Happy Birthday DAD!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY DADDY!!

Happy Birthday to the Best Dad a girl can have!! :)

I love you so much!

Thank you for your Model of a Godly Man! Thank you for all you have done for ME, for US, and for CALEB! Thank you for investing in a relationship with Chris, and leading him with great advice and awesome support. Thank you for loving Caleb - in a way like no other. Tractor rides, Baseball, and (what was that about the "Back porch?") HaHaHa! :)

We love you so much!!!

We hope you have a FANTASTIC DAY! Can't wait to see you!!

MARCH MADNESS!

Ok... well... around here... March means much more than Basketball! In fact, I don't even know who is playing in March Madness... well... I know Memphis is/was in there somewhere. That's all I know. I am thankful that we aren't inundated with news and the economy here. We feel it, believe me, but because we can chose what news we read (ie, MSN or Yahoo News)... our lives aren't immersed in it. For this, I am thankful!

MARCH MADNESS around here means Reading Month! :) It's a fun time of celebrating reading. We spend our Fridays dressing up as whatever goofy theme, and reading Dr. Seuss books. Then we also have DEAR (Drop everything and Read!) What a great thing to have in a day! Drop everything and read for 15 minutes! Teachers included!!! I think I should write this into my lesson plans! :) :) The last day of reading month is always an adventure. The idea was to "TONE DOWN" the event this year, but it still ended up to be some great craziness! We got SOAP SOCCER! Which is a huge Blow Up Soccer Field, covered in soap! So you "slip and slide" all over the thing! :) It's so much fun! Then we over course, covered everyone in water and had a huge water fight! :) Mr. Bose dressed as the Cat in the Hat, Chris and Daniel were Thing One and Thing Two! IT was a great day! and a Great month!

BUT... I HAVE to share this... One of my precious ones... (you know they all are! ... but this one especially!!) told me that God has shown him so much through Reading month! The Lord used Reading Month (and triple points for Bible books read!! :) ) to get him BACK IN THE WORD!! He was able to couple his Bible reading with other Christian fiction books to really get excited about the WORD again! ...I almost jumped out of my skin! God is SO GOOD!! Please pray for this fella... I so desire to see him in the WORD like he was last spring, when God ROCKED his heart!!

Celebrations!

Kinda funny, I think... in an Ironic sort of way...

Our Anniversary was on March 7th! 12 years! WOW! 12 years! That's amazing! Sure thought he would have 'traded me in' by now! ... you know for one of those Newer, less Flawed models! :) HeeHee! 12 years.... Wow... God is amazing!

... but that's not the Irony! :)

Our Anniversary was March 7th - so... some would ask... 'so did you celebrate with an AMAZING night of dinner and romance'... ummm... no. 'Did you celebrate with a weekend away?' ....ummmm... no. But what we did... we think is still pretty spectacular! We had SMASH IN THE STREETS! So we spent all day preparing for, 2 hours actually serving, 2 hours fellowshipping, and then taking all the kids home. Then crashed! BUT... it's what we're here for... "It's just what we do!" (as this is now our standard line for the questions about why we drive kids all over town, why we spend nearly every weekend with them, why we take them to lunch, why we 'sacrifice' for them. *totally not a sacrifice!!)

So... why would our anniversary be different? Our Anniversary was spent with OUR KIDS! (minus 'the real one' - Caleb had to stay with friends!) What a great day too!

So... the Irony continues.... My Birthday was March 19th. Guess how we celebrated.... ummm... yep! SMASHin'. We had SMASH unplugged that night! :)

Chris and I did get a nice 'romantic' dinner AND a movie! Thanks to the Lancasters who let Caleb spend the night! :)

SMASH in the STREETS!!

Our SMASH in the STREETS event was incredible!!

We hit the Streets, divided into 3 cars and the Subway... with 17 kids, 5 leaders, 2 drivers, and 100 Sack Lunches!!! We made up sack lunch bags with a ham & cheese sandwich, chips, cookie, chocolate milk, and a beautiful bookmark paper with these verses on them:

Isaiah 55:1-2

Come all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy, and eat! Come buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not staisfy? Listen, Listen to me, and Eat what is Good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.

