So, I'm just going to give you a quick recap. Otherwise, I'm never going to manage to start telling you about where we are and what we're doing now.
Gareth says that this summer we were "too busy doing blog-worthy things to blog"!
June: June saw us playing in the sun-shine, attending VBS, and packing for a BIG trip!
July: July saw me celebrate my 32nd birthday-in ENGLAND! Gareth's parents were very kind and gifted us with tickets to visit the family in England. The kids loved it, and so did we.
We spent lovely time with Gareth's parents, sister, her partner, Gareth's Granny, and even caught up with Aunt, Uncle, and a cousin.
Granny had planned a trip to Legoland-Windsor, which was a huge highlight. We had fantastic weather and it remains one of the kids' "best things ever".
We made a quick trip to Bristol and spent a lovely day catching up with friends from our church family in Bristol. As most of us had added at least one more child in the 5 years since we had seen them, it was LOTS of fun and a special time of catching up with old friends. While over on the west coast, we took the children to visit the Atlantic Ocean. It was a very typical English day, and so we showed the children how to be very British and enjoythe beach even in the rain!
The children spent lots of time playing in Granny's back garden, including a really lovely day with their Great-Granny sat, aged 91, in a chair in the middle of them joining in the game of football (that's soccer to us americans). That is definitely my favorite memory of the entire trip!
Rosie had great fun going on a shopping trip with Favorite Auntie Keri and Uncle Sam, and the boys enjoyed a trip to an activity center with Grumpy and Daddy. Noah finally managed to scale the climbing wall!
Our last day, we visited Warrick Castle. It poured rain most of the day, but we had a great time. Noah and Rosie even had a chance to practice their archery skills!
We returned from England just in time to hand out invitations for a 5-Day club, which we hosted in our neighborhood. We had a great group of youth from our church come out to lead it for us and had loads of kiddoes come and hear the Gospel.
August: August saw us spending lots of extra time in the pool and enjoying the last days of summer with our best friends. It also saw us do a unit study on Egypt. We made pyramids out of sugar cubes, learned to write our names in hyroglyphics, studied Egyptian history and religion, learned about modern Egyptian culture. Our study culminated in a visit to the Philbrook Museum to visit their Ancient Egypt exhibit. The kids were thrilled to get to see a real mummy! Their Mommy was thrilled when Noah gasped in surprise and then said to one of the ladies supervising the display, "Wow, you have a real sarcophagus!" She about fell over in shock, and they went on to have a great conversation about what Noah had been learning about.
September: September saw my 3rd year of home-schooling begin with Noah in 2nd, Nathan in Kindergarten, and Rosie in Pre-K. September also gave us the opportunity to celebrate Noah's 7th birthday.
October: October saw us celebrating Rosie's 5th birthday, first with family, and a week later with a "No Boys Allowed" princess tea party with her little friends. Sadly, October also saw us having to admit that our sweet Inky -dog's cancer was spreading and that her time to be with us was growing short. In His goodness to us (and especially to Nathan who took the news really hard), God gave us the blessing of a new puppy-dog from friends who raise labradoodles, but had a batch that they had not sold as young puppies. We were able to adopt Oreo with out all of the expense that would usually be involved. Lastly, October saw me finally complete the on-line portion of my nurse refresher course.
November: November saw us celebrating all things Thanksgiving. One of our favorite activities was a "thankfulness tree". We drew a treetrunk with lots of bare limbs, then every day we took a construction paper "leaf" and writing something that we were thankful for. The whole family really enjoyed taking an entire month to be deliberately thankful. In November, we said good-bye to Inky. She was the perfect dog for my munchkins when they were young, and I am very grateful for the almost 3 good years they had with her. And, Oreo's arrival had been perfect timing. Her presence really helped to ease their sadness over Inky's death. November saw my "skills lab" refresher completed and the beginning of my clinical time at OSU's Medical Center begin.
December: December was a whirl of Christmas programs (for me, complete with Victorian costume and hoop skirt), parties, bronchitis, and a visit to Grandmas. It also saw Gareth's project that he had been pursuing awarded. He is now officially a project engineer, acting as a project manager with his 1st project. I'm thankful that, at least for this one, the project is in-state, so we won't see him jetting off around the world on business!
So, that's where we've been! I've been trying to put pictures into the right places, but it's just slowing the computer up way too much, so I'm afraid you'll just have to have them at the bottom fo the post. I needed to just get this written and posted so we can move on, 'cause I can't wait to tell you about where we're going!!!!!I
