Stitches, Weddings, and Biking

So kinda an eclectic title, especially as the stitches had nothing to do with biking (no injuries on that one...probably because we kept Kelly in a the kid backpack). So, it starts last weekend when we wanted to have an end of the year Cub Scout party, so we went bowling...what's the worst that could happen. Well, the first game went great. The kids had a blast due to the bumpers and Kelly (due to the kid bowling ramp and some great aiming from her father) even won. However about midway through the second, as she carried her ball up, she tripped and landed with her chin on the bowling ball. Chin is definitely not stronger than bowling ball and after a trip to the ER she emerged with her first two stitches (her Uncle Mike is so proud that she is following in his footsteps). But all is ok. She did great (handling things much better than her mother who skipped the trip). All week she ran up to anybody she saw and tipped her head back to show off her stitches, which are hidden just under the chin.

A little less drama was had yesterday as we went up to West Virginia for a wedding. We spent Friday night in Hitton, WV at a nice little hotel. Saturday morning after a healthy breakfast at Mickey D's (kids choice) we headed out for a hike in the mountains (beautiful) followed by swimming at the hotel pool. Kelly did take a little fall coming down the mountain, but no harm done this time. Then it was off to the wedding in the afternoon. It was outdoors and the light rain from the morning cleared up and everything was great. It was definitely one of the best weddings I have been to. The farm was beautiful and everything was pretty low-key, but well done. The message was one of the better ones I have heard at weddings. After the ceremony the reception was outside at the farmhouse with dancing on the driveway. It was just a blast to hang out, have all the families around, and see an amazing couple get married.

We headed back down last night to have a last Sunday at our church here before heading to north later this week. The message was outstanding and, as often seems to be the case, was just what I needed to hear. Later we headed out for some biking. It was raining on the drive out, but we stopped for lunch and it cleared up for our bike ride along the Lake Murray Dam. The ride was great, although Kelly missed most of it as she fell asleep in the back pack. We stopped for ice cream before turning around. All of us were quite tired by the time we got back as we rode a little over 9 miles and quite a few good hills in there. Brian and Allie did great, but all are were pretty tired tonight.

So a good start to our last week down here for the summer. Looking forward to heading north and seeing friends and family.

Done...for now

We just submitted the final for our last class of the semester. That feels good. It's a strange combination of feelings. We both love our classes and it is great to go, yet it also is nice for them to end. I am done with my Greek series though. Two years of Tuesday's evenings have been devoted to the language and I can finally say I'm done. That one for sure is one that has the mix of feelings. It was awesome to learn and I've gained some great insights. This semester alone was truly amazing as we studied Luke, a book my professor has spent his entire life studying (that and Acts). Just listening to his insights each week was astounding. So, it looks like just one year left and I'll be done for good!

These past two weekends have been fun as we've had some visitors from Michigan. Ray came down two weekends ago. Saw "the sight" of Columbia and got interviewed for the news (learned they like to put their own twists on what you say...although I didn't make the cut as only Allie and Ray were on TV...and I thought Kelly sitting on my shoulders would have given me extra points). We celebrated Kelly's birthday on Friday and Ray was quite gracious to join us at Chucky Cheese, much for all in the end I think as they had some good games there. We also had some board game action, introducing Ray to Settlers.

Last weekend my sis came into town, she's doing an internship in DC this summer. We also took her to "the sight", but she wanted to do some hiking with Zuke (Laura's Great Dane for those of you who didn't know), so we went to Harbison State Forest and would probably about 5 miles through the woods. It was a blast. Kelly loved "walking" Zuke. Not sure what would have happened if he had decided to take off while she was holding the leash...we told her to let go, but we kept a close eye on it. Brian was running all over the place, but got a little tired at the end as Laura and I ended up going ahead to get the car and come back to get the rest. A great time overall, the only downside for us was the bugs and Zuke did not enjoy the heat. The neighborhood kids got a kick out of seeing Zuke, they had never seen a dog so big. Sunday we had a lunch picnic (some great food from Fatz Cafe) which was cut a little short by a thunderstorm. We thought we were good under a pavilion until the wind got so strong that it was blowing the rain sideways even under the entire pavilion. So we made a mad dash for the car and were thoroughly soaked, but had a great time. The only sad part of the weekends was watching people go. It was great to see them, but difficult to say goodbye.

