Tuesday...What does one do on Tuesday...

It's only noon and I'm wiped out!

Today Hayden and I had fun clearing out the kitchen!

I took all the "breakables" and Hayden took all the plastic and we brought them upstairs. We must have made about 50 trips. Okay, maybe 30, but still!!

Drill Sgt. Hayden made it a particularly good work out by:
1.) Rushing me to hurry so he could make another trip!
2.) Making me carry his 30 lb butt down stairs every time while counting 1...2..3..for each step.

My arms and legs are like rubber.

And Corbin provided moral support by snoozing in the swing.

I'm glad Hayden and I could take a break from our "battle" to have a bit of fun. What "battle" you ask? He he he.

So when we start spending the day without a kitchen, I will have no microwave (ours is the kind that hangs from the cabinet). So chicken nuggets will NOT be an option. So I'm trying to get him to eat a turkey sandwich and it is not going well. He's on a hungry strike! Sustaining on only milk, water, a few crumbs of bread from his sandwich, and his morning banana!! Argh, I think I may give in. I gave him a sandwich for lunch yesterday - refused! I gave him a sandwich again for dinner thinking surely he'd be hungry enough to eat it - refused! He got his normal breakfast this morning which he ate. I offered another sandwich for lunch -refused!

Bah! I cannot keep this up. I'm thinking this little bugger is not going to eat turkey sandwiches. Dang it. And PB&J is not an option with his allergy. So that leaves...fruit? crackers? Hmm...I could probably make mac&cheese on my electric burner. What a food snob. I cannot believe that I will be making mac&cheese in my bathroom on an electric portable burner. Guess I better dig out my strainer.

Anyway. I'm still not done with the kitchen. I still have all the plasticware/baking dishes left. Hayden was super helpful, but let's be realistic, he can only carry so much. He did get to practice his balancing skills, sorting skills, walking up stairs without crawling (taking a step at a time), and even practiced one of his new favorite words: "Up" - as in pick me up and carry me downstairs wench and be snappy about it!

I also need to do some dishes - I don't think I'm allowed to leave dirty dishes in the sink and dishwasher. Yeah, uh, just work around those, thanks! Put them back in the new sink when you finish, since that's what it will look like soon anyway. Hehe.

I've started making some priorities and changes in my schedule lately. I know...that was an awkward transition....speaking of priorities (which I wasn't speaking of)...hehe... I recently took on an additional responsibility at church - leading up the Nursery-PreK Children's Ministry Team. It is as big a job as I thought it was, maybe even a bit bigger. But I really enjoy it. I love working with all the sweet teachers because they are AWESOME! But it has it's challenges. Obviously, I won't be talking about my work in CM on my blog, but just know it's something else going on in this crazy life!

So, to compensate for that extra responsibility, I've had to cut some other stuff. My family comes first and I am barely handling that (or am I handling it) as it was. In the fall I stepped down as co-leader of Evangelism/Assimilation - I just didn't have the time this ministry deserved. I am sitting this semester of Conversational English out. Two of my three students had to stop coming, and the program seems to have more volunteers than students this year, which is unusual. Mostly, I think the economy is really affecting the program. We used to have a lot of Korean women whose husbands came to the US to work for tech companies like Samsung. Now, those companies are scaling back.

I've also stepped down from baking bread for Bridgepoint. Bridgepoint is our church's way of thanking new visitors for checking out our church. We want them to know they were noticed and we give them a loaf of dessert bread as a thanks! It's a ministry I LOVE, but with the two little ones and these extra responsibilities, I needed to take a break for awhile. I hope I can return when I get things more under control. I might still bake every now and then, but just not make the commitment to bake. Between HCBC NW (our old church) and CrossRoads (our new church), I've been baking now for 3 years! I totally would recommend this ministry to anyone looking to serve with love! Just put a little love and prayer into your batter, and you have a loaf of love!!

Hopefully, with those to responsibilities set down for now, I can feel less overwhelmed and have more love and energy to serve in this new role! I definitely would love your prayers for a calm, quiet mind, lots of patience, grace and mercy, as well as to always look to God to fill our needs. Just in the past week, I've needed all of these!! It's always challenging to see the "inner workings" of a church and not just have the "sit back and enjoy" experience. I know God is going to grow me tremendously by experiencing this. I definitely have grown over the past year after joining the Core and beginning CrossRoads. I went from a "sit back and enjoy" person to a "get to work and make it happen" person. And whoa, was that a big transition! But so worth it.

Just last Sunday I saw God "work" in Children's Ministry. I was sitting in church thinking about a need we had and how in the world we were going to fill it, and when church was over I walked back to CM (childrens ministry) and God had provided!! It was definitely humbling. Here "I" was trying to make it happen and God stepped in and said...Hey, just let me work woman! As a rule I'm choosing never to discuss details about CM on this blog or to anyone else, so forgive me if I'm vague, but trust me it was a true need met!

Okay, so now your eyes are bleeding from reading such a long post...maybe you should go take a nap!