Just a Quick Update

Summer is definitely going by quickly - as it always seems to do.  I keep thinking I'm going to get in here and do more posting, but...  well, there's always a 'but' isn't there?  :)

A week ago this time, I was at the first night of Impact! with Anna and all the Jr. High teens.  More about that in just a minute.  On the Wed. and Thurs. before that, I was at Advance at Libscomb with Mackenzie for her registration and orientation.  We were able to meet her roommate, Carolanne, and her mom, Teri, on Wed.  They are both very sweet. :)  We saw their dorm room, took some measurements for curtains and things, and had a yummy 'get to know you' dinner out at the Cheesecake Factory.  (This will be a nice perk of visiting Mackenzie at Lipscomb because I LOVE the Cheescake Factory and now I'll have a good excuse to go there! yay!)   So Mackenzie is now registered for her fall classes and has her official Libscomb Student ID and car decal.  It's feeling more and more real all the time...

 Mackenzie and Carolanne in their very empty dormroom...  they're looking forward to decorating and making it 'Home Sweet Home' for the next year! :)

It's for real!  (and I'm not sure whether to attach a smily or a sad face to this one!)

So as Mackenzie left Nashville and headed for home at noon last Friday, Anna and all the teens were arriving on the vans for Impact!  I did my best to make a hasty transition from 'mother of college student' to 'chaperone of middle-schoolers' ...   this was not as easy as I thought it was going to be - ha.  But by Friday night we were in full IMPACT swing and it was a fantastic weekend!  The theme was "Hooked" and they did a lot with the story of Peter Pan and Captain Hook and all the lessons revolved around making sure that we're not letting something "hook" us in life so that we miss out on the journey that God has planned for us.  Lost of good stuff to think about and take to heart.   I'm so thankful for people who are so willing to use their talents and creativity to put together these kinds of times.  :) 

I really didn't get too many pictures, but here's a cute one of Anna, Emma and Belle ---

So that's all I've got for now.  It's almost 9:30 and we're headed out for vacation with Jack's family early tomorrow morning.   Time to go finish packing...  :)



Milestones

Well it's been a busy, busy couple of weeks around here...

Last Thursday, May 19th, Mackenzie graduated from Huntsville High and we were blessed to have lots of family and friends gathered to cheer her on.

Here are a few pictures from the night:

And here's a quick video of the big moment:   yay!! :)

Then this past Wednesday, May 25th, Anna finally escaped the hallowed halls of Hampton Cove Middle School!   haha....

And one more video from Anna's graduation:

And then yesterday was Mackenzie's 18th Birthday.  Wow.   No pictures from that, but she celebrated by staying with some friends at the Embassy Suites last night and having a yummy dinner at Sam & Gregs...  The moment that I think it really hit me that she's an 'adult' now (well, everywhere except in Alabama where apparently you now have to be 19 to be an adult - go figure)  was when she came downstairs after logging into her bank account and told me that they made her log out of the "child" account that we had set up for her and made her sign in to the 'regular' banking website....  They didn't waste any time on THAT 'transition.'  :)

I'm not so sure that I'm quite as eager to move on as the bankers are...  ha

Speaking of, I read this a couple of days ago in "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp (thank you Lisa, for letting me borrow this book!) and I think it fits my feelings about all this:

My baby is five.  She falls asleep in my arms after the close of dinner prayers, us still seated at table, and I hold her long after [her dad] has put the rest of the tribe to bed, her curls damp and etching into my skin and I don't move.  Her face is turned toward mine, broad and open, eyelashes whisper of gold.  I trace her lips, gentle curve of all things beautiful.  The way her eyes danced today, soul light, the arch of her eyebrows and that lyrical laugh, heaven's echo that entirely undoes me.  Her breath is warm on my face, all that is alive and warm and breathing inside of her now, falling upon me, and I can't capture it, hold it, this, her life now, me in this moment.  She is leaving me, she's growing up and moving away from me, and she stirs and I sweep back the crop of the golden ringlets.  Stay, Little One, stay.  Love's a deep wound and what is a mother without a child and why can't I hold on to now forever and her here and me here and why does time snatch away a heart I don't think mine can beat without?  Why do we all have to grow old?  Why do we have to keep saying good-bye?

