The finished product

I thought I'd brag about my flowerbeds and how they matured this season. Not that I did anything special. We had hot days in June when it was not looking good and then the rest of the summer was unusually cool & rainy. I am excited to think that next spring it won't take quite so much work since I'll have some established vegetation. But before I get ahead of myself, here are pictures of how my garden grew.
The back bed is full of hostas, coleus, impatiens, grasses and 2 potted ferns.
The side bed is where I have a little sun for flowers. The daises and black-eyed susans did pretty well. As did the dahlias.

More impatiens grace the patio.

The begonias out front finally started getting big in August.

My front door flowerbed - dwarf lamb's ear, dusty miller, begonias, and dwarf golden barberry shurbs.

Looks like we'll get our first frost this week so all the pretty will start dying away. But I have been happy at the progress made this growing season.

Eat your heart out, Martha Stewart!

So I might have mentioned to a few, or 15, of you that I had some foundation work done this spring. It was not the fun way I had anticipated spending that money, but keeping the house from falling apart ended up trumping any other plans. The southeast corner was where they had to do the majority of the work. It left some lovely cracks in the bedroom at that corner of the house. These are the 2 biggest cracks. And yes, that one ran up into the ceiling.

My house has the lovely popcorn & glitter ceiling that I hate. Since the crack was into the ceiling, I decided to finally tackle removing the popcorn. Afterall it's only a 10x10-ish sq foot room. It's not hard, it's just labor-intensive and MESSY!! That was not a fun day. (BTW, if you ever decide to take down a popcorn ceiling, always have it tested for asbestos first. Though I highly recommend hiring the job out if you are considering removing your popcorn ceilings. It's not fun.) I removed it and did the oh-so-fun cleanup then waited about a month to have any motivation to be in the room again. After sanding down the ceiling and creating another giant mess to clean up, I started in on the patching work. Due to the size of the cracks, I used mesh tape to first cover them.
Then I glopped on, I mean, expertly applied drywall compound.

Then came sanding, another big cleanup, priming, and painting. I primed & painted the ceiling too. I was pretty happy I had just enough primer & white paint in the paint can stash in the basement to finish the job without buying any more. I also had left over paint for the wall color from when I painted the room about a year & a half ago. And here is the finished product. The patch jobs may not be the most professional, but it's done. I was quite proud of my home-owner skills. I may have watched too much HGTV in my time, but it's come in handy.

Voila!

Labor Day in Colorado

I was invited to join friends for a few days on their vacation in Colorado. It took me about 2 minutes to decide I could figure out a way to make it work. So I joined Christy & Michael for Labor Day weekend in Avon, CO. My flight arrived several hours before theirs on Saturday, so I got my rental car and headed out to Dillon for some shopping. Then I went to Vail. Gourmet on Gore was in full swing - a food & wine festival, so I walked around and had some fun people watching. We got settled into the condo in Avon that evening.

Sunday was a scenic drive on Highway 24 to Colorado Springs with many stops for picture taking. Some of the aspen trees were just beginning to turn their brillian yellow color. We started a hike at The Crags, but it began to thunder & rain so we had to turn back.

Monday we took a local's recommendation for a hike. We drove into Glenwood Canyon. That is an amazing spot if you ever have the opportunity to experience it. We hiked up Hanging Lake Trail. It was steep & rocky with a beautiful mountain stream flowing beside the trail most of the way up. There were gorgeous moss-covered waterfalls near the top of the trail. Hanging Lake is a jewel of a spot - a crystal clear mountain lake near the top of the canyon. It was an awesome hike!

El Salvador

Where to even begin...

On July 25, a team of 15 flew from Wichita to San Salvador, El Salvador. Our mission was to assist Iglesia Biblica de Elohim in Santa Ana in any way we could for the week. That afternoon, after settling into our hotel, we were taken to the church to meet the congregation and have dinner. Papusas are a salvadorian nation food. It is a thick flour tortilla around refried beans and cheese that is grilled on a flat top. I had heard many stories of papusas from the team that came 3 years ago, so I was interested to try them. They were tasty. We had lots of beams, rice, chicken, plantains, and tortillas during the week. There were several church ladies who worked hard to make our lunches and dinners every day. They even taught us how to make tortillas.

Sunday we toured Tamazul, a Mayan ruin. That evening we went to the church service at Elohim. The congregation was so welcoming and loving to every one of us. Monday we started our work days. We painted some intricate ironwork and started digging a retaining wall. The retaining wall was hard work since it was being dug by hand with shovels and pick axes. It took us 3 days but we got that wall dug and moved tons of dirt by wheelbarrow. We worked alongside Salvadorians who volunteered at the church. And there was always a number of children running around and angling for our attention. We played volleyball and soccer with them as well as just hanging out while attempting to communicate in broken Spanish. We had one team member who was fluent in Spanish and others who got along in it decently.

