It's December 1st and I'm ready to begin a running post and update on our family.

As I did last year in place of mailing Christmas Cards and Pictures out (except to a few folks) I'm going to do a virtual newsletter update on our family.  About once a week or so I'll do a posting and update you all on each person in our family. I'll start with the one I know best, me!!

2010 has been a year of emotional highs and lows!! From the excitement of planning for Kara and Derrick's April wedding, to having Ellen graduate from high school.

In January we kicked into high gear for our wedding planning, finishing up all the odds and ends like ordering a cake, which turned out to be an interesting event, but ended beautifully.  We had 3 blessed bridal showers, two here locally and 1 in Milan, PA (5 hrs. from here).  We just wanted to share our joy with all that we could and we knew that was not going to be entirely possible due to budget constraints, I don't think you can quite understand until you have to plan a wedding.  But God blessed this day with every heavenly blessing and showered down his love and care over every detail from the weather to the honeymoon.  We are so thankful for all those that took time out of their lives to come and share in the joy of the day, helping us watch our dear daughter move on to begin her new life as a wife.

 Then came our next big event of the year, Ellen's Graduation Party.  We scheduled this for June and had a very hot, but gorgeous day to celebrate.  We were blessed by the many friends and family members that came out to celebrate Ellen's accomplishment. Will share more on Ellen in her post coming up soon.

 Then in July we headed to Tennesee with the our friends the Balega Family and attended a family conference sponsered by Answers in Genesis.  While there we took in as many of the sites and activities that we could, it was a fast paced week that was a lot of fun!

The cabin on top of a mountain we rented, secluded we wanted, secluded we got!

The Awesome Titanic Museum, spent 3 hours there, could have spent more.

Some of our party wanted to go Zorbing! riding inside a giant ball down a hill!

Most of the gang on day 1 at Dollywood when it was about 102 deg, the next day it was 106 deg.

This is just one of the many switchbacks we took up and down the mountain 2x a day to the cabin, in our 12 pass. van nonetheless! talk about excitement!!

This was actually our first outing,  River Rage Tubing, tons of fun but not without a little danger.

On our way home we stopped at the Creation Museum, this is in the lovely gardens outside!

 

 

 

 

  We kept busy all summer by hosting a couple's Bible study called "Visionary Parenting" where we had 6 families come out for 8 weeks on Wed. nights, the older girls helped keep all the little ones busy, there were sometimes as many as 25 children in our basement!  We also hosted a twice a month fellowship night where Steve and our dear friend Angelo Terranella taught from the book of Daniel, this was after a few hours of fun activities that families had together i.e. wiffleball, volleyball, water games, water night, and always lots of snacks. 

Volleyball

Laura ready for Bible Study

Sack Races

Inner tube, tarp, soap, + water = fun

Even the little ones join in.

 Summer flew by as usual, we spent most weekends enjoying the lake house (as Derrick calls it) and our church family at Pleasantview Baptist each Sunday, we even were blessed to spend Resurrection Sunday with them this year, it was 90 degrees in April this year!! an unbelievable weekend that allowed the opening up of  the windows there so early.  Then in October we closed up a week early as we were making a trip up to help Kara and Derrick move into their new home.  It was a great trip and we all did not want to leave, even my van  tried to get us to stay, it took a few trips to the repair shop to coax it home.

Everyone worked really hard helping get the house ready to move in.

The livingroom looked great after everything was moved in.

The dining room getting painted, Derrick needs no stepladder.

We celebrated Kara's 21st birthday with her while we were there.

 

 

So not too much has happened since October.  We've been busy with our homeschooling and our one co-op. We did not return to the enrichment classes that I had directed for so long, so it's been nice to enjoy our Fridays at home for the first in over 14 yrs.

Kara and Derrick were able to spend Thanksgiving with us which was absolutely wonderful!!! it was very hard to see them go on Sunday, Ruby didn't want to let go of Kara's neck and everyone had sad puppy eyes as they pulled out of the driveway.  Lord willing they'll be back for New Years, but with new jobs for both of them it'll be a short weekend visit, it'll be time for us to make a trip back up to see them I think.

So I'll stop there and get some posts up on each member of our home so you can keep up to date with our lives,be sure and drop us a line and let us know how you are doing, we'd love to pray for your family, please remember us as well, pray that we may seek the Lord, continue in His will for our lives, and see His Kingdom grow.