Happy Birthday Amanda!

Amanda cringes when I use pictures of her, but tough! It's your birthday, and your picture is going up on my blog!
What a blessing this girl is to our lives! There are times when I am overwhelmingly grateful to live in a college town. Not necessarily when I'm driving around, like this week, and 50,000 people come back at once to clog up Texas Ave., but other than that, I'm SO grateful! Because it means that I have girls like Amanda in my life. Girls that I keep lasting relationships with. (I miss you girls, who have left me, much to my protest!) I am trying to keep Amanda here as long as possible. Of course, that means, she's working at our office right now. We'll employ her as long as we can. She'll use her super-organizational powers on our office for a while.
Thanks, Amanda, for loving my kids almost as much as if they were your own. Thanks for being their "favorite babysitter" who brings fun movies and lets them eat popcorn with M&M's in it. Thanks for always calling me when you're going to the store to see if I need anything. (EVERY Mom needs someone like that in their life, am I right?) And thanks for being teachable and growing right before my very eyes. We love you! Happy Birthday!

Also, for those of you who also love my Emma, check out her latest blog post "If I was a movie director." I think it's so cool! I love seeing her budding relationship with the Lord played out in her creativity! She also created a book club last night for her and the girls from our Core Group who come over for prayer each week. They decided they would read about Neil Armstrong and get back together next week to discuss it. Emma made her own sign-up sheet and everything. How cute is that?