50 posts tagged “friends”
Around these parts, the homeschool community puts on a sort of prom called the Senior High Gala. Kathryn and Taryn went together and met some friends from one of their schools they attend (Geometry class) and had a BLAST! Who says you need a date to spend an evening of laughter, fun dancing and to top it off a gourmet meal. They were certainly glad they didn't let not having a "date" hold them back on making fun memories and having a great time with friends and each other.
What great timing for getting their hair done by cousin Christa who is still in town. They were asked by someone if they got their hair "professionally put up." Here's the result of her efforts:
The girls were soooo excited about our family field trip with friends to the Carolina Raptor Center today! They were
jumping up for joy in praise to God! Well, truly, Tar was just trying to get a good profile pic for her FB page. LOL.
Here's a group shot of friends who decided to join us on this outing!
Some great shots of our furry friends:
Want to know why? Well, besides the fact that we remembered Christ's great sacrifice on the cross for us, His chosen ones (His death was good news to us unworthy sheep so we wouldn't have to save ourselves), and that we were able to do so with good friends, reading Scripture, playing games and eating scrumptious foods, but the icing on the cake was that we had not just one baby but TWO babies to hold and kiss and oooo and ah over! I even had the added blessing of having one fall asleep on me. Nothing more precious than that!
Since it was also the week of Passover, which pointed the Israelite community to the coming of the ONE who would truly save them, we played a few games around the old testament celebration of Passover.
We look forward to Resurrection Sunday and the fact that no sealing of the tomb and any number of guards were able to keep Christ hidden away and dead! He has risen again and conquered death for us!
HAVE A VERY JOYOUS EASTER CELEBRATION WITH YOUR LOVED ONES!
Well, I survived another retreat... That's 2 for me in 3 weekends! Though this one wiped me out just like the other one, I at least was able to get some shut-eye enough to make it through each day...
When we first arrived at Redeemer in January of 2007, the youth retreat was one of the best things for our kids to go to in order to get connected in quickly. This weekend was the 3rd time around for them. It was however a bit different for the oldest two this time. Taryn was a team leader with Steve's friend, Kiko for rec games. They called themselves the Scarlet Dragons and began the weekend in the lead and surprisingly stayed in the lead the whole time. This is pretty rare as the tide can turn at any time and oftentimes, the one team doesn't stay on top very long. Taryn also was a discipleship devotional leader and Stephen too got to lead his own group of middle school dudes for after worship group time! I think they both felt priviliged and were also blessed to be given such responsibility. We are very thankful for a youth group where the pastor makes it a priority to stretch and grow the highschool students in service out towards others.
Howard was once again honored to give the kids their talks this weekend. The theme he centered around was taking down our idols and giving God His rightful place from the story of Samson in Judges 14 & 15 with the phrase of "what you revere you resemble for your ruin or your restoration."
Here's the group shot which we forgot to take with the background of the beautiful Lake Norman but instead our last minute ditch effort in the parking lot of Wendy's!
Tonight we got a taste of all the art projects the
kids at Grace Academy have been doing! We happen to know 5 of the students that are taking art there; our own Stephen and Paige, their cousins Meagan and Maddie and our family friend, Amanda. Here are some of their creations:
Self-portraits, wire figures, paper mache, paintings, poreclain bowls, drawings and so on! Paige, Amanda and Meagan made a great effort at their first ever self-portraits(photos below)!
We took care of a 6 month old baby and lived life like usual and survived. That may be more because Emma was as near perfect as an infant can be to take care of than in our abilities to manage the day with an extra little person around. She played well, slept well (2 hours at a time) and ate well. Honestly, she did not cry once. Since Sammy is OUR baby, he had a blast feeding someone smaller than himself since he has no younger siblings! Here's a conversation we had while she was here.
Sam: Mom, we need to have a baby just like this one.
Me: Why, when we can just borrow this one?
Sam: This one is so cute and chubby. She doesn't ever cry!
Me: Not ALL babies are as easy as she is. So, if we have one or get one, she might not be like her. And, most babies cry a lot so you'll have a lot of work to do to help out.
Sam: Well, I still want one anyway.
Here's Sam feeding little Emma:
20+C+M+B+09 translates into the year of our Lord 2009 and CMB means Christus mansionem benedicat, may Christ bless this house. We had a marvelous first-time celebration of EPIPHANY with our friends who are veterans in regards to celebrating this church holiday! I am not going to elaborate when my friend did such a great job of writing about it already and had much better pictures too! Here's a link to our friend's summation of the night because she wrote it so well:
http://frankfamily.vox.com/library/post/epiphany-further-revealed.html
One other thing about Epiphany that is very meaningful is that it is the revealing of the Savior to the Gentiles; those outside the nation of Israel - that means US! and the magi were kings from other nations coming to worship the King... Christ, the true light, was revealed to the NATIONS!
On the left are photos of the kids exchanging gifts with one another in the spirit of the magi giving gifts to the Christ child! Instead of doing this on Christmas day, we waited till after Christmas for the kids to shop for one another (drawing names) and then opened them on Epiphany! They actually enjoyed having another surprise 12 days later. Next year, we hope to celebrate the 12 days of Christmas between Christmas day and Epiphany.
January 6 was also the last night we had with Pa and Lola who flew back to Cali the following day. So, we had one last night with them making smores together and then we all prayed for them both; every child, in-law and grandchild. We feel so blessed to have them around and are thankful for each time they sacrifice their money and time to fly out to visit us. Lord willing, they will return in May for another graduation; Meagan and Paige's who are graduating from 8th grade to HIGHSCHOOL!
I can't believe this is the year I will turn 39!!! My last year of the 30's decade. Every year we are given is a gift.
We celebrated the new year with some friends dipping goodies into an overflowing chocolate fountain! Picture the three moms present scraping off the last remnants of the gooey substance so "it wouldn't go to waste!"
The weather this evening was NOT warm yet we dared to brave the cold around a blazing cauldron of fire. It kept us pretty toasty for the couple of hours that we sang silly songs and told stories!
We spent the last hour of the night watching the battles scenes of Prince Caspian until the final minutes near midnight drew near. Of course, we had to turn on Dick Clark and watch that ball drop! Here we are toastin' in 2009!
Yesterday had three pretty significant events occur!
Take One...
We had our Christmas party with a group of families from church who have become very dear to ours over this past year as we met monthly just to fellowship and mutually encourage one another not as couples or just kids but as families. This has especially been important as our church family continues to expand and you can sometimes feel disconnected from the mass of people. Meeting with a few families regularly has kept us feeling a bit more plugged into Church of the Redeemer. Here's a photo from toddler to teen playing the draydle (sp?) game together after which we sang Christmas carols and of course ate lots of yummy treats.
Take Two....
Stephen had his first meet with his Grace Swim team and for their first year together, they did a fantastic job competing. He beat his personal time in his specialty stroke, the 100 breaststroke. His relay team of 4 guys came in 3rd in the 200 IM medley where Steve swam the breaststroke and 2nd in the 400 free relay! The other videos we taped were too large to upload so we'll try to get one next time of him breaststroking but for now, here is Steve in the 50m free. He's the guy towards the top of the screen with the blue cap.
The team has bonded pretty well over the
past month of daily practices. This is a great bunch of students who are very encouraging towards each other. After the meet they celebrated by having the buffet at 9 at night. Steve ate and ate and ate. All that hard swimming sure works up an appetite.
Take Three....
While I was at the swim meet with Stephen, the younger three kiddos had their Christmas piano recital. Since it was Sam's first one, we wanted to highlight him tonight! We are proud of the progress he has made in just 3 months of lessons. The other two did super as well.
