This is February???????

For the past 3 days we've had summer like weather (well, summer up north standards!)!! It was up to 92 on Tuesday! Here's today's high - it's held steady since about 12:30! I just planted about 100 sweet onions in my beginning garden and I'm HOT!!!!! Is this global warming??

Adventures of SAM and the Rubber Tub!!

You can purchase toys for children, toys for cats, toys for dogs -- we even have a toy for our horses! I guess big people have toys too, but their toys are a bit more pricey than those of their children! If you can remember when you were young (some of us have to remember more years back than others!) what were your favorite things to play with? Pots and pans? Buttons? Sand? Remnants of Dad's carpentry projects? Many of the things we played with were not purchased for playing!!! My cats ALWAYS love playing with 'ta-ta's (little pieces of balled up paper) more than most things purchased! Sam has had LOTS of dog toys, but he doesn't really PLAY with them - he EATS them!!! When he first arrived to live with us, he ate his food out of Sheba's travel dish, then he ate the dish!!! (pictured left)
The toys I buy are reduced to small bits within a very few days. However he has found the best toy for himself right here under Eeyore's nose, Eeyore's rubber feed tub. Twice a day we have to hunt for the tub in order to feed Eeyore. Most often it's somewhere in the front yard. Before Sam claimed it, Eeyore and Tutu would carry it around the corral, and I had to hunt for it out there! Sam loves it SO much, he steals it while Eeyore is still eating! Or, he'll snatch it right out from under Tutu or Racey's nose when they come to finish off Eeyore's food! You see - when Doc finishes his, he displaces the girls to finish theirs! There's a hierarchy amongst the animals we have! Though Sam totally respects the equines (because of their size), I think he's definitely the TOP DOG!!
Note his feet - half the time he's in the air while he's tossing the tub to and fro! If you could see the tub close up, you'd see the chewed down edge - the tub keeps getting shorter!

He goes crazy when it comes to the tub!

And that's not all!! He's totally fascinated with Tober - day and night:
If Tober comes too close to the window, Sam barks and jumps on the window! OOPS!!

Got a little too carried away!! I'm sorry!!! Didn't mean to break the window!!!

The Glorious Ending!

The crowning glory of our Disciple Now experience occurred as we left the church after the creative skits between 11 p.m. and midnight. The kids looked up and called our attention to the moon which looked very much like this!!!

In all my years, I have never seen a moon halo! It seemed like such an appropriate night for it to show itself. It was incredible!! Unfortunately the battery in my camera died, so I couldn't take the picture myself. This picture is close to what we saw!!

EVERYTHING!

We just finished with the 'Disciple Now - 2009' program offered by our church. The theme this year? EVERYTHING! We opened our home to young participants. Our initial expectation was one or two 'kids' would stay here with activities at the church. When called to plan for our 'kids', we discovered we would have around 10 (TEN) eighth grade boys!!! The good news was the 'package' deal came with a small group leader and a helper which for us turned out to be a wonderful young man, Jared, who's seeking a counselling post-grad degree, and Spencer, a parole officer!

Wednesday night we got to meet most of these people. We learned a lot about this program by participating and really enjoyed our group of 8th graders though parts of the house looked like a dorm room (no picture needed!). Activities really started Friday afternoon at the Olney/City View Basketball games (girls & boys JV & Varsity), followed by a large group session at 10 p.m. (included a Christian band and an awesome speaker who seemed to relate well to the kids.
Truck the kids back to the house (they ALWAYS wanted to ride in the bed of the truck) for a small group session and bedtime at 1 a.m.! You have to know that Mike's bedtime is 10 p.m., and I was totally impressed that he hung in till 1 a.m. on Friday, and AFTER 2 a.m. on Saturday!
Saturday included more large and small group sessions. We were responsible for breakfast and dinner on Saturday (food and paper goods supplied by church).

Each group came up with some sort of a skit. Skits were performed Saturday night and some were VERY moving and some were fun and musical.

While the band was practicing, Keelan experienced 'rock star' status on drums, since that's what he's learning to play.

Our church provided a great pancake breakfast on Sunday morning and the morning worship was essentially another large group session. There must have been at least 150 participants from 7th - 12th grade!!! It was a BIG deal!!!