My Ebenezer

We at Truth Baptist Church were so honored to receive a handcrafted pulpit on Sunday, made by one of our regular attenders, Nathan Lee. Isn't it beautiful? Now I know many of you would like to see who made it so you can put a face with a name. Unfortunately, Nathan was not eager to get in the picture with the pulpit he made. Fortunately, I have a picture of him from the church picnic. See him all the way down the row in the blue shirt? (Nathan, you left me no choice. This is what happens when people refuse to get their pictures taken!) Silliness aside, this new pulpit is a blessing, as it provides more room for Pastor Rowley's notes and water cup, and looks worlds better than the stand we had before. God is already using all the members of a church body to see needs and meet them! What a great God we serve!! The final picture I wanted to show you is of another regular-attender, Antonio, age 9 (? or maybe he's 8? Jen, do you know?). He was in "class" with me last n...

Working on building a dock in back of Cellar Cir. Noah coming down the slide at the waterpark Matt Harper with Jenna Hannah, David, and Daniel jumping in the waves We saw some monstrous waves as a result of Hurricane Bill. Surfers were everywhere! Aunt Nemnee (Melanie) with Noah Daniel and Brianne stopping up the hydrant at the waterpark Noah having a blast!

Our 10-day "stay-cation" is over. Most of the company pulled out on Friday morning. Joel and Hannah are still around 'til Sunday afternoon, and the Fallons will be stopping through here tonight on their way back from dropping their daughter off at BJU. Soon I'll try to load up the few pictures I was able to take of our family get-together. I first need to locate my camera (!!) and then I'll post what I can. This weekend I have been working on getting back to our normal lives. Planning meals, doing laundry, cleaning house, and reminding Noah how to play by himself again! He loved having Melanie's 3 kids here at his house these past couple weeks. Every morning he would wake up and say, "Go see kids!" I feel kind of badly for him that he doesn't have a brother or a sister to play with, so it is nice to be able to play with other kids for a while. It is quieter here these days. A bit more lonely perhaps, but very peaceful still as we resume our rout...

Notice I said "thoughts" and not "pictures." That's because I don't have any pictures downloaded on my computer yet. I have a few in my camera, but haven't had the time to get them where you can see them. We are hosting the Rowley Family Vacation this year which spans last week and this week. Between the two households (Matt's and ours), we have 16 people present and accounted for! So far we've gone to the beach, visited the water park, talked, worked on building a dock for our new house (the guys have done that), shopped, and had a lot of fun fellowshiping and eating. I notice though that when I have company, I go into what Josh calls Martha Mode. Think Luke 10:38-42. "Martha, Martha." "Joanna, Joanna." My devotions have suffered neglect in all my distraction, that's for sure. So have a host of other things I should have done this week. Blogging, errands, cards to people, cleaning my bathroom... So tomorrow, I h...

I don't know why, but I never thought I'd be 29. Not that I thought I'd die before I made it to my 29th birthday, but rather that in my wildest imagination as a kid I never could picture myself 29 years old. What would I look like? What kind of person would I turn out to be? At the very least I thought I'd be different. Mature. Adult. Grown Up. It never ocurred to me that I'd still be Joanna, just in an older body. I don't feel any different at 29 than I did when I was 15. Except maybe with a few gray hairs added. Does that make any sense? At any rate, I'm 29 now; the last year in my 20's. Jen made me a fantastic Oreo cake (chocolate cake with a pudding-ish, cream cheese-ish, cool-whip-type filling). It was like something out of a dream. :) Thanks, Jen! I also got this card from Josh and Noah. It made me smile, since Noah was reportedly the one who picked it out. How cute is THAT?

