Maybe I'm the talkative one

Our little Lady bug is now 7 years old. She had a fabulous birthday party with 11 talkative 7 year old girls in attendance. So talkative that Erik had to hide in the computer room for awhile.

At Jenna's birthday party the girls did a lady bug craft from Oriental Trading Company. The craft was fun but required a lot of gluing. Thus it was a little messy.

Now I am one of three people in charge of the nursery/toddler ministry at church. When I went to Oriental Trading I went a little wacko and bought a ton of crafts for the nursery/toddler ministry. They really have tons of cheap, cute crafts for little kids.

Hard at work on the crafts

The girls loved the craft

Jenna's Birthday cake - red velvet cake with chocolate frosting (so it had lady bug colors!)

In other news:

1. Our Coo* book club finished the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and we are now currently reading Catching Fire. This series is really good and Erik and I have been discussing our theories about what we think will happen. This is a great read!
2. I am also reading Watcher of the Dead by J.V. Jones. This is book 4 of the Sword of Shadows series and I highly recommend this series.
3. Finally Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan came in from the library. When I reserved it initally I was number 700 something so it took a long time for me to get this book. Just like the first Percy Jackson series, I'm enjoying this series as well (this is book 2 in the Heros of Olympus series).
4. I'm also reading the Case for Christ as well. This is well-written and engaging.
5. So those are the books I'm currently reading. I'm also debating another series. Erik is reading the Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson. He thinks I'll like it.  I just don't know - the first book was so broad I'm not sure if I'll like it. I'm still deciding. Erik keeps saying "but Tim is reading it" since he thinks I'll read whatever Tim reads.
6. Matthew is now walking, however he is not talking. Help Me Grow is an organization that will give him free speech therapy starting February 1st. I hope he will start talking soon. Now he does the "more", "all done", and "shoes" signs but that's it. The girls were basically talking in full sentences at 19 months and he is not saying much at all. I hope they help him.
7. This semester has been tough and I'm barely keeping my head above water. I wasn't sure how I was doing since I am teaching 4 new classes!  However one of the online deans called me today and said I was doing an awesome job and wants me to talk about my experience to all the online faculty in Engineering and IS on a conference call in a few weeks. Wow! That is pretty exciting. So I guess they like me :).
8. And I'm on the committee planning the faculty symposium in Chicago in April.  I'm excited about this since I'll get to meet and work with faculty across the system.
9. Our church has changed their name to Gateway Community Church. I'm pretty excited about our name change. We even had a big party to celebrate. We changed the lighting during our worship (pretty colored lights!) and got fancy TV's and touch screen computers out in the main area. It is pretty awesome.
10. We are starting a 6 week series on the End times in our Tuesday night Bible study. We've had so much discussion from doing the Heaven series by Randy Alcorn that everyone wanted to study the End times.
11. This weekend we are going to have an awesome Tron party with friends.  We are going to stay up late and watch both Tron movies and eat Tron food. It should be a blast!
12. I had a lot to say!
13. 76 points on Quiddler and I got to make the word "teasing"