A City Life For Me

The kids loved the house we stayed in while in Wanatah, Indiana with Crossroads Baptist Church.  There was a Jacuzzi tub big enough for all four kids to bathe at the same time!     Daddy found "Hungry, Hungry Hippos" game in the closet - the kids had fun with that - even the twins!         Nehemiah was fascinated with the washing machine all week.  Thankfully, once the door is locked, any buttons he pushed didn't do anything!           Silly twins while we were packing up   Bloomington, Indiana with the Gaschke family and Stoneridge Baptist Church   Nehemiah and Andrew, Elaine, Liberty and Kiersten, Heidi, Will, and Nolan   Pastor Andy Gaschke was the assistant pastor at Highlands Baptist Church shortly after we began attending there.  He and his wife Jenny helped in the youth group and with teen visitation on Wednesdays, so I had a good deal of interaction ...

We are in Cumberland, IA for a few days.   Our next stop is in Fremont, NE.   Ben asked me to check the distance between the two, expecting the split the drive into a couple of days.   We were surprised that we are only two hours away from Fremont!   Knowing we would need an activity to fill the days which we had expected to be driving, I googled “things to do in Fremont, NE”.   What I came up with was a list of 57 things to do (mostly summer activities), but 54 of them were outside of Fremont.   {I am thinking that Fremont is a small town!} One activity that came up in the list was the Omaha Zoo.   Um, I didn’t even know that Omaha had a zoo.   And in 2014 Trip Advisor ranked it as the #1 zoo in the world!   It has many different exhibits, several of which are the largest of their type in the world.   Most of the exhibits were inside, so we were able to do it even on a cold winter’s day.    And it was cheap, too! ...

On Friday we drove three and a half hours towards our next destination.   We stopped for the night in Moline, IL.   I had booked a decently priced hotel on hotels.com.   As I researched the area for activities to do on Saturday morning, I discovered that we were right across the street from John Deere Pavilion.   It’s a big showroom full of tractors and heavy equipment that you can climb on to your heart’s content.   Best part about it?   Completely free.   For a family of six, that’s amazing.   Elaine in one of the "big ones" Liberty loved this little mower.  Nehemiah liked the automatic "Tango" mower.  I liked that one too...if I had a yard to mow!   The kids enjoyed the showroom and scattered in four different directions.   Luckily it wasn’t that big that we couldn’t keep track of all of them.   However, we did have quite a lot of attitude come out – especially from Liberty.   Nehemiah was rather co...

Something I've wanted to do for a while is visit Niagara Falls.  I don't really have a "bucket list," but if I did, seeing Niagara Falls would be on it.  Our trip from Rome, NY to Wanatah, IN took us basically right through Buffalo, NY so we were able to make a quick {and very cold} stop to see the American side of the Falls.  Some day I would love to go back and take the boat ride in the summer...   The sun was in their eyes, and Elaine had just sneezed.  But...we were there! It wasn't quite as enormous as I had imagined, but I think it was because of the amount of ice at the bottom, and quite a bit of the Falls was shrouded in mist so I couldn't see it completely.  We walked out to the observatory bridge as far as it was open.  The kids were more interested in throwing ice chunks over the fence than in seeing the waterfall or getting their picture taken!   Nehemiah and Elaine wanted their pictures taken.   We ha...

I have written before about the "other side" of deputation.  It's not just all a great vacation as you travel across the country!  And since my next post will likely have some pictures from Niagara Falls (it's been on my bucket list for a while, and it's en route to our next stop), I wanted to go on record again saying it's not all a walk in the park.    Today I am thankful that we have been in one place for four days at this beginning of our big deputation trip out west.  We were never able to book a meeting for last night, so we ended up staying at the same church for a Sunday and a Wednesday.  It seems a little counter-productive to getting into as many churches as possible.  But God knew we would need a "home base" for a few days - even at the beginning.  (I anticipate reaching a point in this trip where I want to just "park" and set down a few roots rather than constantly being on the move).   This is how our days have gone s...

We just started a new unit in school on Mountains and Oceans.  Our lesson for Tuesday was about volcanos.  We were able to do the project and build an erupting volcano.  The kids loved it!  After the initial experiment, Ben decided to try round 2.  This time he screwed the lid on our bottle hoping for a bigger explosion.  I was grateful his version failed, since I was in the line of fire!       I bought terra cotta colored clay so it would look better without being painted.  Elaine was not so thrilled with the color of her hands though!     

Some video shots of the indoor playground we visited yesterday.  The slide was wavy and had quite the drop off so the kids really went air borne at the end.  Nehemiah did it probably 20 times in a row with a little "friend."      The twins finally tried out the bouncy house.  I just sat and laughed watching them try to stay on their feet and jump with any "style" or "form."     

January was an amazing month at home.  Busy, full, as we prepared for and anticipated beginning full time deputation.   Now that the time to leave is here, my heart is full with all God has done and all we expect Him to do over the next year.    Ben didn't work in January, yet God has provided for all we needed and even prepared our February rent payment already.  It was a big step - and it grew our faith - but where God led us, He has provided.  It makes me anticipate great things from this trip as well, because we know God is leading us this direction, and He has proven Himself to us time and again.   It was hard to say goodbye to people that we love.  And though our time in Brooklyn is not done quite yet, we know that our days of regular attendance at Bethel have come to a close for the most part.  When deputation is done, we will be moving to the Bronx to start the next chapter of our ministry.  My church family h...