John 6: 35

Then Jesus declared. "I am the Bread of Life. He who comes to Me will never go hungry; and He who believe in me will never be thristy."

The kids were impacted by what we did. Our car saw every extreme. One fella was so moved, he tore a piece of his sandwich to offer it to the girls as a gift. Another fella offered them food/supplies from a big trash bag of "collected" items from dumpsters. (half rotten). One guy was not nice, one was sleeping, one was totally in shock. Our lady was smiling from ear to ear! We went to the park, as well, and fed the popcorn vendors and ice cream vendors. These people work so hard for so little!! One family was there and the kids were so excited! The mom was overly gracious! :)

The other groups all had amazing stories! The Subway group talked to a guy that asked them to PRAY with him! One of the other car groups saw a large grouping of people in cardboard boxes out behind some dumpsters. So many needs around here!!!

How amazing our SMASHer's Standing in the GAP for these people! :) Awesome Experience!!

Then we ended the Awesome night with some PIZZA and fellowship! :)

Waterfalls & Rainbows

In March, we went to the Waterfalls again. There are actually many different waterfalls around Brasilia, but this one is probably the most "commercial." There is a big hut with a snack/lunch bar, music, a pool, and a couple of slides that are in the center of the "park". The path to the waterfalls is off to the side, and a little bit of a hike to get to the lower part. To get to the top, it is a pretty good hike up. Chris and the men, and the kids all went to the very top. We had a lot of fun, even though it rained on us for the first couple of hours. Then, we ate lunch. The sun ended up coming out just in time for everyone to have about an hour of play, then we headed home. It's a 2 hour drive one way on some really bad roads with random Speed bumps in the middle, so the drive is long. But it's worth it once or twice a year! :)

The most amazing thing however, was on the way home. There was an INCREDIBLE HUGE BRIGHT Rainbow!!! In fact, there were TWO! I have never seen TWO if you look very closely at the partial pic of the rainbow, you can see the very faint shadow of the second one about a centimeter to the left of the bright one.... you see it?? We actually see a good many rainbows in Brasilia during Rainy season, but I have never seen a FULL one that couldn't even be captured in one view of the camera!

I have never seen a FULL Rainbow this amazingly BRIGHT before!!! The pictures don't even do it justice. So... the SCIENCE GOOBER in me got to tell my car about prisms and the separation of the colors that make up light and their different wavelengths. :) In Physics, we got to really talk all about color and light and rainbows. We even got to talk about why our sky is blue and how it's really not reflection, or "colored" at all, but that the particles in the atmosphere allow the light to SCATTER and the higher frequencies of light get trapped first - which is Violet and Blue. Our eyes don't see Violet wavelengths as well, so our eyes pick up the Blue wavelengths. (in face, most animals and birds most likely see Violet!) :) ...AND... we only see the Blue with the "background" of black (SPACE!) and that looking down at earth from space, there is no "blue sky" ... AND... (sorry! :) ) in a city with SMOG, the reason you don't see Blue, (or much less of it) is because there are MORE particles in the air to SCATTER the light, so more wavelengths are trapped... making the sky almost Gray/White. (White is not a color, it's the combination of all wavelengths). ...Sorry for the little Physics lesson there... but it's COOL STUFF!! :)

So.... as I'm thinking of the SCIENCE behind these Rainbows, I'm just amazed at our CREATOR, SAVIOR, and LORD who thought up the complexity of these beautiful creations! How HE made light in its Perfection. How HE made this Earth to have perfect levels of the atmosphere that protect us from so many other parts of the Light that are not visible, that would cause us harm! We think UV rays are so damaging, well... we only get a VERY SMALL FRACTION of them, the rest are absorbed & reflected by our Ozone layer. How HE created everything with complete perfection beyond even our Scope of understanding! THEN... I get ANGRY at the very Science that I love that isn't fully capable of recognizing OUR SAVIOR! How can it be? Other than, of course, that God 'has confounded the minds of the Wise!' How can they DENY HIM??