It was another week of no appointments outside of the home.  I love weeks like this because it helps me to keep my home better.  The house stays tidier; there are better meals on the table; and I feel more satisfied in every area of my life. 

We had a birthday party for Jacob this week.  He turned eight years old. And as usual, we had two parties.  Our “Uncle Jon” and “Aunt Alexandria” party was held at the company office this year.  We used a conference room (pictures coming soon, I hope) and invited the staff to join us as we celebrated Jacob’s birthday.  The presents were awesome, as usual.  A giant remote control tractor – did Jacob ever love this!!!  A set of funny, silly and goofy looking teeth; a 3-D slide show viewer of prehistoric animals; a neat 3-D coloring book where you draw on black paper with special crayons and wear special 3-D glasses; and a really neat set of prehistoric animals (Jacob loves these.) 

I had  9 really neat cupcakes (strawberry shortcake; pineapple upside down; cotton candy; German chocolate; coconut cream; chocolate ho-ho, etc...)  All of these cupcakes were like individual little cakes and tasted just like their names.  We bought a few dozen more inexpensive ones from Wal-Mart, and served pizza and pop.  It was a fun party.

That night, though, Ruthie got sick.  She had over eaten the pizza and cupcakes, and it made her so sick that I got little sleep that night.  I lay by her side with the bucket and all night long, I held her hair back and helped her aim into the bucket.  I don’t think Ruthie is going to want a cup cake or a piece of pizza for a very long time.

Friday morning we were all moving slow.  We did manage to get the house clean, and we had another birthday party for Jacob in the evening.    On the menu: Mahi Mahi with a coconut batter dipped in macadamia nut and a lime and passion fruit dipping sauce; pepper steak made with a wine sauce and tri-colored peppers;  Fried vegetable rice and a salad.   The cake was a D.Q. peanut butter ice cream cake. 

As I was running out Friday afternoon to pick up the cake, Jacob asked me if he could have a corn dog for his birthday.  With the above mentioned meal all planned, it did seem a little unnecessary to have corndogs (he’s only had these at the county fair.)  But, my husband and I determined that we would try to find him one.  Never having bought one before, it took us a little bit of investigation and time to find it, but we succeeded.  Jacob had his corndog and we enjoyed mahi mahi and steak.

Cute:  We were telling everyone about Jacob loving corndogs at the beginning of the party.  After dinner, as Jacob was coming out of the bathroom, with his hand on his stomach as if not feeling well, he said, “Mommy, the corndogs are not loving me back.”     We all got a good laugh.  

This early Saturday morning, I brought all of my past week concerns and thanks to Him. I started to read in Ephesians chapter one, but never got past the second verse.  “Grace be to you and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.”  What a great verse, I thought when reading this, to pray and to claim for others. I got curious about this word, ‘grace,’ and began to look up its full meaning in the back of my Hebrew Greek Key Study Bible (this is an excellent resource – it has a Strong’s dictionary concordance and Lexical aids in the back. It is sold/published by Institute of Basic Life Principles.)  I started looking at all the different forms of grace in the Greek – charis, chara, charisma: I especially was encouraged by the form of grace called charitoo.  This is the grace that does not mean ‘to show favor to’ but rather, ‘to give grace to; to make accepted or acceptable’.    This word is only found in Scripture and in post-Christian text.  What a great revelation that we can pray  that those that we love that do not know Christ, will receive “charitoo” - God’s grace – for God to show His grace to them.  Claiming particular Scripture verses for situations and for people helps me to pray in faith that what I ask for is God's will for their (or my) life.