Are you my bed?

Happy late Thursday evening everyone. How are you doing? I'm doing good, but pretty exhausted. You know when you're traveling or staying at someone's house, it's always good to get away from your house, but man....isn't is always FANTASTIC to come home and sleep in your own bed? Seriously, there is nothing better than that. Tomorrow, I get to do that for two nights. It will be nice to be in my bed, but since I won't be home very long, I won't even have time to adjust to being in my bed. I haven't sleep in my bed hardly at all this summer. I have had five housesitting jobs so far, one still to go. Since about the middle of June, I've only been home maybe one or two days total. Yes, horrible right. I'm so, so, so tired of being away from home, living in other's houses, sleeping in different beds. And lately, over the past few weeks or so, I seem to have difficulty sleeping. Oy vei. Housesitting is definitely a nice supplement to the income in the summer, but I can't ever recall being gone this much. Someone already booked me for next summer, still not sure if I will be here or not. Thankfully this next housesitting job is only five days then I'm done. Whew! It's been a long summer. It will be good, I want to take day trips to explore my state and very well couldn't when I was watching animals. August 1st, I am heading out to California (hopefully J is coming with me) to kiss on these adorable cheeks:

It's the Paigey!!! Don't you just want to eat her up? I can't believe she'll be one soon.

This week at church is also Vacation Bible School. Holy heel spur, Batman. My poor feet are killing me. For those of you who don't know, I have heel spurs in each foot and being on them constantly makes it worse. My job at VBS is to supervise the preschool area, which requires walking around a good portion of our campus making sure everything is okay. And it's not a small campus. My foot doctor said I should take Ibprofen three times a day to keep the pain at bay, but I refuse to do it. That stuff eats the lining of your stomach. My feet have been hurting so bad this week that I've been popping those things like my life depends on it. As exhausting as VBS is, it's totally worth the pain every year. It's just so fun to see all the kids around the campus, it's fun to hear them learn stories in the Bible. The best is when a wee little three year old is trying to tell me what they have learned, it's seriously the most precious thing. Although I had to lay the law down tonight with a five year old. He was just giving his teacher a difficult time, I pulled him aside and explained how he knew the rules and how he knows not to act that way if I were his teacher (I have had him in Children's since he was 6 months old), so I expected him to treat his teacher the same way he would if I were in the room with him. I also pulled the "mom" card on him and threatened to call his mom. He straightened up after that. He really didn't want to deal with the wrath of Miss Brandy and  his mom. I also had a parent get mad at me last night for a stupid reason. When he dropped off his daughter, she was crying, fifteen minutes later her teacher called for me and wanted me to look at something. I went into her class, this little girl still crying. Her teacher proceeded to show me a nasty cut on the bottom of her baby toe. He said it didn't happen here, but this little girl had no band-aid on and it was bleeding pretty bad. And let's not mention the fact that she had on flip flops.  I'm sorry, but if your daughter has a cut on the bottom of her toe, do you really think it's a good idea letting her wear flip flops when we are constantly rotating stations, outside? I called her parents and made them come get her. She was not letting us touch her foot and it looked pretty bad. Dad was less than thrilled when he had to come back not even 30 minutes after dropping her off to pick her up. They knew about the cut, but figured it was nothing. Not so much....the first thing the EMT that we had on site said was, "Oh". Yeah, seriously if the EMT has a look of shock that a three year old has the nasty of a cut, then it's not good.

I just bought Hillsong United's CD, I Heart Revolution. It's a double CD. It was at Berean for $18. I was debating on getting it, but there are so many amazing songs on the album, all live. I decided I would get it. I was super excited when it rang up for $14.50. Sweet! All the more reason to buy it. I've really been loving the song, "The Stand", it's just amazing and brings chills to my arms and tears to my eyes. When I think about how amazing God is, what He has done to this life of mine, and how how I'm crazy blessed by the people He has put in my life, I'm in complete and full awe. Sweet diggity dog, God is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

Here is part of the song, my favorite part of the song.

So I’ll stand
With arms high and heart abandoned
In awe of the One who gave it all

So I’ll stand
My soul Lord to You surrendered
All I am is Yours

Everything

There is this song from Tim Hughes called "Everything". That is one of my favorite songs. Ever since the first time I heard it church, I loved it immediately. The song really focuses on how our thoughts should constantly be focused on God. I just bought the album today, here are most of the lyrics:

God in my living, there in my breathing

God in my waking, God in my sleeping

God in my resting, there in my working

God in my thinking, God in my speaking

Be my everything (repeated 4x's)

God in my hoping, there in my dreaming

God in my watching, God in my waiting

God in my laughing, there in my weeping

God in my hurting, God in my healing

Like I said, the lyrics says it all. It's so easy to get distracted and lose focus on God. So many people (including me) get so caught up in the ways of the world. We are supposed to be IN the world, not OF the world. I have definitely gotten better about my thoughts, but I still need some work.

VBS was so awesome last week and by Friday night, we were all exhausted. Someone told me that we had about 700 kids registered. It was so awesome to see them worship and get all excited about the skits. I was kinda bummed the first few days because my most favorite part of the whole week is the worship. I've said it before, I love nothing more than to worship and dance with those kids. I was supervising this year and running from place to place and didn't get to do a lot of worship. But I had to get over myself. I was there to serve, anywhere. VBS was definitely not about what I got out of it, it was what the kids got out of it. The Children's pastor said we had about 30 committment cards for kids who wanted to have a relationship with Christ. Oh dude, that's so awesome. That makes me happy. I love to see kids get baptized. My eyes tear up every time I see one at church.

This is the week

Good morning! Happy Monday! How is everyone? I'm fantastic, as usual. It looks a bit cloudy outside and it just might rain. *Grin* I'm so ready for some rain today.

Next week, my job is sponsoring a food drive for Salvation Army. We do it every year and we use it as a competition for each office. Every day will be a specified food day, like Monday might be a "tuna day". We can bring in anything we want, but if you bring tuna on Monday, then you get extra points. I am on the committee that plans the food drive, and something that really is bothering me is that Salvation Army requested that we do not give any Top Raman at all. Okay, I'm sorry, first off, Raman is cheap! And can buy excess of it for a very small amount of money. And I don't think that Salvation Army should be complaining about the food they receive, but be thankful for everything. I guess last year, they got a lot of Raman. I can see both sides of the story, but it just bothered me a little.

This past Friday was my friend's memorial service. We had her service in the chapel at our church, it was packed to capacity! It was so amazing to see how many people's lives she had touched. She worked at Cox Communications and there were so many people there from her job. Our church parking lot was honestly filled with Cox trucks. I saw all these men walk in, they are still in uniform. You can tell they are on duty, some of them are dirty, but it's amazing to see them all there. I can't stand to see men cry, that will usually push me to the edge of crying. Believe me, there were a lot of men crying. Some people got up and spoke and they all said the same thing, she loved shopping and chocolate. But they all also said that no matter where she went, she was the ray of sunshine. That is so true. There was also a slide show of pictures of Erica over the years. It was nice and a good means to get closure.

So, this is the week, the one I look forward to every year. Drum roll please.......it's time for VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL! Hooray! This week always provides for an awesome week. We will all be exhausted by the time Friday gets here, but it's totally worth it. Our theme this year is "Lifeguard" and how God is the lifeguard over our life. This year, I'm supervising the 1st - 3rd graders. The best night of the week is always Friday. After everyone picks up their kids, all the families, staff, and volunteers go into the Worship Center and we see pictures of the week as well as sing and dance. It's so fun.

Anyways, that is all today. Have a fantastic day!

Quote of the day: "You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance." Franklin P. Jones.