Saturday was a wonderful day of just being with the family. It was especially encouraging to see God’s working and maturing in my brother’s lives.
We played street hockey in our driveway for several hours that morning. The boys had worked out an ingenious system to best utilize the amount of space that we had. The goals were two laundry baskets on their sides and the goalie would kneel in front equipped with a baseball glove and knee pads. The defender for each side played with a little two foot mini hockey stick and the offense got to use the real big sticks. Every ten minutes or so we would swap places.
Our “puck” was a tennis ball; this worked out very nicely because my dog is a born retriever so she would closely “ref” the game and rush to get the ball every time it went out of bounds. Occasionally she would deem that the ball was out of control and quickly grab it until things calmed back down, usually delivering it to the nearest goalie.
During the whole time we played I was very encouraged to see the sportsmanship demonstrated by my brothers. Also to see how they used my dog to a good end rather than become annoyed by her interference showed a great creativity.
Later that evening my older brother Michael came over and we all went out to play with him. We played until dark and then decided to go try it on an outdoor rink that was at a park about 15 min away (close for us). We played hard from 9:30 to 10:00 and due to the temp and humidity (lovely Texas weather 
we were very sweaty and thirsty. There was only one water fountain and the younger boys were claiming their places in line. I was about to chide them about being gentlemen and letting the girls go first but remembered that the lady’s privileges were not to be demanded but accepted so I quietly waited in last place. Then to my utter delight, David, 14, offered to let me go before him. How wonderful that I didn’t push ahead and dictate, but rather let the act come from his own mind and initiative.
Tomorrow I go back to finish with the last two weeks of camp. I have good friends there and I love the work that I do, but I will be ready to be back with my family, it does my heart good.
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