God's enduring promise

One day last week we had some storms come through our area. They actually missed our town by about 5 miles. We live on the far south west end of town and could stand in our yard and watch these huge black clouds move through the area. Massive ligtening & thunder was produced & we watched in awe.

When it was all said & done this beautiful double rainbow was produced. It was also a full rainbow. Such a beauty can only make me reflect on one thing: God.

Happy Birthday Mandy!

YIKES! I now have 2 children with double digits for their age. Yes.... yes.... I am getting "old". Anyway, this post is not about me, but Mandy.

10 years ago I was 5 days overdue with child number 2. We knew she was a girl & we knew we would name her Mandy after my childhood & best friend Mandy. My mom & I went shopping at Shop Ko when I first felt labor pains. Since I was induced with Angel I wasn't sure if what I was feeling were really contractions. We kept shopping.

I knew that if indeed I was in labor & would be going to the hospital that once I got there they would not let me eat. So I insisted we go to lunch & we stopped at Fazoli's. I kept having my contractions, noting each one to my mom. They were getting a lot more noticable. FOOD, though was more important at the time. As we are finishing we decide we better go home, get my bags & head to the hospital. On our way out of the restaurant I had a big contraction that stopped me dead in my tracks, right there in the parking lot. Phew!

Once at the hospital I labored on my own just fine. It turns out that was to be the only time I labored on my own without the aid of any meds. At about 6 p.m. it was time to be pushing. I assured Jim that there was plenty of video on the camera for the event. But in an instant I let out a blood curling scream & the camera clicked off. God knew, what was going to happen. It was awful. She was stuck. Medically known as shoulder dystocia. Look it up, it will make you squirm.

I'll leave out the other gory details & jump ahead to 6 minutes later & Mandy was born. Any dr. or medical person I know who has heard the full story & details tells me, it's a miracle that Mandy is not only alive, but that she also survived the event with no ill effects.

I always say that from the minute Mandy tried to come out she was all about drama, my little drama queen that she is today. She's our spunky gal. We love her so much! Happy birthday Mandy!

garden

I have a garden. Let me stress the I since I do about 99.9% of the work. I do on occasion send the kids out to weed. Being a bit of a controll freak though, I'd rather just do it myself. It's not a very big garden, about 15 feet long by 7 wide. A kitchen garden is what it's referred to. Just enough produce for our family & maybe some to give away. I've never canned anything before. This year we have rhubarb, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, green pepper, jalepeno peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, cantalope & watermelon.

So far I've picked 3 big cucumbers from the garden. They were perfect! I also brought in all the rhubarb & made a delicious dessert with some strawberries too. There is a lot of other stuff coming in, but not ready to be picked. In the next few weeks I think we'll have produce coming out of our ears. I'll give away what I don't use for ourselves. And there will be plenty of things I won't need to buy from the store for awhile.

This cucumber is from my garden. Taken right before I plucked it & ate it up.

A new roof

We are sporting a new roof on our house. We've been home owners for many years to more than one house, but have never taken on such a big home improvement project. Voorhees Siding & Window was the company we used. All we know of the actual roofing crew was Salvador, the leader. We are highly satisfied with both the company and the workers. They did an excellent job and did many things to make the whole process go very smoothly. Below you will find a slide show of all the pics I took in the process.

friends

We got together recently to bid farewell to some long time friends, Doug & Jen Schneider. We hosted them along with Bill & Mary Spillman. We had a great night of food & fun. The kids greatly outnumbered the adults and ran all over the house & in the yard. We are blessed to have such good friends.

family

There are 12 Luna grandchildren. 6 of them belong to us, the other 6 to my sisters (4 to Lisa, 1 to Blanca & 1 to Chris). We get together often, several times a year in fact. But it's not very often (maybe once a year if we're lucky) that all the kids are there at one time. So when it happens we like to take a group picture of all the kids. Here they are:

Some my favorite & best memories of growing up involve my cousins. That's from BOTH sides of the family. I love it when my kids get to be with their cousins as well. They don't always get along perfectly and grandma usually gets mad at some point & yells at them. But they are family. And if there is one thing my parents did an excellent job instilling in me; it's that family ALWAYS stick together and we love each other no matter what.

