Special time for my sweet M.

My sweet little girl turned 11 on Sunday. I will have some pictures up of her birthday later.

First, however, I have some pictures of another exciting event that happened to her on Sunday. She was baptized!! I know that each religion has it's own views and ways of doing things, so I will very briefly tell you what this step means to us:

"We believe that baptism by immersion is a necessary response of faith to God’s free grace. It is not a work we do to earn God’s favor, but rather, a work God does for us."

We see this as one of the steps necessary to becoming a Christian - giving your life to God.

I am not posting this to start a theological argument or anything like that. I am only posting this because it is such a meaningful experience for us.

Anyway, here are some pictures taken on that day.

Stepping down into the water:


Daddy asking her if she is ready to be baptized:


The dunking:




Coming out of the water:




Look at the smile on Dad and M.'s face, priceless:

Cancer stinks . . . .

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate cancer? Tyler is young man who has fought cancer for years. His battle will soon be over.

There is an article in his home town newspaper, along with a picture gallery.

If you visit most of my favorite links, you will notice most of them are kids who have fought or are fighting cancer.

Please keep Tyler's family, and all families that are going through similar situations, in your prayers.

After you pray for them, say another prayer thanking God for each day that you have.

Vacation notes

**Notice - all pics were taken with my cell phone. I haven't yet figured out how to make the pics load any bigger without becoming too pixelated. If you know how to fix that, please let me know.**

On the 4th, my beautiful niece got married. She, naturally, was a beautiful bride!! Her new hubby seems like such a sweetie, and he seems to love my niece and her daughter great deal.

We then spent the night at my parents. The girls got to ride the 4-wheelers and play with my niece's daughter, which is always fun.

On Monday, we went to a theme park not too far from home. M. is a roller coaster/thrill ride fanatic. On one roller coaster, J. rode with one of her arms across M.'s chest because M. rode with her arms up in the air. J. was determined to keep her from falling out.

On Tuesday, we went to my father-in-law's house. He and his wife were great hosts. We went to see Wall-e while we were there. We also got to see some great mountain views:

On Wednesday, we headed up to the mountains to my parents cabin. M. found a baby bird that had fell out of it's nest:
It actually let her pick it up and hold it. We made it a little nest in a bowl to keep it warm and safe while we figured out what to do with it. We called a good friends of ours, SLK, who not only was a forester, but also makes a habit out of rescuing animals. We found out that the mommy bird would come back for it. We followed her instructions and the mommy did come and find it. She seemed so excited, as did the little baby.

We rode 4-wheelers a lot and walked down to the waterfall. We also went fun-yakking. We managed to get sunburned. Woo-hoo!

We had a lot of fun, but we are now back to reality. At the beginning of summer, we always think that we have all kinds of time to get things done, then, before you know it, summer is almost over and we are just getting started.

I know this was not an exciting post for everyone, but it will document our trip so that we can come back and remember it later.

I hope to post more pictures soon.

By the way, see that word below? The one that says "comments?" Please click on it an let me know you were here. I see the hit counter go up, but not many comments. Sniff, sniff.