Measle Outbreak at AWANA

This is one of the fun ways our AWANA group encourages kids to finish the year and hopefully finish their book. The goal is to have the sickest leader/listener by the end of the night by causing a measles outbreak. The clubbers get to add measles to their leader/listener for each section completed in one night. Pictured are two of the leaders in my room (Sarah and Julianna) who went home pretty sick.

What happened to April?

Ugh! I missed posting even a single post during the month of April! As Miriam mentioned in her post, I also am looking forward to the end of the school year. Hopefully, I can get caught up in posting some of the many events that have occurred in April, such as:

Measle Outbreak at AWANA

No Job . . . ?

Traveling Mama and Papa

Kids in the House

Turning darkness into Light

Interesting Comment . . .

Easter Again

I titled this post "Easter Again" mostly because of the beautiful colors and because a few days ago before the tulips were completely open they looked like colored easter eggs in stems.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you?
Matthew 6:28

Doesn't that verse just mean so much more when you're actually looking at God's beautiful handy work, rather than just reading black words on white paper.

Gardening

I logged into my blog site tonight to upload a new post and realized I had started this one but never published it.

A few weekends ago, Chris helped me build two 8x4 raised garden beds. We built the beds out of 2x6 cedar boards and then lined them with layers of newspaper which will act as a weed barrier.

We (rather I) plan to plant tomatoes, strawberries, onions, cucumbers, lettuce and snow peas. I say I plan instead of we mostly because Chris doesn't like any of the above except peas.

Labor Day

@ 7:47am

Dani and Jon headed to the hospital around 2:30am today. No baby yet, but check out Jon's website for updates at http://www.thatjonjackson.com/.

@11:55am

Baby Noelle was born! Yah. 6 lbs 5 oz and 19 inches long.

A Day in the Field

Today, I am in Lake Charles for a project trip. Four other project team members and I flow down today for a two day trip to gather information for a tank project. We arrived mid-day (just in time for lunch) then we headed to the terminal for a one hour safety training course. After that, we headed to the field. There had been a lot of discussion about where to locate the tank because we are putting it in the same dike area as another tank and according to NFPA there are certain spacing requires. The surveyors had been out earlier and had marked the final location of the tank and the civil contractor had probed for buried lines. Mark, the mechanical designer, and I went and measured where everything is so we can develop the plot plans. The current plot plans are fairly out of date. Then, Larry, the project manager, gave us a tour of the terminal. I have worked on several projects for this terminal, but this is the first time I had visited the terminal, so it was pretty cool the see some of the things I had worked.


Once we were finished for the day, we headed back to the same restaurant for dinner: Steamboat Bill’s – a Cajun crawfish, seafood restaurant. My project manager loves seafood! I am not a huge fan of seafood, but I don’t hate it either and I always say don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it. So, I had shrimp etoufee for lunch (which I had never heard of before) and boiled shrimp. Etoufee was like Cajun gravy served over rice with shrimp. It was pretty good, as with most seafood; I think it’s gross when it’s cold.

For dinner, Larry ordered a few pounds of crawfish for an appetizer (pictured on the left). The picture to the right is the portion I eat. Crawfish aren't that bad, but it sure is alot of work.

Spring Is Here!

Last fall, I planted about 100 tulips in our front flower bed. When I plant bulbs I am always afraid that I will plant them upside down or too deep and then they won't come up. In our fast paced world it is so hard to complete a task for which you can't see the results for several months. For several days now, every where I go I have noticed that spring flower bulbs have started pushing through the dirt. Today, I finally check my own flower beds to see if there was any green pushing through. Below is what I saw. Yah!!!

Eva Rose

Here are some new pictures of Eva Rose, Chris and Lori's baby (Lori's my sister). These were when Eva was 4 month's old which were taken a few weeks ago.

ABC 1 . . .2 . . . that's right 3!

Yesterday evening, we held a triple baby shower for three mom's in my SS class who were all having their second baby. Of the three mom's was my sister, Dani who is expecting Baby Girl #2 in March. The evening was filled with conversation as about 30 women showed up to encourage and "shower" these moms with essentials for their second baby. Here are the three expecting Mom's (from front to back: Dani Jackson (my sis), Darcie Niels and Jen Smoliak. Darcie is having another boy and Jenny is having boy (her first is a girl).