It didn't rain!! The Lord blessed us and answered our prayers that the rain would hold off so we could enjoy our first church picnic outside! Not only did it stay dry, but it was nice and overcast so it didn't get hot. Anyone who lives in Florida in the summer will appreciate the meaning of "nice and overcast." :) We had about 14 people total (I think I'm counting correctly) and we all enjoyed hamburgers, hot dogs, baked beans, pasta salad, chips, cherry pie, brownies, and cookies. There was no shortage of food, that's for sure! After dinner we played volleyball and talked until sunset and then packed it up and went home. Here are some photos of the evening, taken by Stan, one of the attenders. I'm sad to say that I discovered my camera's battery was DOA at the picnic. I'm just thankful someone was taking pictures. :) Our little quarterback Pastor Rowley (will I ever be able to call him that?) :) with Bill and Kelly, Matt and Jen's neighbors f...

Last night Josh and I went to Olive Garden for a night out. Matt and Jen graciously agreed to watch Noah for us, and we went out uninhibited and uninterrupted. It was great! I got dessert . And coffee . This is not normal for us, but it was such a treat!! It rained all evening, but that didn't spoil the night at all. It's good to be reminded every once in a while who you married and why you're friends. :) Tonight is the church picnic. We'll see how much picnicking goes on, since the weather forecast calls for rain. I'll try to take some pictures of that and load them up today or tomorrow.

I thought when I moved to Florida that I really loved the heat. Trouble is, it turns out I don't. :) I love that it's warm and pleasant here most of the year and that we can be comfortable all winter while the North is freezing. I love that Spring comes early (February!) and that Fall comes late (November!). Really, I love it for about 10 months of the year. It's July and August that are the problem. It'll melt you out there! Which is why, for the duration of the summer we try to stay indoors as often as possible, or if we're outdoors we try to be immersed in some sort of water (sprinkler, pool, ocean, hose, water balloons, jet ski rides...you get creative!). Our latest indoor diversions are watercolor painting and play-doh, which Noah calls "clay-doh." Since I am Noah's favorite playmate, I am cajoled into playing with these things and have been a little more daring in my play-doh creations than the familiar stand-bys of a snake or ball. Yesterday I m...

Confession: I am now addicted to Flylady. :) Have any of you ever heard of Flylady? I was talking with Jen the other day about housework, and she mentioned this website in passing. I took a peek and now I'm hooked! I've been trying to get some sort of workable routine going to save my house from succumbing to dirt and clutter. I won't tell you how long I would let my bathrooms go without cleaning them, until one day I'd walk in and they'd literally be screaming at me. Or we'd have company coming over and I'd have to take an entire day to get my house clean enough to not be embarrassed. I was getting sick of all the clutter and junk, and feeling like I never had time to clean. Flylady breaks it down for you and helps you get a handle on it and stay on top of house-cleaning a little bit every day. I love it!! Now my house is much cleaner (my bathrooms have been cleaned twice in the last 2 weeks!) and I feel like I have more time to do things, AND I'm a lo...

Here is a video of Noah, Josh, and me singing Noah's favorite bedtime song, "Holy, Holy, Holy." As to why this is his favorite song, my only guess is that it's repetitive enough to be easy to remember. Same thing goes for "There Is Power In The Blood," which is quickly climbing the charts in popularity. :) Noah doesn't look particularly happy in this video, due to the fact that it's right before bedtime and he was TIRED. He was snoozing 10 minutes after this video was taken!

I thought I'd take a minute to announce Noah's graduation from baby to Big Boy! Yes, those are underpants on our little man! No more diapers, forget the pull-ups, cloth training pants are SO over-with, we have moved full-time into regular big boy underpants. We've enjoyed more than 2 weeks straight with ZERO accidents! Night-time is still a different story, as Noah has yet to make it through the night dry, but at least in the day he stays clean and dry. I'm SO excited!!! P.S. Does anyone know when kids can stay dry all night?

One thing that surprises me each and every week is that new people continue to walk in the doors of Truth Baptist Church. This is only the Lord's doing, and it reminds me that He is still working in the hearts of people. Jen was saying the other day that she keeps mentally preparing herself for our attendance to be "just us," meaning the original 7 people we started with. I know just how she feels, because each Sunday (or Wednesday! We've even had visitors come out for Bible study on Wed nights) when someone else comes in, I say in my heart, "Praise the Lord!" It's so exciting to think He uses various ways to bring people to the services. By His grace He will continue to do so! We usually (can you say "usually" if you've only had 3 weeks of services?) have 20-some people in attendance on a Sunday morning, and 10-15 in the evenings. This Saturday we've planned our first church picnic! It will be held at a local park, and we'r...

Playpals is the new moms/kids group that Truth Baptist Church has started in effort to minister to the families in our church and provide times of fellowship for the moms and playtime for the kids. We initially planned to meet 2 Thursday mornings a month, but will change it to Saturday mornings instead due to the work schedules of the moms we are trying to reach. Because today's "field trip" was already on the calendar for a Thursday, we decided to keep it and just move the future ones to Saturdays. Today we went to Kids Kampus (side note: it bothers me when people name their establishments and spell their own names wrong on purpose. They think it's all cute, but it's really sort of distracting/fringing on irritating for those of us who are borderline OCD about spelling and grammar. I thought you'd like to know!). This was such a fun park for kids! It has tons of activities for them to do; everything from riding bikes to playscapes and a waterpark--all for fre...

I started our spiritual enrichment time for Noah this week, and our theme is Creation. I've told Noah several times over the last 2 days about God creating the whole world, which usually ends up with our naming everything we can think of that God created (mushrooms, bugs, clouds, etc. It's how a 2-year-old mind thinks!). Yesterday we made play-doh creations of our own and worked on memorizing the verse for the week, Genesis 1:1. Today we made the first page in our visual Creation book (thanks for that idea, Carrie!) as well as reviewed our memory verse. Here is a video of Noah reciting Genesis 1:1, and as an added bonus, you'll hear him recite Ephesians 6:1 (a previous memory verse) because he got confused. You'll see. Enjoy!

You'll just have to trust me when I say these pictures show SO MUCH progress over there at Cellar Cir. You may not see it, but I can remember the hours my dear husband has put in. Most of my time there thus far has been spent cleaning up after the "crew". :) We still have far to go, but we have come a long way too! Living room. We closed in the far wall (the office is behind that wall) and opened a wide doorway to the right into the dining room. We added recessed lighting and rewired the room. The Master Bath. Totally gutted, re-wired, drain in the floor moved, re-plumbed, added recessed lighting, new skylight, etc etc etc. View from kitchen into dining room. Added recessed lighting, re-wired, removed paneling, added insulation, new sheetrock, knocked down a wall, created 1/2 wall separating kitchen and dining room. Opposite end of same room; looking from fireplace through dining room into the kitchen. Added a skylight (the light part of the ceiling in the kit...

This is my latest find at a garage sale for Noah--a Firetruck Puzzle! Just to show you how big it is, I took a picture of Noah beside it. He loves it even though it's a little beyond his capabilities. But thankfully his mama loves puzzles, so he had help doing this puzzle over and over again yesterday. :) Today marked the second Sunday at Truth Baptist Church! I don't know how many people we had in the morning service (I was in the nursery), but when I came out at the end I saw a few new faces as well as some familiar ones. One couple told us they think the Lord is leading them to come to Truth as their new church home and plan to start attending all our services regularly, which is such a blessing! I definitely noticed a change in my perspective from last week. Last Sunday I think I was running on adrenaline and the excitement of the newness of the church. This week it's starting to set in how much work this will take (especially after reading Jen's blog!). But the Lo...

So Noah is 2 now. He can talk with the best of them and has a mind like a trap! Some examples: (this one is kind of embarrassing) If someone cuts me off while I'm driving or I have to stop faster than normal, Noah will shout out from the backseat, "You're KIDDIN' Me!" Hmmm...I wonder where he hears that from? I'll let the guilty party remain nameless because I don't want to embarrass myself. He can remember the words to every silly kid song he's heard ("The Wheels On The Bus" anyone?) In light of the fact that he can remember and does remember, and in light of the fact that I want to make sure that most of what he learns is about God or good things and not silly songs or what his mommy says in frustration at passing motorists, I have decided to revamp my schedule and allow for some one-on-one Enrichment Time with Noah. I figure there is no better time to start than now, when his mind is a veritable sponge. Why not soak up knowledge of God a...