With a little help from my friends...

Thanks to Mike, Sergei and Mike Sr, our kitchen now has walls!!! Mucho progress! So, the next steps are to tape and bed the areas that will not be covered with cabinets, paint, fix and paint the ceiling and then install the cabinets!!!

A Terrible Prayer

One of my favorite books of all time is Ragamuffin Prayers. I picked it up again last week and wanted to share one of the poems with you.

I have always been terrible at praying.

I forget.

My mind wanders.

I fall asleep.

I don't pray enough.

I don't understand what prayer is

Or what prayer does.

If prayer were school...

I would flunk praying.

But prayer isn't school.

It is mystery.

Maybe the mystery is...

Jesus loves terrible prayers.

Maybe...

When I can't think of anything to say, He says what I can't say.

When I talk too much, He cherishes my too-many words.

When I fall asleep, He holds me in His lap and caresses my weary soul.

When I am overwhelmed with guilt at my inconsistent, inadequate praying

He whispers, "Your name is always on My lips."

I am filled with gratitude, my soul overflows with thankfulness and I...

I... find myself saying over and over again, "Thank You."

Praying the mystery.

I feel like I can so relate to this poem- so many times I feel like I don't pray enough, get mad at myself for my wandering mind or falling asleep while I'm praying....

I find comfort in our God who knows that we are human and not perfect and loves us despite our inadequacies.

useful information

In case you were wondering how much caffeine you could ingest before it would kill you in one day, check this out:

http://www.energyfiend.com/death-by-caffeine

According to the website, I could have 93 tall Starbucks lattes before I died in one day.

Good information to know for my upcoming semester! :)

working from home...

Poor Mike. He's sickly. Woke up this morning, thinking that he was just constipated, but possible constipation/abdominal pain turned into a nice GI bug (and all that it implies), followed by fever. He bought himself a ticket to stay home tomorrow. And, so I will be working from home! :) Poor guy- he looks miserable. But, so far, he's kept down applesauce and some jello...

the heat

I just can't take it anymore. I'm so tired of the TX heat. I'm SO ready for it to be cold. It shouldn't be over 100 degrees. Anywhere. Mike asked me if I would ever move to Houston. I said "only if you could change the weather."
I looked at the Nashville temp averages yesterday and the average highs are in the high 80s, low 90's for August. As much as I'm anxious about starting school, I'm SO ready to be where it's at least a little cooler for a week or so!

school days

"I would give you a bouquet of freshly-sharpened pencils"- quote from my favorite movie, You've Got Mail.

So, as I'm gearing up to start school in about 3 weeks, I went to Target (pronounced, "Tarjay", makes it sound more French and exotic) and bought some school supplies. This trip secretly made me very happy because I love organization (although from the looks of my house at its present state, you couldn't tell) and I love the fall. I love new binders, new spirals, new planners, new pens...

And, I found some new pens that are AWESOME! Sharpie makes a very fine-line pen that is permanent, but doesn't bleed through your paper nor can you get high off the fumes! AMAZING! AND, they won't explode on an airplane- even more important!

jackhammers in the morning

For about a year, we've wondered if our pool had a leak. We (mainly Mike) have had to keep adding water, more than we thought we should. So, we had a pool leak guy come last week and it was determined that we did, in fact, have a leak in our pool.
So, about 9:30am, we had two guys come and jackhammer our deck, scoop out the mud and plaster and fix our pool leak.
And now, no more leaks. :) Yay!