LAST DAY OF SOCCER

Caleb praying with his soccer team after the game

Soccer Medals

What a wild weekend we had. We had my cousin Carol's family in from Indiana. I will post a picture of our visit soon. It was so special to have family here. I love it when someone really knows what I am talking about or can visualize it when I tell them about something going on here at the seminary. Friday night I had a doula client call me saying they were on their way to the hospital. I asked if I should meet them there and the husband said he would call me when they checked her in because they weren't really sure if they would keep them. When he called me 15 minutes later he said she was 8 cm. I was out the door in a flash. I had a feeling I wouldn't make it in time because the hospital is a good 15 minutes from our home. When I arrived she had a sweet baby girl in her arms. She had the baby 10 minutes after they called me. Unreal, I was so happy for them. They were a couple from one of my childbirth classes so it was so fun to meet their little one. What a sweet little miracle.

The kids had their last soccer game on Saturday morning. Afterwards they had a little pizza party and got their medals. The boys really enjoy playing... Anna on the other hand just enjoys being out there with people. I am not sure how much soccer playing actually happens with Anna:) Seminary kid's soccer is really low key. All the coaches are dads and usually they referee the game as well. It is perfect and only lasts about a month. They usually play again in the spring. I am thankful for the dads on campus that organize this for the kids.

Yesterday in church we had a scary experience. God was at work. We usually always go to the warehouse services at out church. They also have services in the sanctuary at the same time. I think last year we attended the sanctuary service 3 times the whole year and we always sat in the balcony. For some reason (the Lord's leading:) I suggested we go to the sanctuary service and not the warehouse service. The kids wanted to sit in the balcony and Greg said I should decide where we should sit. We sat on the main floor. They showed a video from a secular band that basically showed how we don't know how long our time will be here on earth. In the video people had numbers above their heads and the numbers were counting down until it was the end of their time on earth. Anyways, about 10 minutes later there was an older lady in the row directly behind us whose husband was in need medically. (We still don't know if it was a heart attack, stroke, or a reaction to medication) She was asking for a doctor. Well Greg isn't a doctor but he jumped right over there and was a big help. A nurse came over right away and was helping the man. Greg was holding the man's head up and reassuring his wife. Greg is a great care giver. I am realizing more and more I am not good in those types of situations. Greg is so calm. He was able to pray for the man, his wife and all of the people helping. God knew Greg needed to be there and I am so thankful. They did call 911 and take the man to the hospital and thankfully he was conscious when he left church. It was quite a real life lesson for us and the kids that we need to make the most of our time here on earth. In the big picture it is such a short amount of time. And eternity is forever. We want to make our time count and use it to grow God's Kingdom.

MORNING WALK AND MESSY LITTLE MAN:)

PAPA AND ANNA ON THEIR MORNING WALK

JOJO GETTING EVERY LAST DROP

ONE CONTENT CUSTOMER!!

I have been so proud of Greg this year. He really wanted to make sure he spent some time alone with each of the kids. So he is following after our friend Mr. Chris Tiews and going for a morning walk with each of the kids during the week. Last Friday was Anna's day. Excuse the blurry picture, but I literally was running after them, sneaking up on them to get a picture. I thought it was so cute to see the two of them marching along holding hands. I know the kids look so forward to this time with their Papa and Greg says they have some really great conversations as well as some really funny ones. I can only imagine. Last night we were watching Extreme Home Makeover and it was the part where they reveal the new home to the family. Well, the people were REALLY excited. Anna says to all of us,"Wow, they are screaming so loud, it makes me have to go potty." It is so funny and random the things that they say. I am sure Greg hears a lot of those types of things on his morning walks. He has decided he will have to start taking Jo for a day because there has been more than one day where Jo is at the window crying that he wants to go too.

Yesterday we went for a bike ride around Forest Park. I intended to just go to the History Museum and back, but Greg said he wanted to keep going. He was pulling Anna and Jo in the bike trailer. There are some killer hills on the ride. When we got back Greg said, "That was so much harder than I remember it!" I laughed and said, "That is because I pulled the kids the last time:) It is about an 8 mile ride all together. So I told the kids if there wasn't any complaining that we would have sundaes after lunch. God blessed us with an absolutely beautiful day, perfect for bike riding. The second 2 pictures are of Jo enjoying his sundae. He was covered, hair and all.