Hopefully we'll see everyone when we come up to Michigan in a few weeks.

Kid Stuff

So busy week with the kids. Aside from the normal stuff we had a few extras this week. Brian had the council Pine Wood Derby race for cub scouts on Saturday. Hundreds of cub scouts, plus brothers and sisters all running around a gym...absolute chaos. The actual Pine Wood Derby portion was quite well organized. I've never seen such a nice track or such nice cars. Sadly, Brian didn't do quite as well as last week, but he had a great attitude about the whole thing. One scout was a little more sad after losing, and was crying while walking out next to us. The dad, ever practical, was trying to tell him about not being a sore loser. The mom turned to the dad and said emphatically, "He's not being a sore loser, he's nine!" I was especially proud of Brian because he did most of the work on his car, with just our guidance. As I talked to some of the other parents I found out that for some of them, this was more their project than their kids.

Although Kelly had her Trike-a-thon at school to raise money for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, apparent Kelly that was not big enough for us. So Wednesday at Bible Clubs she decided to dive over the sidewalk into a brick ledge. She caught her head right on the edge and gave herself a nice little gash on her temple :( So we spent the evening in the ER getting her checked out (no stitches even), but thankfully she is fine and was back to her energetic self the next morning. So, nothing major in the end, but a great reminder of how much God is watching out for us because it easily could have been much worse.

In news for Allison and I, it looks like we will be heading overseas for a couple weeks this summer in July. If you'd like to know more about it, please email one of us.

Cub Scout Pine Wood Derby

Some of you may know that we have had quite the process with Cub Scouts at our school. Well, it has been a long road, but we finally this weekend felt like we are making some big progress. Thanks to another local pack we were able to pull off our pack's first ever Pine Wood Derby Race. The day wouldn't be complete without the last minute adding of weight (supplied nicely from our collection of washers), but the kids had a great time and it seemed like all had fun. Brian had a great time of course, as his car came in first in our pack. The great thing is that I think he did the most work on it himself out of any of the kids...so I think it was well earned :) A couple will go on to compete at the council level next week. To celebrate the good time we ended with a trip to McDonald's for ice cream and some play place time.

Speaking of McDonald's Kelly had a funny comment today. We were going taking the Bible Club teachers out to lunch after church and she asked if we could go to McDonald's. We didn't think that it would be their first choice, so we told her no we were going to Groucho's Deli. She thought about this for a moment and then asked, "Is McDonald's closed?...for why else would we not want to go to such a wonderful place :)

Quick Easter Update

Hi all,

Just wanted to try to get a quick update put out here. I'm still trying to be a little more regular about it. We had a nice Easter down here. Brian and Kelly are on break, so we did some good family time on Friday and Saturday. We found a Good Friday service at a cool old church downtime that I have wanted to visit for quite some time. The Pastor, Ferguson Sinclair, was excellent, living up to everything I had heard about him. Afterward, we just wandered around down town Columbia, which is always fun. We found a fun shop for ice cream and they amazingly had the best flavor of all, Black Cherry (I don't usually find much outside Michigan). I'm unsure if Kelly enjoyed the ice cream or the downtown fountain more. Saturday we mostly relaxed together. Allison attempted, in vain, to wash the pollen off the car. Actually she succeeded, but you wouldn't know that a short bit later (I have never seen as much pollen as they have down here). The bad news Saturday was that MSU lost (as well as Duke winning), but on a bright note they recently opened a BW3's down here, so that was an enjoyable find. Easter day was an interesting mix. Service was nice in the morning and we relaxed all afternoon and played some games as a family. Brian's game of choice was Rummikub, although Kelly's help was mostly going around and telling what each of us had in our hands. So lots of fun and Allison made some good food, however we do miss family on these days.

Speaking of family, there is again some hard stuff going on back in Michigan., so please keep my family in prayer.

Update Part II

So we're feeling pretty good down here after just watching MSU pull out a sweet win against Tennessee. It is great to have things even like sports that tie us back to home...especially when they are exciting things.

