December 2nd–was a lot

We celebrated my birthday a day early because 12/2/23 had a LOT going on.

We started our day early, with Tabitha, John and I heading up to One Life Institute in Marietta, SC.  Tabitha has applied and has been accepted to their Gap Year Program for 2024-2025.  We had a lot of fun seeing the campus with our favorite tour guide Daniel showing us most of the highlights.   I should have taken some photos, but we were on the move a lot.  It is pretty clear to us all that this was where God was pointing Tabitha for her first year out of high school and she is super excited.

We finished there around 11:30AM and we booked it home where I quickly changed clothes, grabbed Johanna and headed to pick up much of her AHG squad to head to Charlotte to the Operation Christmas Child processing plant.   We filled the big van and headed into our 2 hour drive in the rain.

 

We spent almost 5 hour inspecting boxes.  It was exhausting.

 

 We made it home after midnight.

Festival of Trees -

It was our third year to head to the Hyatt downtown to help decorate for the Festival of Trees with AHG.

It was Johanna’s squad again, and it is more than double in size from last year.

 

Afterwards we did our annual visit to Kilwin’s Ice Cream.  It costs more than Culvers… but it is special.

 

It was a wee bit chilly, but otherwise a gorgeous night. 

I love living in a place where I am not afraid to be downtown at night. 

Soccer–FEVER 2023

The girls were able to play Upward soccer again this year.  It was Johanna’s last year.  She hopes to help coach next year.

 

 

CBS efforts

Not really sure what to name this post, to be honest.

I am part of the servant’s team this year at CBS.  I am the teacher for the Baby Class, that means kids under 18 months old.  I watch the babies while their moms are in their core groups and teaching time.  I certainly dropped off my kids for hundreds and hundreds of hours at CBS from 2002 through 2021, and I am glad to be on the volunteer side of things in this way.

However.

That means I have to arrive at 8:30AM so that we leaders can have our core group and praying time.  And by default, that means Johanna and Katriel have to also go at 8:30AM.

We leave our house by 8AM.  They bring a LOT of school work to do from 8:30AM to 10:15AM.  Then they go to their class.  I pick them up around 12:15PM after all the babies have been picked up and my room is clean.  And then we head home.  And if we are really lucky, we start OUR school by 1:45PM, after we have eaten and unwound a smidge.

It is really hard.
We are tired.
We are behind in our lessons.  Too many Thursdays we don’t have the wherewithal to start looking for split infinitives and quadradic equations at 2:45PM.

But if it was easy, it wouldn’t be an offering.  It seems really hard to imagine doing this for another 20 weeks.  So we just focus on one week at a time and trust that God will help us to sow good things.

A camptastic weekend…

Johanna went camping on Kings Mountain, and Katriel went camping at Paris Mountain.  I did not go to either event… but my friends shared some photos.

 

 

 

 

 

80’s Dance–Hope Co-Op

I have the photos that I have because of friends who sent me pictures.  The blog has suffered the last few months as I found that my iPhone was storing photos in formats that are incompatible with blogging. 

Johanna was able to attend her first co-op dance.  This photo was sent by Taylor’s mom.

Johanna is seemingly following in her sisters’ footsteps… she appears to have more dude friends than female friends!

Meanwhile, Melody, Tabitha, and Emily got decked out for their last thematic high school dance.

 

 

Steamboats

 

Axe Throwing • Johanna

Mrs. Owings arranged for an afternoon of axe throwing. 

And one of her favorite places to eat – Culvers.

It’s beginning to look a lot like soccer season!

Third year for Johanna to play Upward sports, and second year for Katriel.  Tonight was placement.

 

More Wednesdays with Kate

 

Wednesdays with Kate

Johanna and Kate have managed to get together more Wednesdays than not since co-op ended. 

Memorial Day / Johanna’s birthday

The Hoyt’s invited us over for the holiday, so we celebrated Johanna’s birthday with our special friends.

An extreme badminton game.

Marguerite bought her balloons. 

I love this little girl and I love this family God is allowing us to do life with.

Some pre-birthday celebrating!

It was a rainy weekend, but the sun always shines through this one’s smile.

Our newest teenager!

She’s going to have a great year!