Chronologically, the first thing I have to share is a couple of pics from my sister-in-law, Deb's pre-prom. In case you weren't aware, I'm an only child, so when I married into this large family and gained three sisters and a brother, then even more as they marry, I'm in heaven. My new sisters are precious and understand my need for sisters and don't rub in the "in-law" part too much. Deb was five when I met her and now, here she is, all grown up!
I read on this site some ideas of things to do with your kid and this is my variation of one of their suggestions. They said to use bowls of different cereals and then put one of each type in a egg carton and have your little one match them up (from the bowl to the carton). Z didn't much see the point in moving cereal from one place to another, but enjoyed the display of snacks and helped himself. Once, in grabbing a handful of All-Bran he dropped a twig into the rice krispies and took the time to fish it out and put it back into the proper egg cup. That was good enough for me, he gets it, they're different. We used the egg carton full of snacks for a few days for snack time until the novelty wore off.
Our Memorial weekend was spent at the family cabin in WV. As always it was relaxing and fun. Only two of my siblings were able to come (we missed you Biz, Jer, Andy & Missy!). Z missed his cousins, but revelled in the constant attention from his aunts and Ben's cousin, Megan. Bottoms from L to R we have Gramma H., Bekah, Megan and Deb.
Aunt Bekah and Z on one of our hiking trips
Some ferns we found along the way
The four ladies and "The View" as we now call it. Breathtaking in real life! I mean the view of the scenery, not my family's backsides. Not that they don't have lovely bottoms, yadda yadda yadda...
Finally, I finished my book while out in WV. Z slept over three hours Sunday and Monday which felt like a vacation in and of itself. Before I read the book, "Addicted to Mediocrity" by Franky 
Schaeffer I wasn't thinking about his relation to the author Susan Schaeffer Macaulay who I reviewed in this post. The two are siblings and supported each other in their premises that we (especially as Christians) should aspire to excellence and provide our children with exposure to all sorts of greatness whether it's labeled "Christian" or not. As you might notice from the title he has a problem with the complacency of Christians. In this book, though, he focuses on the fact that as a church and somewhat as a society as a whole we have given creative endeavors low priority in our lives for the past century as creativeness has been deemed impractical or useless (settling for bumper sticker art). We see evidence in most every Protestant church you visit, often times in gymnasiums, we have become utilitarian and pragmatic in our view of worship, service and worse yet, of people. We have separated creativeness in terms of "Christian" or "Secular" forgetting that all creation is God's creation. We need only separate ourselves from sin. This book made me want to paint, to get rid of our cable subscription, to become an activist in the things I'm passionate about and to get off me duff! It's super short and I devoured it. We had to pay $2 for our interlibrary loan to find the book (from Greenville College in IL, where artists Jars of Clay and Jennifer Knapp attended). I wish now that we had just spent the $9 it would have been used from alibris.com with a $1 off coupon from this site. I'm inspired to read some of his suggested readings and perhaps some from his parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer.