Day One

Our first day of skiing was really awesome. We had really great weather. The temperatue was about 20 - 30 F with a really light wind and clear sky. Here is a picture of Robert (my cousin) after he successfully snowboarded down the mountain without falling and the other is a picture of him carving his way down the mountain. This only the second time Robert has ever snowboarded and he has really caught on quickly.

Motivation

Need ideas for motivating your AWANA clubbers? Give this a try! Bec is an LIT (leader in training) at our church. She helps with the 5th & 6th T&T girls club and she is helping me as a T&T Bible Quiz coach. Noticing that some of the girls were no longer motivated to finish their books, Bec gave them a little incentive. The first girl to finish their book would get to pour a bucket of water on Bec. As you can tell from the picture, this definitely got the girls motivated. Now Bec brings a bucket with her each week to club and who ever (in her group) has finished their book gets to pour the water on.

Useful Tool

Have you ever planned a large party and tried keeping track of all the RSVPs? Evite is the perfect way to eliminate all those hassles. I have used evite for several occassions including baby showers, birthday parties and most recently a Super Bowl party. Evite is really neat in that you can have guests not only indicate whether or not they can attend, but they can also sign up to bring something, like chips and dip or soda.

I started using this for invitations after trying to keep track of over 60 attendees for my sisters baby shower. Sorry this sounds like a commercial for evite, but this is a really great site. I am currently planning a triple shower for my sister and two other mothers in my Sunday school class who are all having their second child.

Science Experiments

From reading Miriam's blog, I learned of the Science and the Bible experiment books. After reading several of her posts about how she used the experiments in AWANA counsel time; I purchased the books and lent one to our counsel time leader. Last night he tried his first experiment. The illustration involved wrapping our biggest/toughest male AWANA leader with cassesste tape. The first time, he was only wrapped a few times and then he tried to brake free which he was able to do. The second time all the tape was used to wrapped him. This time he was unable to brake free. The leader then explained that we might think that those little sins in our lives are not a big deal that we can "brake free" from them at anytime, but those sins can easily ensnare us. The experiment was a very effective visual, especially for the boys. The experiment is in Book 1 or the yellow book, sorry I don't know the page or title. (I don't have the book right now.)

Oh My! Look who's 35!

That's right, thirty-five years ago today, Christopher Guy Hitz was born. Here are just a few pictures from that wonderful day. Happy Birthday Chris! Looking forward to at least another thirty-five more.

Answer to Prayer

For the past few weeks, I have been praying that God would help me witness at work. Every time an opportunity comes along, I never think of the correct response until later. Usually the opportunities aren't specifically related to salvation, but other topics. I always think of all the Bible verses and examples to use after the conversation is over.

Yesterday, while working with IT on a computer problem, the IT guy mentioned that he had been doing some interesting research that he was really excited about. He said that he was researching angels and that his research revealed that there were several levels of angels He also mentioned a few specific angels and told me about one "special angel" that was a man who had walked with God and he was so close to God that God made him an angel. When this angel was a man his name was Enoch. Knowing that I was a Christian, he also mentioned that Enoch was in the Bible as well as 11 other Hebrew manuscripts.

Though I know the true story from the Bible about Enoch, I told him, I thought it was interesting that God would make such a "close man" an angel. If "close to God" meant he was a Christian then making him an angel would be a demotion because the Bible says that Christians are the sons and daughters of God making us co-heirs with Christ. Since Christ is higher than the angels, this would have been a demotion.

This seemed to cause him to question some of the things he had researched and I asked him were he had gotten his information. He said the internet.

Praise the Lord for giving a quick response! Hopefully, this will lead to more discussions and an opportunity to explain that we shouldn't worship angels; only the Lord Jesus Christ is worthy of our praise.

Shopping Buddies

After work today, Dani, Lori and I went shopping. Of course, Zoey and I are best buds so we stuck pretty tight as we shopped. While we were in Charlotte Rouse, looking for shoes, Zoey and I also tried on hats and we were able to snap this quick shot of our shopping experience. Though we didn't purchase anything, we had a lot of fun just spending time together.

"Students of the Snow" (I mean COLD!)

