Monday, August 23, 2010

Old-Fashion Lemonade Anyone?











Lemonade is one of those things that screams summer so the kids and I, upon their years of requests, finally decided to do a Lemonade Stand. And what better way to finish off summer break than to make a great memory! After some heart to heart discussions, Benjamin and Catherine decided to give all the money made from the lemonade and chocolate chip cookies to a ministry called Urban Eagles (http://www.charlotteeagles.com/community/urbanministry/index_E.html). This ministry, in particular, is dear to their hearts because some of the children who are ministered to attend our church and are in their Sunday school classes. Proverbs 14:31 says, "... but whoever is kind to the needy honors God." We've been talking a lot lately at our house about how richly blessed we are and about being grateful and content rather than always focusing on what we don't have and what we want... so hard in our culture because most everything around us is telling us we "need" so much more than we really need.

We had a really fun time preparing everything to make our table pretty... okay, I had a really fun time! I found the best links for printable labels on a blog new to me: http://www.i-do-it-yourself.com/. And juicing all the lemons... whew, that was a lot of lemons that left our whole downstairs smelling delightful! I should've counted them but didn't even think about it. In all we made 4 big batches of lemonade and 4 dozen chocolate chip cookies. The day started our really cloudy with threats of rain, but the Lord was beyond faithful to answer my prayers to keep the rain away at least until we were finished... it was sunny and hot from 1 to 3 while were manning our stand. Brian said maybe next time I should pray a little more specifically... keep the clouds but without the rain!

Thanks to the generosity of friends and neighbors, the children have a donation of $61.85 to give to the Urban Eagles! Thank you to everyone who came out to support us and thank you Lord for making it a success. It was a delightful afternoon!

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Back to School for Benjamin & Catherine

dressed and ready for another year of school

new school sign - Sunset Park Center for Accelerated Studies

Catherine is getting so tall

super excited about her new backpack... a birthday gift

big 5th grader

Catherine and Mary Frances, one of her friends and classmates

loaded up to head home after walking big brother and sister into school

How quickly the summer passed and here we are... another 1st day of school. This time, it's 3rd and 5th grades. It began hitting me hard that this was the last "1st day" of walking Benjamin into elementary school. I can remember like yesterday taking him to the door of his kindergarten class on his first day there, and like a flash, he's now a 5th grader. Catherine's a 3rd grader which means she's half way through with elementary school. They're super excited about their year and are anticipating it being a challenging one as they are both in gifted and talented classes where all of their work will be accelerated... so lots of interesting new things to learn should await both of them. Here's to another awesome year at Sunset Park!