Back to School Picnic & Piper's sleeping

So the Lord has been truly dealing with me about tithing for the last few months. I have been trying for a LONG while to get right with God and figure out who I am and where my life is supposed to be as a Christian, as a wife, as a mother, and just as a human being in general. Our church has been steadily loosing people and they have not been getting replaced. Our budget has not been being met every week and for a few months, Justin and I have been extremely concerned about our church as a whole. Even the people who have been at Trinity for 10+ years have left this year. Anyway, we have a back to school picnic every year the Sunday before school starts. I decided a while ago to be the POC for planning this event. It is normally just a big picnic and we just hang out and enjoy ourselves for a while and then go home. This year, God really started working on my heart that we had to do more than that. Between the beautiful women that I get to call my friends and I, we came up with a bunch of ideas of what this picnic could have and what we could do to get people from the community involved. We decided that we would put up posters to let people know about it and we would get a bouncy castle and do some races and things and really try to get get the community involved. Amber and I have worked our hineys off this week getting everything done and today was the picnic. The weather was cold and rainy and I truly just wanted to stay home in my nice warm, dry house but do you know what happened instead? God showed up! There was at least 6 or 7 new families that showed up and got to touch base with some of the people at our church and talk to us. Jacque helped me to come out of my comfort zone too by making me talk to the new people that did come! I was so uncomfortable but it was okay because we got new people to make contact with us and if only one of those 6 families shows up and continues to come, that's okay with me. God was there and He showed out! I am just so blessed that He moved in my heart and allowed me to work in his name! Praise God!

Ok, on a totally separate note, on Monday we began trying to get Piper to sleep without having to be put to sleep. It is very hard to be able to let my not even 5 month old cry it out and I realize that some parents start doing this at 2 or 3 months and some don't start until their children are 10 but we decided that she is plenty old enough to start putting herself to sleep. Anyway, she cried for 30 + minutes for the first couple of days but Friday she went to bed without crying at all, yesterday she fussed for less than 10 minutes and tonight (even though she was over tired) she only took about 20 minutes of intermittent fussing to go to sleep! She is getting so big! I am so grateful for such an absolutely amazing baby!

Life is good, we are blessed! Piper is doing well and getting big, Amber goes back to school tomorrow and Justin is getting more used to being in the field and I am just kind of hanging out! I am trying to decide whether or not I want to go back to school this semester. I want to and we are here for a long while but I just don't know! We shall see!