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First, I'll share what has been happening in the Hartman family since our last post. On Sunday February 8th we attended our church's annual Spaghetti Dinner. This is a fundraiser for the youth to start raising funds for their summer missions trips. Both my sisters, their families, and my parents were in attendance. Emily was there as a waitress and we also took advantage of this time to celebrate my mom's birthday. It wasn't the ideal place to celebrate but it was the only time we could all get together.
The next event on our list was Emily's Valentine dance. This exciting event took place on Friday Febuary 13th. Emily had a great time but thinks that her junior high dances should be called "Stand and Talks" because that's all that anyone really does.
Early on Saturday the 14th we headed up to New York state to see my best friend Jennie and her family and spend the long weekend with them. We had an absolutely great time and the kids played nonstop! We visited lake Erie, ice fished, sledded and got to see a house (inside and out) that Jennie and her family are hoping to purchase sometime soon. While at their house the kids were playing dress up, making crafts, playing on the computer. Jennie, Emily and I were busy chatting and making buckeyes to snack on, it doesn't get better than that!
Provided just below is a video of Jennie and Clint's youngest child, Caroline. She got in the spirit of dress up and put together two very unlikely costumes. P.S. Pay no attention to the boy in the pink princess dress in the background.
Last night Emily performed with most of the other people in the Junior Hight Praise Band from church. They were asked to lead the Boys Brigade in some praise songs at the beginning part of their overnight at church. The kids did a great job and were hopefully encouraged by their performance.
Tonight we're headed to the Cakewalk, an annual event in Deer Park. It's a fundraiser for the band sponsors and is a really good time. It's kind of like musical chairs but on a much larger scale. In each circle (there can be up to 10-12 of them) there are 30 chairs and each person gets a chair and walks around in the circle while the band plays. Each of the school bands play one at a time through the evening and during each one of the "walks" the band is stopped suddenly and everyone in the circles finds a chair to sit on. At this point the MC picks a number (from 1 to 30) randomly out of a bowl/hat/whatever and calls out the number. The person sitting in that particular number chair in each circle wins a cake!!! The cakes are provided by each of the school band members, in our day each member brought two cakes to the walk earlier in the day. It's been a long time since I've been to the Cakewalk and even longer since I've won a cake. We've got a strategy worked out for this evening though so hopefully we'll be eating cake tonight!
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The first event that caused me to see how small and connected our world is, is when I went to go pick Emily up at a friends house up north of where we live now. They have a beautiful horse farm and as I was getting to know Emily's friends' parents I found out that her father was also from Deer Park. He graduated some years before Jason and I but was good friends with some of our neighbors just down the street from where I grew up and would frequently go past my childhood house. Weird!
The second event that was even weirder was when we got to Presque Isle (at Lake Erie) we were talking with one of the park rangers and found out that his wife was from Cincinnati. We then found out that she was from Deer Park!!!!! Although we didn't recognize her name it was still surreal to find a close connection to home five hours away!!
It may seem a little silly but these events have caused me to pause and reflect. I've been on Facebook for a better part of a year now and this has brought me together with a lot of people I haven't seen or heard from in many years. I enjoy seeing what they've done with their lives, who they've become and see also how they're still the same as I remember them. I try not to dwell too much on the past afraid that I'll miss what's going on today but it does help to remind me from where I've come and how God has blessed me and my family with His grace and mercy time and time again.
I'll leave you with another quote, one from Ravi Zacharias that I heard
this week and that has me thinking.
this week and that has me thinking.
"The shortest route is not always the best route because it can bypass some of the most precious lessons in life."
Think about it....
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