Our Everyday Talk

Cowboy Church

This post has been edited.   After reading my post I found a bunch of errors and felt like it just kind of fell flat, so here it is again.  

Our Church had us some “Cowboy Church” two weeks ago, and it was SO MUCH FUN!   Pastor Denny invited a friend, Duke Edwards, who is a real Cowboy Pastor from Colorado to join us for a fun day of rodeo.   It was a pretty big deal in our little community of about 8,000.   About 1,000 people enjoyed a hot day in the sun, that included our 2 hour rodeo/service, with lunch and tons of fun activities for the kids afterward. 

It was a very nice fall weekend!   Our family was there the day before helping with some of the preparations, and practicing for some of the clown skits.     I didn't think much about sun protection on these beautiful fall days, but I should have, because after the 2 days my family of fair skinned folks were sun burned!

Noah got to be one the rodeo clowns.

Our little cowboy and cowgirl.

                    

     Both of my brothers and their families were able to come for the fun day of rodeo.   They enjoyed the fun day, and we enjoyed spending the day with them.   This is a picture of Noah clowning around with my brother, Tom, and his family.

Hannah and her friends,Abby and Clarisse, got front row seats. 

 

Todd video taped the service.   He looks a little warm in his black hat, and long sleeved shirt.   But he wasn’t complaining, he was having a great time.

Here are our friends Minsan and Neil in the worship band.   I'll add a short little video at the end of the post with some rodeo highlights, and its Neil singing in the background on the video.   Their country worship music made the day that much more wonderful!

We had Mutton Bustin' (the kids riding sheep), Pigs in a Barrel (with H.S. kids chasing pigs and putting them in barrels), Pole Bending(young women racing their horses around the poles), a Calf Scramble (the kids chasing the calf to pull off a ribbon around his neck), Calf Ropin' with our 4 younger pastors, and finally came the Bull Riding.   Pastor Denny saved the best for last, and got on the bull.   He was only a tiny bit shy of a glorious 8 second ride, like maybe 6 seconds. ;)   But at least the bull gave him a little buck.   As you will see in the video, when it was time for Pastor Kirby's ride, the bull had decided it was just too hot for all of this.   And our Youth Pastor got off easy, much to the disappointment to about a hundred High School kids.   What their rides lacked in breathing taking excitement, they made up for in humor!

When the rodeo was all over, I was talking to Pastor Adam, thanking him for his part in this really fun day.   He told me, “I told God,’God you know I don’t have any talents for this, so please just keep me safe and let me be funny.”  And Praise God his prayers were answered!   No one got hurt, and I thought Adam was the funniest guy out there the whole day!   He had so many hilarious moments, like getting tripped up by Pastor Corey’s rope and falling flat on his back while Corey took a dive.   And starring down the calf, I don't know if he was trying to psych the calf out, or make some sort of connection with the little guy or what, but it was hilarious!

3 twenty-something year old men vs. 1 three month old calf, who won - the calf. They never did get him down.

Click on the arrow in the middle of the picture to watch the 3 minute video.

Even though it was all fun and games for us watching,  a lot of time and work went into this amazing day.   The 2 hour rodeo/service, lunch afterward, and all the other activities like the pony rides, petting zoo, hay rides, and face painting, made for a very full day for everyone involved.   While taking a hayride I had a nice conversation with a couple who were at our church for the first time.  They were in awe of all that was going on.   They couldn’t believe that we had 6 Pastors on our staff, 7 if you include Pastor Amber who is part of our amazing administrative staff of 4.   God has blessed our church with these 11 amazing people who work as his stewards, and our family and our entire community is so blessed by all of them!

Our first day of Not-Going-Back-to-School 2009!

Now that we’ve officially been back to school for 2 weeks, I’m finally getting around to posting something about our first “official” day of school.   Sigh!

The day that our local public school goes back into session each fall is a day worth celebrating around our house!

What are we celebrating?

1.   Our kids don’t have to get to up early and get all “dolled up” for an hour long ride on a bus to take them to school 3 miles down the road.

2.   Our kids don’t have to waste half their day figuring out where their crowded classrooms are, or stand in line to have slightly tasty, slightly warm, slightly nutritious lunch handed to them.

3.   Our kids get to study what they want, when they want.   Not worrying  that things are going to slow for us and  bored to tears, or too fast for us so that we’re wasting an hour listening to someone talking at us when we were lost in the first 5 minutes.

4.   Our kids can be exactly who they are without worry of being made fun of or bullied.

5.    We get to do what we want, when we want.   We go swimming in the middle of the afternoon, or take a daytrip to The Cities to do something fun.   Our days are ours to decide what we want to make of them.

6.   Along with studying reading, writing, and arithmetic, we studying God’s word, and exploring the world he made.   We are also each studying something that we want to learn more about, just for the fun of learning something that we’re curious about.

How are we celebrating?

1.   We’re eating breakfast whenever everyone gets up (that’s usually between 8 and 8:30) and we’re eating breakfast in our pjs.   One of the rules in our house is that we come to the breakfast table dressed.   But 2 days a year we let the kids stay in their pjs, Christmas Day and on the “first day of school.”   Just because we can!   Typically I would let the kids stay in their pjs all day, but we had agreed to help out with our church’s MOPS (Mothers of PreSchoolers) group, and needed to be there from 9 – 10:30 to help out with the little ones while their moms get some much needed “me time.”  

So we ate a special breakfast that the kids requested – choc. chip pancakes, in our pjs, and then got dressed to head over to church.   I don’t see the appeal of chocolate chips in pancakes, but my kids have always requested these on the first day of school. 

    

Some cute pictures of the kids at MOPS

 

2.   The kids get to pick what subjects they study and when.   Typically, I have a list for each of them that tells them what they need to get done that day.   But today the kids got to pick - because they can.

3.   A special lunch as per requested by the kids.   We had chicken and cheese enchiladas, salad, and cheesecake.

 

Doesn’t this look YUMMY?   And they are magic recipes that have no fat or calories in them at all.   I wish!

We had a great day celebrating the start of another great year of schooling at home!