Right now, I'm not in Brazil. We are in Dallas, Texas at the beautiful home of some of our friends. (Here's the description according to Anderson's conversation last night with the son who lives here....... "Your house is a mansion - but it's not scary - and kids live here." To which the boy replied, "Thanks.") Anyway, right now Giovanni is hopefully sleeping off his jet-lag grouchiness, Kevin and the other kids are outside playing basketball, and I'm alone (weird) in a house that I don't have to clean (weird).
Good time to update my blog!
So, since I last posted, here's a little of what has happened....
In September, we celebrated Giovanni's 3rd birthday. It was low-key. He's not fond of big crowds so we had a little party at home which he loved, and then a cookout with some friends the next day.
After that, we had some visitors from the states, Larry and Margaret Ann Bennett, who have a "power prayer" ministry that they trained us in. We got to experience some literally life changing moments with several of our friends and church members as the Bennett's ministered to them. If you want to know more details, just ask me and I'll fill you in. But it was wonderful to have them here. Like having some adopted grandparents staying with us for a few weeks.
There was an Arts and Crafts sale at the kids' school at the beginning of October. Remember when I asked for suggestions for Bronwyn to do to make $$ during the summer? Well, she made a bunch of owl pillows (sold ALL of those and could have sold more!) , and some art notebooks and crayon rolls. We had two tables at the sale and between the sewing and the cookies, we sold enough to almost pay for a plane ticket home for some college girls next year. So yeah!
I started running. When we got the schedule figured out for our furlough, my runner girl sister in law invited us (Kevin and me) to run with her in the St. Jude Half Marathon in the beginning of December. I was very doubtful of my ability to do that, but agreed. I found the easiest training schedule on the internet that I could find and worked up to the point that I could start the schedule. (That's how out of shape I was!) My "personal trainer" husband has been patiently training with me and now I am up to running 2-4 miles on three weekdays, and 6 miles on Sunday. If you know me, you can pick yourself up off the ground right now. I can't believe myself, really, and am actually liking (instead of dreading) my training. It has made me feel better all the way around.
(This is us after a 5K race a few weeks ago. Look at my name tag "Benavy". Cute.)
Well, that's enough info for today. I'll try my best to be a much better blog poster for the rest of this year. Maybe my break from cooking and cleaning, as well as grandparents who like to take care of kids will help me be a better blogger!
Well, Benavy,
ReplyDeleteI must tell you that I am kicking myself for not going to Dallas after all. We had tentative plans to come visit my family but put it off. I had no idea you would be there. Maybe I need to keep up with the blog a little better. Also, I love the owl pillows and think you should post the instructions on here. By-the-way, what is power prayer?
Love,
Samantha