It's beginning to look a lot like summer...

Seriously.

This is the first time since school was out that we will have all spent an entire week in Houston. 7 consecutive days we are home. We got back on Saturday (the 4th) from Family Camp and leave this Sunday for Tyler to drop the girls off for a week at Pine Cove Camp.

It’s not like we’re just sitting around this week…

Caroline participated in a 3 day church middle school Houston mission project. She helped with some backyard Bible clubs:

worked at the Houston Food Bank:

and spent today at the Star of Hope rescue mission:

first they cleaned these beds

and then they made the beds up for them and left verses and candy on the pillows.

Brittany and Savannah have been doing a Kidz Planet drama camp in the mornings and Jacob has been watching a lot of Curious George.

Bill meanwhile re-introduced himself at El Paso Energy. And I’ve made a vow not to call him at work (it’s just that I miss him!) unless it’s a real emergency the next few weeks so he can get caught up.

We almost had just such an emergency yesterday when somehow I got wrapped up in watching the Michael Jackson memorial service in our bedroom and forgot that I was boiling a hot dog for Jacob. That is until Brittany yelled “smoke!” and I realized it was THICK smoke. I yelled FIRE! FIRE! GET OUT! GET OUT! through the house and scared the kids worse than the clouds of smoke scared them. Turns out there was no fire…just lots of smoke.

And speaking of fire…I got burned by a firework. A firework that fell from the sky. HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF SUCH?!? We went out on the bayou to watch the fireworks…you know…lawn chairs…kids spread out on a blanket, friends all around and the first display went up in the air and next thing I know I’m yelling “OUCH!” It hurt something awful. I think people thought I was crazy until others started getting hit. Embers and burning pieces of cardboard were falling like crazy (all this while there is a burn ban in Texas). Anyway…I think that is what would be called being close to the action.

We’ve played some board games, done some crafts, gone on a bike ride, watched TV… all that stuff that just screams summer. We were getting kind of tired of hot dogs and sandwiches so today we decided to go to Chick Fil A for lunch (because you know how I love that place). And in true Savannah fashion, she claimed Chick Fil A had switched out their chicken sandwiches for turkey and she didn’t like it and therefore could not eat her sandwich. I suggested law school to her because there was no convincing her that CFA didn’t do it. I gave up and we went instead and bought her and her hungry self a trunk for camp. Good luck to her counselors. She’s tenacious that one.

So that’s just a bunch of rambling about not much of anything. Sorry. I never got over jet lag before we went to camp. Now I’m suffering camp lag.

But one last thing … about Michael Jackson. We were not around for what sounds like was a lot of hoopla over his death. It wasn’t anything I missed watching (although I can do much of the Thriller routine because my friend Lucinda and I learned it in the 11th grade).

But as I mentioned I did get caught up in the memorial service. One of my favorite lines from the service was when Brooke Shields said…“we never recorded a song together, we never collaborated on a project together…but we did have a lot of laughs together.” And I just liked that thought. I love laughter and love memories of me doing just that with my friends and family.

And please raise your hand if you have ever had some laughs on a church van in the summer!

The other line I loved was in the closing prayer. I don’t even know who that pastor was, but he preached a sermon in his prayer, I’ll tell you that.

And this is one of the things he said…

“the King of Pop has bowed before the King of Kings.”

Now back to summer…