Again, I refuse to walk the bridge into tomorrow's unknowns, and I shame the Bridge Builder with my worries, my demand to just let me stay here, or go back, but no, not to go on, and again He comes to carry me flailing and anxious...

There are a lot of mixed emotions with this time...  most of them now are ones of excitement and anticipation of new things to come.  College, high school...  endings, new beginnings...  and it's fun and full of blessings and I am thankful.  But I'm a little fearful of a few months from now - trying to prepare myself for it and too aware that I have no idea how to do that.  But I've had quite a few moms, who have walked this road ahead of me, pat me on the shoulder and tell me that it will all be OK...  so I'm trusting their wisdom, and trusting God's strong hands to catch me when I start to fall. 

A Crown of Thorns

I spent a lot of time out in the yard on Saturday.  The first half of the day was mostly getting 'chores' done...  the second half was more fun, buying and planting some flowers in pots, finally.  My back porch is much more colorful and festive now.  :)

Early in the morning, I mowed the front yard, then went around to the back to get started there.  Then I had to pause, because I really needed to cut down and dig up this dead bouganvillea that I had planted last year.  It was really beautiful last summer, but since it died, it's just been a mass of long viney thorns sticking out all over the place.  Last time I mowed, I just kept having to duck by it to keep from getting scratched by it - it hurt!  So I went and got my heavy leather gloves and big clippers and shovel and got to work.   I began cutting and putting the vines carefully in the trash so I didn't poke holes in the bag - not easy to avoid with these prickly thorns.  As I was doing this, I was also listening to Chris Tomlin and these words began drifting through my headphones as I stared into my trash at this:

"And I hear the voice of many angels sing, worthy is the lamb

And I hear the cry of every longing heart, worthy is the lamb..."

As I looked at the thorns on that vine and reached in to touch the tip of one, reminding me how sharp they are, I thought of Jesus the lamb, Jesus the sacrifice, and all the pain that He endured for me as a crown of thorns was woven and shoved into his scalp...   "worthy is the lamb..."

Then came these words in the next song:

"Worthy, uncreated one,

From heaven to earth come down

You laid aside your royalty

To wear the sinner's crown...

(the crown that should be on MY head!)

And when we see your matchless face,

In speechless awe we'll stand

And there we'll bow with grateful hearts

Unto the Great I AM."

I am so UN-worthy of the sacrifice that Jesus made on that day for me...  of the pain He willingly endured so that grace and salvation could be extended to me...  of the price He paid so that I didn't have to.  I still really can't grasp it, but as I stared into that tangle of thorns, I was reminded and overwhelmed with gratitude.

24 days and counting...

"Senior Sunday" at church was a couple of weeks ago....

Graduation announcements went out last week...

And it won't be long before Randy Lowry's famous words,

"And please.... come to Lipscomb"

will be ringing in our ears.  :-)   

I still can't believe that it's come so fast...

Alabama All-State Band

This past weekend, our family traveled down to Mobile to take Mackenzie to the Alabama All-State Band Festival.  A while back she had tried out for the band and placed first in our district on piccolo.  This gave her the opportunity to go down to Mobile and compete with piccolo players from all 8 districts in Alabama for 3 spots open to piccolo players in the All-State bands.  There are 3 bands -- The Red Band is the top band, White is second, and Blue is third.  Very patriotic. :-)    They take one piccolo for each band - SO, if you don't make one of the top 3 spots, then you try out on flute and play flute in one of the bands.  Well, Mackenzie is a die-hard piccolo lover...  she enjoys playing her flute, but piccolo is her passion.  So needless to say, she was very anxious to earn one of the piccolo spots in the bands.  We arrived in Mobile a little after lunch time last Thursday.  Mackenzie's try-out was later that afternoon.  She was the last piccolo of the 8 to try out.  After she was done and the judges had deliberated for a few minutes, they began calling the girls in to tell them where they had placed.  (This is where you have to insert some tense and dramatic music to set the scene! ha)  The first girl to come out had made the first spot - Red Band piccolo.  Now we realized they were being called in order...   and before we had time to register all of that, they came out and called Mackenzie's name!  yay!  So she made White Band piccolo - and she was SO happy....  :)   So that was a pretty cool moment.  She then spent all of Thursday night and most of the day on Friday in rehersals.  They had a quick warm-up and dress rehersal Saturday morning...  and then Saturday afternoon performed the most amazing concert for a group of young musicians who didn't know each other and had only been together learning their music for a day and a half.  It was hard to believe how good they sounded. :)  And yes, if you couldn't tell already, I'm one very proud momma...   ;-)