Tuesday was Kids' Day. We had a morning and afternoon session. We organized into 4 teams by age group and then rotated through 4 activity stations (singing, tug-o-war & shark, face painting, and salvation bead bracelets). It's organized chaos. It was lots of fun. Sara & I were team leaders with the 3-5 year olds during both sessions. At the end we handed out candy & stickers to each child. About 200 kids were involved during the day.

Wednesday morning they took us on a hike to the top of Montana Esperanza (Hope Mountain) which is behind the church property. One of our team members has prosthetic legs. They weren't going to leave Dave behind, so they rigged up a chair in order to carry him up the mountain. When the path was too steep or narrow, Walter (aka Superman) carried Dave on his shoulders. It was an amazing act of love that touched us all. During the climb, we were treated to amazing views. Witnessed how they farm corn and beans on the side of the mountain as well. Thursday during the day we were taken in small groups to visit some of the homes in the area surrounding the church. It is a very poor area. The shacks are made of brick, wood, tin, and whatever else they can find to make a shelter out of . They do ahve electricity but no running water. The home I visited was one room with 2 double beds and not much else in which a family of 5 lived. It was typical of the area.

We attended church services Wednesday night. And they ahd a goodbye feista for us on Thursday. I have never been hugged that much in such a short time span. Friday we headed to a resort on the beach for our R&R time. It was beautiful. We were across the street from the Pacific Ocean. Overall it was a great time there. Saturday afternoon five of us were playing in the waves and got sucked out by a heavy undertow. Three of them were able to make it back on their own, but myself and another girl had to be rescued by a lifeguard. It was a very scary situation but God certainly had His hand on us.

And there you have a brie f accounting of the trip. So many stories of a wonderful week and a great team who decided to take a week's vacation to serve the Lord in El Salvador.

Philippians 1:6 - He who began a good work in you will be faithful to see it to completion.

Coming Attractions

I returned Sunday night from 9 days in El Salvador on a missions trip. I am still catching up from being gone and processing all that happened on the trip. I promise a new blog post soon with pictures of the amazing adventure.

Weekend in Tennessee

I flew down to Tennessee to get my hands on my new nephew, Jack. He's a month old now. He's such a cute little boy with big blue eyes and tons of blonde hair. My job for the weekend was to help Hannah out by holding Jack a lot and playing with Marshall. Perfect! I love being an aunt and savor every moment I get with my boys. I arrived late Thursday night. Friday morning I went into Marshall's room to get him out of bed and was greeted by a smile and "Aunt Jennifer! I was wondering if you were coming to visit me." He is 3 now and such a goofy, smart boy. You never know what he's going to say and he usually makes you laugh. We played a lot and had a picnic snack in the yard.

"I want to hold my brother." He did a good job. He's very good with Jack and seems to be making the adjustment to being a big brother quite well. I even got to see my parents for an hour. Dad drove down to drop Mom off for a week. Jack looks so much like Grandpa. He was fussing a little bit but as soon as Grandpa held him, he calmed down and went to sleep.

Is this heaven...no it's Kansas

I spent last weekend in Lawrence. It was great to get some time with my family since I hadn't been home since Easter. JT loves the water. He & Grandma often have special dates at the aquatic center. They have a large kids pool. He is a little fish. We babysat JT on Friday night since it was Sharon & David's 10th wedding anniversary. I got to go along to the pool with JT & Grandma. He is becoming quite the good little swimmer. He could swim the length of the pool on his back, and can swim well underwater for as long as he can hold his breath. He has a little trouble with going forward on his stomach with is head out of the water still. But he amazed us - he's 4.5 years old! And he's getting quite independent. We had fun hanging out together.

One of the reasons I made the trip to Lawrence was because there was a Kansas City Youth For Christ reunion at Circle-C Ranch on Saturday night. It saw something that started with people getting connected on Facebook and it snowballed. It was open to anyone who had ever been involved with any facet of KCYFC over it's 66 years. By Friday afternoon, 650 people had RSVP'd. The ministry's name is now YouthFront and the camp is called YouthFront West. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. Many made the observation that we were getting a small taste of heaven - all the joy at see old friends and getting to fellowship with each other. It was incredible and they promised to do it again in a few years.
Vidy Metsker spoke for a few minutes. Vidy & Dr. Al started the ministry in 1943 a week before their wedding. I had the priviledge of meeting Dr. Al when I was involved in KCYFC. He passed away 16 years ago but Vidy is still going strong at 85. I am reading her book, "God Did It!", and enjoying learning about the way the ministry started.
I got to see several old friends and catch up with them- especially Lisa & Todd Reed. When I was in high school, they were at KU and were leaders with our YFC club. I've had the priviledge to stay in touch with them over the years but hadn't actually seen them in awhile.

It was great to see that the ranch carpet is still in the chapel. This beauty carpets both L-Bar-C & Circle-C's chapels. It's a lovely shag that was donated when they were building the camps. It still looks the same after close to 30 years. You can't understand the love affair we have with ranch carpet until you have experienced. But it's a think of beauty.

It was a great weekend - time with the family and seeing old friends at the reunion.

I pray you have a wonderful 4th of July as you celebrate the good old US of A and the independence we have because of the faith of our founding fathers.