Crown Center

Every Friday after Thanksgiving we go to Crown Center with Papa and Nana Ketchum to see the Mayor's Christmas tree lighting. We look forward to it every year! We go eat lunch at A Streetcar Named Desire, admire all the pretty Christmas trees and awesome train set at Union Station, and run through Crayola Land (which Alex named the Promised Land when she was two). We couldn't hit that this time because of the crazy long lines, and we missed the tree lighting, because our Lila was sick, but it was still fun. We are going to be going back in a couple weeks with our home school group, so we should be able to do Crayola Land then. Our parents came back to our house and we watched the Polar Express on Vince's new TV. It was so much fun! I had to put a pic of Vince putting lip gloss on his little Jewel. He is such a good daddy to his girls!

Giving Thanks!

Thanksgiving was so wonderful! We always spend Thanksgiving with my parents and Vince's parents together. We don't have to drive all over and it is such a blessing that my our parents love each other! It was beautiful weather for the first part of the day, until a cold front moved in. We took advantage of it by playing outside with our new friends (Holly (Uncle Chris' lovely girlfriend) had her two nieces with her). Lots of turkey, cranberry salad, mashed potatoes and peanut butter pie filled our bellies. We were thankful for our health (which now we are all sick, Lila especially). We were thankful for what Christ has done for us. We were thankful for God blessing us with food and shelter. We prayed for our Titus. That the people taking care of him would be blessed and that we would get him home soon. We prayed for Eileen (beautiful momma of three), Caden (age 5) and Sara (age 4); all who are suffering with cancer. God is so good and we have so much to be grateful for. I have been taking care of our sick little Lila for the past few days, praying for these precious children who are sick. I was reading one of my blogs that I keep up on www.sethbarnes.com and he wrote this excerpt from Brennan Manning (one of my favorite authors)...In The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus he tells the story of a man with 13 children who is asked which of them he loves the most. He answers that the one he loves the most was the one who needed him the most at the time.

God is like that - he loves those most who need him the most. Our need forces us to be dependent on him. We struggle to feel God's love in America because we depend on him so little.

Manning observes that we need to be more secure in how God feels about us. God is genuinely fond of you. He's not waiting for you to become more moral to start loving you.

If you want a GREAT book to read, I recommend Abba's Child, by Manning. It changed my life. Happy Thanksgiving!

Leapin' Lizards (or Toads)

We went on a field trip with our home school group to the KU Natural History Museum a couple of weeks ago. I've been slacking updating this! We had a great time and about 30 kids came! We went on a scavenger hunt through the museum and then our friend at church, David McLeod, took us for a 'behind the scenes' tour. We got to see all sorts of amphibians. They have over 300,000 specimens in lab! He showed us frogs and sicilians and many other creatures he discovered on his trip to Thailand. It was very interesting and we learned that one of the frog species only consists of females! It was a lot of fun!