So . . . It's been almost a month since my last post. Ugh! It's not because we have been bored out of our minds with nothing exciting to write about. Oh no, quite the opposite. Since my last post, we have been very busy with Thanksgiving, Christmas parties, Christmas parties and more Christmas parties followed by ice storms and most of Tulsa without power. Thankfully, we didn't lose power and were able to allow family and friends to stay at our house.

During this whole time, Colorado has been getting plenty of snow which gave Chris and my Dad the Ski bug. Thursday, during all the power outages, Mom, Dad, Chris and I packed up our ski gear and headed too Winter Park Ski Resort. Below are some pictures from the very VERY cold trip. As you can see from one of the pictures, the temperature was well below freezing. The Weather Channel recorded the temperature at -18F! I don't think I have ever been this cold before. BRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Hope you enjoy the pictures as much as we enjoyed the trip.

Thanksgiving Favorites. . .

Thanksgiving is my most favorite holiday. I love . . .

• The color of the trees
• The smells of all the different kinds of foods
• Of course eating all the good food
• Cramming all four or five of us girls in the kitchen and trying to cook all at the same time
• Decorating the house and setting the table to look festive

My most favorite activity is sitting around the table and telling of the many things or one special thing we are Thankful to God for. Its like our own time of setting up stones as memorials to God’s faithfulness, grace and mercy. Just like the Israelites did after crossing over the Jordon River.

Here is a few other Thanksgiving Day thoughts . . .

Tradition
Unlike Chris’s family, we were never allowed to have dessert for breakfast . . . except at Thanksgiving. Each year at Thanksgiving, we make about 10 pumpkin pies and we are allowed to have a piece for breakfast on Thanksgiving Day and every day after for as long as there is pumpkin pie (which only lasts until Friday or Saturday)

Memory
My most unusual memory about Thanksgiving occurred while we lived on the farm. We were about 15 minutes from sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner, when we realized that Red (our cow) was giving birth to her first calf. We had never had a cow give birth before so this was a new experience. Needless to say, dinner was postponed until after the calf was born. In honor of Red having her calf on Thanksgiving, we named the calf Pilgrim.

First
After eating “mold injected” turkey for Thanksgiving dinner at college for three year, my senior year we had a real Thanksgiving dinner. We called PCC’s turkey “mold injected” after taking some engineering class because the turkey looked like it had been chopped up and then pressed into a mold to look like a turkey. I was married my last year of school, so dinner was at my house. The night before, Miriam, Tamra, Amber and Julie all came over each person made a special Thanksgiving dish that their family always made. It was really neat to see the different types of food people call Thanksgiving. One fun memory from that night was that we had to make an emergency run to wal-mart for NEW shortening. As Miriam and I made pies, we could never get the pie crust dough to the right consistency and we finally determined that our shortening must be bad. Once we had new shortening, the pie crust came together beautifully.

Resolutions

It is really hard to break a habit you didn't even realize you had.

When purchasing laundry detergent, I have always wondered if you really get as many loads out of the bottle as they claim, because it just doesn't seem like it. So, last time I got a new bottle of detergent, I actually read the bottle instructions. The instructions really surprised me. They stated that level 1 on the measuring cup is for NORMAL loads and level 2 is for LARGE or heavily soiled loads. The measuring cup didn't mention anything about level 3 which is clearly marked on the cup. My own determination of what the levels meant was obviously wrong. I had assumed that level 1 was for small loads, level 2 for medium loads and level 3 for full loads. I wonder if the manufacture actually intends for us to use level 3 or if I am blindly using it and wasting 1/3 of a cup of detergent on every load.

Since realizing this, I have determined or resolved to use level 1 on the measuring cup only. I would never of thought this would be such a hard resolution; but every time I do laundry, I fill the cup and empty it without even thinking about what I am doing. It is certainly interesting the things that become habits. Do you have any unusual habits?

Costume Contest

Though it can be scary, our office Halloween costume contest is always fun. Several years ago, Shannon (a co-worker) and I challenged the office to dress up for Halloween and we would have a costume contest in which a cash prize would be given. Though participation varies each year, it is neat to see the different levels of effort and the different ideas that people come up with for a costume. Here are some pictures of Chris and me dressed up for Halloween.

Little Red Riding hood and the Woodsman who saved her and her grandmother

Popeye and Olive
The year Chris and I did Popeye and Olive, we won 1st prize.

Cow Girl