We Published A Children's Book

So, thanks to lulu.com, Angie and I have self published a children's book that we wrote nine years ago in the Spring of 1997. It doesn't cost us anything to self publish with lulu.com, only the hour or two that it took me to scan the book into our computer so I could upload it. The book is called "A Tale Of A Nimble-Headed Noozit" which Angie and I wrote and illustrated it as a project for our Children's Literature class at Ozark Christian College. We had a great professor for that class, Jackina Stark. People can go to lulu.com and either buy a downloadable ebook version or order a printed book version and they will ship it out, one at a time. Fun stuff. In my spare time over a three year span I have been working on another book with our Forwarding Agent, Milton Hendricks. I came up with the story, then he wrote and fleshed it out, then I illustrated it and am in the process of uploading it to lulu.com. That means soon I will have two published children's books. I love using my talents in my job, but I also enjoy doing special projects on the side on my days off and free time. I am even starting to work on an animated cartoon short that I hope to be done in a year (talk about long term planning, whew). Anyway, just in case you are interested in checking out the new book, here is the link "A Tale Of A Nimble-Headed Noozit."

Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving. The team was all here along with the Harold and Enid Fowler. I don't know why but yesterday I was especially excited. I woke up so happy that it was Thanksgiving. It really was a stress free plain ol' fun day. But since this is not a holiday weekend here in Italy it is back to work in full swing today. I have two classes of English club and we have a coffee house tonight. I want to decorate our house for Christmas in the next few days. This is my favorite time of year. I love it!!!!

Jalapeno Bombs

Sometimes living in a foreign country you start to miss foods from your homeland. In our case..American food. Now Matt and I haven't even been back in Italy for six months yet so our cravings for American food are not great. But tastes from home still bring comfort and delight. This brings us to last night when we tried a new restaurant called Highlanders. A few of our team mates had tried it and sent back good reports so went to give it a whirl. They had something called Jalapeno Bombs. We ordered some and although my mind was thinking Sonic cheddar peppers Matt and I kept saying "let's remember we are in Italy not America. These probably will not task like what we are expecting." Then I took my first bit and .......CHEDDAR PEPPERS!!!!!! They are a bit more spicy and that it ok with me but yummy all the same. They look a bit different with a red pepper and white cheese but they will help fill a Sonic craving. It's so fun finding new places to eat. The burgers weren't bad either. They were not close to Sonci but they were still good.

A Very Busy Weekend

Wednesday of last week my phone rang probably 30 times in one day. The next day my phone rang about 10 times and the days after that a couple times a day. Why so many calls you might ask? Well apparently there was an add in the paper for someone looking for a pizza chef and my phone number was printed as the number to call about the job. Kinda funny. It did give me some language practice to explain the error about 40 times.
Yesterday was our Thanksgiving Dinner Outreach. We had 48 people there for our biggest event ever! But let me tell you when it was over I was TIRED! I can't even remember the last time I was that tired. I hadn't slept a full nights sleep in two nights and had planned, shopped, ironed, cut, decorated, cooked and who knows what all else until the moment people started walking in the door. Really the whole team did so much to help. And I have to brag on my husband because without him and all the work he did to help me pull this together this dinner wouldn't have happened. When it was over my body hurt all over so I took some tylanol and went to bed early.
Today was our last life group as one. Next week we will be two life groups. It was really neat as we sat around our living room with a total of 16 people crammed into our living room singing worship songs. Most of the people were regular visitors but we even had one friend, Novella and her daughter here for the first time. There have even been a few other talking of visiting life group latley. It brought tears to my eyes to see how far God has brought us in the past 41/2 years that we have been having life group. Finally multiplication is here, finally our group is too big to fit into one house and it is a little hard for me to belive that we are actually multipling into two cells.
It has been an exciting, fun filled, emotional busy weekend. I think that tonight I am going to catch up on my TV shows and make something yummy for dinner...like enchiladas!!!!