Flying Time

 Life has been crazy busy, which is often the case when my blog gets quiet. JD's job has proven to be rather demanding, both in travel, commute time and overall hours; sometimes I find it rather discouraging how little it feels he is home. When he is home, we have a million item list that makes the pace very fast. We have hosted two major church events at our house in the last month. One is beans and bullets, which is a bunch of men, with a bunch of guns, out shooting at our house. JD only let Elijah join at the last few minutes while people were cleaning up; Elijah waited in great anticipation all day for his moment of glory.

Just because these guns are in this picture with my family does not mean we own them! The men share at Beans and Bullets.

Last weekend we hosted the teen boy camp out. I did not take a single picture as I was not here - I was at my 5th night of "Brain Camp". I will have to post on that later as I'm going to head to PA in June for more training in helping children with challenges using neuropsychology of the brain. While one child has fueled my quest for help, I think the knowledge will benefit all of us.

My latest frustration has been our latest renters in a rent home that we own. They did not give written notice that they were moving out, they refused to let us show the house even when a realtor requested to show it to people from out of town, they smoked in the home against our spoken and written requirement, they tracked grease on top of fairly new and very nice carpet, they left the house filthy, they did not clean the carpet as the lease states (shoot, they didn't even vacuum the carpet) and I toted three loads of garbage out of the yard to the dump, but they are astounded that we are not returning their security deposit. After some profane texts, they have decided to take us to court. Since the damages they caused are roughly three times the security deposit, the logic astounds me. My favorite is when they throw in (we've heard it before), "you said you were a Christian". The new renters take possession tonight and am I ever praying that they are better!

Along those lines, watching the riots in Baltimore is so sad. So much pain, so much damage all for the sake of violence. It is sad that the kind, hard working people in the inner city have to risk youth and gang violence erupting around their homes. I found it encouraging to see the community come out the next morning and start cleaning the streets. Baltimore showed the worst and best of humanity all in 24 hours.

Around here, we hope to finish weeding our last garden bed tomorrow, and I will try to plant the majority of it this weekend while I do hair and run children to and fro.

We will also celebrate Alei's 21st birthday on Sunday; my three big girls turn 16, 18 and 21 this year!

Have a good weekend!