{Sunday}

Today was the move up day in church, so only Hannah went with us to the early service, Grace and Bethany stayed home and worked on the cupcakes for a party at Bethany’s work (in the afternoon.) The message today was on the book of Job. I have always thought of the book as a story of ‘why do the righteous suffer?’ because Job obviously suffers and he is righteous. But, the speaker asked us to look past that question and answer this one – why are the righteous righteous? There are three parts to that, according to Bernard of Clairvaux. The first is that we love God for our own sake. That is, we love God because in doing so we depend on Him and are grateful for Him, but we also love Him because of the blessings He gives. This is a dangerous place to stay because when disaster hits one can start to wonder if loving God is really so great if He doesn’t protect us from harm just because we love Him. The second part is that we mature and realize that loving God is done because He is worthy of our love, it’s not for our sake that we love Him, it’s for His sake. The third part is the hardest – we love ourselves and in doing so love God because we show that He created something worthy of love. I can see the first one, people realize they need God, they love Him and expect blessings. I can see the second, we love God because He is, just is. The third one I had really never thought of, but most people don’t love themselves and don’t think they are worthy of love. But, God created you in His image, He made you out of love, therefore you are loved and are worthy of love and loving yourself is a form of praise to the One who created you.

We finished up the cupcakes when the girls got home – campfire carrot cupcakes.

We didn’t have to make anything special, but I wanted to do something fun. Everyone liked them and they were easy to make (we melted red and orange starburst to make the flames.) After the party we went to pick up Grandma. Her nephew and niece had sent over flowers for her birthday.

They wrote Happy Birthday on the board in the kitchen so everyone knew it was her 100th.

We took her out to Romano’s for an early dinner. She got 16 birthday cards in the mail and read of few of them at the restaurant.

We toasted (yes, she drinks moscato wine when we go out or at our house, but they don’t keep wine at her house.)

We sang ‘Happy Birthday’ and ate the rest of the cupcakes (hey, she got her coconut cake at the other party.)

She wanted to shop at the bookstore, so we went by there after dinner, then we dropped her back at her place. We weren’t very far down the rode when James got an unknown caller call, it was Joel! He earned a 5 minute phone call! We talked, yes he’s gotten our letters. The drill instructors are nicer, they got to watch 3 movies on Memorial Day and had a special dinner that day too. He’s been working with rifles and got issued an M-16. Five minutes flew by and Hannah cried the whole time. It was nice to hear from him, he sounded great. That ended the day on a high note.

The week – hiking, creativity club, park day, Soles for Souls meeting, tiny tin dioramas, more hiking, birthday pictures, Grace’s birthday, Bitsy stage and a small friend BBQ/party for Grace.