Our week

This week has had it's usual variety of days - some busy and some just regular. Monday was the day that Matthew and I just looked at each other and almost had to laugh - just when you think the Lord has outdone Himself, He decides to do it again on an even grander scale. We went from laughing in shock, to crying in joy, to humbly thanking him in prayer.

Tuesday was I think the craziest day of the week so far. It started off with a letter from Kendrick, the first personal one we'd gotten! It was exciting at the same time as sobering. He is not having fun right now as he said very bluntly. But he has figured out that if you just do what you are told, do it quickly, and yell really loudly, then you will usually be alright. He asked for our continued prayers as well as for someone to take a nap for him. The next activity of the day was for us to run up to Custer - we set up an 'appointment' with Tarin to take some pictures of our family that we hope to then turn into a prayer card. This is a loooong overdue project for us! Hopefully it was a successful photo shoot - 7 'subjects' can be a bit tricky to capture=) But if anyone knows that it's Tarin - she has a houseful of kids of her own! We then rushed home and Monica dashed out the door to go to her sewing class while I fed Jesse and Alana a quick sandwich and then headed to Rapid for their dentist appointement. But I think Matthew's day was the longest of all ~ most of the day on Monday he spent cutting up 2 of the 4 deer we've recently been given, and on Tuesday he had to finish the job. We all helped - cutting, washing, grinding, weighing, packaging - but by far he did the bulk of the work since he had to skin them and butcher them before we could even start on the rest of it. He was up until midnight while the rest of us (Monica, Zach, Logan and I) called it a night at around 10pm. Thank you, honey! He's considering becoming a vegetarian now....

Wednesday was a little calmer, catching up on some things here at the house, running errands in town, getting the kids to AWANA and going to prayer meeting. Matthew currently has a job doing some tree cutting and brush clearing so he's been taking the boys, Z and L, to work with him when they're done school. It has been good for all of them I think!

Thursday was another exciting 'letter-from-Kendrick' day! He was writing back in response to the first letter I'd sent him and you could almost hear the difference between that letter and the first one - he seemed so encouraged to hear from home. The bad news was he has a cough/sore throat....M and Z had piano lessons in the afternoon so we made the trip into town again and hung out at the library while they were at Jenna's. In between the trip to town and running Logan over to work with Matthew, Monica and I cooked up over 12 pounds of hamburg (or deerburg) into several, several batches of meatballs. As of about 4:30 yesterday they were all made, cooked, packaged, and into the freezer for future use=) PTL!!

Today is an at-home day for me. Logan and Zach are caught up on school and planning to go to work with Matthew after lunch, Monica is in town for her final sewing class in hopes of finishing her project - pyjama pants=) The littlest 2 will go down for a nap after lunch and then this evening we will all head into church. Cornerstone is putting on a Valentine's Day banquet. Matthew and I will attend that while the kids are next door either helping babysit or being babysat....depending where they fall on the responsibility ladder! Should be fun!

Well, I know this is a lot of rambling and writing but I wanted to write as I haven't all week - there are things going on, just no pictures to show for it....yet=)