mike has been gone for three of them already.  Check out the pic below of Chrissy and me - we had a riot walking all over the Fair.

Of course it wouldn't be a state fair without me getting my fake, air-brushed tattoo from my vendor on the midway.  He told us that it was either buy a tattoo and get $2.00 off or buy one get one free (BOGO).  Well Chrissy had never gotten a fake tat before but she did that day.  We did the BOGO option.  My tat is in the picture below.

Friday I was really having a challenging day at work - taking a Thursday off and going in to work on a Friday is hard.  Quotes were crazy and other things going on.  I had a jewelry party to go to Friday night at 7:00 and then keep score for my friend from work's softball team at 9:00 Friday night.  Brad's team was visitors and in the first inning they got 16 runs.  I told the guy sitting with me in the stands that the score book had become a coloring book for me.  They called it after 5 innings because it was 22 to 11.

Saturday I woke up with my scar from my fall at work really hurting and I couldn't figure out why - until I finally looked in the mirror.  Half of my scar had blistered and I have no idea why.  I put triple anti-biotic ointment on it and a bandaid and headed to the zoo with a friend.  We had a really fun time at the zoo.  When I got home I looked at the blister again and thought I should drain it - I didn't want to bump it and pop it somewhere that all the fluid would go everywhere.  So I sterilized a needle with a lighter and poked the blister.  I squeezed a ton of clear fluid out.  I tried to cut off the dead skin from the blister but that is pretty hard to do one handed looking at your elbow in the mirror.  So I put a ton of hydrogen peroxide on it to clean it out good, more triple anti-biotic ointment and another bandaid.  It's looking pretty good today.

The last two pix are from today.  I had found the "naked" stick of a cat stick toy that has feathers and bells on the end of it and no idea where the top of the toy had gone.  Sadie found the top and brought it upstairs yesterday.  I took the picture below just seconds before Rowdy pounced on her.

The last picture is Stick and its blooms today - so beautiful!

Saturday is Living Waters Fellowship's School Supply Giveaway - say a prayer for it and us.  We hope to give school supplies away to 1,000 kids and minister to many families!

School Supply Giveaway ~ Outdoor Movie

Well another busy week.  I've learned a new function at work to help another office on my team - along with working my office and back up my sister office.  The sad thing is that with learning indexing - it's the first step to get quotes into the right queue for an office - my office and back up office don't index timely for my co-worker and me.  I wish I could do indexing for Portland/Seattle instead.  Oh well.

 

Our mission team arrived home Wednesday morning and I am hearing lots of awesome stories of what they were able to do in Lima to help that missionary down there.  Pastor Josh said we'll have a slide show and testimonies next Sunday - can't wait.

 

Tuesday night I headed out at 8:00 pm to watch the LWF softball team play two games - they play in Raccoon River Park which is close to me.  Unfortunately they outcome wasn't in LWF's favor for either game but it was fun to watch them.  I tell people how Rowdy waits for me at the kitchen door when I come home and Sadie sometimes is there waiting.  Check out the pic below - not the best pic because they were moving - but they were both waiting for Mommy Tuesday night after 10:00 when I got home after the games :)



 

Wednesday night was our last night for small groups for this quarter - we are taking the month of August off and having modules instead.  So our small group headed out to Saylorville to have a picnic/cookout at one of our small group couple's camp site.  It was a lot of fun, relatively peaceful, could see the lake and have good food and fellowship.  We played the game Say Anything which was a lot of fun and then as Jim gave us rides back to where we parked our cars - we rode in the back of the pick up like teenagers - haven't done that since I was on Central College's mowing crew in the summer.

Thursday night I headed out to Altoona to help our sister church with their final night of Vacation Bible School.  They sang songs, had a quick skit, talked to the parents that had come to family night and then turned the kids loose to get in line for their school supply giveaway and ice cream.  The picture below shows some of the crowd.  When they said to run over to get their free school supplies it looked like a herd of locust heading our way - and not getting into a line.  So I'm yelling, "Line, get into a line" as we were being invaded :)  I was glad I could help that night.

Friday night a family in our small group was having a cookout and showing a movie outside - "Wreck It Ralph" which is an animated movie.  I thought it would be fun and headed over around 7:15 for a little food, more fellowship and then show time at 8:45ish.  Dennis put up a big white sheet to show the movie on.  It was really cute - and it got pretty chilly before it ended.  I think everyone was wrapped up in a blanket :)  Earlier in the evening I had grabbed my pastor's youngest girl, Neriah, to have a little baby time.  She is just a riot.  Check out her taking a picture of herself with my phone :)

Saturday I had to get things done at the house starting with a very bad kitty pooper pan.  I will warn you the picture below is bad.  Rowdy and Sadie have been dealing with loose poo since I got them and I've been working with my vet to try to get their tummies settled.  There is nothing physically wrong with them when their poo was tested.  I had them on a low fiber diet food that did not help - so put them on something else and it seemed to work for a while and then it didn't.  So this is what I had to deal with.  I thought I was going to pass out from the ammonia smell from it all.

I got the back yard mowed - the front yard didn't really need it.  I was all done mowing when I saw it - the second snake of the year.  It was a baby snake but I still sprayed the poo out of it with wasp spray.  I actually tried to get it to slither up on my dust pan to take it to the park but it wouldn't get on it, so it got blasted with wasp spray.

Stick had it's first blooms of the season too - and of course that picture can't get uploaded for some reason.  I also attacked my front and back enclosed porches and they are looking pretty good.

Today we had a really good sermon - we are going to be studying the Lord's Prayer all August.  Pastor Josh did the three verses preceeding it as his "intro sermon".  Then I headed to the movie theater to see "Red2" with a friend.  It was pretty good.

Looking at my calendar for this coming week, I have something every night and something Saturday morning and Saturday night - wow.  And they are all church related except one. 

My niece and I are heading to the Iowa State Fair Thursday (can't believe it's time for the fair) and then hopefully I'll be back on the other side of town that evening to hand out flyers in the neighborhood for our free school supply giveaway which will be August 17th.

The picture below is of Rowdy trying to attack the fly that was in my bedroom Saturday, he's such a goober.