simply grateful

Don't you think that is a long time?  It is! This year, we celebrated my parents' 40 year anniversary.  What a milestone!  And, do you know how they wanted to celebrate?  With a family reunion at Walt Disney World! So, we all met up in Florida in June...actually on Father's Day. (Did I mention that I am behind on blogging?)  I have two fabulous sisters.  One is a Senior in college and the other is a crazy mom of 3 like me.  Her kids are 5, 3, and 21 months.  Our kids are 4, 3, and 19 months.  You can imagine the activity that ensued? lol!  We had so much fun just all being together! We did all the usual stuff. The kids loved meeting Mickey and the princesses. We even met some people from Botswana in Animal Kingdom!  They noticed Elijah's safari shirt from Botswana.  David lived there 2 1/2 years and had a lot of fun talking with them in their heart language.  It was such a sweet intera...

Ok, so it is not MY giveaway, but I am trying to spread the word because I think this is such a neat storage system.  I dig organization, even though my house rarely shows this. If you are interested in organizing any Lego mess in your house, click HERE .

Zooooom.................. That is how I feel the summer is going!  We have been having so much fun goin' and blowin' (as they say in Texas).  We started off the craziness by joining David and the youth group at summer camp. The kids loved it!  It was nice for a change of pace and White Oak Conference center, the location for the camp, was just beautiful.  The little ones and I had fun watching the students play their games and go on the ropes course. I wish I could have hung out with the students more...they are amazing... Eighties night was especially entertaining!  Isn't Miami Vice in the center HOT?! but I did have lots of quality time with these munchkins. (no laundry, cooking, dishes) The last day, our little man turned 3.  The students were so awesome in celebrating him. We are so blessed!

are growing up!!  Just how did this happen?! You might have noticed the new photo at the top.  Yeah, see, it replaced this one: Silly, I know, but in changing out the photo, it was like they grew up right before my eyes! More to come...but for now, I have a little 4 year old patiently waiting for my attention.

Just to assure any of you that continue to check in that we are still here.  Right now, I have a long list of things I should be doing....doing the dishes, putting up laundry, holding a whiny baby, waking a sleeping boy, starting dinner, helping a four year old start her game...but I'm here...for just a minute. All is well in the Petro household!  June has just been very full !  We have gone to youth camp, celebrated birthdays and Father's day, gone to a family reunion at Disney, and now we are recovering.  I will be updating all of our June events very soon.  Probably not today because of the above list.  But soon. Thanks so much for checking in on us!  See you soon.

sitting in the parking lot...listening to music...fighting back tears... Have you been there? That's where I found myself yesterday.  It's not exactly a bad place to be.  To me, it is a "figuring out" spot.  Many times I have been in a similar setting where I made decisions or maybe just dealt with life.  What sweetness I rediscovered yesterday. Let me back up a bit to a summer I spent in Romania helping lead camps for precious orphans.  The purpose of the camp was to introduce the children and the care givers to the incredible love of God...to show them that they too could be adopted into God's family if they accepted the gift of eternal life through Jesus.  Some weeks went great. But, as you can imagine, some weeks were much more difficult:  complications arose, hearts were hard, inconveniences and exhaustion took their toll.  During one of those weeks, God really reached down and touched my heart to remind me of His great love...not jus...