Ten on Tuesday

1.  So we have survived the first week.  Maybe I should have asked God to work on something else besides loving others.  Being at the beach for a month is awesome but let's be honest, it can be hard.  We have 3 families, 6 children, 2 dogs, and 4 hermit crabs, all living in a 3 bedroom house.  People still have to eat, bath, and sleep.  There are lots of different personalities and different expectations all trying to work together. People have different styles of parenting, cooking, and cleaning. I think the thing that is different this year is better communication and a willingness to say "I'm sorry".  And I am talking about the adults, not the kids. 
2.  I don't trust men who wear cologne. Tybee is full of sketchy, too much cologne for the beach, jean short wearing men.

3.  Let me tell you about freezer candy.  You might cuss me for sharing this but it's just too good to keep to myself.  Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees. Take a cookie sheet and line it with aluminum foil.  Get one sleeve of saltines and line them up on the cookie sheet.  Now, take 2 sticks of butter and melt them with 1 cup of brown sugar.  After they are melted, bring it to a boil for 2 minutes. Pour over the crackers making sure to cover each one.  Bake for 7 minutes.  Pull it out of the oven and sprinkle one bag of milk chocolate chips on top and as they melt smooth them on top of the crackers.  Now pop it in to the freezer for about 30 minutes and then take it out and break them in to pieces.  We just put ours in a zip-loc bag and keep it in the freezer.  It lasts about one day. 

4. Jellyfish- 1 Payton- 0  Sharks teeth count: Payton- 5 Paul- 4 (but his were much bigger in size)

5.  Mimi is having art camp. Emory is having cheer camp.  Kayaking, bike riding. summer book reading, making ice cream, UNO and more UNO, exploring, cooking, exercising (a little), watching Britney Spears video marathon (OK that was just Betsy and me), and just enjoying being together. 

6.  This article on Inspire to action article about protecting your children on social media is really good.   Such a good reminder that my blog and Facebook is not a place to share my children's struggles.  My struggle with them, yes.  Do I want them to google their name as a teenager and be embarrassed about what I shared?  No.  I also want to protect my husband and my marriage.  Somethings are better said in private than put as a status just to get some "likes".  I am really starting to see the danger of self promotion in our culture. 

7. Ephesians 3:17-19 We would have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how high and wide and long and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge-that we might be filled to the measure of the fullness of God.
This verse is listed as the chief request of our church each week.  Requesting that we would know how much Christ loves us.  To be honest, this has been really hard for me.  As I try to think about how high, wide, long, and deep Christ's love is for me it makes my brain hurt.  It's too big.  How can he love me like that?  How can he know everything I have ever done or ever thought and still love me like that?  So then I think, it's nothing I have done that allows him to love me in that big way.  It's only because of the death of his son that he can love me and see me as someone precious.  But then that turns my brain too because how could Jesus die for me?  I took Jay and Josie to the beach the other night and we talked about the sand.  God knows how many grains of sand are on the Tybee Island beach.  He knows exactly what is in the ocean that stretches out so far that you can't see anything else on the horizon.  He is so big and yet so intimate.  I can only meditate on that for a short period of time and then I thank God that I don't have to understand it to believe it. 
8.  Last week I started to edit my blogger profile.  Trying to condense who I am in a short paragraph sends me into some serious reflection.  I was bored with what it said before and didn't feel like it accurately said what I would want someone visiting my blog to know about me.  I hate to ask the rhetorical "Who am I?" question but who I am has changed since I last updated that profile a couple of years ago.  I am still a wife, still a mom, still an addict in recovery, but how do they all relate together?  I think the way they all relate to each other now is that my relationship with Christ is involved in all of them.  I used to have different compartments of who I was and being a Christian was just one of the compartments.  I wanted God's help in some areas, but I wanted him to let me have a few areas to handle on my own.  If I had to tell you right now what the "silver lining" of my addiction was I would say that God used it to bring me to my knees in order for me to give him my life.  All of my life, not just the parts I was willing to give him. (And I do see my addiction as a blessing, not a burden.) So now as I think about my profile, I see my life with a few labels and Christ stamped across all of them.
9.  I love seeing the different relationships between the six cousins. Everyone rotates who they play with.  Emory is very much into babysitting Lolly.  Packy and Josie play great together (most of the time).  Jay is a little lost when the men leave but will be happy to ride his bike with someone who is pulling non bike riders.  Jay and Josie can sometimes be a good mix as the two that put more thought in to life instead of being carefree. Emory and Hattie could play all day, every day.  It's always changing. 

10.  I am currently babysitting Lolly and American Flag Churchwell whiIe Betsy takes 3 kids on a bike ride.  American Flag is the second hermit crab that Packy has had on this trip.  Nemo was his first crab and he met an untimely death.  It was very traumatic for Packy.  He was bringing him to me to see if he was sleeping when Nemo's limp body came out of shell and fell to the ground.  Packy's new way of handling things is to run.  Forest Gump style.  As soon as he realized Nemo was gone he took off, screaming and running.  When he stopped running Papa gave him a small tin to put his body in and they had a funeral.  All afternoon, he kept digging him back up.  When Papa asked him why he kept doing that, he said he wanted to see if Nemo had gone to heaven yet, but he had not.  Papa explained that your body doesn't go to heaven, but your soul does.  Later that night Josie and Packy had a screaming at the top of their lungs fight about if your body goes to heaven or not.  It was a funny fight to listen in on.  So back to the crabs.  The next day Jason took Packy back to the store where he adopted American Flag Churchwell.  He is still kickin'.....at least for today.
Thank you Dad, Jason, and Lee for letting your girls be beach bums for a month.  Big thanks to Papa for making it all possible. And of course a big thanks to Mimi for allowing us to turn her relaxing house into a house of crazy. We love you!