praying them home

sunday afternoon:
if you keep up with world news, you may have heard about the very current conflict in the republic of georgia. family friends are currently part of a small team there on a missions trip and they are very close to the conflict. you can see a glimpse of the last few days via ellie's blog. currently, they are hopeful that the airport will be open for them to fly to amsterdam today at 8 pm cst (monday, 5 am in georgia). if it is closed, they will head back to catch the last convoy out to armenia 7 hours later.

sunday evening:
update: it seems they are on their way home!

monday morning:
the team didn't quite get out when i posted last night's update. the delay was at the tbilisi airport (bombs dropping on or near the airport forcing them to deplane, but then replaning later on), but now the team is on their way home. an email came in this morning from them while on layover in amsterdam! ellie's blog has the email posted.

shower and birthday fun

whew! saturday was a busy day! here lately, my saturdays have consisted of pure laziness, i'm ashamed to admit. but this past saturday was quite different. in fact, i had 4 invitations for saturday night! what a social calendar, i have. ha. anyway, saturday morning started off early when i got up to make watermelon fruit bowls for kelsey's linens and lace bridal shower. **if you click on the photos, you can see them much larger.**

after a quick shower, i headed over to mimi's house to help set up the brunch.

we had a fun time with all the ladies and, of course, eating. :) below, the bride-to-be with the hostesses -- mimi, myself, kelsey, and shelby.

i headed home from there and watched a bit of the olympics and took a quick nap. i had to rest up, saturday was also amanda's birthday! we headed down to the galleria area (i hadn't been there in years!) and went to the fox sports grill for dinner with several friends. great food and of course the important thing was having the texans game on one tv screen and the astros game on another. and, actually, i caught michael phelps winning his first gold medal (and shattering the world record for the event) of the 2008 olympics on a third screen! i looked up just in time!

here's amanda about to enjoy her birthday sundae. see that green envelope sitting next to her? that would be from me: a birthday card containing tickets to the maroon 5 and counting crows concert!! woohoo! the fun thing about that gift is that i get to benefit from it also! :) ulterior motives... what?


after dinner, amanda, sherry,and i headed over to the movie theatre to watch mamma mia. it was soooo good. i was even able to get past my aversion to meryl streep, it was so great! being in the galleria area still and at 10:45, we had some interesting people watching to do, as well. ;)

it was a great saturday. and a pretty good way to end my last weekend before i head back to staff development. i'll be at work wednesday and friday, though our official first day is the 18th. the kiddos return on the 25th.

so annoyed...

i love the cool little gadget that allows me to list the blogs i read and gives me updates on their last posting. saves me from stalking everyone -- now i know when a new post is up at just a glance. but, there is one blog that refuses to link properly. i have tried and tried and tried to get it to post to the thompsons and it won't!! ugh. i give up. see, it works here in this blog, but if you click on my bloglist on the right side... it won't link! and, yes, i'm using the exact same text for both links. ;)

please pray!! (update july 22)

please pray for my friends, steph and kyle, and their baby girl suzie. suzie was born 3 months early friday, july 18th. she is currently in NICU at a hospital far enough away from home that steph and kyle were given a room in the ronald mcdonald house across the street. their faith through this is truly inspiring...

tony snow

this makes me sad.

www.foxnews.com

praise God!!

it's a girl!!

smoke on the mountain

i love the ad players. i've been to a small number of performances: Driving Miss Daisy, Pride and Prejudice, and The Heiress. but there have been so many more that i have wanted to go to. i always drool over the website, but usually miss out. sometimes i just suck it up and purchase a couple tickets and decide that someone will go with me if i beg enough. :)

one particular performance that my mom heard about was Smoke on the Mountain Homecoming. it's the third installment of the sanders family taking place in 1945 at mt. pleasant baptist church. the sanders family reunites for a bluegrass gospel singing when the son takes over the pulpit for his brother-in-law.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adplayers/2594941204/sizes/l/

so for mother's day, i bought the two tickets and then presented her with a little promotional poster so that she would have something to open. she actually cried. because for some reason (that she still clings to, no matter what i say), she thought that this performance was over christmas and i had let us miss going at all. anyway, last night was the night. we had been talking about chinese food the day before so on amanda's recommendation we went to kim son. i had the best lemon chicken and the second best vegetable fried rice ever. unfortunately we didn't get to linger and enjoy an appetizer or dessert. we had a little traffic and accident bottleneck on both 290 and 610 (gotta love houston traffic, ugh.). anyway, i still highly recommend kim son. and the prices were very reasonable for great food in downtown houston.

it was a really fun night and we really enjoyed the ad players interpretation of smoke on the mountain. i just wish we could have seen the first two installments that have run over the past years. maybe they will bring them back. the performance was filled with old baptist hymns that we were singing along with. sometimes even out loud when the characters would pull the "congregation" (the audience) into their performance. there was plenty of laughing and also a lot of Biblical truth as the characters would step forward and tell personal testimonies.

if you have never been to the ad players (and you're one of my houston readers), GO!! you won't regret it. smoke on the mountain runs through august 31. who knows, you just might see my mom and i there again. ;) the 2008 / 2009 season was printed in our program last night, though it doesn't seem to be on the website yet. there are several great performances coming up. John, His Story and the houston premeire of Last Train to Nibroc are two of the performances for the season. also for the kiddos -- check out the children's theater, currently performing Samson.