So we continue to help our kids make memories with their cousins, grandparents, aunts & uncles. Whoever, as long as they are family.

The boys: Brian, Derek, Andrew, Parker & John

The girls: (back) Krystyne & Mandy, (front) Hannah, Brianna, Allison, Carmen & Angel

Happy Birthday to me!

I won't exclude myself from the usual birthday entry and slideshow (see below). The pictures are mostly from school. I stopped with my senior picture cause at my age you don't have time to look through THAT MANY pictures. : )

I LOVE having my birthday and have no qualms about turning 32 this year.

Some interesting facts about my entry into this world. I was born breech and had my feet tucked behind my ears when I came shooting out of my mom. I only weighed 6 - 13. (I say only cause none of my kids were that little). I was born back in the day where dad was not present at the hospital. When he does show up my mom announces that it's a girl and she takes off down to the nursery to show my dad. Except when she gets down there she turns around and my dad in nowhere in sight. She goes back to the room and finds him still sitting in the chair mumbling "a girl.....another girl....." (cause I was the third girl in a row).

It's a rather quite day. While I love having my birthday I don't expect any great big hoopla either. I had many great birthday parties while I was growing up, enough to make up for my adult years.

zipline

Here is my birds eye view of jumping off the zipline at camp. That is my friend Lynette with me.

I am very much afraid of heights. I have no idea why I do such crazy things, but I do. I think the tower is 60 feet tall. I'm not sure how long the ride is, but it goes along the beautiful shores of Clear Lake, IA.

Tornado

Here's a first hand view of riding the Tornado at AdventureLand. I learned that the Tornado turned 30 years old on July 4. Wow, so I'm older than that rollercoaster. (no comments please). I meant to record more of my ride but my hand accidently pushed a button in the process. This recording is of that first hill you ride up and down. It's the first coaster we rode that day at the park. Warning, I am a screamer. No matter how many times I've been on that coaster, I still scream.

vacation

Yikes! I meant to blog right after I put up the slideshow to give you a written report on our vacation. It's turned into a very busy week and I kept putting off such task. Of course I found many other non productive things (Facebook, MySpace, Hearts BB) to filter away my free time. But I also have a very clean house, hosted a wonderful going away party last night, helped a friend clean her house and dealt with roofing issues all week as well (that is another post).

Anyway, the slideshow speaks volumes. If you can't tell: WE HAD A GREAT TIME!!!! As if there is any doubt anyway. I have never had a bad camp experience. Maybe a few not so wonderful moments, those mostly date back to my teens years where hormones were raging. But for the 7th straight year the Peterson family had a wonderful week on the north shore of Clear Lake, IA at Iowa Regular Baptist Camp. We are already signed up for next year.

I could talk & talk (who me? talk endlessly for hours? hehe!) about our camp experiences this past year. There are so many stories to tell, God moments we experiences and funny situations to make you laugh. For now though I'll just leave the slideshow. There will be future posts I'm sure.

We also went down to Des Moines on the 4th of July and went the AdventureLand on the 5th. My *old* body is not withstanding the rollercoasters & rides like it used to. There was once a time where I rode them non stop for the whole day. I had to take a break by noon time for I was sure to created an unwanted memory involving puke. So I held off and kept the day to good memories. More posts about that day are sure to come as well.

Until then life is moving on at a very fast pace. We jumped right back into life back here on Olive St. Next week I will be without 2 extra kids and my calander looks (gasp!) empty! More time for me to blog!!!! I will leave you with our Peterson family flag we created for the 2008 Family Olympics. It's now hanging in our kitchen.