Julie Gumm - Author

Give a kid “Fresh Air”

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If you live in the Northeast US, the Fresh Air Fund is looking for host families to give New York City boys and girls, ages six to 18, free summer experiences in the country and the suburbs.

Thanks to host families who open up their homes for a few weeks each summer, children growing up in New York City’s toughest neighborhoods have experienced the joys of Fresh Air experiences.

Fresh Air children are boys and girls, six to 18 years old, who live in New York City. Children on first-time visits are six to 12 years old and stay for either one or two weeks. Youngsters who are re-invited by the same family may continue with The Fund through age 18, and many enjoy longer summertime visits, year after year. A visit to the home of a warm and loving volunteer host family can make all the difference in the world to an inner-city child. All it takes to create lifelong memories is laughing in the sunshine and making new friends.

The majority of Fresh Air children are from low-income communities. These are often families without the resources to send their children on summer vacations. Most inner-city youngsters grow up in towering apartment buildings without large, open, outdoor play spaces. Concrete playgrounds cannot replace the freedom of running barefoot through the grass or riding bikes down country lanes.

For more info, visit their site.

This, that & the other thing

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Yeah, things have been quiet around here. Despite my best efforts to blog consistently, life gets ahead of me.

Working from home is fantastic, but having 4 kids home in the summer causes a dip in productivity during the day and I often find myself catching up on stuff in the evening. By the time I have some time to write, my creativity is fried.

But here’s what’s been going on around here…

  • Mark was gone for 16 days to Ethiopia & Kenya. While he was gone I: took 3 van loads of stuff to Goodwill, filled the large recycle can 3 times w/ papers, cleaned and reorganized the garage so that we can fit 2 cars in (took about 30 hours), hung a cabinet in the downstairs bathroom (thanks for the help Dad), hung new curtains, painted an end table & coffee table, bought shelves for the playroom (hung them after he was home), cleaned the den, dismantled the hutches from our office desk to make the room seem less crowded, scanned approximately 300 pieces of paper into Evernote (going paperless), shredded two trash bags worth of old bank statements and tax returns and somewhere in there I ate, slept and worked. I’m not sure why I go on home project binges while my husband is gone.
  • Took the kids to Cali for a quick 3 day weekend. Disneyland one day, dinner with friends and lots of hotel pool swimming. Oh, and Cars 2 (super cute). Despite the 90 minute line (it SAID 50 minutes) we went on the new Star Tours ride – pretty freakin’ awesome!
  • Next week I’m headed to NC to attend the SheSpeaks Conference put on by Proverbs 31 Ministries. I’ve been wanting to go for years and some freelance work provided the funds. Plus I convinced Jen to come with me 🙂
  • As part of the conference I have to prepare two talks – one 3 min, one 5 min – that will be evaluated and critiqued. Yikes! I’ve got my topics, illustrations and scriptures, I just need to put it all together.
  • Do you have ANY idea how hard it is to get a illustration, point & scripture across in 3 minutes???????
  • Several people from SheSpeaks recommended “Communicating for Change” by Andy Stanley so I bought it. BLOWN AWAY! Seriously! Anyone who speaks to groups needs to buy this book. That goes triple for every pastor I know 🙂
  • I’ve got no less than 3 radio interviews coming up about the book. Two are internet radio shows, the other is for FAITH900 in MN. Working on updating a second edition for the next printing.
  • My 4 nephews & 1 niece are here from Arkansas for a few days so we’re getting in some cousin time.
  • Spent the last four days dealing with PayPal issues. World Orphans is switching our e-commerce system over but apparently my name is now on too many accounts and so it flagged me. They froze both my personal account that I used for decals (hence they are down for a bit) as well as the account I have for my publishing company (although you can still order the book w/ Google Checkout. It’s a nightmare that is slowly getting unwound but a huge headache.
  • Little Caesars Pizza just opened near us with their $5 carryout special. I love this because the Papa John’s across the street started offering the same deal. COMPETITION! Let’s see – Little Caesars or Papa Johns? That’s a no brainer! That’s only about $1 per pizza than the frozen ones I buy.
So what have you been up to?