Suprise!!

I got a call yesterday afternoon that rocked my little world. My daughter-in-law called to let me know that Charlie and I were going to IHC next week for our anniversary. My wonderful children had decided we should do this and had already made the arrangements. My first thought was unbelief, then that it wouldn't happen because Charlie wouldn't be able to take off work. But Danielle assured me that she had already called Charlie and he had cleared it with his company. Soooooo.....We are going to IHC for the very first time ever.

I posted this on facebook and was surprised at the response. I guess it is kind of strange to be a conservative holiness person in this area (especially since we lived in OH until 15 years ago) and never have attended IHC. But there is a very valid reason for that. For many years Charlie would be off most of the winter and would just be getting back to work in the spring when convention rolled around. Kind of hard to take 3 days off in the middle of week right then. But now he is rarely off in the winter. As bad as our winter was he didn't miss one day because of the weather. He did have a couple of days off in between jobs but really needed the break. So he wasn't complaining. But my husband doesn't like to take off work for anything. So I didn't even ask. But my daughter-in-law did. And he said yes! (I'm sure he would have for me, too, if I would have asked).

I guess sometimes we just need an extra push to do some things. We could have done this on our own but neither of us thought it was feasible this year. Charlie does have a lot of responsibility with his job and I have Jay'von all week. But they have all of that covered, so we get a much needed break and will get to spend time with some family and friends that we don't get to see enough of.

Thanks kids for giving that push. Hopefully we will come back spiritually and emotionally refreshed. We love you a lot!!

RANDOM!!

Well, Easter in over and in my book that means spring is now really officially here. The weather is beautiful and I am so glad to have the windows open and feel that spring breeze.

This is definitely an unusual Easter. For the first time ever all my kids had other plans and were not here for Easter. Chuck and Danielle spent Easter with her family in PA, Carolyn and George spent Easter in Martinsburg with friends and Courtney was at her house in Morgantown and didn't bring Jay'von until later in the day. We did get to spend time with them but not for church and dinner. I felt kind of "old" and strange. I'm sure some day when they all have families there will be other times this will happen on special occasions but this was the first.

We are a small family. Charlie's parents and aunts and uncles are all gone and he is an only child so aside from some distant cousins that he has never been close to he has no other family. So my family is now his family but my large family (there were 6 children in my family) now has families that are growing up and have plans of their own. We only had 3 children and so far 3 grandchildren so our family is still kind of small.

So this year I have learned that we really need to focus on the holiday and why we observe it and not so much on getting all of the chickens home to roost. We will all be together on Tuesday to celebrate Breanna's Birthday, though, so that will help.

Another thing that came to my mind was to reach out to someone who wouldn't have anyone to spend the day with. My Mom and Dad could have gone a couple of places but decided to spend it with us. We also invited a couple in our church that only has family out of town. They would usually go to Ohio for the holiday but since we were in revival that weekend they stayed home. We really enjoyed having Lonnie and Susan Mayle with us and would love to do it again even when our kids can be there. I hope they enjoyed it as much as we did.

God is still God even in the disappointing times. I'm so glad that God helped me to focus on that and it was an enjoyable day even without the joy of children's laughter and all the Easter basket mess. Maybe next year will be different and we will have all that. Maybe not, but that will be OK because never again will it be the first time.



We dressed Jay'von up in his clothes for pics even though he wasn't there in time for church.



Carolyn helping Jay'v decorate an egg the week before Easter.


C.J. decorating an egg.



Breanna decorating one of her eggs.


We did have the kids over on Thursday (they were on spring break) to color eggs and give them their baskets from Neena. Carolyn even hid some in the yard and they got to hunt them. Jay'v couldn't quite figure it out but with some help he did find some. I had to put these on here so I at least had some Easter pics for 2010. (lol)