Monday

Our Monday was uneventful. Stephen was off to work at 8AM, and Ian was off to school shortly thereafter. Isabelle, Caleb, and I hung out at home until about 11:30. Then we left for Cut Bank to take Isabelle to preschool. Her class is from 12:15-2:15 on Mon & Wed. While she was in class, Caleb was stuck running errands with me. Today, it was Radio Shack, the Dollar Store, Albertson's (grocery store), and JC Penny. We also had time to stop by a friend's house to chat (for me) and play (for Caleb). The picture is Isabelle at the end of preschool. That is the most I could get her to smile. After we picked Isabelle up, we drove back to Browning and picked Ian up (at 3:10). Stephen worked until 6ish and then we were all home for the rest of the evening. We live such an exciting life. (ha-ha) But that is a pretty typical Monday for us.
Stay tuned for more excitement tomorrow...

Our typical sunday

I thought that it would be fun to try to blog about our typical week.
This morning we went to church. Of course, I forgot to take the camera! So after church I did take some pictures of the kids. Isabelle and Caleb are looking at pictures, which they love to do quite often. The reason all of the kids are looking past me is b/c we just turned the Charlie Brown Halloween movie on when I took the pictures. I can't compete with that!
I teach the preschool Sunday school class. It is 3-4 yr olds (plus Caleb). We had seven this morning. They are a fun group, but they definitely keep me hopping. Stephen is in a adult Sunday School class, and Ian is in a K-2nd grade class. We don't have Sunday School in the summer, so this was only our 2nd week.
The next thing is church. Everybody starts out together for prayer, songs, and announcements. Then the children go back to children's church.
This week, we were teaching. We started the program this time last year, and it has really grown! We started with 7-8 kids. This week we had 20. Our church has added alot of people, and many of them are families with young children. It is exciting, but it can be a little hectic in children's church. We are dividing them into two groups. We still have some wrinkles to work out, but it is going well. The younger (preschool) group is about 1/2 of the kids, so we make them one class and then Kindergarten and up for the other group.
We have been very blessed to have lots of volunteers to help us out with Children's church. We always have a teen helper, and we usually teach 2 weeks a month and other people do the rest.
After church, we come home for lunch. Then, if I'm lucky like today, Stephen watches the kids while I take a nap.
The rest of the day, we don't do much. It's just a nice day for us to relax and spend some time together as a family.

"THE MEETING"

Anna and I wanted to thank everyone who prayed for us yesterday as we met with reps from the C&MA. There were four people who interviewed us and the interview was scheduled to go for 1.5 to 2 hours. I thought "what can we talk about for two hours?!" Well it went to almost 4pm. That is 3 hours if you were scoring at home, and at time was even emotional for everyone there (again, who would of thunk it?) The dynamics in the room were pretty cool, and overall very supportive. I was encouraged both by one member of the committee who was almost cheering us on, but was also relieved by another member who was relatively dogged about getting us to talk through some theological issues. The encouragement from the former was obvious but the the latter was encouraging to me because it reassured me that the C&MA as an organization is dedicated to having strong Christians in its ranks as missionaries.

The bottom line is that they were recommending confirmation to the C&MA for us. There were some details of Alliance distinctives that we were a little hazy on. I will have to talk to Pastor John (our Baltimore pastor at the C&MA church) about slacking on a couple of issues in his preaching topics.....of course it could be I might have dozed off a couple of times:)

From here we wait to here from Phil Skellie who is the director of IFAP to go from here. Further issues to be addressed are:
1) how much money will we need for support?
2)Where can we do language study? (we have a good idea on this one)
3)How is the relationship between C&MA and GO mission will be worked out?


Anna and I are very anxious to be going and doing so continue praying for us.

In other news, we will probably travel to Missoula next weekend since a missionary couple that we were with in Gabon will be speaking. They have served for a couple of decades in Gabon, he is a surgeon and she is a nurse (David and Becky Thompson).

New Haircuts

This is Isabelle's new haircuts. Lee Ann left it as long as she could. There are still some shorter parts in places. We will have to let it grow out a little bit, and keep trimming until it is all about the same length. I thought she might be upset, since she likes having longer hair, and being able to wear ponytails. But she seems happy with it. (Maybe too happy- if you know what I mean.)

