August is one of our busiest and most enjoyable months, with my oldest son coming to visit for his birthday and mine for about eight days (not counting travel days). Usually the family members who live locally visit more often and we have a few family excursions.
Our visit was a little low-key this time with Mittu sick for a couple of weeks and unable to come over except for Jeremy's birthday. But the rest of us talked a lot, played games, ate out a couple of times, and had a couple of outings. As always, it went too fast!
The first part of the month was preparing for Jeremy's visit, and last week was recovery time. 🙂
Family funnies
On the way home from church, I saw a car repair shop's sign for "Painless Dent Removal." I thought that was odd--did they mean painless for the car owner, as in low-cost? Or were they anthropomorphizing the car to be funny and appealing? I mentioned it to Jim, and he said it was paintless dent removal, not painless.
Card-making
This one was for the baby shower of a lady at church.
It didn't turn out quite as well as I had envisioned. I probably should have only used one border instead of two (those came in a set of baby-related strips). But I loved cutting out those pink onesies with the Cricut along with a couple more for the inside! With my children and grandchild being all males, I don't get to use my pink papers very much.
This was for Jason and Mittu's fifteenth wedding anniversary:
The little hearts were a crocheted set I had bought somewhere. And the swirly parts of the white cardstock were embossed with the Cuttlebug.
This was for Jeremy's birthday:
I couldn't find an odometer in the Cricut files that I liked, so I used a window frame and cut out the horizontal lines.
Watching
We didn't watch much this month beside the Olympics. As I said earlier, I only saw the last hour or so of the opening ceremony, so I missed the controversial parts. We saw the NBC coverage most nights. It was frustrating that there were some parts of it they didn't show---I didn't even know about rhythmic gymnastics until afterward. On the other hand, they couldn't show everything from all the competitions in prime time coverage.
It seems like there were more athletes talking about their faith and giving glory to God for their achievements than I remember seeing in other Olympics. That was neat to see.
Reading
Since last time I finished (titles link to my reviews):
- Be Decisive (Jeremiah): Taking a Stand for the Truth by Warren Wiersbe.
- A Boy's War by David Michell, nonfiction. David was a student at Chefoo school for missionary children in China when it was taken over by the Japanese during WWII. The school was eventually sent to an interment camp, where they remained until the end of the war.
- Shadowed Loyalty by Roseanna M. White, fiction, audiobook. What do you do when your beliefs in God and His will for your life clash with your mob family? Not my favorite of Roseanna's books, but an intriguing premise.
My list is a little shorter than usual due to the Olympics and family get-togethers.
I'm currently reading:
- Be Hopeful (1 Peter): How to Make the Best of Times Out of Your Worst of Times by Warren Wiersbe
- Help for the Hungry Soul: Eight Encouragements to Grow Your Appetite for God's Word by Kristen Wetherell
- Write a Must-Read: Craft a Book That Changes Lives—Including Your Own by A. J. Harper (haven't actually looked at this much the last month)
- Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance (just picked this one back up after letting ti sit a while. Not sure I'll finish it. Several f-bombs and talk of ancestors murdering people.)
- What's a Disorganized Person to Do? by Stacey Platt (just started--want to read a small section at intervals)
- Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens (audiobook)
- Hope Between the Pages by Pepper Basham
Blogging
Besides the weekly Friday Fave Fives, Saturday Laudable Linkage, and book reviews, I've posted these since last time:
- God's Solutions Are Better. Sometimes we come to God asking for Him to solve our problems in a certain way, but He has something else in mind.
- Christianity Is More Than Getting My Needs Met. God wants us to come to Him with our needs and promises to meet them. But God also wants us to glorify Him---not because He needs glory, but we need to give it to Him.
- This I Call to Mind. In the midst of an utter wreck of his life and country, the writer of Lamentations remembers God's mercy and faithfulness and finds cause for hope. We can, too, no matter what is going on in our lives.
- Don't Wait Until You Feel Like It. It's wonderful when will and mind and emotion all work together. But when they don't, we're not faking it if we do spiritual things without spiritual feelings. We're taking ourselves in hand and battling our fleshly nature.
Writing
Not much has happened on this front, with the other family things going on. Our critique group has taken some time off this summer, and while the break has helped with time for other things, I am looking forward to getting back at it.
As we change the calendar to September, we look forward to celebrating Labor Day with the family and Jesse's birthday in a couple of weeks. I'm anticipating fall breezes and color, but we won't experience much of that til the end of the month. I'm trying to enjoy the time at hand and not rush past it too soon in anticipation of what's ahead.
How as your August?
