Quotable quotes

Here is something quite memorable said by our pastor last night in prayer meeting:

"If sin looked like broccoli, I would never be tempted"

For my sake the illustration would have been a little better if he'd said peas=)

Some videos....I hope! #1

I've never posted vidoes before but hopefully this will work - I'll wait to hear from people if they are unable to watch them.
One is from this morning - I was doing school work with Logan while answering Alana' questions about marriage (!) and then realized I didn't know what Jesse was up to. He was not happy to be caught.

Video #2

This video is from a few months ago but it is often a daily occurrence. Alana is very theatrical, dramatic, musical, etc. Here she is singing one of her homemade songs while standing in side Monica's dirty laundry bag!

Happy Anniversary to us!

Yes, it is our anniversary. Several years ago we made a promise 'before God and the assembly' to love, honor, and cherish each other until death do us part. We have traveled down that road and kept that promise for eight years now. Lord willing, we will have the opportunity to keep on fulfilling that promise until He returns or one of us goes to be with Him. I'm am glad about the choice of man God had for me. He is not perfect but he is exactly the right fit for me, since I'm not perfect either! Our weaknesses and strengths fit together. The waters have gotten a bit choppy at times but we've enjoyed some smooth sailing as well - of course the five others riding along in the boat with us have made the cruise that much more interesting!

I'm not going to carry on about how much I love Matthew or about how wonderful he is....he already knows because I've told him before and I'll tell him again. I just want to thank God for our marriage and ask Him to stay at the center of it so that we can continue to celebrate these anniversaries with joy.

Rapid City - growing up!

It seems like in the last couple weeks we've made more trips to Rapid City that we usually do. Rapid is the only city remotely close to us so when we have anything major to do as far as shopping we head up there. Hot Springs - 15 minutes away - has a small version of an expensive Wal-mart, a few restaurants and two small, and again expensive, grocery stores. So for anything else we head to Rapid. There is an average size mall there and most of the other usual stores you'd expect in a city but not much else. So - we are pretty excited about Rapid's newest arrival - our very own Cabela's! We went up the day before the grand opening since we are the privileged owners of a Cabela's club card=) Ooooh - Aaaah!

Anyway, here are some pictures from our visit. Also, there is a new strip mall coming to Rapid, too. So far the stores all look to be repeats of what we have or weird new ones that don't seem all that exciting, but we'll have to wait and see....oh the suspense!

They had the usual big display of animals which Jesse really enjoyed.

Monica was away at camp when we went but Zachery, Logan, and Alana were each allowed to take $10 out of their savings account and pick something to purchase.

Here is Alana with her special find - she actually played with one of these at a friends house and has been wanting one ever since!

The boys debated a while between popguns and a few other things but Logan ended up with a rubber band gun and Zach with a blow dart gun!Matthew and I split a bag of roasted almonds=)

CAMPING

Well, last weekend we finally decided to face the crowds and the elements and go camping. We tried a few weekends ago and then realized it was the same weekend the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally started and decided not to go! The population of this state sometimes doubles during that week and lets just say they are not usually the 'cream of the crop'. But I was ready! Between Zach and I we had everything out on the deck and ready to be loaded into the truck, I even had pre-cooked the potatoes for the hash browns we were planning to have for breakfast one of the mornings! We were ready! But then we didn't go.....So last weekend when the sky turned dark and the chance of rain was 70% we decided this time we were going anyway.

Setting up camp among the puddles...

Logan trying to dry out his sandals as it was sprinkling.... It poured during most of the drive up there and most things got wet - including the mattress Matthew and I had planned to sleep on=) Matthew somehow managed to keep the fire going and made supper in the rain. The rest of us huddled in the tents....fun! Thankfully there was no rain that night but by the next morning it was back and everything was wet all over again. Not to mention the first 2 nights were COLD! But, all in all, it was everything camping should be and we had a good time.

Trying to keep our 'holey' tent from leaking....

The 'little people' and I spent quite a bit of time hanging out at the campsite while the older ones got to go fishing, go on a hike, hang out with some friends that were also there, and just enjoy being outdoors.

Matthew's goal when we go camping is to fish....

Logan's goal was to catch some craw fish....Here he is sharing his catch with his admirers....Jesse was wearing a square piece of mesh cloth that was part of the tent....he loves to have something on his head or face!

Alana, Jesse, Logan and I spent a short time on the beach. It happened between Jesse's bad diaper change which was followed by a meltdown and Jesse falling in the water followed by a meltdown=) During the short interlude I did get some cute pictures!Once the sun came out the last couple of days we were there it was really beautiful. Matthew and I also took a night hike underneath a very full, very bright moon! Very romantic=)

We finished up our weekend by getting together with two other families we know who also were camping at the same location. Sunday morning we had a service together and then they shared their lunch with us. It was a really good time of fellowship. Here's 2 pictures to close with.

