Philly Weekend

This past weekend I spent some time in Philadelphia with my parents and my brother and sister in law.  Congratulations to Tiffany for getting her Masters Degree!  …and a 4.0, at that!

It was Father’s Day and the Tigers were playing the Phillies.  What a great day for me to take my dad and mom to a game!  To top it off, the Tigers won.  Dad wasn’t as happy…but I think that the sting of watching his beloved team lose was at least a little less because I was there:)
June_2007_257
This is my dad and me outside Citizens Bank Park.

This is us with my brother, Todd.June_2007_272
I was told that I looked like I was confused…wearing my Tigers shirt and my Phillies hat:)

June_2007_274
This is mom and me, right before I left.  She’s the one that kept elbowing me when I would scream for Pudge at the game, Sunday.  She tried to kick me out of their row!

June_2007_247
And as an added bonus, I got to see a good friend from college, Ryan, who’s working in the culture of Philly.  It was also great to see him.

June_2007_285
And just because I wanted to take a picture of the beautiful scenery of Pennsylvania…while I was driving…dad, pretend you didn’t read that:)

Kay, the beautiful goddess statue

Meet Kay.  She’s my beautiful goddess statue.Dsc03369_2

A few years ago when I was at my grandma’s house (the one that passed away in January), I commented on
her statue.  I said that I liked it and I asked her if I could have it someday.  She said that she would make sure I got it.  Well, she moved out of her apartment about two years ago, so the statue had been at my parents’ place, hiding out in the upstairs closet.  This past weekend I drove to Philly to be with my parents and I brought Kay home with me. 

Why "Kay"?  My grandma’s name was Katherine (like a wonderful writer/friend I know;), but she went by Kay.  So now I have her in my apartment.  She doesn’t match one thing that I own, but Kay will always have a place where I live, somehow and somewhere.

“Chase the Lion” Lifegroup

Tuesday nights @ 7 I get to spend time with a really awesome group of people at the Southfield Public Library.  They make up my Lifegroup.  Although I would have never just randomly put these people together to just "hang out", for some reason this group makes sense and is so great!  A couple of people were new tonight and a couple of people were out tonight…they were missed.  Put everyone together and it’s so much fun!

Tonight I started my group off with a KWL chart about fear.  KWL is a "before reading" strategy that teachers teach kids to do…write what you Know, what you Want to know, and then what you Learn.  I wasn’t too sure how my group of adults would take to my "classroom" strategy, but it actually seemed to go as well in our group as it does in my classroom!  Yay! 

Then we started off our book together-Mark Batterson’s, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day.  Brad actually51np15gza0l_bo2204203200_pisitbdp50
preached on fear two days ago, and it led perfectly into our discussion tonight.  (Thanks, Brad!:)  We had some great, authentic discussion, and it whetted my appetite for the discussions that we’re going to have these next couple of months, as we wrestle through this together.  It pumped me up! 

We ended our night by doing something that I used to do as a Discipleship Leader, back in college…and we did something similar a few weeks ago, too…we wrote to ourselves.  We wrote down fears that we have about our current life, and fears that we have about the future…things we want to overcome.  We sealed them up in labeled envelopes and I’ll return them in a couple months-or perhaps the fall. 

Community is built through times like these-or at least they start in times like these.  I thank God for Sylvia, Joi, Cheryl, Stacey, Mark and Don….and Jayne when she can make it:)

I may come back to jot some thoughts down about fear, as we go through this book together.  I already added some things to my "L" column on my chart! 🙂

Really a Detroiter

Last week when I was with my old friends, Mike and Christina, something was confirmed.  When Mike and I were talking about Detroit sports, he jokingly said something about how you can tell when a game’s in Detroit, ’cause there’s usually a riot that breaks out…

Then he laughed even harder when he said, "Wow, Kim, you’re really a Detroiter now!  Your teeth are clenched!"  With raised eyebrows, and a chuckle, I said, "Yep, I guess I am!" 🙂

The Project-The Process

Well, it’s official…I just got busier.

I work to give myself "me" time.  It can be hard during some weeks and fairly easy during other weeks.  Right now it’s early on Saturday afternoon and I realize that I’ve accomplished very little so far today.  I’m okay with that though.  Plus, I may take a nap in a little bit (you’d think I was a growing baby).  My list is right here in front of me, and blogging isn’t on it, but I need to put some thoughts down to continue in my day.

However, this past week I agreed to be a part of what we (at Hanley) are calling the Kissman Project.  While it’s difficult to gracefully organize into precise thoughts for this post, I will explain it simply like this; I have an amazing opportunity to be coached (perhaps mentored?) by two incredible people in the education field.  Three teachers at my school were chosen.  God-given opportunities are pretty obvious sometimes…this one’s quite obvious. 

