Minich Week

I haven't been in the mood to blog. Maybe it's the endless clouds and rain we've had for a week off and on. I think it's been cloudy and/or raining since last Thursday. The week has been incredibly busy, believe it or not.

• Graduation on Saturday at OCA. This was my favorite class!
• Three parties on Saturday, so I was gone all day until about 7pm and I still didn't get to one boy's party that I really wanted to go to
• Sunday. Sang in church so had to be there early; nursery duty, lamb for dinner, nap and another graduation party until 9 or so.
• Memorial Day. Transplanted the hosta that were under the willow tree. Made homemade ice cream. Vacuumed the pool.
• Rain, rain, rain. Andrew took the day off to get things moved in to his new house. We bought a bed that will be delivered today. Spent the afternoon packing him up and cleaning up what was his room. Organized stuff. Baked cookies. Tacos for dinner. Had to be at church at 7:30 for music practice. I was already tired from standing all day. The practice wasn't that great. It is for a "concert" we're having in our church parking lot. I thought maybe we'd get some upbeat, fun music for singing outside, but it ended up being hymns sung in the same tempo with guitar...that's the upbeat part, I guess. Sounds like old ladies in a southern Baptist church.... Well, not quite. I was disappointed anyway.
• More rain. Grocery shopping. Cleaned the house, vacuumed the car. Baked more cookies. Andrew came home for dinner, but I missed him since I was at church. *sad* BTW, the cookies are for the concert thingy. I'm NOT sitting here scarfing down all these cookies...I could though!
  

Linnea got home from Peru on Saturday! If you've seen the Flickr badge, she's uploaded all her pictures on to my Flickr. Click the slide show for a brilliant video of the trip! I don't think they are all in order yet. It's kinda hard with Flickr. But you'll get the idea.

William got the job with the ObamaFellows campaign. He has to decide by this afternoon where he's going to work...either Oregon, Washington, North Carolina or Iowa. That's what he's narrowed his list down to. It's from mid-June to the end of July, registering voters, doing community service stuff. You can probably go to the website and find out what all they're doing. He's pretty happy about it. And I'm glad he's getting into politics like this. He is very interested in it all! "The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps." We'll see where God takes him!

AND my momma got home safely from all her travels. We picked her up over a month ago and she's been visiting my sisters ever since. I talked to her this morning. She got through the Atlanta airport with some help and only had 10 minutes to wait before boarding. The flights went smoothly and sister #5 picked her up at the airport in Moline! Now she's in her quiet house. All her plants are blooming profusely she said.

A week without "work"

Of course I don't mean I'm just lying about, but this is the first week out of school so to speak. Bellevue got out last week and OCA has half-day exams most of this week. So really, I'm out of school for the summer. I do love substituting, though. I love the teachers I work with at OCA, I love the action at school. I love kids. AND I love leaving it there!!!

I've finally planted my flower pots on the deck. Well, got started anyway. I'm so totally out of fresh ideas that I went to the store and couldn't even see what I wanted. I ended up with petunias, dusty miller and ageratum. Guess I'm in the red, white and blue mood. I've kept my hanging geraniums alive through the winter, so I will probably cut them back, repot them and hang them up again. I couldn't resist buying lantana. This variety is yellow when it first buds and then the flowers turn hot pink. I've put it in a pot out on the pool deck. In Italy it flowed over fences around the pool park we used to go to. So I have sweet memories of it. Also, I think Maureen grew it on her balcony across from us. I'm NOT bringing it in in the winter, though. There are ENOUGH plants coming in! However, I think the rosemary has had enough. One pot has a branch or two still alive, the other looks a little better. They are both outside now getting sun from early morning to late at night. We'll see how they fare this summer. I'm sure they must be root bound. I've had them in various size pots since I bought them the summer of 2000!!! Not bad, huh?
We had our willow tree cut down while we were out of town for Will's graduation. It was very large, very old, and much of it very dead.( BTW, the guy who cut it is named "Vinny Palermo". How do you like THAT for an Italian name??) Now we have a huge stump and an empty place in the back yard. Our yard slopes quite a bit, so we're trying to figure out how to landscape it to improve the bare look and fit in a fire pit area. It's very hard to come up with good ideas. Den and I are not idea people! I wouldn't mind the pond idea either.
My other project I'm working on is a letter to the pastors of our school students. I've never worked with mail merge, so I'm trying to work that out! I just gave up and started writing this instead.

