kenny has been very busy over the past few months preparing for something that began last night, and that we hope continues and grows on into the future.

with the help of friends and other church members, we started a saturday evening service for church members and anyone outside the church who wants to check it out to worship. the service is based on "an order of worship for the evening" so communion is not included. however, the service concludes with a free meal for everyone, so communion happens, just not Holy Communion.

we honestly had no idea if anyone would come, but we were pleasantly surprised to see the faithful worshipers from a typical sunday morning service come, and a few others.

i can't describe the service any better than kenny already has at the service's web site. please check it out. and if you're local, come visit! and if you think of it, keep this service in your prayers.

i leave you with an image of my favorite poster we've hung up in stores in the area.

the end of summer seems so...heavy. take a look around you. the green leaves are weighing branches down. the gardens have candy-apple red (or ripe-tomato red) fruit hanging on plants shared with dead, yellowed (once green) tomato leaves. the weeds have overpowered every effort of weeding. shrubs, grasses, and plants look tired of their summer life...as kenny likes to say, they look "rode hard and put away wet." they've had a good life in the hot sun. it's time to rest for the colder months and re-awaken with vigor come spring.

this is the first summer in a long time that i've enjoyed every last bit of heat and sunshine, and would love a few more weeks of MORE. fortunately, it can be in the 70s well into october in these here parts (i.e., october 21, 2001 was in the mid 70s...i remember this because i was wearing a heavy, silk wedding dress that day), so i don't really have to let go of it just yet. however, everywhere you look, fall is here: pumpkins and scarecrows and halloween and thanksgiving decorations line the shelves in every store.

we've been enjoying the cooler (or less humid) evenings after dinner playing aerobie while the three boys run around us in the yard. rowan and sawyer usually spend the time riding their bikes into the pine trees or swinging on their jungle gym while adam walks circles around us.

the other evening, kenny and i stayed on the deck with adam after eating dinner outside while the older two went to swing. they eventually ended up watching clouds (something i haven't done since i was a kid myself!). adam had fun with the cat:

happy mother's day to my mom, grammy, and all my fellow mommy readers and bloggers.

i was blessed to share homemade crepes (ala kenny) with my boys this morning. and i was gifted with THE NEW MARTIN SEXTON CD!  ahhh...black coffee, lovely crepes, and martin playing all day long!! the perfect day!

and here are my reasons for truly celebrating today...
 

i don't know what you'd call my friend audrey and i.  we're two peas in a pod? anomalies? coincidences? twilight zone characters? separated at birth?

we have these odd similarities that just kept popping up over the years as we got to know each other. and we're not talking about "i liked ralph macchio in high school...OMG so did I!" or "my prom dress was yellow...OMG so was mine!" here are just some of our odd similarities:

1. my full name is elizabeth anne. she was meant to be named beth ann (but for some reason her parents decided on audrey).
2. my mom's name is diane. her sister's name is diane. (okay not so weird...a lot of us have similarities like this.)
3. we both have a niece who is the same age AND named sadie rae. same spelling.
4. we both remember watching "Hatchey Malatchey" - a children's program that i used to watch when visiting my grandparents in their home in Scranton, Pennsylvania. when i found out that audrey was a graduate of this show as well, i was floored. NOBODY (and i was beginning to think it was a figment of my imagination) had ever heard of that show before, until it was mentioned in passing one day in one of our conversations.
5. we're both BIG Twin Peaks fans.
6. We're both BIG Gypsy Kings fans.
7. She has a Nana and Pop-pop, and so do I. and now my parents are Nana and Pop-pop.
8. We're both fans of burnt hot dogs. And we mean blackened. MMMMMMmmmmmm!
9. Her husband, Tom, and I share a birthday: March 7th.
10. The biggie: We've both been blessed with pilonoidal cysts (i was going to post a link, but if you really want to know, you can research that on your own!)

perhaps these don't seem odd to you, but when we come up with yet another odd "thing" that we share, we just shake our head and laugh.

a mutual friend of ours, amy, and i also have fun similarities. my favorite is that amy is one of the only adults that i know who also likes Peeps and candy corn. we agree that it is better, hands down, over chocolate any day of the week. if i had to, i could live on Peeps and candy corn and nothing else.

but i don't. because if i did, i'd have much bigger dental problems.


ps. if you'd like to donate a year's supply of Peeps or candy corn for my friends and i, please email me for my address. thank you.