Day: November 17, 2006

Yesterday night we went to the pool for another day of swim team practice. I was doing all right (though a little bit slow) nearly the whole time but then we came to the diving practice. You all know that I’m an exceptional diver and that I am very talented and all that. I guess this time my talents failed me. My stomach and head hurt so hard after I was done I nearly fainted 🙂 It was fun though! My coach was nice, she was teaching me how to do a perfect dive (which you all know I can do. It just wasn’t my day 😉 ) And the children were all kind. I’m actually having lots of fun!

I forgot to post the other day when I went baby sitting about an incident that I had had with a little girl there. Boy is she a handful. The whole time her arm hurt and we had to take her upstairs to her mother at least 80 times. Finally, the girl who was helping me, Rachelle, said no to her going upstairs. Sidney, the little girl, went into a tantrum. Rachelle got her calmed down after a while but pretty soon Sidney went into tantrums again. Rachelle was busy with the other kids so I went down to talk to Sidney. “Where does it hurt?” I said, and she jabbed her finger at her arm.

“Right HERE and my tummy hurts tooooooo!!!”

“Do you want to color?”, I asked “NO!!”, Sidney shouted.

After a little bit of coaxing I got her to color with me and then I went off to help Rachelle while Sidney colored. After maybe three or four minutes Sidney started bawling again. It seems another little girl had accidentally hit her lightly in the stomach.

“WAAAAH!!! I WANNA GO WITH MOOOOOMMMY!!!!”

I asked Sidney if she wanted to color again, “NO!” she replied angrily.

I got out the Winnie the Pooh coloring book and started to color Kanga’s scarf while humming a little tune. The other children soon joined me and we all had a terrific time coloring Kanga and Roo ice skating.

“Oh I’m having LOTS of fun, are you guys having lots of fun?” I asked the other kids.

“YES!!” they all said.

Sidney stopped snuffling. “Can I color too?” she asked.

“No, I thought you didn’t want to color!” I replied.

“But I really, really want to!” Sidney pouted.

“Sidney, I thought you said you didn’t want to color!”

“But I really, really, REALLY want to!”

I let her color and for the rest of the night, Sidney didn’t give us any trouble.

Homeschool day 60 of 180 (One third of the way done. WOO-HOO!)
Government school day 49 of 170

We are going to have the family Thanksgiving at our house this year. There will be lots of aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends at the house for dinner–about 30 in all. We were not together for Thanksgiving last year. I was in Texas while Lorena was here trying to get the house sold. I was pretty sad to be away from my family, but actually had a very, very nice time at a community Thanksgiving there. Many of the people with whom I met for Wednesday night bible study and Sunday morning fellowship meeting did not originally come from Texas. One of them, Ray Nerpel, rented the hall in the housing community where he lived and invited everyone who did not have family to go there for a Thanksgiving dinner potluck. At that dinner, I started getting just a small picture of what a tight-knit community my family was going to enter when they got to Texas a couple of weeks later.

There were the Larsons from Minnesota and Michigan, the Nerpels from one of the Dakotas, the Krigbaums from Canada and Oregon, the Parrishes from California, etc. etc. They were rich and poor, blue and white collar, and of every type of personality you can imagine. All of them welcomed me to the party with open arms. All we did was sit around, talk, eat, and watch the kids play. It was not about what we were doing, but the fellowship we enjoyed. It was an exceptional group of people who had no other connection than their love of Christ. What I did not know is that this group did not just get together for church meetings and special occasions. They got together whenever they got the chance and everyone was included. I was in Texas for only six months this time and the family was there for only three, but we feel a great debt of gratitude to those people for the example they gave to us in their hospitality and kindness in including them in their “family”.