100 Day and a Women's Retreat

This week we had 100 Day!  We've actually done school more than 100 days, but Lyla's 100 chart didn't get started until 2 weeks or so into school.  Consequently we didn't exactly celebrate 100 days of school, but that Lyla got to the number 100 on her chart.  She's been putting a straw in her 100 cup everyday for 100 days and finally we filled it to 100.  Of course, Gwyn and Celee wanted to do 100 day activities too so we had a 100 Day Party.  We counted out 100 cheerios, made a 100 paperclip chain, made 100 Day glasses, and 100 Day crowns.  We times ourselves to see how many of certain things we could do in 100 seconds.  100 seconds is longer than I thought it would be!  The girls drew pictures of what they think they'll look like when they're 100 years old.  I even found a neat-o math activity for Gwyn and Celee all centered around the number 100.  They kept trying to get me to make 100 cookies, but I had to draw the line somewhere.

I got to go to the Women of Grace Retreat this weekend in Gettysburg, PA.  It was a much-needed time to focus on God and what he's doing and wants me to do.  Lisa Whittle was the speaker and her message about how God wants us to thrive was very timely for me.  The worship music was great!  The workshops were all poignant; I even got a new perspective on Nehemiah's story of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem that was particularly meaningful to me.  I ate way too much good food!  It's nice to be pals with self-confessed foodies who steered us to great food all weekend when we weren't eating the yummy food at the retreat.  I kept being surprised by seeing people I know, not from church.  It is a small world.  It doesn't seem like we've been in Baltimore long enough to keep running into people I know, but I do!  And it's nice.  I got to hang out a lot with some of the ladies from our small group.  I must say that Jason and I, and the girls, have been truly blessed by these women and their families inviting us into their circle and making us really feel a part of their "house church."  I came away from the weekend overwhelmed by how sweet God is.  I just kept getting a feeling throughout the worship services like when someone gives you a "happy."  I don't know if people outside of the South call it that, but when a friend gives you a little gift or token for no particular reason I've always called it a Happy.  That's what God gave me many times this weekend.  Little Happies, which just kept reinforcing to me that God does see me, He cares for me, and He desires me to be well.

 A big Happy God gave us this weekend is also that we now have a contract on our house in Illinois!  Yay!  We don't close until May, but it is so nice to have that at least scheduled.  Barring anything going wrong with inspections or banks, we will soon be able to stop worrying about paying rent on top of the mortgage!  As the girls said, "Then we can do stuff!"  In other news, the girls had a busy time this weekend, with each girl needing to be more places than usual and with Jason in charge of it all.  He did good!  He's a keeper!  ;)  I did get to go to Celee's girl scout meeting when I got back home from the retreat.  She is so funny!  They were making paper crowns because they are studying England for World Thinking Day (I know technically that was Feb.22nd, but here they aren't celebrating it until late in March).  They also colored pictures of Queen Elizabeth.  So Celee decided to cut Elizabeth's face out and attach it to her crown so she could impersonate the Queen.  And of course this started something, so a lot of the other girls started putting poor Queen Elizabeth's face on their own too.

I think they get all this silliness from their daddy, who decided we needed to all arm wrestle after dinner tonight.  As if it wasn't enough with Jason and me holding the girls' elbows down so they'd do it right.  He decided to arm wrestle for Lyla by putting his arm out the arm of her shirt.  She was not amused.  And that wasn't enough.  Then she put her arms out of his hoodie and this is the picture we all left the arm wrestling match with.