PIZELLES AND PASSING ON THE FAITH

ANNA AND JO ENJOYING MYRA AND MARLENE'S PIZELLES

WE ARE PASSING ON THE FAITH TO THESE 4 BLESSINGS

I am so blessed and fortunate to be able to attend a seminary wives bible study twice a month at a lovely woman's house. Her name is Myra. One week she leads us in a Mothers study and then 2 weeks later the study is on the topic of being a Godly wife. She is just awesome, so humble, so truthful, so forthright, so grounded in God. I just love it, she has a way of speaking the truth in a loving but not sugar coated way. She will tell you straight up if you are not on the right track. I love it, she is not afraid to be honest, it is refreshing. She also has a way of saying such sensible, logical things. I am always saying, "Now that makes so much sense why didn't I think of that?" Well her sister Marlene and her 90 year old mother are in town and they made us Pizelles for a snack. They made enough to send one home for each person in all of our families. How gracious since some of us have larger families. Well the first picture above is of Anna and Jojo enjoying their pizelles. Yummy! Thanks Myra and Marlene:) I am secretly praying that Myra (well, not that secretly, because I told Myra this already) will publish her materials, it is that good. I think more women need to benefit from it.

The next picture is of all 4 of our kids with their TAG U R IT bandanas on. That was the theme of our Going family reunion 2 years ago. Do you get it? Tag you are it! The theme was passing on the Christian faith to the next generation. I don't even remember what it was, but something made us all talk about that reunion. So the kids wanted to wear their bandanas. It was great, they were wearing them all around campus. I remember when I was pregnant praying for all sorts of things for my kids. Maybe I have mentioned this before, I prayed for their health, their future spouses, a safe delivery, but the thing I prayed for most was that the precious ones I was carrying would know Jesus. So everyday we are trying to do things, talk about things, read things that will point them to their Savior Jesus. I have to say one of our favorite things is our prayer board. Every morning after we read from our family bible we pray for 4 different families that have helped us and then we pray for everyone who is on our prayer board. It has touched my heart so many times. For the last 2 weeks Louis has been the one to pray for my brother Mark who has a liver disease. He has prayed for Uncle Mark and then always says,"Lord please zap that liver disease right out of him." Uncle Mark loved that. So pass your requests our way and we will put them up on the prayer board:) Any ways, I would encourage you to pass on your faith in Jesus to all the little ones in your life!

These commandments I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

Deuteronomy 6:6-7

TWO LITTLE SWEET PEAS

LITTLE MISS ANNA

LITTLE PACKER FAN

It was a beautiful Sunday in St. Louis. The weather was perfect with a wonderful breeze. Church was great, we are blessed to be at a great church called St. John's in Ellisville. It is a church with over 5,000 members so it gives us a lot of opportunities to see some different kinds of ministry and worship. It is a pretty amazing place. They have 4 different worship venues each week, all very different from one another. Everything from a traditional Saturday night service, to contemporary Sunday morning services to a service held in a banquet room of a restaurant/brewery on Tuesday nights. Greg and I are also getting to participate in a Bible Study on Sunday Mornings that is studying the book Revolutionary Parenting. We are enjoying it and it gives us a lot to talk about on the way home from church. Today's message was on Sexual sin, the theme for this series of messages has been secrets. It was the story of Amnon and Tamar from 1 Samuel. It was a great message and with a theme like that also gave Greg and I a lot to talk about on the way home:) They actually forewarned us so we took turns going to church and Sunday School and watching the kids. We were blessed.

BLESSINGS ABOUND:)

A HUGE DONATION TO THE SEMINARY FOOD BANK

THIS YEARS KNITTED CAPS HAVE ARRIVED

SOME SWEET HAT MODELS:)

Once again we are so blessed here at the seminary. On most Saturday mornings I usually head up to the food bank to help unload the produce truck. There is a wonderful gentlemen that picks up produce and bread from local grocery stores. They are getting rid of it all because it is usually on it's way out. But it is great if you can eat it in the next few days. We put the produce and bread out and it is free for the taking. Anyways... before Dennis arrived we got a huge donation of food from a church in Clayton Illinois. Really it was HUGE! The top picture shows some of the people who drove the donation here to the sem. The picture just shows a portion of what they donated. It was awesome! Before I came here I didn't realized what an amazing help the food bank is to all of the families here. It is a tremendous blessing and really helps us all to be able to stretch our food budgets:) It is so neat to see all of the ways that God has used His people to help, serve, and bless others. They really have been the hands and feet of Christ to us.