This is Caleb's new haircut. Doesn't he look tough! He still has a few almost bald spots in the back. Poor baby, it's tough having an older sister!

Haircuts.... by Isabelle

This morning, I made some cards with Isabelle and Caleb.There was an online challenge. You are supposed to make a card within 45 minutes and you can upload it to the gallery if you want. Last night, Isabelle helped me make one card.
Today the first challenge was posted at 10 AM (mountain time). Isabelle and Caleb were excited, and picked out a few word stamps that they might want to use while we waited for the challenge. We knew that it was going to use crayons, so we were ready with those.
The challenge was to use leaves to make leaf rubbings and put it on a card. We went outside and picked some leaves, and then they did the leaf rubbings. They each got to pick some cardstock to use. After that, Caleb lost interest and decided to go outside.
Isabelle continued. She cut out her leaves, stamped some words, drew some more with crayons and added glitter. Then she decided to take her scissors and cut some more leaves off the trees... Sounds perfectly reasonable... right? About 5-10 minutes later the doorbell rang. Our neighbor noticed that Isabelle was giving Caleb a haircut, and came over to let me know. When I went outside, I saw that Caleb had hair all over him and there was hair everywhere. I then noticed that some of the hair was pretty long.... I think you can see where this is going.

I took a picture of the back of Caleb's head while he was sleeping. I didn't think he would hold still long enough while he awake. Some of the spots on top of his head look almost bald. His hair is maybe 1/8-1/4 inch in places.
Isabelle was happy with her haircut. She said, "I like haircuts." Maybe I should hide the scissors!
I have appointments for myself and Isabelle to get haircuts on Monday morning. I thought we would get her bangs trimmed, and maybe a couple inches off of the rest. Now I think she is going to get a very short haircut. There are some spots that are only a couple of inches. I will post pictures of how her hair turns out on Monday.

Back to School!

Ian started school on Tuesday. Even though today is only his third day, it seems like this has been a long week already! I think we just need to get back into the routine. It does help to have more of a schedule to the day.
Last Thursday was Ian's open house. He got to meet his teacher (we finally found out who she was). He in Vina Chattin this year, which is for 2nd and 3rd grades. He saw the new building, and lunchroom, gym, library, etc. After that he was pretty excited about school, but he still feels like he will miss out on all of the fun things that we do without him. (I'm not exactly sure what that is!) On Tuesday morning, I could hardly get him to sit still long enough to take his picture. When I was going to leave, I was trying to get his attention to tell him, but he was so busy talking to his friends, I just gave up. At the end of the day, we practically have to drag him out of the classroom. At least we know he is enjoying himself.
His teacher is from the area, but was living in WA until this summer, so is new to the school. They hired her in August, so she didn' t have alot of time to get ready, but she seemed like an experienced teacher. She has 17 kids, where most of the teachers have 20, so I hope that her class will stay a little bit smaller. I am going to try to take some more pictures of his class. He looks so small compared to some of the students. He did grow some over the summer, and I'm hoping that it is part of a big growth spurt.
On Tuesday, when we asked Ian what he did all he could do was talk about the movie he watched in Blackfoot Language class. It was all about monsters-- vampires, Medusa, etc. Sounds like he's off to a great start in 2nd grade!
Isabelle had her open house for preschool last Wednesday, and her first day was yesterday. She is very excited. She wants to go to preschool all day, every day. I think all kids love Ms. Olson. She does such a great job. Caleb would have liked to stay, too. At least I don't have to worry about our kids being too clingy!
She will be going on Monday and Wednesday afternoons from 12:15-2:15. During this time I will stay in Cut Bank, run errands, visit with friends, go to the library, etc.

(In other news we are meeting with the CMA reps in Great Falls next Friday the 14th at 1pm as a final step in our confirmation process with them. I hope that light at the end of the tunnel is not a train....
We would appreciate your prayers for that meeting as well.-- added by Stephen.)

Before and After

Before Summer at Running Eagle Falls




After Summer