So what else is keeping us busy, and a little overwhelmed and confused down here? Well, it really is the same story for us since we've come down here. We've mentioned it before, but we have surprisingly found ourselves in the middle of a large group of young kids from the neighborhood who have picked our house as a spot to always want to come and play. In many ways this is great, but at the same time it can quickly become quite overwhelming at times.

The confused part comes in when you add to this that our church, seeing this opportunity, has decided to start Bible Clubs for the kids on Wednesday nights. Awesome, but we are gaining a new appreciation for the difficulty of this as we have been asked to coordinate it (man, give me 20 college students any day over this). How do you take this group of 20 kids and get them to settle down for a Bible lesson? What kind of lessons keep them interested and what do these young kids who are so tough in many ways, but so young in many others, need to hear? Add to that the teachers are students from CIU who are in their first teaching experiences. So, although they are doing well overall, we are helping them learn as well and trying to balance when to step in.

So, some pretty cool stuff...just a little (or a lot) stretching at times.

Speaking of overall (using it above reminded me), Kelly was quite humorous today as we prepared to go out to watch the basketball game. She, quite the little Spartan, wanted to wear her MSU cheerleader outfit, but she faced the dilemma that she also wanted to wear her overalls. No problem for a creative 3 year old. She decided to wear the cheerleader outfit along with the overalls...turned into underalls in this case. It was quite the unique choice and I'm sure caught some stares at the restaurant...but hey...she's three so it's all fun.

Still here

So I know it has been forever since we have posted anything on here and I apologize for that. But, we are still alive and doing well down here, just very busy. There is so much to tell that has happened since December 6th (wow, that is a really long gap since the last post). It's too much for one post, so I'll just share what is on our minds right now and I'll try in some future ones to go back and tell a little bit of the past couple months. That there has been so much is one of the things that has kept me from posting, so busy and so much to tell.

Alright, what is going on right now. I'm not sure what the right word is...overwhelmed, confused, searching...none seem to quite fully describe the situation. There are really two big fronts that this is coming on, but I think one will do for tonight. As many of you know we live in a poorer neighborhood and many of the people have been hit especially hard by the economy. In the midst of that God has seen fit to bless us, but that leaves us trying to figure out how and where to help out. My roommate from college is in a similar situation and we have recently talked about our struggles in learning how to deal with this. There are just so many questions that don't seem to have clear answers. Who do you try to help? How much do you step in and try to give support and how much do they need to work through the problems themselves? People are going through hard times, but sometimes they are making some choices that are making things harder on themselves. It is especially hard in the case of our one friend, a single parent, whose decisions also affect children. What is called for then? Should we simply help, showing mercy because we all make poor choices? Should we be there as an encouraging friend because they truly are struggling and it is such a sad situation? Is this one of those times that calls for some hard truth to be told?

Out of all of this a couple of things seem to be coming clear. I think we are coming to the realization that we will never get this perfect. There are always times that we will make the wrong choice about where to live in balance. Yet, that does not mean that we should stop trying and learning to do it better and better. Also, admitting that we don't have it all together may be one of the biggest keys, I recently read this in a book and it struck me. We like to think that there is a nice easy plan to life (do A, then B, then C and presto...situation solved). Or we like to think that whatever comes we are capable enough to figure out what to do and handle it. Both of these really are us trying to look to ourselves rather than admitting that we need help. We need the help of others and most importantly the help of God. Admitting that we cannot handle it should not drive us to quit or to believe that things won't work out, instead it should drive us to our knees to ask for help and guidance in the situation. To be given wisdom for how to proceed when we have no idea. To look to God for our encouragement that He is in control and that He can work things out when I cannot. It is exciting to see that He answers. The message this morning was exactly along those lines and was the encouragement that we needed. God has provided good friends who can offer us encouragement as well as some sound advice to make sure we are making wise decisions. And most of all we have prayer, both to ask for help and to be renewed.

Sorry if this is overwhelming for a first post in awhile, it just is what is on our hearts for now.

P.S. Maybe it's small, but it was a nice encouragement that MSU pulled out an awesome win today.