gulp

Gulp. There are forty-two odd days until staff training begins. I have so much to do before then it's not even funny. Noah is our theme this summer and we are turning the TL barn into an ark. One (only one) part of my job is filling this ark with non-live animals (Matthew is taking care of the live ones, thank goodness). Tonight, I drove through the barn and kind of realized how big it is. I mean, it's huge! I hope that Scott, and the support staff are ready for what lies ahead! Please, please, keep me in your prayers. Program is a lot of thinking and planning, teaching and then executing and that has to take second place to Tuan and Johnny. Somewhere behind that is housework, etc . . . although not pre-eminently important (to me, at least)--it surely makes life nicer. There's a lot to balance. Someone was trying to get me to take on a separate project and I just had to say, "sorry, I'm swamped." It's hard to say no, when you want to seem like you've got it all together, but necessary.

So, I ask for your prayers. Please pray that I would place a high priority on prayer and seek God before I tackle these projects! Please pray that God would give a lot of grace between Tuan and myself as he is about to enter a SUPER busy season. Please pray that I would be a good mother to Johnny and that he would thrive during camp. Please pray that the staff would just embrace Noah and get the gospel message that is in it. Please also pray that the gospel would be taught/seen through all this stuff and that I would place a higher priority on that than program perfection.

It's amazing that Johnny will be eleven months tommorrow! Wow. Anna V. had her b-day party today (she's two!) and it just seems like yesterday that I was at her one year old party. Johnny is changing so much and every day is more and more fun. He has learned to say star and to point to my nose. He is also trying to walk. Wow.

Today, after the party, Johnny went down for a nap and I had intended to do some more housework (should have been doing program!), but all of a sudden I was possessed by the urgent desire to paint. "PAINT!" said my inner voice, and I frantically ran to and fro, gathering supplies and searching for a subject to satisfy the urge to "PAINT!" I found a photo of Johnny at the beach with my aunt in the background taking his picture. As I've written before, I never took painting in college and am trying to learn how to now. Today, I was very methodical (but loose, Caroline). First, I used a grid to get my proportions right and to do a pencil sketch. I wanted to focus on value, so I worked from a black and white photo. The first layer of paint, I blocked in light/dark and forms, using colour. Then, I worked on background to foreground and then began to zero in on applying colour to my subjects. As a result, the painting is very vivd and high contrast. I'm really happy with the way it is going and plan to post pictures of it on Monday after I finish it. When I took "drawing two" we did everything in pastels (which I loved) and my teacher forbade the use of black. (this, I believe is a wise thing--except in graphic design--but even now I have an aversion to using black type, I usually go with 90% or less). I love getting dark-darks and shadows out of colour combinations (particularly red/green). It irks me when people use black to do shadows.

Aren't I silly? Anyway, it was a blessed afternoon. Johnny slept long and hard and then played well while I finished up. I was able to paint for about 3-4 hours straight. Tonight, after supper, I was able to work on program, while Tuan cared for Johnny.

Oh, and in between all this, I'm reading Jane Eyre again (it's been years--and I don't remember much about it). Personally, I don't care for her as a character. She rather annoys me. I'll write more about this later when I finish the book.

Lastly, happy birthday to my dad!! He's fifty (but still cool). Dad, I thought about you all day. Hope you had a good one.