Kadesh

This past week, I was blessed to attend Kadesh camp at Abilene Christian University. This is a camp I had the privelege of going to last year, and it's a great camp. The theme this year was "Grace", and it was encouraging and freeing! I was placed in a group mixed with people from Baytown, Houston, Coppell, Denton, Abilene, Maypearl, Northwest Mississippi (Memphis, TN area), Boulder, CO and Boston, MA. Our group got close. Our leaders were from Amarillo, but they had both attended Harding University. One of the leaders was a youth minister at the Southwest Church of Christ in Amarillo, and the other girl was his girlfriend. One day, I was walking down the stairs from our room, and there was Laura! I went up to her and gave her big hug. She then walked with me to the Student Center and gave me her contact information. So later that day, I got permission from my hall counselor to go visit her during free time. While I was there, Dan walked in, so it was really neat to get to see them while I was out there. So far, out of the two Kadeshes that I've been to, this one has been my favorite topic. Once your kids get to high school age, send them to Kadesh, because it's a great camp!

Camp Goddard

I just remembered that I had not told everyone about my camp counselor experience. Back near the end of June, I went with our church to be a co-counselor for nine fifth grade boys at Camp Goddard in Sulphur, Oklahoma which is located in the Arbuckle Mountains. It was a very interesting experience. The theme was "God's Hand", which explored God's Hand in the creation. I don't see where the kids got all their energy from! The food was absolutely horrible! There were probably around forty kids there. The stars at night were beautiful! It was also hot, but thankfully we had air conditioning in our cabins. But, the last night there, I had a big theological conversation with a few of my friends in the youth group that got me involved in the conversation and our Children's Minister. It was a very neat conversation. Thankfully, I got to ride back with an adult and youth intern, plus two other counselors. I found out that the bus the kids and counselors were riding back on had air conditioning problems, so the kids didn't have ac pluse they couldn't get the movie player in the bus to work, so it was a miserable ride home for them.

4th of July

Our family celebrated the whole Fourth of July weekend. First, on Thursday night, Lake Arlington had a fireworks show. We pulled up to an out-of-business gas station at Green Oaks and 303 to watch the fireworks. The show was okay, but here's a funny story to tell y'all about that happend while our family was waiting to watch the fireworks. We had forgotten to get lawn chairs to take to sit on while watching the show. So, we turned the backseat over in our van which mommy and I sat on, but daddy decided to take out one of the captains chairs in the van and just perch it on the ground, it was funny. When he did that, it made us think that we were rednecks! Next, on Friday, our family woke up and went to the Arlington Parade, which is one of the best parades around! We had a nice spot, but we were a little late. I got to see my friend from church, who is one of the Drum Majors in her high school band. We also got to see other floats that came by our area. Later that day, our friends Doug and Annette, my grandmother came over for dinner and to go see the GOOD fireworks in Fort Worth. I invited our youth minister, Wes, because his wife and kids were back in Tennessee where they are from. He came over, too. After eating and talking we left westbound to Fort Worth with two freezers of homeade ice cream which daddy had made. He had made a strawberry sherbert and a vanilla ice cream. We have gone to the same spot in years past behind the Fort Worth Credit Union, to watch the fireworks from Concerts in the Park, which is where the Fort Worth Symphony plays. The fireworks are always great, with a grand finale at the end. More friends met us there, and we just talked and ate together. Finally, on Saturday night, mommy, daddy and I went to our shopping center called the "Arlington Highlands" to see a fireworks show. The show was probably the least best of the three shows that we saw. The shopping center had a jazz band that was there playing. All in all, our fourth was good, just like all the other ones.

Virus!

Our computer has been down for the last few weeks with a big, bad virus. We had to end up calling a geek to work it all out. We are glad to be back with a computer that is up and running now.