Decks Dances and Dinosaurs

Hello all... Life has been busy beyond belief lately. I haven't even had time to check blogs let alone blog. I hadn't thought about he fact that a lot of you haven't seen our deck yet. And so the other day Joanna says, "You should post pictures of the deck." I hadn't even thought about it. So, below are pictures of our new favorite hang out spot.

We dug a table and four chairs out of the grange and they now have a home on the new deck. We ate dinner out there a couple of nights ago, we have played cards, I have crossed-stitched... As I said it is the new favorite spot. It is almost like being in a tree house 'cause of the surrounding trees.

Another thing that has kept us quite busy is getting ready for the dance recital. Our first performance was last night and our final performance is tonight. It is a bittersweet thought that this will be our last one. A lot of good memories, and I know I will miss dancing, but I also feel like that chapter of my life is closing.

Jesse was always pleased to see me in between dance numbers. Here is a picture that we snapped during one of the intermissions.

This summer doesn't look like it is going to slow down any either. The rest of June is filling up... and in July, God has opened up a opportunity for me to go to The Summit, which is a two week Christian worldview conference, and it includes 70 hours of instruction in worldview
analysis, and Christian apologetics. It is a very intense retreat, and I would really appreciate your prayers... I am excited about it but I'm also wondering what those two weeks will hold in store. Even in all this busyness God has been showing and teaching me certain things. At times the busyness can just make you get a tubular vision and you start living in a box and thinking only about yourself and the stuff that is important in your own life. And when I get into that mentality I have a really warped view of life and God. And after going to the LEAH convention and hearing Jeff Myers speak, I really started thinking about how warped my thinking has been lately. I realized that life is more then just me. And that took a huge weight off. I have been more content and happier then I have been in a long time. There are bigger things than just me and my problems, and God is bigger then them all. And God kind of confirmed that the other night. Thursday just before I turned off my light to go to sleep, I really felt like turning to Job and reading the last few chapters. So I started in Job 40 and in it God is talking to Job, and He tells Job about Behemoth which I believe was a huge dinosaur. So, one of the things that God used to comfort Job was that there was something out there bigger then Job was, and that God was still in control of even the biggest of His creatures. And He is still in control of our lives... and reading it now I pray that I can be more like Behemoth;

"If the river rages, he is not alarmed;
He is confident, though the Jordan rushes to his mouth."
Job 40: 23