Change, just for fun

I was looking over the templates and thought I'd just do something new for spring. I'm not sure if it's "me", or if I'll like this new look, but it's fresh and fun. I could go with something pink..... I like the way it frames my photos. I couldn't figure out what other people's had a frame around them and mine didn't. All I can figure out is that it's the template.

My Happy Wanderer

Linnea is off to Peru! Amazing that young people can just decide to take off and go. She went with a friend from SC, and they are going to do the Machu Picchu hike. Click on the word and it should take you to the tour that I'm guessing she's on. Here's what she wrote about the rest of the trip:

Tomorrow we go to Cuzco and then hike the Inca Trail from Saturday till Tuesday, getting to Machu Picchu at dawn (apparently that´s the big deal) on the last day. Very exciting, I got all my hiking gear my last few days in Columbia so I´m all ready . . . hopefully. Anyway, after that we go to Arequipa (so you can follow this on your map), where there are canyons and volcanoes--it´s also close to Lake Titicaca--on Wednesday and then come back to Lima Friday night to fly out the next morning.

This is what happens when they watch Carmen Sandiego while they're growing up! They learn about all these places and then have an insatiable appetite to see them. I'm glad she can do this. Poor Andrew is feeling like he's going to be George Bailey, always wanting to "get out of this crummy old town and see the world". He's just got to find someone to do it with!

Blogger sisters

Here are the three of us, now all bloggers. (We have three more who haven't joined us yet!) My sister on the right joined us yesterday; she's "What's for dinner?" What fun it will be to read her thoughts, see her photos and stay in touch with what's going on with her family. She's a wonderful woman! Has the sweetest husband and children, and I'm glad I'm going to be able to hear what she has to say. She lives in Delaware and her husband is a PCA church planter. Her children go to a classical school where Em works some. She is great with women's ministry. Other tidbits about this sister....I was her teacher for 5th and 6th grade during the first year and a half of which I still lived at home!!! She couldn't get away with much! She also went to CIU where I went and met her husband there just like I did. After graduation she taught at Ben Lippen while her husband went to seminary.

So I'm introducing my sister. Enjoy reading her blogs....she's enjoying reading yours. *smile*

"Put no confidence in princes..."

We are very much into politics in this house. It can be very, what shall I say, volatile? emotional? passionate? Anyway, I think in recent times, our country has become more and more dependant on the State. We think our problems can be solved by the State, that our comfort depends on the State, that any difficulty in our lives is the fault of the State. A pretty sad state of affairs! (pun intended!)

One of the advantages of growing up in a Christian home and going to church all the time is that the hymns I grew up with are all in my head. Sometimes the words come to me out of the blue. However, the title of this blog came from the hymn we sang just last Sunday. I love it when the words come back to me all through the week. This line comes from the third line of the first verse. The second verse continues the theme.

Put no confidence in princes, nor for help on man depend;
he shall die, to dust returning and his purposes shall end.

Happy is the man who chooses Israel's God to be his aid,
He is blessed, whose hope of blessing on the Lord his God is stayed.
Heaven and earth, the Lord created, seas and all that they contain,
he delivers from oppression, righteousness He will maintain.

Psalm 121:1 "My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth."

Happy Mother's Day!

Here's the card I woke up to this morning! How did they know??? The inside says, "Well, at least that's the way WE remember it!

Score!

