Ruby loves Max!

These pictures are about a month old now... I know, I'm horrible! But the kissing and huggging hasn't changed much. Ruby still wants to do it ALL the time, and Max still accepts it without really loving it! Ruby has also been trying other ways of showing her love such as trying to get Max to drink from her sippy cup, shoving goldfish crackers in his mouth, and "best" of all stuffing her party noisemaker in his mouth... All of these attempts have ended with Max screaming and Mommy running to see what has happened this time!

Ruby also really wants Max to play with her. She has decided that since Max is a boy he must want to play with cars, so she is constantly bringing him matchbox cars or trains from her train set. She wants him to grab them and drive them around like her friends, Carter and Nathan. No amount of explaining that this just isn't in his skill set yet seems to sink in! She is going to be so happy when he starts doing more. The highlight for now is getting Max to smile or better yet laugh! As soon as he cracks a grin, Ruby runs around reporting, "MAX SMILED! MAX SMILED!" (Well, it sounds more like, "Max smmm-eye!", but that's what she means!)

Lest you think I've just been sitting around watching soaps, leaving everyone hanging on updates, we really have been very busy. Until this last week I have been involved in two small group studies--one studying the book, Bad Girls of the Bible and the other The Power of a Praying Wife. I was not very enthusiastic about the women's Bible study choosing Bad Girls of the Bible, but it really ended up being a pretty good study. I don't think that it's one that I would want to do on my own, but in a group we had some good discussion and our teacher/leader was really great bringing in a lot of outside reasearch, which helped. It was a very convicting study and informative. I'm also going to miss the group of ladies--we probably came from about 6 different countries and varied in age by about 50 years! Really a diverse group and a great one to learn from.

Last weekend our church ran its first Backyard Bible Club--kind of a toned down version of VBS. Since we are a small church and school still has two more weeks remaining, we decided that a weekend long club would work better than a weeklong one. Jared and I were in charge of games and had a great time making flour bombs, water balloons, and other such things. We had about 18 kids each day and they really seemed to enjoy it. Almost all of us that were leaders this year won't be around next summer, but I hope that the church is able to do it anyway. I think it could be a really great outreach.

Well, I think I better go prep dinner and make some banana bread while I still can! You gotta love afternoon naps!