The boys were tucked into their beds, and Felicia was just finishing up her shower. As I walked down the hallway, I could smell a burning odor. As I tried to determine where it was coming from, Addison called out from his room, “Mom, what is that burning smell?” Okay – so it wasn’t just me. Immediately, I called downstairs and asked Max, “Honey, do you smell that?” He said, “Yeah, it smells like burnt popcorn, but I’m not popping any.”
While he started searching, I tucked Felicia into bed because I knew she was exhausted and would fall right asleep, and there was no need for her to stay up while we tried to figure it out. I walked downstairs and started sniffing my way around the house trying to figure out where that smell was coming from. All of a sudden, Max opened the basement door and – whoa! – it was definitely coming from down there.
Both of us searched all over in the basement and couldn’t find the source. Since we didn’t see any smoke or fire, we decided to stop searching and just continue with the evening. However, when the smell continued to linger, I said, “Max, maybe we should call 9-1-1. It’s better to be safe than sorry.” He wasn’t really comfortable with that because we didn’t see any smoke or a fire, but he said he would just call the fire department for a consultation.
A fireman answered and, after a few minutes, said, “Well, let me send a guy over there just to check it out. It’s better to be safe than sorry.” 
Max hung up the phone, gave me the quick summary of the conversation and then headed upstairs to check on something. After about 5 minutes, he came racing down the stairs and said, “Did you hear that? Did you hear that fire engine siren? I hope that’s not for our house! The guy said he was just going to send a guy over to check things out!” (more…)
During the last few weeks, I had one of those periods in my life – the kind that you can sense that something is just not quite right, you are not fully engaged in the here and now, you sense an unexplainable heaviness, you can’t put your finger on it, etc. During those days, I asked the Holy Spirit to pray for me. I did not even have the words to explain my feelings to Him, to myself, or to anyone else. I knew that with all the transitions and changes that I (we, as a family) were experiencing, there would be these times of confusion and lack of understanding, even a continuing wave of 
What a beautiful testimony: 
It is already the beginning of another month – can you believe it?? That means it is accountability time for me with regard to Scripture memorization. I want to confess that I was not able to memorize both passages that I had listed on the 