I need to write this down because I know that I will hit a day when I’m so tired and exhausted from being a part of this project, this learning experience, that I will wonder whether I was really supposed to do it.  I need to be able to go back to this day and know that I am walking in God’s will. 

One main goal that Brian and Susan (my coaches) have emphasized is that we’re going to learn how to teach the process of learning.  If I could dialogue with you about this for a few minutes you would really see how much this was, so completely, made for me!  As I sat in that hot room on Thursday afternoon, and listened to them, I realized that what they want to accomplish through us is what I’ve been trying to figure out how to do with my students all year long!  I thought, "They’re going to help me do what I really want to do!"  It was great to be able to be authentic in sharing a small part of that with them.  It excites me.  After all, God is constantly taking me back to the process.  You’ll learn more through the process, or the journey, than through someone just telling you.  Learning through the process causes you to make what’s learned your own.

Sh-Sh-Sh-Shake it

Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh-Shake it, don’t break it. Took yer momma nine months to make it.

This is one of my favorite kids in the whole world, doing her rendition of ‘Hype Man’-I think that’s what it’s called:)

***I did get permission from Tal to post this…despite what you hear at the end of the video:)

Make Herr’s Yours

If you don’t know this about me yet, you can take the girl outta Philly, but you can’t take the Philly outta the girl.  One thing I love about visiting home are the things that Philadelphians tend to take for granted. 

You’ve got the pizza (which I posted about here ); you’ve got the steaks (which I posted about here ); you’ve got TastyKakes; you’ve got the soft pretzel that you buy for a quarter on the side of the road from the guy who probably doesn’t wash his hands-on which you slather French’s or Gulden’s mustard on…yum!; and then you’ve these two things that I’ve experienced these last few days.

Side note:  I went to see my friends, Mike and Christina (and their daughter, Clara), in Ohio this weekend.  Mike and I go back to Jr High-so he’s from Philly too-and Christina and I go back 10 years to when we first went to North Central together.  It was such a good time hangin’ with them…I’ll post about them later.

Mike was so excited to tell me that Dayton just got its first…RITA’S WATER ICE!!!  (Be cool, go toRitas Rita’s!)
Water ice is very hard to explain, for some reason, and every Philadelphias/East Coaster will agree.  We’ve tried, again and again, to no avail.  It is not simply crushed ice with flavored juice, like a snow cone.  Nor is it like a slushy or a slurpee, like at 7-11.  Its flavor supercedes these things to levels that no man can truly describe.  My favorite flavor, for a long time, was banana…oh the frozen chunks of banana :0P  But since high school, I usually go for a gelati (not to be confused with the italian ice cream, "gelato").  A gelati is a combination of water ice (pronounced "wooder ice") and frozen custard.  I like mango water ice and chocolate custard.  My moutDsc03298h salivates.

That was Friday night.  Now to today.  It was lunch time and of course I didn’t bring a lunch.  I headed over to the vending machine to find, none other than, a Pennsylvanian brand of chips…Herr’s!  I’m not even a huge chip fan, but I did visit the Herr’s potato chip factory when I worked a Y-Day Camp 6 years
ago…I had fresh, hot potato chips and they were stinkin’ good.  They don’t sell Herr’s around here, so I was completely shocked.  And, to top it off, the flavor (which surprisingly tasted fabulous) was Philly Cheesesteak!  I even took a picture to commemorate the moment.

Prayer Walk

I decided to take my LifeGroup on a prayer walk through a neighborhood in Southfield tonight. 

The biggest thing that I felt the Lord speak to my heart was that I needed to do this in my own neighborhood…every week…at least once a week…and that I should encourage others to do the same.

Pray for transformation and life change.  Pray for bondages to be broken.  Pray for people to do flips for Jesus.  Pray for your own boldness to speak love and truth to others.  Pray against apathy, both for Christians and non-Christians.

Go for a walk around your neighborhood, and pray. 

Well-Hidden:)

I told my mom, this morning, that I was sorry she was getting her mother’s day card late.  I’d bought it last week, wrote it out and put it in the mail-to-go-out bin at work this week.  It never got mailed, so I had to mail it on Friday afternoon.

She told me that she had one up on me.  Remember my dad’s birthday a few weeks ago?  My mom had bought his birthday card 3 weeks before that, and hid it so he wouldn’t find it.  She said that she read through a whole bunch of cards and picked out just the right one that she wanted.  Well, Mom hid it so well that she still can’t find it:)