Well, my friend Kelly says I just can't let a week go by without having some sort of crazy thing happen at my house. So last week was my oldest son, Josh's turn to go to the Emergency Room.

He was exhibiting every, single sign of appendicitis and so my husband took him to the pediatrician. Then the doc examined him and recommended that we run, not walk, to the Children's Hospital. Of course I will add that the entire day I had been having contractions, and mind you, at 27 weeks this is NOT a good thing!

But the good news is that after spending 6 hours in the ER and getting all sorts of tests run, Josh ended up having a NON-surgical type of appendicitis. I won't bore you with the details, but it was the lymph tissue inside his appendix that was inflamed, not his actual appendix. Needless to say, this is a rarity and in the past, most kids would've just been put under the knife anyway.

And we've started this week off with a BANG too! At church this morning, I started having contractions 2 minutes apart. And since we are currently meeting in an elementary school, there was no sofa or other comfortable place to lay down. So I found a lunchroom bench that turned out to be the perfect solution -- all I needed was to put up my feet and the contractions immediately stopped. Wow! If only the other problems in my life were so easy to solve!

Now some fun news . . . Josh (9), Autumn (7 1/2) and Jac (6 1/2) tried out for parts today in the upcoming musical they will be doing, called Acorns to Oaks. They all got one! Josh gets to sing and be a scarecrow, Autumn will be a crow named Maggie and Jac has a solo!

Here's a link to a very interesting article I read this week by Steve Maxwell. It was actually in the Dads section of the newsletter, but for some reason I decided to read that part this month. Note his comments in paragraph 3 about how today's churches and Christians want fish to jump into their boat instead of going out into the water (the world) to preach the gospel. Quite a neat way to look at it, IMO!

http://titus2.com/corners/7-07-d.htm

I am currently reading Steve's book about Raising Sons and finding it so far to be very encouraging and challenging. Although I think it was meant to be read mostly by Dads, I've enjoyed finding out what he recommends too.

Lastly, we've signed up to go to a Family Camp over Labor Day weekend (the last day my midwife will let me travel) in North Carolina. It will  be at a place called The Wilds. They come very highly recommended and we are really looking forward to it! You can't beat the price either, so check it out at

http://www.wilds.org