Excuses, excuses...

This nice blog I read sometimes by a guy named Jeremy Riley featured this paragraph recently: 

Please pardon the lack of posts, I was out and about at a youth program back East and writing quickly jumps to the bottom of the list at a summer camp.  While I was there, I had the distinct privilege to share stories, laughs, activities, and the good news of Christ with middle and high school students for nearly a month.

Bill onboard the camp bus

And I wish I had a great reason like that for all my recent blog shenanigans (or lack thereof): that is, photo-heavy posts, reposts, but mostly not posting at all. But, honestly, I’ve really no excuse. It’s just busy around here. And not with good deeds like working at the soup kitchen or teaching at youth camp like our Jeremy. 

Just why are we so busy? Well… Bill has been in summer camp and for some reason that makes it extra busy around here. Camp pick-up is after 5pm Monday through Friday, which has us running home to make dinner or making a mad dash to a shoe-horned-in guitar lesson... and every other week the camp has a “Family Fun Night,” for which I traditionally make brownies. 

The Men in Kilts – no peeking!

We went to the Whitewater Center in Charlotte, where, unbelievably, the guy who was behind me in the queue for the MegaZipline was one of our neighbors on Pine Cone Drive in Oxford back in the day! We had the Men in Kilts clean out our gutters. It was awesome, but was it like a reverse Hooters? I don't know. I loved it, though! Still trying to get Tom into a kilt! We did the neighborhood 4th of July parade and hosted a family cookout (for which Grace and I scrubbed the house down). 

I'm working with my awesome brothers and sisters and my mom on moving her into the swanky Carolina Meadows. We're trying to strengthen Bill's grasp of Spanish for the coming school year. And in general, we work around the house, run errands, go to shows and to baseball games, have playdates and dinners out. 

Stuffed zucchini... ready to get baked!

And then there’s the farm share. That’s where you get weekly box of fresh veg from a local farm. Now, I’m not a natural cook, so lots of my thought and energy goes into figuring out how to fix all the zucchinis and such. I’ve prepared sautéed zucchini, steamed zucchini, roasted zucchini with tomatoes and onions, stuffed zucchini (stuffing makes anything delicious!), and zucchini bread like my grandmother used to make. It tasted like spice cake but Bill still refused to eat it because it had green flecks in it. 

We’ve had salads as big as your head made from a dozen different raw plants, and I’ve made roasting my go-to cooking method… roasting any and all combinations of produce – potatoes and leeks being the most successful so far. 

Nothing says Happy Birthday America
like kids in a parade!

Plus, I do have work to do… although I could do more. Really. If you know anyone who needs help with graphic design, writing, etc., I’m available. In the meantime, I expend a lot of energy looking for ways to make money and trying not to freak out about the lack of it. God provides – I know He does… It’s hard to wait, though.

That said, I actually DID work on a quite long post about the Psalms, which I'm STILL reading of a morning... but it grew unwieldy, and took no real shape. One of my favorite paragraphs from it went like this:

Psalm 101 begins like so many Psalms do... with praise! Can’t argue with that, right? But then, it starts to get freaky. David, who is named as the author, talks about how perfect he’s going to be – how he’s not even going to look at anything or anyone evil. All the stuff evil people do? Slander? Pride? Deceit? He HATES that crap.

Then I went on to say that 

“...resolving to steer clear of “bad” people… well, this goes against every fiber of my evangelistic being. Don’t the “wicked” need to hear about God? More than anyone! Does a sick man need a doctor? Evangelism is a raison d’etre I take both quite lightly and extremely seriously. I mean, how can I be salt if I’m not let near the food? Or light if I stay shut up in … a room full of other lights? Do you think Paul was worried about shunning evildoers when he climbed Mars Hill and said his piece?”

And really, the rest of it was just rambling. You know how I can get. Blah blah blah… the only other funny thing I had in it was this clip from Craig Ferguson. I love it because 1. I love Craig Ferguson, 2. I love hearing him mock Hollywood peoples’ fondness for plastic surgery and kale, and 3. I was proud that I learned how to add a video to my blog!

Anyway, that’s what’s happening over here. Not sharing the gospel with teens at summer camp or stuff like that…