Oklahoma City Race Day 2

Last pics of OKC - I promise! Our friend shared these pictures of the race day since I had my hands full. Thanks quilt-n-mama!

Happy Spiritual Birthday, Benjamin!

On May 6, 2007, at an AWANA program at church, Benjamin gave his heart to Jesus. So we celebrated our boy this weekend with a neighborhood ice cream social. This is about half of the group that showed up:

I'm headed out the door in just a few minutes to attend this year's AWANA program. It is my prayer that tonight more boys and girl will follow in Benjamin's footsteps.

It's official - Katherine is now crawling! No longer does she scoot and lunge, she has control over all four limbs. Now I have to keep my floors clean!

After I got out of school a few weeks ago, I reevaluated our school days and our routines to be more intentional about being a good steward of my time and energy. What I found embarrassed me! I wasn't doing a good job at teaching character traits to my children on a regular basis. So beginning with obedience (because after Mama had been in school for a while, the kids needed a reminder), we now have a fun character lesson first thing every morning in school. The kids look forward to it and complain if we have to skip our "obedience lesson". Thankfully, their obedience has improved dramatically! Since I'm not very creative, I've enlisted a couple of books to help me get started: "For Instrucation in Righteousness" by Pam Forster and "The Children's Worker's Encyclopedia of Bible-Teaching Ideas" (one for Old Testament and one for New Testament).

Yesterday, we read in Deut. 8:1-10 about God's offer of blessings to the Children of Israel if they would obey. The "punchline" of this object lesson is:

God gives us special rules and directions because he love us. Just like the Teacher in our game, God can see the whole picture, so he knows what's best for us. God wants to give us blessings we can sink our teeth into! When we listen to God and obey his commands, we'll get to "taste" his blessings! (p. 53 - The Children's Worker's Encyclopedia of Bible-Teaching Ideas: Old Testament)

The kids took turns being the taster, the teacher, and the twister. Here's how it looked:

Not exactly what I had in mind, but I think the kids got the point.

Happy May Day!

In case you didn't know, my Sarah's love language is gifts. Yesterday, she spent her own money to buy flowers for all of our neighbors to celebrate May Day. She's had this idea in her head for a long time! Posterboard and markers added up to beautiful cones for the flowers, and by 7:05 this morning each door was decorated with a bouquet of flowers by my sneaky girl.

Just had to include this sweet picture of Katherine and her belly after filling up this morning. Yes, I did kiss all over that sweet girl!

Oklahoma City: Race Day

Sunday morning dawned rainy, windy, and COLD! Aaron left early for his race, while the kids and I prepared for the Kids' Marathon. By the time the races began, the rain had subsided, but the wind was still bitterly cold. Thankfully, our friends loaned us some extra jackets.

I was so proud of my crew as they joined 2500 other kids in the race. I wish I had taken the camera, but with no strollers allowed and Katherine on my hip I'm not sure I could have taken pictures anyway. I was in awe as we came to the bottom of the hill and looked up - all we could see were runners! What an amazing feeling to be part of something so big. Aaron said there were about 16,000 adults participating. I can't describe how proud I am of my husband for honoring God with his body, tackling such a monumental task, and finishing the race.

After some sweet fellowship with our friends, we headed home that afternoon with a tired and somewhat cranky bunch. My sweet Benjamin came to the rescue by singing to and playing with Katherine. She would scream until he sang to her, then she would calm down and listen. Benjamin was certainly in his element!

Thanks for your prayers as we sought to "love the Lord our God with all our strength" last weekend!

Things that last

Yesterday coming home from the grocery store, our van rolled over 100,000 miles just past a cow pasture on FM 1382 in Cedar Hill, Texas. I meant to pull over on the side of the road and take a picture of the momentous occassion, but I left the camera at home. We're so thankful that our van has lasted seven years, and yet we know that it won't last forever.

Ann's blog once again got me to thinking about things that last like our words that we invest into our children and sow into the "seed bed" of their lives. Too often my words are harsh instead of the Proverbs 16:24 words like honeycomb.

"The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever" Isaiah 40:8

Oklahoma City Part 2

Saturday, our family visited the memorial for the Oklahoma City bombing which occurred April 19, 1995. In the children's section, tiles made by children around the country lined the wall. And chalk board rectangles begging to be drawn upon lined the ground. Above is a picture of Sarah's contribution.

Benjamin's gift of words:

The nine rows, large chairs for the adults and small chairs for the children who perished in the blast:

The survivor tree:

We met some friends at the national park. Shawn ran the half-marathon (he encouraged Aaron to participate) and the kids ran the kids' marathon, too. While we were there, a park ranger gave the kids an opportunity to become junior rangers by learning about the memorial. Here they are being sworn in before they get their badges.

After we finished at the bombing site, we drove over to the zoo and enjoyed the beautiful day! Our friends' foreign exchange student (who also ran in the half-marathon) became an instant buddy for our kids.

Oklahoma City Part 1

Our great weekend in OKC began by spending time with my college roommate and her husband.

Aaron and Sean warmed up for the big race by driving go-carts and playing putt-putt.

Aunt Amy practiced on Katherine to get ready for the little one coming this fall!

The Weekend

Happy Arbor Day! We won't be celebrating much about trees today because we're about to leave for the Oklahoma City Marathon. Our family has been training for months to prepare for this race - Aaron is running the half marathon, and the kids are completing their marathon. Katherine and I just get to run alongside the kids for the last 1.2 miles. We will meet several friends while we are in OKC, and we are looking forward to the sweet fellowship.

Other noteworthy topics of the day:
First license plates - 1901: New York began requiring license plates on automobiles, the first state to do so

Maud Hart Lovelace birth anniversary - 1892: One of our favorite authors (Betsy-Tacy series)

Tim Duncan's birthday - 1976: One of our favorite basketball players (close behind David Robinson)

Hope you have a great weekend!

Nature Walk

"How many are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures." Psalm 104:24

We've enjoyed having some extra company from Memphis this week.

Our friends hiked the trails with us today and admired God's creativity!

Thanks, Poppa!

My dad came down for a busy weekend to help out while Aaron and I played our cellos in "Savior", a joint performance with our church and a church in north Dallas. The kids enjoyed some extra hugs and kisses, and Aaron and I enjoyed being stand partners again.

What is it?

Once again, it's time to play "What is it?" with things we've found around the Choate household. We discovered this growing on our bread today, and we've never seen this color before. Anybody know what it is?

Outside, the trees are covered in these little lime looking things. They come in all sizes.

What do you think?

Learning Tok Pisin

One of the things we would like to do before we leave the country is to learn a little Tok Pisin (the trade language of Papua New Guinea). Learning some language before we get to our Pacific Orientation Course will give us a head start, so we are playing number bingo and concentration games using animals and foods like those below.

Animals
mosquito-natnat
crocodile-pukpuk
cat-pusi
pig-pik

Foods
sweet potato-kaukau
cabbage-kapis
orange-switmuli
milk-susu

If you want to try and pronounce some of the words, remember that the orthography follows the International Phonetic Alphabet. So 'a' says 'ah', 'i' says 'ee', 'u' says 'oo', etc. For more information about Tok Pisin you can check out:

Radio Australia – Tok Pisin Service
http://www.abc.net.au/ra/tokpisin/

Thomas H. Slone's Homepage
http://members.tripod.com/~THSlone/index.html

Robert Eklund's Tok Pisin Homepage
http://roberteklund.info/

Tok Pisin
http://www.tok-pisin.com/

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin