Bullet Points to the Rescue

Blogging is one of those things that moves in cycles. As you may have noticed, I have been on a cycle of nothingness. I open the account. I hit "new post." I stare blankly at the page. I sign out. Unfortunately, there is no tracker for blog attempts which means you aren't even aware of my feeble and wasted, good intentions. All you know is that the little marker in the corner still said "April 29, 2009" -- a week and 1/2 real time. Forty years blog time.

Today, I am going to try to bullet point my way out of this slump. It will give you a picture of the past couple of weeks and give me the freedom to move past those events and on to fresh topics of blogdom. Here's hoping. =)

• We applied for passports for the three older kids. (No, we are not fleeing the country.) The boys' came back with no problem. Mamoune, however, needs further documentation that she made a lawful entry into the United States. Apparently, a Permanent Resident Visa issued by the Department of Homeland Security doesn't settle the issue. Crazy.

• This past Friday, I took two 13 year old girls from the neighborhood out to celebrate their recent birthdays. We had a fun time and talked about EVERYTHING you can imagine. I only hope they learned as much as I did. ;-)

• In about two weeks we will begin an in-house Wednesday night Bible study for twelve kids. (1st-4th grade) We'll be studying black heroes of the Christian faith and a couple of the moms have agreed to help out with crafts and such. We are very excited about this!

Addendum: The book that we are using for this study is by Dave & Neta Jackson. It is called Heroes in Black History (True Stories From the Lives of Christian Heroes) Each story is broken into four parts -an intro followed by three narratives. Each narrative has a scripture reference for some character trait exemplified by that person and three discussion questions. I could see it as a bedtime devotional, dinner conversation starter, short or long-term bible study. The set up makes it very versatile. We plan to do one historical figure per week and the children will choose one of the three verses to memorize for the next week's class. Also, there will be a craft time and I am mulling over ideas for a group project that will span the twelve week course: a freedom quilt or something along those lines. Anyway, the book alone is worth checking out!

• The kids crafted delightful homemade Mother's Day cards for me. The fact that they fought the whole time they worked only added to the sentiment. But the real present was a date night with my hubby! (Thanks to the Rego family) Nothing says "Happy Mother's Day" like pawning your kids off on someone else for four hours.