Back in August my sister came to visit from far off Qatar.

The children enjoyed playing with their cousins (Christopher and Ashley).

We took them ice skating as a special treat. Erilynn had the best time ever riding on cousin Christopher's shoulders. Seems dangerous but they are actually very skilled skaters (they play hockey).

We put out a bird seed feeder and a hummingbird feeder. We had a steady stream of customers.

Part of the children's home-school curriculum is called Galloping the Globe. They go country by country and study their history, geography and most importantly, the food. The girls get to help Hollye prepare an authentic entree from the country they are studying. This is classic Israeli food.

Tennessee royalty...

I had to ask the children what was going on here...

This picture shows Hannah as the flower girl, followed by Erilynn who was the princess, then Alena the maid of honor, followed by William the crown-bearer. Christian (not seen) was the flag-bearer.

The purpose of the ceremony was to "honor the princess".

This is a picture of the children sitting at our new dining room table. After using a folding table for a long time, we finally saved up enough to buy my "dream" table. It's solid cherry, made by the Amish with eight chairs and two leaves that expand it to 8' by 4'. Even better it has my favorite cookies sitting on it (Oatmeal/chocolate chip/raisin/pecan). Mmmm, Hollye is such a good cook.

This is Christian who decided a Batman hat was just not enough. Check out the home-made construction-paper mask.

Why Google???

Many people are not aware, but when you use search engines, you are making them a lot of money (on advertisements and sales). The most popular of these by far is Google. Even though they are a relatively young company, their market capitalization is around 97 Billion dollars, if you can fathom that.

I've discovered a neat alternative to Google called GoodSearch. When you search through their site, a portion of their profit goes to the charity of your choice. How cool is that? There is a link on their home page (Add GoodSearch to your IE, Firefox, or Mac toolbar Add GoodSearch to your toolbar) that shows how to add it to your browser search dialog if you are so inclined. I hope you find this tool helpful to you and the charity you care about.

On a totally different subject, here I am on the local neighborhood scale. Looks like I need to go back on the old diet.

The Lemonade stand...

Bet you've never seen this before. What seems to be a kid's entrepreneurial lemonade stand is something more. Click the picture to read the signs. They made over $20 in donations on one gallon of lemonade.

Hannah and Alena's vet shop. Note the bandages on all the animals.

Playtime...

The boys playing with their kitchen (Future master chefs).

Can you guess what the girls are playing? Well, if you come up with something let me know, because I don't have a clue.

Alena playing with her home-made doll house. Creativity was born when imagination met boredom.

The weirdest Christmas list ever...

We had the girls each write down a Christmas wish list. Guess whose list the following belongs to:

• Camera
• Drum set
• Sandals
• Jail house and handcuffs (for her dolls)
• Drum sticks
• Nail polish
• Lotion
• The best Christmas ever
  

If you guessed Erilynn, you were correct. Here she is doing what she does best - "looking at her brain" (that's what we call eye-rolling).

South Dakota mission trip...

In June-July, I had the privilege of going on my first mission trip. It was to South Dakota at an Indian reservation in a little town called Manderson and lasted 9 days. I was in charge of the VBS registration desk, and in my spare time did evangelism and took pictures.

We took a day to do some site-seeing while we were there. Mount Rushmore is pretty close by.

So are the "Badlands". Can you guess why they're called that? Like the Grand Canyon, a picture does not do it justice.

Here is a shot of my fellow missionaries that I went with. They were fantastic Christians.

And here is the reason we were there. To minister to the native Americans and tell them of the hope we have in Christ. I took hundreds of pictures, some of them are amazing. If you like, you can see my entire library (and other peoples) here: http://nbcmissions.info/

Home sweet home...

Nice picture of Hannah going for a stroll with the boys.

If you ever wondered what our house looks like, well, here's a view of the front.

Hollye's Birthday...

Back in June we celebrated Hollye's birthday. I gave her some nightstands for a present. We had to have them custom made to try to match our dresser because we bought it so long ago and it was out of production. They turned out real nice.

She was anxious to dig into her carrot cake.

The 23rd Channel...

The TV is my shepherd I shall not want,
It makes me lie down on the sofa,
It leads me away from the scriptures,
It damages my soul.

It leads me in the path of sex and
violence for the sponsor's sake,
Yea, though I walk in the shadow of
my Christian responsibilities, there will be
no interruption for the TV is with me,
It's cable and remote control,
they comfort me,
It prepares a commercial before me in
the presence of my worldliness.

It anoints my head with humanism,
my coveting runneth over,
Surely laziness and ignorance shall
follow me all the days of my life,
And, I shall dwell in my house
watching TV forever, Amen.

(Author Unknown)

The average American spends more than 4 hours per day watching television. That is more than 28 hours per week. I can't help but wonder what would happen if we spent half as much time praying, reading the Bible and at church instead...