The next picture is of 2 lovely older ladies that work with 1 more to knit bags of beautiful items for the families on campus. All of those bags in that picture are packed full of hats, scarfs, hot pads and baby blankets. I can't believe 3 ladies could do all of that. It took me over a year to knit a baby blanket for Caleb...I think I finished it just before Anna arrived. Anyways, they are obviously a lot faster than me :) and each year they donate their time and talents to bless all of us here at the sem. Last year it was chilly when the hats arrived and it was so funny because almost immediately you saw tons of kids running all around campus with these sweet, brightly colored hand made hats on. Now today on the other hand was around 85 degrees but you still saw plenty of kids out with the hats on:) It was such a treat for our kids to get to go up to the food bank and pick out their hat. The two younger lovely ladies in the picture are Sallie, the food bank manager and Miss Wendy ( as the kids call her ) and her son Joey, they volunteer with this Hintz crew up at the food bank a couple of times a week to help unload food trucks. Joey is one of Anna's new special friends. She has really taken a liking to the babies on campus as of late.

Anna and JOJO had a touch of some bug this week but thank the Lord, I think they are on the mend. I was blessed with the opportunity to be with a couple from the seminary this week when they celebrated the arrival of their sweet son Asher into the world. A babies birth is such an amazing miracle. It was such an honor for me to be there. The bigger boys are enjoying the seminary kid's soccer league. They will play every Saturday for a little over a month. The biggest boy is really busy studying. He is doing great, we are all really proud of all of his hard work.

LITTLE RASCAL AND THE RABBIT

OUR LITTLE RASCAL:)

THE BALLOON RACE AT FOREST PARK

THE ENERGIZER BUNNY BALLOON

We have had a busy last few weeks. School is in full swing for everyone. Greg is especially enjoying his Marriage and Family counseling class. I am enjoying it too:) He has come home from class and said, "I think Dr. Hartung hit the nail on the head." Then he will go on to explain something that I have been trying to help him understand about me for years. Somehow this professor seems to make it all make sense. Yeah, Dr. Hartung! :) It has been great, pretty funny actually. I think it will greatly benefit Greg's ministry down the road. This class will go great with the Marriage and Family Life Masters degree that Greg was working on before we came to the seminary.

The weather has finally cooled down. We actually broke out the blue jeans this weekend. We are all well and enjoying all the fun things here in the fall. Jojo always has us laughing. He is starting to use the potty and is just plain silly. We have so much fun with him, all of us. I wouldn't call it the terrible twos, more like the terrific twos. He can definitely get upset when things don't go his way, but he is really easy going for the most part. It just warms my heart how all of the other kids just love him so much. Today Louis put him down for a nap and they were both so sweet together.

Last night we went to the balloon glow in Forest Park. We hiked over there with a group of about 20 from the sem. and saw them light up all the hot air balloons. This year they seemed to bring them down earlier last night. I think there was too much wind. But today they had the balloon race. They were expecting over 200,000 people in the park. It was a beautiful day and we had a blast just watching from campus. I wanted to get a better picture but we were a good mile away. Caleb counted at least 25 balloons in the sky. The energizer bunny balloon was by far the kid's favorite. For us Wisconsin folk who are fortunate to even see a hot air balloon in the sky once in a summer, to see so many is a real treat. We are always amazed at all of the fun things there are to do here. We are trying to take in as many as we can while we are here. Last week we went to the Clayton Art Fair. Apparently it is one of the best in the nation. Louis now says he wants to be a glass blower when he gets bigger.

FIELD DAY FUN

PANDA BEAR FACE PAINTING

ANNA SHOWING OFF HER TATTOO

Today was field day on campus. Basically it is a day for the kids on campus to kick off the new year. It is so much fun, face painting, play dough making, snacks, games, tattoos, and lots more. We played two family games called "MOM call" and "DAD call". All of the moms or dads are blindfolded in the middle of a circle with all the kids surrounding them. If there are multiple kids in a family they all stand together. The blind folded moms and dads had to spin around 10 times. Then at the same time all the children yell "MOM" or "DAD" and the mom or dad has to find their child or children. It was hilarious. Greg actually won when we played it with the dads. Yeah, he knows his children's voices:) It made for some pretty funny video.

The other highlight was the Clayton Firetruck. The firemen bring it in, hook it up and let it loose on all of the kids in the field. It was a blast, they got a major soaking. It was a beautiful morning, perfect for a little cool down. Greg is helping at church tonight and the kids and I are heading over to the picnic the seminary is hosting on campus. The seminary does so many nice things for the students. It all really helps to build a sense of community and family. That is what makes it such a wonderful place. Things are starting to pick up on campus as most of the 4th years are back from vicarage and the new 1st years have arrived. We all start back to classes on Tuesday, sad, scary, fun and exciting all at once. Summer comes to an end once again:)