Breathing again

Sorry it's been forever since I've been in the blog world. Here's what's been going on:

John went to the Ministry Summit at ACU the weekend after Easter. The kids and I got to tag along for a weekend out of Tyler. It was nice. On our way back, we stopped at the Ft. Worth zoo ... and we have no pictures to prove it! I had left my camera at home. We stopped in Dallas for dinner and met up with Dad and Maria at PF Chang's--YUMMY! What? Of COURSE we had the Great Wall of Chocolate ... are you kidding?!

The Tuesday and Wednesday after that I was in charge of all the food for the biggest school event at Johnathan's preschool (Little People's School), Rodeo Roundup. It started out a few years ago as your basic cowboy day where everyone dresses up as cowboys, but it has grown to an all day event including games, a hayride, face painting, a petting zoo, an inflatable slide and all sorts of decorations. I was also helping with decorations in addition to my food responsibilities. All in all it was huge success and the kids had a great time. The photographer even offered to take Kalleigh's picture!

That Tuesday night, I went to a crop and got stopped for speeding on the way there! I was actually on the phone with Mom when I saw the lights behind me! Amazingly, he only gave me a warning. I knew right then what I would be scrapping that night:

(The arrow points to the part that says, "This is a warning only.")

This past Saturday was full, but great. It started with me being wide awake at 6 am, so I went jogging. By nine, I was loaded up and going out to ride Gallant, which I did until noon. Johnathan had a b-day party to go to from 1:30 - 3. Then we had a rehearsal for a singing gig coming up, oh right, tonight. Then I took my family home and came back up to the church building to help decorate the gym for the youth auction because the decorating committee was short a few hands. Stayed there until about 10:30 when I remembered I still needed to go to Wal-Mart to get cream cheese (among other things), which I needed to make the cream cheese frosting for the cake I had to make the next day. Got home just before midnight and was still just wired. I checked email, read blogs and then crashed around 1 am. Nuts. Oh my! I just realized that I totally missed Mamaw's birthday. I am so sorry, Mamaw!

Sunday evening was the youth auction, which consists of basically three different auctions: the dessert auction (a tradition and a favorite), the silent auction and the live auction. I made that cake (triple layer strawberry cake with strawberry cream cheese frosting, complements of the Cake Mix Doctor) for the dessert auction. Then a friend and I teamed up and donated a complete 12 x 12 scrapbook of any theme. Meaning, the lady who bought it is going to give us a bunch of her pictures and we're going to make an album for her. I think it will be fun! Anyway, at the auction, I helped register people, taking their information and assigning them numbers with which to bid. It was a good evening and the youth raised close to $45,000!

Tonight is that singing gig I referred to earlier. Our group of eight that has been singing together a few weeks is singing a variety of star-themed songs--mostly vocal jazz arrangements--to fit with the evening's theme. Like last time, the songs are hard, but absolutely beautiful!

Tomorrow I'll be getting ready for the ladies' retreat this weekend. I'm just in charge of games, so that shouldn't be too hard. We're headed to Frisco. It will be the first ladies' retreat for Glenwood in, I think, three years! Hopefully, I can help with making it a more regular event.

Nothing earth-shattering; just life. And I'm loving it!