This year is supposed to be getting better...

The week after the birthday party, I was running between the church and the office complex, tripped over a post and landed on my chin... Off to the emergency room for a few stitches and then many trips to the dentist as I had sprained my jaw and my teeth were out of alignment. Talk about alot of pain! Ibuprofen was my best friend for a couple of weeks. A piece was fit for my mouth...the whole while I am still teaching 2 bible studies, and doing special music for the United Methodist Women's conference meeting the day after my fall.

A week goes by and I thought I had a sore throat, but it kept getting worse. I started running a high fever. Could it be the swine flu? Oh, no a trip to the doctor said I was fine, so a couple more days of misery that would not end, I made my way to the dentist's office and wouldn't you know it...I had developed an infection that caused me to have to have a wisdom tooth extracted the day before Sara and Chris came for Thanksgiving (which was Nov 20th). By the time I finally got around to going to the doctor the infection was pretty advanced. I was taking 2 different anti biotics - which we all know causes other problems intestinally... How in the world am I going to be able to host Thanksgiving dinner for my family of 14 while on pain killers and strong anti biotics -- Man do I feel old...

Nov 6th

In the midst of getting the animated light show up and running, I planned my step-father's 80th birthday party! I asked what kind of party Daren would enjoy...Mom said "let's have soup beans and corn bread". Oh, my. I have never made soup beans...and how do you have a beautiful birthday party while serving soup beans? Yes, it was a challenge...but we managed to pull the party off beautifully!

Wow, it's been a long time

Woah - it has been a long time since I've written in the blog. Life has been so busy - hardly time to breathe. Life should not be like that... we need to slow down...

In 2007 Steve had the brainy idea that Grace UMC needed to begin an animated Christmas light show on the outside of the church building. Everyone said that "It can't be done"..."we are an older congregation"...."there isn't anyone who can do this kind of thing"...well, don't say it can't be done to us... Jayna began researching the programs, did a lot of calling around, visited other animated light shows in the area and ...last year (right after Steve's heart attack) we strung, hung, and lit over 30,000 lights on the side of the church building. So, once again, come November, the process began. You cannot imagine all of the hours it takes to produce something of this magnitude. Not only did it take a cherry picker, professional "hangers" and expert electrical engineers, we utilize computer guru's and sound techincians...all overseen by "yours truly". I never imagined that when I became a pastor's wife that I would be going to town hall meetings to get streets closed and learn computer software, but here I am today - stretched beyond my capacity and loving every moment - okay I didn't love it when I had to call support to get the thing up and running again, but other than that, once the lights began dancing...it made it all worth while.

Right after Christmas we are going to begin the process of programming an animated portrayal of the birth of Christ..I'm very excited about trying to do this. It's going to be great! Okay I think it's going to be great ...if we can figure it all out. This year we tried to figure out how to put our list of songs in groupings and we fried the monster brain and had to order a new one..ugh!