Here are a few of the things we’ve been doing this week.

Last Sunday afternoon we went biking. (During the summer, we can bike in the evenings, but now it gets dark too early.) Biking around town does several things: it helps me get exercise, we get more familiar with the houses and streets, and we often meet people. Will and I both have baby seats on our bikes so Desiree and Keane can go too. Elijah and Stuart have no problem whizzing along on their bikes!

One evening we grilled steaks in our back yard. We don’t have a grill, so we cook the old-fashioned way, over a little fire.

I baked some sourdough bread.

I got a box in the mail from my mom for my birthday!

The children made a house out of blankets. I remember doing the same thing as a child!

Desiree’s laughter was enough to make me start laughing, too!

This morning, Will taught children’s church at a church in town. He does it once a month. The job fell in his lap, and he loves it. Every month Will asks God for a message, and God is always faithful to give one.

A few more highlights that I don’t have pictures for:

Yesterday I spent a lovely day with the ladies from my Hutchinson church. “Rest” was the theme of our little retreat, a very appropriate focus for me. One of my friends gave up her precious solitude time to listen to me talk. She patiently sat with me in my pain and confusion. I couldn’t even make sense of my thoughts, but she listened anyway, and prayed for me. (Thank you, Andrea!)

Last night Will’s brother Levi and his family brought pizza over. (So sweet of them–they live an hour’s drive away!) We had fun with them, and of course ended the evening by praying together. That is something we especially enjoy doing with them.

This morning we attended the last session of our four-week study with some young families in town. The DVD showed a man from Rwanda telling the story of his life as a starving child in a war zone, and how as an adult he faced his painful memories to return to help other children in the same conditions he grew up in. It was a gut-wrenching story. I don’t know what to do with it all–what can I do about the terrible physical and spiritual poverty in the world?

After church, we went to the home of a family whose baby I will help deliver in the next week or so, Lord willing. We ate lunch with them and another family, and even though we hadn’t met them before, we had a long, nourishing spiritual conversation.

Tonight we are at home, lounging lazily, crunching popcorn and sipping pear cider. I just might go find a book and a blanket now…