I Think I Use The Word Wonderful Too Much In This Post...

Wow! Where has the time gone?!?! Our snakes are settled in quite well...in fact it will be feeding time here in the next week or so...and summer is progressing nicely for the Brown Clan. Am I allowed to call us a clan? I don't know if we are Irish...isn't Clan an Irish kind of thing? Anywho...we are doing great!

Yesterday was an awesome day of worship for me. We had a great church service at Freedom Fellowship and God was definitely there with us. The music was fabulous, Cliff's preaching was great and my ADD didn't kick in and so I paid attention the WHOLE time!! BTW, Ben Patat is the closest thing to Goliath that I can imagine, except he is the nicest guy you could ever meet...not a mean giant...a nice giant! The VBS (or VB and S and Logan calls it) video turned out awesome-big props to Julie and Keith for that!-and it was an all around great morning! Then we celebrated Mimi and Beba's birthday-you guessed it-by eating Mexican-are you surprised? :o) complete with a cake from Brusters-yum.

Then it was off for more worship at Heritage Baptist Church in Greenville. Remember-we were there a few weeks ago? Well, Richie, Steven, Mark, Carla, Kent and Rhett rocked again! We had more people from Freedom there to share in the experience and it was awesome! We even were able to witness and pray for someone being saved and giving their life to Jesus! Woo Hoo! That's good stuff right there!! I took a couple of pictures, but I didn't want to use my flash and everyone was moving around so they came out blurry. I took 2 videos. The first one is shorter and is everyone singing How Wonderful, How Marvelous.







The second video is longer and is of them singing my new favorite song, God of This City. It's one of the things that inspired me to get off my butt and start giving back to the community, but more on that in a minute.

So, needless to say, it was a WONDERFUL, worship filled day!! We ate with friends after the church service and didn't get home til about 10pm. It was a long day after leaving the house at 8:30am! We are going back to Heritage September 7th so I'll remind you when we get closer-if you'd like to come I know you will be blessed. The people of the church are so loving and really are doing amazing things in their community. A community that needs God is seeing Him and seeing Him work through Heritage. No doubt.

The Boys and I have helped with Meals on Wheels 3 times now with our 4th time coming up this Thursday. We love it! We make pictures to deliver with the meals and so one child takes the meal, one takes the milk and one takes the picture. It works out perfectly!! The Boys have really taken to our project and enjoy talking to the people and sharing their smiles. I am thinking of getting Logi's hair cut though. So many of the people think that he is a girl with his blond curls!! I don't mind correcting them, but it's getting Logan to be polite when they say "What a beautiful little girl" that is worrying me! Maybe we'll just wear a ball cap every time we make out rounds! Many of you have expressed concern for our safety and although I am still very careful and aware of our surroundings, we are just fine. I haven't felt threatened at all and have a magnet that I stick on my Mommymobile letting everyone know that we are delivering meals. Not that a rival gangster would be driving a minivan with Terrific Kid magnet on it, but you never know! :o)

So there is the update on project number one. Project number two has started off slowly. We are collecting children's clothes for the closet at Greer Community Ministries so kids can come pick out clothes to start school. I have had lots of people tell me that they have clothes for me so now I just have to get them! I''ll get Nadine's this week and I think Missy's too so next week at church I'll have 2 bunches, 3 counting mine! Let me know if you have clothes and I'll come get them from you or you can bring them to church or drop them off at my house. Whatever I can do, just let me know! I'm getting clothes through August 3rd. That will give them time to get the clothes sorted and distributed before school starts.

Also, my church is having their 2nd annual Back to School Bash Sunday, August 10th from 5-7pm at Century B Park (Kids Planet). We are collecting school supplies and are giving out free backpacks filled with what kids need to start school. So if you want to bring clothes AND school supplies...feel free!! We need pencils, glue sticks, wide ruled notebook paper and wide ruled 1 subject notebooks. There was a huge turnout for this event last year and we had backpacks left over, so this year we want more families to come!! There will be food and fun and it's all free! Let me know if you need more info or if you want to help and by george, you can help!!

The weather was a little iffy last week with the threat of rain, but we were able to hold our VBS at Lake Robinson without getting TOO wet! I have posted pictures on my FaceBook page so if you want to sign up and ask me to be your friend on there you can see them. Here are two of my favorite pictures from that week.

Here is Logan and Nancy...

...and the sugar high Brown Boys!

We had a great time and had over 200 people (children and adults) there each night! It was wonderful!! This was our 3rd year holding it at the Lake and the kids love it!

We had two birthday parties this weekend. Friday we went to Summer's party. She had a huge waterslide brought in so the Boys loved playing on that! Here is a picture of Garett...I think he caught the most air on it!

Here's Harry with Summer's sister Brooke...

......and then here are the Boys drying off.

We had a great time and ended up not leaving til around 11pm...but we weren't the last to leave so I didn't feel bad about how long we stayed!! It was fun to hang out with Mark and Melissa and Ben and Crystal while the kids all played. Thank you, Ben and Crystal, for a super fun afternoon/night!

Saturday we had Camden's party at the pool!! I didn't have the camera, but I did get this video of Reece, Cody and Chaz diving and Summer, Lauren, Logi, Garett and Camden playing!

And here's a great picture of Logi, Lauren and Garett from my phone.

We had fun there and I got to hang out with the Moms while Rhett had all kinds of practices for Sunday. He did get to come for a little bit at the end and see the Boys swim and play in the pool. Thank you, Alison and Alan, for inviting us to come play and hang out with you!!

Last week we went off with Nadine, Katelyn and Luke. Look at this picture. Where do you think we went?

BOWLING!! We had a blast!! Here is a great picture of the big kids!!

I love all the colors of the balls! Who of this group would be the least likely to win do you think? Yep, I would think it too, Logan. Guess who won..yep..Logan. Unbelievable! We had a super time and Nadine and I decided that we need to have a Girls Night Out and go bowling!! Wouldn't that be fun!!

Okay, well, the children are waking up and it's time for me to move on with my day, though I have lots more I could ramble about. I have loaded lots of pictures onto my FaceBook page, so again, if you'd like, add me as a friend and you can see them. It's free, easy and lots of fun!

Until next time, I'm Fondly Yours,

Jeanne

Queen of the Brown Clan (Irish or not!)

P.S. We have NOISY nest of birds in our fireplace. I just heard them and thought I'd share that with you!