This is Mackenze, Maggie and Clay after the concert.  Clay and Maggie both play clarinet.  Maggie was 8th chair (out of 32!) in the Blue Band.  And Clay is the budding prodigy of the group - he's just a freshman and made 4th chair in the Red Band!  And I should give some credit to Bob Jones as well -- they were giving out solo awards at the beginning of the concert and I think more than half the kids they called up were from Bob Jones...  let's just say that North Alabama was well represented! :)

And while Mackenzie was off working, Jack, Anna and I got to play a little bit.  There wasn't enough time to make it to the beach, so we spent a few hours touring Bellingrath Gardens - it was beautiful!   Here's a few pictures below:

Upstairs, Downstairs

This is the state that I left my upstairs in to escape to the downstairs for just a little while and take a deep breath!   There's a BIG neighborhood garage sale going on this weekend and we're trying to clean out the attics around here...  mostly right now, we're just moving piles of stuff from one place to another and I'm trying hard not to get too overwhelmed! ha.   Oh where's my sister when I need her?!?  :)

Ahhh.... Downstairs.  :)  I had to clean up first down here before starting anything up there just to make sure I had a place to retreat to!

If you look back a few posts, you'll see this room when I was getting started on it.  It's the 'picture' room.  I'm not sure you can really call anything going on in here 'progress' except that I did manage to find enough pictures of Mackenzie over the years to send in for her Senior Band Awards Banquet... at least that's one mission accomplished - yay!!

ALL of those bags have stuffed animals in them.  I can't even begin to explain how we could have possibly accumulated all of those over the years.  And hey, does anyone need a model of the solar system for a school project?  I've got one of those too!

 And this is how I found Mandy when I came downstairs...  there is something terribly wrong with her work ethic!  sigh....

It's amazing all the STUFF you come across when you start cleaning out the attic.  Things that you forgot you had, things you thought you had surely thrown away long ago, things you SHOULD have thrown away long ago, things you didn't know you ever even owned...  wow.  Lot's of memories, too.   But I will glad when it's all done!!  Wish me luck - or better yet, pray for my sanity! :)

April Fools Update

OK...  so after I posted my little April Fools story this afternoon, I actually got pranked pretty good by my darling daughter tonight.  So I had a quick dinner out with Jack and Kenzie while Anna was at gymnastics...  we ate at Wings and when I got home from that, I wanted to wash my chicken-y fingers.  So I went straight to the kitchen sink when I walked in the door and turned on the water - and proceeded to get sprayed head-to-toe with water!  Anna had apparently taken advantage of the time I was in the shower earlier to wrap the kitchen sink sprayer with tape and point it out so that as soon as you turned on the water you'd get sprayed...  very devious and very clever!  And I was the total sucker in this joke -- it even took me a while to realize that it was a joke and that there wasn't actually something wrong with the faucet.  haha. 

So, of course the next step was to figure out how to get her back. :)   The 3 of us put our heads together and the final result was taking the shower head off in her bathroom and filling it up with Dawn dishwashing detergent.  She always takes a shower before bed, so we thought we'd surprise her with a bubble-shower. :)  It worked pretty good....  but not quite enough bubbles to have as much of a 'revenge' effect as I wanted...  oh well, at least maybe the shower will get clean now.  ;-)