Be My Valentine

This is what has kept me from blogging lately.

It is Burrito's class auction project for his school. I somehow (I still don't know how this invariably happens to me!) ended up organizing this among 4 different classes. Burrito's school has an annual auction to raise money for a portion of its operating expenses. Each class this year was given a theme. Ours was dress up so amongst the 4 classes, we collected dress up and pretend play items for a police officer, military member, veterinarian, and chef. I found these trunks and dressed them up a bit and loaded them up with donated goodies. I think they turned out cute and will be turned in this afternoon, hooray!

While it has been a little work to get this organized and make decisions, it has been an opportunity for me to meet some moms at the school that I may not have otherwise had an opportunity to meet and for that, I am very thankful.

Though we have been in our current area for 1 1/2 years now, I still feel like we are "new" and meeting people is not always easy. Back in January we started attending a church closer to home. We long for some community and we want this for our kids too so we decided now was a good time to start looking for a church here on this side of town. We have never lived close to our church, and as a result of that and having 2 small children, commitments to Sunday school and other things outside of the Sunday morning church service were sacrificed. Now that the boys are older we feel we are more able to do more things but living so far away made it hard.

So I thought a new church would be the answer. And it has been in some ways. We've been going to Sunday school and it's good. The boys seem to like things okay. The sermons are great, something that has not been the case at our previous church. This church is smaller so things such as music/worship are still developing but satisfactory. Sounds promising, right? Except for one small thing....you know, the reason we made the switch.....community! We have not had a favorable experience. NO ONE, and I mean no one, talks to us. It's really weird. Both John and I feel like we seek people out more than they do, and we are the visitors! We've been attending for 7 weeks so I feel like we've been fair in giving plenty of opportunity. And we've noticed that the members don't really hang around and talk with each other either. A lot of them shoot out of there as soon as the service is over. This experience has been so different than our experience when we first started attending our other church. And it has been convicting for us as well, thinking of how many times we should have been more proactive in seeking out visitors and introducing ourselves. It has been such a poor experience it may change our minds about switching churches. But John and I both agree that a church closer to home is better....so where do we go???? Praying for the Lord's wisdom....

On a lighter note....

Burrito had his class Valentine party last Friday and Noodle and I attended as well. It was fun and Noodle always amuses me with his assertion that he is a part of the class too! He just makes himself at home.