Alana found an M-16 to play with while we were visiting!

The Browns - a family who no longer lives in the area so it was a real treat to spend some time with them.

A visit from friends

While I actually have a few things to blog about right now I'm going to try and spread them out and make an attempt to do them in chronological order. We've just returned from a weekend of camping so today was spent catching up (for example - five, going on six, loads of laundry). Also, we had a trip to the vets, more on that later, and made an attempt to unofficially start school today.

Anyway, this post is about some really great friends who were able to stop in for a couple days on their way through the area. Tom and Debi Pfaffenberger are close friends of Matthew's from before I even came on the scene. But, because of the history shared between their family and ours, the connection was immediate for me and renewed for Matthew. He was like a kid who found his long lost puppy - he enjoyed their visit so much, as we all did.


Thank you, Tom and Debi, for your friendship, your prayers, your example, and your love for our family - each and every one of us. Know that we will continue to pray for you and yours and hope to see you again someday soon=)

25 Years...

The years have passed by since this very day in 1983 but I have a hard time thinking that it's been thaaat long - 25 years ago today my father, Eric Rozelle, passed away. This post is not for me to get a chance to mope and cry and feel sorry for myself or to get some sympathy but rather to celebrate the legacy that ~ even after the passage of a quarter of a century ~ still lives on. My dad was an amazing man who lived his 31 years for the Lord and I will always be grateful for the time he was here on earth and for his testimony. He was a regular guy who grew up as a farm kid in Maine, rarely met a stranger, liked to fish, who did 'Bert & I' impressions (if you're not from Maine you won't know what that is), rode a Yamaha motorcycle, and who took his young family to the mission field of Chile.

The few memories that I have of my dad are mostly from that year and a half we spent there before he had to come back to the US because of his failing health. The time he let me get a puppy, the time my best friend spent the night and got homesick so he carried her all the way home (I know you remember that, Kris), the times he would mutter something about 'dipsticks' if he came across a bad driver, taking me for a ride on the boat that belonged to the mission and was used for work among the islands in which we lived, buying me some new shoes the day after Chad was born and I was disappointed that he was a boy, falling asleep on the gas tank as I sat in front of him on his motorcycle.Then there are the memories that I've claimed although they are really someone else's memories that have been shared with me. For example, Kristi (same best friend - 15 years later) and I were in a church service together singing "Until Then" when she leaned over and told me that it used to be my dad's favorite song because of that line in the chorus "But until then with JOY I'll go on singing, until then with JOY I'll carry on..." My mom's name was Joy=) Or my husband who remembers my dad taking him fishing when he was just a kid. There was also the time 5 years ago when an older gentleman came up to me and asked if I was Eric Rozelle's daughter, of course I answered yes and he immediately became teary-eyed. "Your father led me to the Lord", he said and proceeded to tell me about a cold, snowy night many years before.Each stage of my life that I've come to has made me miss him in different ways. I sometimes wonder if I would be in a different place or be a bit of a different person if he'd been there all along. I missed him when I became a teenager, when I was in my first play, when I graduated from high school and left for college, when I earned my degree, when I got married and my brother stepped in to walk me down the aisle, when I had his first grandchild.... So today I would like to honor my father, my mother who stepped in and did the job of two parents after he was gone, my grandparents who always remember him so fondly and share their memories all the time, my uncle who stepped in to take his place as my dad in these recent years, and many other family members as well as some friends who made the loss of a dad easier throughout my growing up years. But most of all I'd like to honor the God who my dad served until his dying day, even when he was in the hospital and nearing the end the words that came to his lips were hymns about his Saviour.

Furry Friends

We've caught some cute things on film lately from the animal kingdom. Alana has a love-hate relationship with our cat. In these pictures Alana was doing the lovin', and the cat, well....

Zachery often makes a mad dash out the door with the camera to capture something - here's his latest ~

OK, so this one's not so cute!

Logan is very proud of his snails=)

And finally, in Hot Springs the other day I saw some deer triplets - I only had my phone camera with me so it's not such a great shot but there they are!

My weird men-folk

Zach's weird self-portraits ~ My husband's weird tan-line ~Jesse's weird spaghetti faces ~ Jesse's face after I told him the Olympics start today - 08-08-08!Man, I wish I had TV=(

I'm singing in the rain...I mean mud

I just downloaded some pictures off my camera and came across this incident from a couple weeks ago - now you can see that Logan is not the only one in my family who enjoys a good mud puddle=)
I love the irony of the pink, princess lettering on her shirt=)Jesse was flinging gobs of mud for all he was worth!And Monica the 'Pied Piper"....