Happy 28th Birthday, Kristin "Pit" - We love you!

A new park

Yesterday, we met Ms Lois and Ben at Lenoir City Park. I had never been to that park or Fort Loudon Lake, which has a very beautiful marina. We had a lot of fun playing on the playgrounds, feeding the ducks and geese, picnicing, and dangling our feet in the water...although Allyson warned us she might jump in at any moment!

Untitled from kevin whitley on Vimeo.

my money saving "things"

We made $12.46 for these and we only contributed a few cans and thankfully none of the beer bottles. (thank you to our neighbor for those)
just one batch of my baby food. All that you see are sweet potatoes, carrots and rice cereal. This will feed him for two weeks and cost me roughly 6 dollars. This would have cost me around 40 dollars if I would have bought baby food in jars.

Mera's pics

Kristinah took Mera for a walk and let her take pictures .This is what she came up out with.

She did most of the editing her self on photoshop. I just had to make sure she clicked the mouse right.

July 21st --> Mama's Birthday!

I hope you enjoyed all the calls and cards you received yesterday, Mama! Since you are extra specially loved, we want to keep celebrating your birthday! :) Here's your BIRTHDAY POST!

Yesterday at Jean's home

Pictures of the following: drawing on Ben's big garage chalkboard, Allyson and Mama playing Wii Fit, visiting the Grady's coffee shop, and eating supper at Mangia Pizza.

Day hike

We went for a drive up Highway 1 today, and we stopped at a spot (see pics below) where a waterfall comes out of the mountains to the beach. It was warmer than usual. Mama would have loved the hairpin turns that we had to take at the edge of 500+ drop offs to get to this place. We headed to another destination after this but the path to get to it was so steep and narrow (as seen in the picture above that we decided not to try it with the kids. We had a great day.

Birthday fun at the park

Lula invited Noah's church friends to the park today for cupcakes to celebrate his 10th birthday. Kaleb and Travis played some "informal" football w/the boys and Pastor Ray. Allyson had fun giggling w/all of her friends. The last two pictures are of our afternoon at the library.
Happy Birthday, Noah! :)

Sea of Galilee

Last Wednesday an interesting message was preached at church. Since then I have been reading over that passage several times and it has really made me think about a couple of things. They are very simple and everyone else has probably already thought of all this, but I thought I would share it anyway.

In the gospel of Mark it gives the account of the fishes/loaves miracle. It states that the disciples were commanded to gather up the remnants (12 baskets). Then Jesus commanded them to get into the ship and go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee to Bethsaida. The two points I found really interesting were:

1. Mark 6:48 And he saw them toiling and rowing; for the wind was contrary unto them: and about the fourth watch of the night he cometh unto them, walking upon the sea, and would have passed by them.

I found it interesting that the Bible stays that the Lord "would have passed by them." But in the next two verses it says they cried out and immediately he talked with them and told them to be of good cheer and be not afraid. I just think about all the decisions, big and small, we have in our lives for which we never ask God for help. But he is always right there wanting to help us if we will just call out to him! Then he will immediately talk with us and give us guidance. Yet most of us will just "toil and row" through all the storms of our lives. Even though God is right there the whole time we just seem to insist on trying to get thru on our own. How sad.

The second point I found interesting was....

2. Mark 6:51-52 And he went up unto them into the ship; and the wind ceased: and they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, and wondered. For they considered not the miracle of the loaves: for their heart was hardened.

Now the disciples had JUST seen the miracle of the loaves and fishes and probably had the twelve baskets of remnants in the boat with them! Yet, not a few hours later they were "sore amazed" when they called out to him and he performed another miracle. Not just surprised or amazed, but sore amazed! Basically had forgotten about the previous miracle and the Bible says their hearts were hardened. I think that's is exactly like us... when we do pray for something and God provides it we are usually just amazed! Why should we be amazed? Do we have so little faith in the Lord? Or maybe we don't pray very much and are not seeing the full capacity of what God could be doing in our lives so when we do occasionally ask him for help and of course he does, we are just shocked!

We should remember that:

I Peter 3:12
"...the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers..."

Great-Grandma's visit

Grandma came for five days and we had the best time! The four generations are in middle pictures. We played board games, celebrated Kristen's birthday and ate lots of bbq ribs (Grandma's favorite) as you can see in the yellow bowl.

An evening at the Preacher's house

After church, we went over to Pastor Ray and Ms Lula's house for pizza and cookies. Allyson had spent the afternoon w/Hannah...so they began their giggling and playing right where they had stopped a couple of hours before.
Lots of laughing...hope to do it again soon!

Cades Cove

Allyson has been asking and asking us if we could go on a picnic...so, today we packed the cooler w/sandwiches and sodas and headed for the hills. We drove around the incredibly beautiful Cades Cove...saw the preserved cabins that the settlers lived in over a hundred years ago. Then on our way back home, we took some refreshing dips in the river.

"UNSHACKLED!"

For anyone who has not heard this yet - it is my father's testimony - broadcasted on radio by Pacific Garden Mission in August of 2002.

Keepin' cool today

Kaleb relaxing...

Allyson's many jumps...

Tuesday afternoon

(top four pictures courtesy of Lula's camera)
Today, we met Lula Ray, the preacher's wife, and their three children Noah(10), Hannah(8), and Sara(almost 2) for lunch at one of our favorite little places to eat here in Clinton...Hoskins Drug Store. Then they came over to our house to play. The kids had so much fun, and I had a great time visiting w/Lula!
Come again soon, guys! :)

Our weekend

July 4th - my favorite holiday!

During The Great Depression, the only fireworks that were displayed were out in the middle of your own street. You didn’t dare ride your bike past a group of rowdy kids, because they would throw cherry bombs at the pavement and the sparks would fly up and burn your legs. There were some sparklers and roman candles….but no plastic made-to-order show in some remote stadium or TV spectacular from New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty. In fact our big explosions were home made. Like everything else in those years when there was not enough money to feed and clothe us properly, much less to have extra left over to buy fireworks, we made do.

Pappy was a welder by trade, and he would take his blowtorch out to the back clothesline pole, stuff the pole with magic potions, place a tin can over the end that faced down into the gully wash behind the house, and light the torch.
Kids were lined up all around the back yard. Grandma and mom would stand near the entrance to the back screen porch with their hands over their ears waiting for the explosion. I was always the scaredy cat, cringing at their feet never understanding when the blast would go off.
Finally, the torch would come to flame. The scene was all set. It was dusky dark. Now he could do it.
“Hot pups,” he’d say as he reached up to the empty end of the pipe and touched the string attached to the explosive.
Hssssss! Ka-Booooom!
The tin can took off for outer space. It was a good thing that we lived on the last street of town. After the gully wash was a huge orange grove, and we could see the flaming torch can going through the sky and then down into the darkness of the trees.
The wonder is that he didn’t cause fires, or accidents in our own yard or to the many children waiting for his incendiary display.
I guess it was just many of the wonders that protected us during those lean years when he did crazy stunts to make us all laugh.
“Well, that’s over for another year,” Grandma said uncovering her ears and heading back into the house to stir the chili beans and make last preparations for dinner.
“That was my best work!” Pappy said coming back across the lawn trailed by all the neighborhood kids.
I guess it was. He’d made a lot of poor kids happy on the Fourth of July.

by Thelly Reahm © Tidbits of time, 1936