Jeremy's Spring Break and Baby Names

I decided to post some pictures of the youth group trip...I felt like I participated vicariously and am so glad it turned out well. A missionary from our church saw these photos (and many more) and asked, "Where are you guys? Are you even in America?" which went right with Jeremy's heart for the trip, so I was proud. The first picture is some of the kids in the Tiki Room at Disneyland--most had not done that attraction and Jeremy kept referencing it as a joke and so they went first thing in the morning and some of the students said it was the strangest thing they had done at Disneyland.

Here's the kids (and leaders) being ecstatic about oranges at Richfield Community Church.


The group went on to L.A. where they worked at the Union Rescue Mission for 2 days and even got to sleep on the roof. I asked if it was noisy and Jeremy said no because no one drives around Skid Row at night and all the people who "live" there don't have cars...but they could look down and see all sorts of rats among the people sleeping in their tents and on the street. During the night, a homeless guy came up on the roof and stole one of the student's clothes and some money, but they loved sleeping up there anyway.



One of the nights in LA, a friend of a friend took the group to the different ethnic neighborhoods near the mission and helped the students get a sense for what innercity ministry is like. The second night, they went to Santa Monica.

Then they went on to San Diego, where a friend of ours arranged for the group to stay at a church that does a lot of work with refugees from Sudan, Burma, Uganda, Iraq, etc. They spent 2 days there learning about the ministry, listening to people's stories, and playing with the kids.



It might have been hard to not have specific "work" to do the whole time, like finishing a roof in Mexico, but I know they blessed the refugees by paying attention to them and occupying their children for a few afternoons. If I was a mom struggling to survive in a foreign country, I would appreciate the break! We wanted to show the kids the documentary "God Grew Tired of Us" about the Lost Boys of Sudan, but it didn't work out--but I HIGHLY recommend that you watch it!

The boys and I went to the creek today with our friends and fed the fish at a Trout Pond (and stopped at my favorite Dairy Queen, of course!).
I didn't mention that one of the things my mom and I did in CA was begin to plan how to decorate the new baby's room...I think we are going to use Mary Engelbriet art and fabric and make it bright but girlie.

It's going to be fun...but I am a little sad to give up the 3rd bedroom that we have been using as an office/storage/place to sleep when our spouse is keeping us up in the middle of the night because of tossing and turning/place to display all our kitschy little travel knick-knacks...I don't know if our camel collection will ever see the light of day again! Oh well, this little girl is worth the sacrifice...speaking of "this little girl," I have just now started to refer to her as "her" instead of "it" or "the baby," and have begun looking at a website with baby names. Today I was perusing the M's and here's some of the names I came across today: Macarena (really?), Maconaquea (a strong contender if I could pronounce it), Madge (oh, good old Madge), Meliffany (what's that all about? could you just not decide between Melissa and Tiffany so you squashed them together? that doesn't count as a name!!!), Minerva (she could be friends with Madge and they could play Bingo), Myfanwy (if you look at that one quickly or just change one letter, it becomes quite funny...but boy would your kid get made fun of!). So, that's an insight into what goes on in my head when I am reading the names...as my friend Tricia and I were discussing, they put so many crazy names in the list that when you finally get to something sane like "Marlena" you say, "Oh, Marlena, how cute" and it goes on your list and then your husband vetoes it later and wonders how you picked it. I think I had Harvey and Otis on the list of suggestions for Evan because of that reason. We haven't narrowed anything down and it will probably be awhile...we always wait until the end anyway. Except my friend who just delivered at 28 weeks makes me a little nervous...I bet they didn't even have the crib put together yet!