Feeling the Pressure

Okay, okay...it's been a l-o-n-g time since I've blogged, but I do check everyone else's blogs almost daily, so all of you make sure to keep up the good work!

Here are a few random pictures and comments:

Abby and Reyna are shedding big-time, so we do brushing sessions and still have lots of fur/hair to vaccuum from the floor. I guess it's just that time...

(I was not brushing Abby in this picture. I don't do that in the house! It was just a neat picture of my pal.)

Abby had a "Kong" dog toy that Drew and Carrie gave her about a year ago. (Kongs are really, really hard rubbery toys that are supposed to be indestructible.) Here's a picture of Abby destroying her favorite one. It was a barbell, and now it's a ball!

We went to a Gimple family wedding (cousin Tony's son, Logan), and here's a picture of Aunt Ellouise with her sister and Grandma Gimple -- three lovely ladies.

Dick and I went to Kansas City this past Friday and greeted Carrie as she flew in from Erie in preparation for a week of working at CUMCITO, a camp in the Ozarks for KC inner city children. Carrie had worked at this camp while she was in college and really loved pouring her heart into these very needy children. She's working all this week alongside a dear friend, serving at the teen girls camp. We spent all day Friday with Carrie as well as Saturday (Sonic, Wall-E at the movies, a little shopping at Cabella's for Dick, some KC BBQ, and Sonic again!), taking her to the camp mid-afternoon on Saturday. Dick and I stayed in KC overnight Sat. night as well, just for a little time away since Dick's been putting in a lot of hours at work. It was a great get-away!

This morning, Dick and I went to a pretty big church in the Kansas City area just to visit -- no real connection there; our pastor had mentioned he'd visited there once some time ago. Well, this morning was not their "typical" Sunday morning. We were blessed to be part of their worship celebration in sort of commissioning a "daughter" church to a different community there in KC. The church plant has been more than two years in developing (with lots of prayer and thought and preparation even prior to that), with about 25 people committing to intentionally separate from the church and start a new church to reach this new area. It was really exciting to see their desire to choose to leave the "ease" of being a part of this big, well-functioning church and stretch out of their comfort zones to begin a new church. We really appreciated the morning of worship.