Our little backyard bunny (it's wild) that the children named Clover. Can you guess why?

Children's choir

All our girls go to children's choir on Wednesday night, while we attend the pastor's Bible study. Back in May, they put on a great performance for us praising and worshiping our Lord Jesus.

Erilynn

Alena

Hannah

Christian sharing with William.

Choo-choo train. Looks like they enjoyed the ride.

Here I am. Mr GQ with our hot rod automobile in the background. It's a 2000 tan minivan (my dream car). It has been our only vehicle for over 2 years now.

More cute pics...

Here's Hollye modelling the latest double stroller with cup holder.

Who needs the latest lead-painted toy when a stick is just as entertaining?

Ever catch your children watching you to see if you're watching them? Christian looks like he's headed for trouble.

He saw it all...

I love music. Now that I'm in Tennessee, I like to listen to some bluegrass and gospel. My new favorite song is "He saw it all." I love songs with lyrics that are clever and actually mean something.
Check it out here: He saw it all MP3

The chorus is:
I was trying to catch the crippled man
Did he run past this way?
He was rushing home to tell everyone
What Jesus did today
And the mute man was telling myself and the deaf girl
He’s leaving to answer God’s call
It’s hard to believe but if you don’t trust me
Ask the blind man, he saw it all
Ask the blind man, he saw it all

Oaklands Historic House had a free day back in May so we decided to grace them with our presence. The free part really is appealing when you have five children.

Here is Princess Erilynn curtsying for all her fans.

And here is Alena (her nick-name is Saucy, by the way)

And finally Hannah acting like a refined southern girl. (She actually IS a refined southern girl).

Everything was going so well until they saw a tree and someone got this tabloid shot.

Fireproof!

We recently went to see the movie Fireproof with members of our Sunday School class. This movie, about redeeming a failing marriage, was made by a Christian church with a budget of 500,000 (tiny by industry standards) with a mostly volunteer crew. Critics laughingly said it would not even crack the top 10 list. We saw it opening night and the theater was sold out. It opened 4th at the box office and so far it has grossed over 13 million.

It is a movie with a theme so alien and contrary to what passes for movies today that I left the movie amazed and feeling really good. Hopefully we will see more like this from these guys coming up.

Speaking of marriage, here is Hollye - my lovely bride of 15 years (so far):

One of Hollye's favorite things to do is to relax and spend some nice quiet time reading a good book.

The Damage Magnet...

I'd like to introduce our resident damage magnet - Christian. A couple of months ago, Alena was swinging about as high as she could go on our swing set and as she was coming back, Christian stepped behind her. He got clobbered really good, got a concussion and had to go to two hospitals. Praise God he did not have to have surgery and was able to come home without an extended stay and had no long-term side affects.

Tonight, we were playing a game of tag in our house and Christian was "it" and was happily chasing someone (I don't know who). He tripped and fell and hit his head on the edge of our hall tree. It gave him a large, deep gash on the top of his forehead so we took him to the hospital again. They held the wound closed and glued it back together and sent us on our way. (I had some super-glue in the garage. I could've saved who knows how much money).

Here's a picture of the little angel. Doesn't he look so calm and careful? He loves flowers by the way.

Here's a picture of Christian and William (left to right). Notice the single and double cow-lick respectively. It's the easiest way to tell them apart, although I suppose now Christian will have a nice scar to help with that.

The Denninger family orchestra...

Since last year, the girls have been taking instrument lessons through the Northside's Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA). It is administrated by our church and has great teachers and reasonable prices.

Back in May (that's how far behind I am in blogging), they had a recital and all the children played for us.

Alena plays the guitar and did a nice rendition of "This Land is Your Land".

Hannah plays the violin (that's a fiddle for all you southerners) and played a French folk song.

This is Hannah's best friend Ashley. She plays the violin as well.

AWANA year end ceremonies

For a few years now our children have been involved in AWANA. Their goal is to help churches and parents worldwide raise children and youth to know, love and serve Christ! They accomplish this mainly by helping the children do scripture memorization. The children also have a blast playing games and shopping at the AWANA store.

We have children in every one of the AWANA child-level programs. Here our boys are getting their "Puggles" certificates.

Erilynn was in Cubbies, Alena in Sparks and Hannah was in Truth and Training.

And here's a totally unrelated picture of them watching the hummingbird and seed bird feeders in our front yard. Call it a bonus.

Gymnastics competition...

The girls participated in their first gymnastics competition and did very well. Alena place 3rd in the floor routine exercise.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood...

We have a wonderful mix of culture and color in our neighborhood. We have Indians, Laotians and African-Americans as neighbors. And they all love to come to Hannah and Alena's Bible school where they sing hymns, read the Bible and play games.

Hollye purchased and set up a Slip-and-slide for our children and within ten minutes half the neighborhood showed up in their swim suits and volunteered to help test it out.