Chatting with the Cook's: April 2013

So we have been doing more living than blogging lately as you all can tell...and I say "all" lightly...not sure how many are still reading this since I've taken so long to continue my blogging career.

I have actually read more books this year than I have in the past five years probably, I know that's pretty crazy for some of you who read a book a month.

I have also been working on getting more physically fit (a nicer way of saying, trying to lose some weight). I am doing pretty good with this so far, not to the point of blogging about it yet :-)

I have also been greatly enjoying my bible study group with PWOC (Protestant Women of the Chapel) and my MOPS group too. I have been organizing (for what seems like an eternity) a VeggieTale Movie event that is coming up in a little less than two weeks. I am pretty excited that we are going to give tons of people the opportunity to learn more about God through the movie, The League of Incredible Vegetables. It's been about 8 months in the working! Praying that God uses this event after all the effort that I have put into it.

Tom has been working incredibly hard on his school work this semester and working many hours doing his job with the Air Force. He has also been involved a lot with our chapel middle school youth group. He was gone over President's Day weekend for their retreat, so me and the boys kept ourselves busy with fun stuff to help the time go by quickly...it did.

Gregory is always busy...on the computer, on the wii, watching tv, building with legos, playing with his Transformers, doing "schoolwork", making a craft, reading or working on his spelling words. Gregory is AMAZING us every day with his reading skills. It is so crazy to think that a little over 100 days ago, Gregory couldn't read a single word and now he is reading books...not just "Bob" books either, but stories (or even his new Bible that he got for Easter).

And Joshua, well, we aren't making any "major" progress on the potty-training, but we are pretty sure by the time he's 10 he'll be using the toilet :-) Ok, hopefully sooner than that. Joshua loves taking care of his "friends"; Winnie (the Pooh), Tigger, Bob (the Builder), and many others. He LOVES music and loves to imitate musicians...so this has gotten Tom and I thinking about what do we want our boys to "do" musically...so we'll see where this leads in the next few years.

A big change for our family has been that we are attending a different church than we had been. This was a big deal for us since we'd been attending IBC (International Baptist Church) since we came here to Stuttgart. We are now attending SMCC (Stuttgart Military Community Church). We've met with the pastor and his wife a few times and gotten to know them a little bit and have decided that we needed a church like SMCC to help us grow spiritually. There have been a few "incredible" moments for me at SMCC, one being that our church is pastored by a couple that are Assemblies of God missionaries. For me this is amazing as a little over 10 years ago when I worked at the Assemblies of God Headquarters I got to be involved with the process of when people first became missionaries with the Assemblies of God.

And the last, but probably the most important thing that has been consuming our minds and our prayer time...what will we be doing two years from now! Yeah, two years from next month Tom will be retiring from the AF after 20 years in! It's pretty hard to believe that we are so close to this happening and starting to seriously contemplate what our next "job" will be. We are weighing our options and praying constantly...will we join with Cadence International Ministries or will we be interviewing at churches to see if that is where God would have us to be? If you think of it, please pray with us about this, that God would make it plain for us to see and that we would follow His leading.

As always, there are new pictures on our shutterfly page (http://tomandroxannecook.shutterfly.com/)

Blessings to you and yours and I hope to not have four months pass before I blog again.