Andrew had his 20th birthday on May 8th. We were all home (except Linnea) which, for Andrew's birthday, is amazing. While Andrew was growing up, the ship usually was underway or Den was TAD. When he was out of the Navy, he was on a business trip. Will missed about 3 while he was in college, so it was great to have us all there.
Also, we found a birthday present. Now that he's a working man and buying tools for his work as well as to work on his car, we figured he'd like a place to put them. He was pretty happy. Good choice, whew!

Graduation 2008

Here we are, another year, another graduation. Amazing to me how fast the time goes. Can he possibly be that old? Has he finished college already? Didn't we just do this for high school? We had a great time celebrating Will's achievement. Friday evening was a banquet for the seniors. We had assigned seats. The family we sat with was one Will had spent spring break with in St. Augustine a few years back. It was interesting to learn a little about them and hear some of what went on that spring break! Some of Will's friends were at the table, too. A faculty member gave a charge to the seniors at the end. Two things he reminded them of that I thought were great: God is sovereign and His love is steadfast. Great things to remember when faced with uncertainty after college graduation.

Graduation at Covenant has a Scottish flavor. They don't march in to "Pomp and Circumstance", they march in to bagpipes and drums. (Sorry I know those aren't parallel ideas, but you understand.) I don't know what the slow piece was that they marched in to, but they practically RUN out to "Scotland the Brave" after it's all over! I think it was cool that he could celebrate his Scottish "heritage" at his college graduation. (Notice Justin Richards in the background.)

After graduation we met up with our extended family and went to a Mexican Restaurant for lunch. We were going to go to Olive Garden, but everyone at Covenant must've decided the same thing. The wait for lunch was an hour and a half! We had to scout out several other restaurants in the area before finding a non-chain restaurant that had NO WAIT!

Den was getting a cold by the time the trip was ending so he decided to drive all the way back to Omaha on Sunday. We left Chattanooga at 7am and arrived home by 9:15pm. That includes time change and going via Iowa City instead of Kansas City. We figured it added about 70 miles.
Back to work tomorrow...only Will's going to do the teaching this time. :)

Home at last

I'm just writing a quick note to say we arrived home on Sunday evening. We drove straight through from Chattanooga via Iowa City to drop off a former Cono student who also goes to Covenant. It only added about an hour to the trip. What a gorgeous day to drive, too! Fantastic scenery, lovely mountains, fields, sky. Nice to get home to Andrew again. I'll write more later; I'm off to get groceries!

Got Georgia on my mind

Here we are enjoying lots of warm sunshine and extended family time. After days in the car, we finally arrived here on Tuesday about 4:30. Den and I got to visit with his mom for awhile before driving a few miles into the country to his sister's. We're staying out here in the middle of the southern forest. Pine trees all around. Stars are bright, birds are loud and things other than that are quiet. It's great. Very relaxing and peaceful.

We had a lovely Sunday at Sycamore with Mom and our friends there. The pastor was beginning a series on the history of reformation at Sycamore. Max Belz and Bill Calhoun figured significantly in this week's lesson. I was even mentioned as one of their first teachers. Nice Sunday to be there. It's always nice to catch up with friends there. Several of their church young people are at Covenant, too. Too bad Harvest doesn't push that school like it should!

Monday we drove to Liberty, Kentucky to Celeste's. We had several showers, but overall a lovely drive. Arrived there about 5 ready for a good dinner! We don't feel too hungry while we drive so Rachael's blood sugar gets a little low by the end of the trip.....need I say more. However, after a most wonderful lasagna dinner and lots of laughter, thanks to Denny, I was feeling lots better. We had a super evening talking and laughing. Mom can't handle Denny after awhile, so she went to bed. Well, she was probably exhausted after our nine hour drive, too! The Peterson family appreciates Den's humor, though. Tuesday morning I practically had to drag him out of there. As long as people laugh, he keeps the stories coming!!!

What a beautiful drive on Tuesday through the Smoky Mountains! Through Kentucky, Tennessee and down into central Georgia. We're just outside Vidalia.

Pictures coming once I get home and can upload them! We go up to Covenant tomorrow for the big celebration. Will just called to say he got an "A" on his SIP! Yippeee!