Fossil hunting and quiet time

Yesterday was such a beautiful day that none of us wanted to stick around the house.  My sister had been asking me to take her to Purse State Park with us the next time we went so we decided to make a day of hunting for shark teeth. On the hike in, Gavin and Kaileb stopped to smell the Lemon Verbena we spotted the last time we were there. There isn't much beach at the park so we had to correlate with low tide.  When we arrived the water was not clear like it has been the past few times we've been and seaweed covered everything.  It made it much harder to find shark teeth and everyone seemed to get tired of digging through the green spaghetti pretty quickly.  The waves were coming up bigger than usual and taking out any shark teeth we spotted underwater just as we would see them!  Instead of feeding into the frustrations, I took them for a walk down the beach.  Not far was a little creek that was running from a pond that was part of a marsh just behind the river. This was the jackpot.  The kids ran up and down the little creek and played in the pond area.  The water just beyond was pretty murky and with the copperheads around here I didn't let them go where they couldn't clearly see where they were stepping. Gavin loved the warmth of the water and before long was rolling around and sticking his head in it.  Ava loved the feeling of the sand in her hands and rediscovering her toes.  I just love those little toes. Haylie was such a big helper on the way back to the car, juggling four kids, the camera bag, the wet clothes, and the stroller was a challenge.  She carried Ava most of the way back for me because Gavin was too tired to walk and took over the stroller.  

We made it home just before company started filtering in for the weekly bible study we have here. It was just ladies tonight and we had a chance to talk about what we've been soaking up from our "quiet time."  I talked about what I've been reading in Hebrews.  Hebrews 5:14 says "But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil."  This was convicting for me in the sense that I'm not in the Word daily: "constant practice." Although, that's not what this verse is saying, that's what it made me think about.  It was really nice to hear what other people are gaining from reading their bibles this week.  

I hope you all are having as blessed a week as I am.